Friday, February 13, 2009

Valentines Dinner

Kathy and I celebrated Valentines Day a little early last night.  Kathy treated me to Kelly Jae's, which is a delightful tapas restaurant in town.  The steak with shitake mushrooms was exploded with taste in our mouths.  But it was outdone by the salmon with wasabi pea-encrusted topping.  Wow.

We finished our meal with a chai creme brulle.  Mmmm-mmm.

Pictures or it didn't happen, you say?  Well, I did take a couple pictures with my phone, but you really don't want me to post them.  They turned out horrible.  =)

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Invisible Bookshelves


I made two sets of invisible bookshelves.
I chuckle every time I see them.
=)

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Flipside

Right after posting my thoughts about living in the present I read this from flipsidecomics.com.  I thought it seemed appropriate somehow and decided to pass it along to you all.

Present

Kim recently wrote a blog entry about living in the present.  I have gotten out of the habit, but I used to consider where I would be in five years or ten years.  After several five or ten year periods passed, I found that my plans didn't really have any bearing on reality.  So I stopped planning that far out.

It wasn't really disappointing.  It was actually more of a relief.  It showed me basically the same thing that Kim came to realize:  living in the present is the best way to enjoy life. 

Planning probably is a good idea, but more in a general sense.  I used to think about taking more classes, moving to certain locations, having children, etc. etc.  Now, I'm happy to live in Goshen until the time comes to move, work at my current job until something else comes along.  We don't have to plan and force change just to meet some arbitrary deadline.  Life happens; things change; we move with the flow. 

I have two goals:  further my education and own my own business so Kathy and I can work together.  We had specific plans for both of these options at one point or another.  Those plans didn't work out because of various circumstances, which at first was disappointing.  My focus has changed though.  I live in the present and enjoy where I am at.  If something works out that would lead to either of those goals I would consider them, weighing them against our current situation. 

If it seems like they will work out I would be happy, but I don't have to force them because I am happy as things stand. 

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Kathy's Green Curry

Earlier this week I made green curry with brown rice for supper. In this first picture you can see the rice cooker in the background. When my parents came back from living in the Philippines for about a year they bought a rice cooker. When I found out how much easier making rice is with one, I got my own, and I love it. You can cook white or brown rice in it (It's magic! It knows how long to cook either, even though it's a different amount of time! (We eventually had to look up how it works. Turns out it's physics.)) without worrying about burning. It turns out great EVERY time and you don't have to take up a burner on the stove.
Anyway, back to the curry. I started the rice before I started the curry, since brown rice takes about 40 minutes to cook. Then I sauteed a couple of onions, the way I always start my curries. I added a sweet potato, cut into thin sticks, and then several cubed potatoes. I added enough water to keep them from burning, adding more as needed.

After the potatoes had cooked for a bit, I added a thinly sliced sweet red pepper. I also prepared the sauce, which consists of two bunches of cilantro and 5 or 6 garlic cloves blended with enough water to make blending easy in a blender. I also added some Thai seasoning - a dry mix that I get at my local health/bulk food store, and some salt.
When the potatoes were cooked, I added some shelled edamame (soybeans). I like their flavor and their texture - they're very firm, not at all mealy.
You can see a wierd ball-thing behind the curry dish. That is a couple of sweet potatoes that grew together into a loose sphere. I saw it in the sweet potato bin at the store and thought it was pretty cool, and since I needed sweet potatoes, purchased it/them. The sweet potato that I used for this curry had some weird white streaks - sort of like regular potato mixed in with the sweet. It must be the season for odd sweet potatoes.

Roasted Vegetables


Last night for supper we had roasted vegetables. This is one of our favorite meals - it's pretty quick and easy, it tastes great, you can make it with whatever veggies you have on hand, and it's very healthy.
This particular bunch was made with sweet potatoes, an onion, a regular potato (Yukon Gold), some green onions, a sweet red pepper, and a carrot. I cut up all the vegetables, trying to cut the ones that cook more slowly into smaller pieces and the ones that cook more quickly into larger pieces so that everything would finish cooking at more or less the same time. I tossed the cut veggies with a little olive oil and some salt, and popped the baking dish into a 400 degree oven.
I set a timer to go off at 10 minute intervals so that I could stir the veggies periodically. This batch took about 40 to bake. The veggies were done at half an hour, but I like to bake them a little longer because the onions get a little carmelized and I really like that flavor.
I normally try to have a green veggie in this - normally snow or sweet peas, sometimes asparagus, but it's still good without. When you bake roasted veggies, it's better to use a larger pan so that the vegetables can be spread out in a fairly thin layer.