This little pig...

Went to market! The Vancouver Farmers Market!

We've been going for a couple of years now. It's very small, but we like it that way. They have both local vendors, as well as vendors/farmers from the east side of the state. They have flowers, produce, arts, jewelry, bake goods, live music, etc...

We always get a bouquet for the apartment. They sell from $5 to $15. We usually go for mid-range bouquet (seven bucks).

From 2010-04-30

I got some fresh parsley for 50 cents. I used it to make some beef pho (Vietnamese rice noodle soup). It's usually made with cilantro, which I hate. I added leeks (from the market), fresh lime juice and jalepenos. It was delicious! Dan ate it and said, "I like leeks!" Mind you, he hates any form of onion. It was my first time using leeks. They really are mild.

From 2010-04-30

I am joyfully gluten free (most of the time joyful, all the time gluten free). Dan is joyfully gluten free (all the time joyful, most of the time gluten free). He does splurge on a few gluten items, including an organic cinnamon roll at the market... he says the ones I used to make taste better :0)

From 2010-04-30

We came home from the farmers market and cleaned of the deck. Some of our herbs weathered the winter including the pineapple mint, rosemary, sage, thyme, and spicy oregano.

From 2010-04-30

Happy Spring!

Mozzarella Cheese Sticks

I decided to venture into the gluten free cooking world today. After a month of gluten free, I missed some old favorites, namely, mozzarella cheese sticks. So I whipped up a batch today.

I cut some mozzarella into sticks. Then I used a gluten free flour mix to coat them. I dredged them in an egg and milk mixture and finished them off with gluten free breadcrumbs mixed with seasoning. Here they are before going into the freezer.

From 2010-03-15

I put them in the freezer for an hour to make sure the cheese wouldn't just ooze out of them when I fried them. I fried them on the stove in some canola oil. It only takes about 30 seconds per side (at about 350 degrees). Deep fried goodness...

From 2010-03-15

Crunchy yet gooey...

From 2010-03-15

The last picture is blurry because the steam from the mozzarella stick kept fogging up my camera lense. However, blurr aside, you can see the delicious, melty cheese. Yum.

It's boo-tiful outside!

It's finally fall. My favorite season. It was foggy on the way to work this morning, and I'm breaking out my scarf collection. Dan hauled out the fall decorations for me. Thanks to all of those who have contributed to them along the way. Happy fall everyone.

From Halloween '09

This is a tower of chocolates I got from Teresa one year. Delicious! Dan was very excited. The white ghost next to it is a candle holder I got from her the year before.

From Halloween '09

These are some cute little wooden signs my mother sent me. She got them from the drug store in Monte, I believe.

From Halloween '09

Perhaps the classiest of all the decorations. I got this one playing this game at a bar with my brother Dale. It was a punch board. I think we one this ghost and also a dozen eggs from some lady out the Wishkah. We never collected on the eggs.

I have a lot more decorations up, thanks to my family. If you have decorations up, send me pictures, or blog about them. It really is my favorite season.

Pizza Night...Again

This time I made my crust from scratch. It was very easy. I used a recipe from www.recipepizza.com I used the thin crust recipe, but I added a little oil and an extra handful of flour to compensate. The pizza crust was VERY easy and quick. The main part had a good texture. Thin and crispy crust with a little bit of dough on top. The outer crust was bland and a little too crispy. Overall, I would make it again, but I'll continue to look for a better recipe. One thing I like is that it called for very few ingredients and in small amounts.

From Pizza night

It was a taco pizza because we had leftover taco toppings but no leftover tortillas. You can see from the picture above that a little lip of the pizza crust got messed up when I slid it into the oven. I used a hot pizza stone (500*) and used cornmeal on the bottom to make sure it slid off the baking sheet onto the stone.

From Pizza night

Now that is a perfect picture of a perfectly crisped crust if I do say so myself.

From Pizza night

I used some leftover pizza sauce with some salsa mixed in. I blended them together (Dan doesn't like chunks). I added a little mexican seasoning I have from world market and a few dashes of hot sauce. I topped it with leftover taco meat, tillamook cheddar, and some lettuce and spinach when it was out of the oven.

It would have been great with tomatoes and avocados, but alas, I was out of both. Leftovers should make quite a tasty breakfast.

The start of our winter storm

We are just now getting some snow in Vancouver. We have about 1 3/4 inches now at 11:25 AM on Saturday. We are under blizzard condition warnings starting at 4 PM. We are supposed to get about 10 inches in the next 24 hours and winds up to 50 MPH. I know that might not seem like a lot to those of you on the east side of Washington, or on the East side of the U.S., but you have to remember that our entire county only has 3 snow plows.

From December 2008 Snow

This is the frozen duck pond at our apartment complex.

From December 2008 Snow

Don't be fooled... these are not real boulders. They are from the abondoned mini golf course!

We will keep you updated. Stay warm and safe!

