adventure in the kitchen

so last night after a long day “at the shop” (as my dad says) and then lawn mowing before the rain… which never came until sometime this morning… it was time to fix dinner.

When I was a newly wed and wasn’t working, I meal planned. It was great and I always knew what was coming up and what I had in the fridge. Well, needless to say, I have slacked in recent months. Its really hard in the summertime to get geared up to cook when its over 90 for like 2 months straight!

So after much deliberation, we decided on eggs and bacon (a fantastic backup meal), but because I had just harvested like 5 peppers, among other things, I decided to try to make Chile Relleños.

A Chile Relleño is a stuffed pepper. yum! I just stuffed mine with cheese but you can stuff them with lots of things! Even Mike had a second bite! They turned out really good, almost like a glorified mozzarella stick except with some pepper in there too and they were not spicy at all!  The only change to the RECIPE would be that in Hispanic cooking, typically there is no yellow cheese, so I made this recipe with white mozzarella cheese. Great new thing to try.

 

Suggestions on “charring” and peeling peppers. If you have a gas stove, this is easy, turn the stove on low and put the chili directly over the flame, but watch it closely. You want the skin to boil and turn a little charred. If you have an electric stove, do the same thing on a skillet with little to no water/oil. Once about 60-80% of the outside is charred, remove from the heat and put in a glass bowl. Put some saran wrap on top of the bowl and allow the peppers to “sweat.” After about 15 minutes or so you can literally peel the thin outside layer of skin off the peppers and then you can proceed with the regular recipe.

First trip to Clarksville

So on the 13th, I made my first ever trip to visit Kristen in Clarksville (just north of Nashville on the boarder between TN and KY). It was a trip to help her settle into her house, to celebrate her birthday and all around just have a great time.

The biggest project we tackled was taking care of Kayden… ok just kidding. Kristen was dog sitting and was in week 2 of 3 and was worn out with this 1 year old male dog named Kayden. So my job was to be her reinforcement. Here they all are together. He is a high energy, still being trained, bossy, barking dog. And while he is quite sweet, he’s a handful to take care of.

 

 

 

 

We also tackled the organization of their bedroom. Here’s the before:  

 

 

 

Here’s the after!! It went really well and didn’t take all that long. If I had the time I would go back next week and help her with the next room. I guess we’ll just have to plan a second trip!

View Full Album

Here was the schedule: 6 a.m. wake up due to the noisy dog, tackled the bedroom (or most of it) before 830 a.m., mowed the lawn (which is huge! and I have the blister to prove it), quick lunch and food prep for meeting later, completed the clothes organization, did some shopping for organizational baskets, went to an FRG meeting, movie, slept, another early morning, exercise video (thanks Jillian!!), hung new towel rods, visit to the Commissary, saw where Aaron worked, visited the College K is teaching at, church, lunch at outback, and headed home. lots of good conversations occurred in between.

I had a great time and can’t wait to go back again soon! Love you K =)

Outside in the yard

Here are some things you will now find outside in our yard.

We built some mini-clothes line looking apparatuses for our berry bushes. The first picture is our box that holds (from the left) black berries and three different varieties of raspberries. You then see a close up of some blooms which we are supposed to pick off to encourage more fruit growth next year. And the last picture is our lone strawberry bush that survived. Next spring we’ll make the boxes more even by putting one of raspberry bushes in with the strawberries.

 

You will then find our second hatching of eastern blue birds. This picture is kind of at the ugly stage but they just hatched in the last two days. Hopefully soon I can get a picture of them when they’re more cute.

 

 

And these are the creepy spiders we keep finding. He is larger than a silver dollar and gives me the heeby-geebies. We have now seen 3 different webs. They are called Garden Spiders or Argiope (ar-GUY-o-pee) Spiders and are harmless to humans (or so they say) and eat large insects. I guess that’s why this one set up camp right next to our butterfly bush which seem to be the most favorite. When I leaned in (not too close for sure) to take the pictures he started bouncing his web like a trampoline. Talk about shivers down your spine. But they also called them Writer Spiders b/c of the sweet designs in the middle of their web.

 

*No insects were hurt in the creation of this blog… only the mosquito that tried to bite my leg. Maybe I can train the spider to eat those instead!!

proud to be my mother’s daughter =)

Last week Wednesday, I went to pull some ice out of the freezer for my water before going to bed around 10p and realized that the ice was soaking wet (slightly odd)! Upon further investigation, I realized that 1/2 of our freezer was defrosted and the rest was thawing fast. *a bit of background… the few weeks before the incident, our fridge was making odd noises at decreasing intervals and the day before the melt-down, the noises were occurring about ever two minutes.

We called our neighbors across the street (yes at 10pm!!) and they were able to take most of the freezer items. Thursday, the repair man came out and replaced the relay (which we thought might be the problem) which should have started the compressor, but failed. He gave me the bad news that because the compressor was bad… that means buying a new fridge. Bugger. The repair man suggested buying a Whirlpool and going to this scratch and dent store near by before going to Lowe’s to try and find a discounted one. (remember… we’re both Dutch so a deal is like finding gold!) We went to the store Thursday after work and picked out an Amana fridge which I loved. It was delivered Friday and installed.

It was the most noisy fridge I have ever heard!

I could hear it upstairs in my house. I called the store back and said this is not acceptable…  they offered to send out a repair man on Monday to try and fix it. Monday came and the repair man said there was nothing wrong with it, that it was just a loud fridge… great! we had just spend over (fridge, tax and deliver) $1,100 on a new fridge and it was loud!

Upon much thought and review, we decided to call and see if they would exchange the fridge for a different model and they agreed. We went in to pick out a new one on Wednesday of this week and the sales guy Greg knew our situation and was showing us this Whirlpool Gold model on the floor. I really liked it but w/o tax and delivery fee it was about 300$ more than we paid before. Mike said that was too much and I agreed. I told Greg, “this fridge is more than we paid for initially” and he said it was no problem and he would sell this one to us for the same price as the other and therefore do an even exchange. WHOOO HOO!! This second new fridge is a Gold model whatever that means and retails at like $2200. It had some major scratches on the handle but  Greg ordered us a new one free of charge! so not only was it discounted, we got new handles come in =) and we got it out the door for around $1100.

Here she is!! She was installed yesterday and she runs like a dream! super quiet

 

 

 

 

 

 

It pays to be persistent and hunt for a deal. We did not go out looking to swindle a deal like that but are totally fine with the results for sure =) and are satisfied with the product and outcome.

**Note: My mother is the master of all deals. She once got a patio furniture set (let’s say for example sake.. I don’t remember the exact figures) that retailed at $2500 marked down to 1500$ but asked for it to be discounted more because it was the floor model and hand some dings on it. After going round and round with the manager who wasn’t coming off the price much and mom offering around $800, the manager said… take it for $500… that’s my final offer!! Mom wasn’t even bidding that low! But let me tell you, she took the deal before he could change his mind. And after purchasing it, she even asked them to hold it for another week so she could come back and pick it up! thanks for the training mom!!

Summertime fun

Here are some pictures of what we’ve been up to on the weekends out on the lake.

View Full Album

View Full Album

I even officially surfed behind the boat! let go of the rope and rode the wave for quite some time =) Pretty exciting! Next stop Hawaii!! (ok not really)