I Toe-tally had an accident today :0(

Well, today didn't quite turn out as planned. The weather was gorgeous. Dan and I went grocery shopping together in the morning and planned on having a great day together at home. I planned to make him meatball subs so he could enjoy the wonders of Sunday football, as it was one of the few Sundays he has off. I planned on getting some stuff done around the house, making cookies, and some planning for my classroom.

As we got home with the groceries, I began to open all the windows and doors. It was so gorgeous here and I wanted to get some nice clean air in. As I opened the door to the balcony, I decided to go check on my herbs to see if they needed any watering. That is when the door attacked me. Here is a picture of the bottom of the door. Note the large, metal weather stripping.

Apparantly my pinky decided to go to war with it, and my toe lost. Big time. It slice my toenail in half, and took off a good section of the toe as well. It hurt as bad as stubbing a toe, not any more, but that's because I kind of went into shock. As most of you know, I don't blood, cuts, etc... I called the nurseline for my insurance and they told me to go to a doctor to avoid infection.

I went to the urgent care, which surprisingly, only took about an hour and a half to get in to see the doctor. He took a look at it and said it was all toenail. I said it was skin/toe too. We serisouly had a back and forth, "No it isn't, yes it is" for about 2 minutes. Finally I just gave up arguing with him. He numbed it up with a series of 3 shots (was only supposed to be two). MAN. THEY HURT. One was right by the webbing of the toes. Ouch. Then he cut off my toenail. I couldn't feel it, but I could actually here the scissors cutting through my skin. YARF. At that point he admitted that I was right about skin. I told him I'm going to charge him for the visit.

I am supposed to keep my foot up for a day or two, with the bandage on. No pain medicine because we are trying to conceive. Apparantly the stuff they used to numb it is ok, as is the tetanus shot that I got. That's what they said at least, but if he doesn't know the difference between toenail and skin, I was going to trust him. Everything I've read online seems to say it's perfectly safe to keep trying. Here is a picture of my shoulder with the cool Daffy Duck bandaid on it.

Don't I look tough? Surprisingly, the shoulder (thanks to the shot) hurts worse then the toe. I have a feeling that's going to change in a few hours. Overall I got four shots and I only cried once. Not too bad!

Summer is still here

Summer is still here! The weather has been nice and I've been trying to enjoy. Dan and I are both trying to get in better shape, so went for a walk with a couple of wonderful co-workers on Friday. We plan to work out at school a couple of days a week.

We are also trying to eat healthier. We tried something new. Boca brand (vegetarian) breakfast sausage links. Pretty good. They were especially nice chopped up in our eggbeaters today (better that way, then just eating them by themselves).

Dan is getting home from work soon and I just got done making dinner. Weather was so nice that I decided to grill up some chicken. I marinated it with some of my fresh basil and spicy oregano (amongst other things like lime juice, oil, garlic...). To be honest, it needed a little more salt, but you can't tell that by the beautiful picture!

I hope you all are having a great continuation of your summer!

The Green's visit Vancouver

I think this is my first blog entry, so I'll try to make it exciting. Up to this point, Susan has been responsible for putting up new entries on a pretty regular basis, but she's busy crafting (with a little dancing as we listen to some Death Cab for Cutie), so she left this one up to me.

This past Monday, Jaimie, Dale & Jackson came down to Vancouver for the day. We had talked about visiting the Portland Zoo, but with the rain, we had to make other plans. We spent the afternoon going to Whole Foods to pick up some chicken for dinner, hitting Starbucks for some mocha lite frappachinos, and then shopping at The Learning Palance, where Jackson ended up getting some flash cards and other fun learning activites.

At our apartment, Jackson was having fun with our stairs: climbing up, getting carried down, climbing up, getting carried down, climbing up, getting carried down, climbing up, getting carried down, and on and on. Living in a one floor house in Monte, he loved the new adventure of climbing the stairs of our apartment. For the next few hours, we were hanging out and playing with Jackson. At some point we realized that no one wanted to cook, so we got pizza from Papa Murphy's.

Of course, the night wouldn't be complete without playing some Mario Cart on the Wii. Playing while Jackson is awake is always fun because he tends to gravitate towards Susan so she has a few more obstacles than the rest of us.

Mario Kart

This one is for T- to the Revor. You said you didn't like all of the boring day to day stuff. You said you wanted pictures of Dan playing Mario Kart. Here you go. PS... I finally beat him (He is the best in our family, even beating my brother Dale.). I was racing as Koopa Troppa- He was Baby Peach. Usually we race as our own people (Dan and Susan), however, we wanted fun little vehicles. He rode in a duck... I had a spaceship similiar to a Star Wars TY Fighter.

I threw in a bonus picture of Dan painting our new closet door (downstairs). Don't mind the messy closet!

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

This is how our garden grows! We only have a few feet of space outside of our balcony. We have recently decided to dedicate this space to growing a garden. We decided on one foliage plant (the gardenia), one tomato plant a couple of herbs. We are growing spicy oregano, basil, tarragon and sage. We have already used the herbs in a couple of dishes (including mini-burgers... for which I made homemade mini hamburger buns). We have also almost lost the gardenia bush in the great June heat. It reached 104 degrees here after months of rain.