Bora Bora

Hi, friends!
I hope you're having a wonderful summer. The temperature has been hovering around 100 degrees Fahrenheit and, hoo boy, have I been trying to stay cool! Toodz phoned to say "hayyy!" Ok, stay fun, everyone!

(I'm in Bora Bora here.)

Happy happy summer.

House Warming

Moving into the new house - I have a new domain to oversee!! Adnama's walls are still bare so we decided to do a little arts and crafts with Hatky.

Hatky and Adnama had quite an adventure at Michael's. Hatky coveted Martha Stewart's line - especially the glitter! After much perusing, we decided to purchase a few canvases and try our hand at painting.

Hatky's was feeling quite geometric. And dots!:


Adnama was a little more abstract:


This was her favorite in the series. She used keys for the first of her 3 canvases. String was used for the second and the third was originally made using a lock but had to be painted over.

Remniscent Winter

It's summer right now and we're doing everything possible to lower our body temps and stay cool: snow cones (successful), iced peach tea (successful), flippy floppies (moderately successful), and reminiscing about the cozy coolness of winter...

Treeson (our vinyl friend) and Three (one of our happy pocket monsters) went outside to play one February to find a winter wonderland in Austin, Tx. So, naturally, I took some cute pictures of them.

Three is facing the wrong way!

Ahh, much better! Hay, fwends! Hehe :B

Treeson perched in his tree.

Hm. Looking at winter photos did little to lower my body temperature. I should drag out the kiddie pool and get Toodz to go swimming with me.

Oh, and just for good measure, here's one of my favorite pictures I took of Adnama with a hot pink monster at SXSW 2010:

I hope Hot Pink Monster gets invited to the Oscars one day.

KAL Cooking Week 1

Tonight, Laur, Kends and I had our inaugural weekly cooking date. Kends took 10 weeks of cooking lessons while in Mexico. He came back excited to show us all his new cooking skills. First on the menu: OCTOPI.

I knew this was going to be an adventure from the get-go when Kends calls me with bad news: his local grocery store ran out of octopi and squid ink! They said they are typically in stock but happened to run out on this particular day. It must be that time of year when everybody's craving octosquid.


We called around to 4 different grocery stores and finally found it at a store 15 minutes from my house. I went on the octopi run ... totally clueless on how to shop for octopi. Do I buy it in a can? Are we getting mini octopi? Do I ask the fishmonger to cut it? Can I get octopi filets? Kends said 1 kilo would be sufficient and that we wanted to buy a whole, large octopus. Unfortunately, we were not able to locate any squid ink.

Laur has been holding down the fort, preparing it for octo-fest. She is ...estatic to see that we got whole octopi - tentacles and all! Kends seems to be very pleased with the goods while Laur takes a little time to warm up to the little guys.


Laur was the master veggie cutter while Kends meticulously followed his bilingual Spanish-English recipe. Some choice words from his translation from his Spanish-speaking cooking teacher:

Preparacion
1. Cut off part of octopus with eyes

• Push out teeth with thumbs
• Stick finger through mouth, out head, and make sure nothing left
• Clean the octopus with salt - scrub it like clothes, wash with water and do this 3 times
• Before putting octopus in water, place in once, take out, in a second time, take out, and in a third time and leave it with boiling water, 2 dientes of ajo and a little onion and salt and cook for 15-20 minutes

Luckily the fishmonger had already detoothed/eyeballed the octopus and Kends let it go with just one washing. Here they are demonstrating proper octopi technique:


Sadly we slightly overcooked the octopi, but look at how curly the tentacles get:


There was a few onion-induced tears shed, neosporin/bandaid action and frantic chopping going on.. a high action meal for sure. Totally worth it though - the finished product was a success! I even got my anti-seafood roommate to try some & she said it tasted way better than she expected. I think she actually used the word "edible" to describe the octopus, while not a glowing review, it's something!


Kends made sure to show us the proper way to use the end of the curly tentacles to add some pizazz to the dish, ha.

CARDS CARDS CARDS

Limey and Adnama were inspired by cards they found in Uncommon Objects, a thift/vintage store in South Austin. They had really cute cards with compound phrases. For example:

• "Bad" followed by a picture of a donkey = bad-ass
  
• "Sex" followed by picture of a cat = sex-kitten

Limey and Adnama first created a few for friends and family:


Adnama then had extra time the office since her students are standardized testing this week and decided to make cards for her students for the end of the year. She needs a few more ideas ... running out. They need to be PG and appropriate for students. Ideas??? She has about 7 more to make.

Cooking Sundays!

Limey and Adnama were tired of eating the same thing for lunch every day. They decided to combine their resources and cook two dishes for some variety. Having delicious, made from scratch food would prevent them from making trips to the local convenience store. We don't really follow recipes but often walk by the Whole Foods display case for inspiration. Last week: vegan pesto, chilled cilantro-y tofu dish and a chow mien stir fry.

Vegan pesto:

Vegan pesto is really easy to make and uses only 6 ingredients. Some vegan pesto calls for nutritional yeast, but I think it tastes fine even without it - I try to avoid processed products when at all possible. Instead of using pine nuts, we used walnuts since Limey's grandmother sent over several pounds of fresh roasted walnuts from her backyard in Washington state. (If we had to purchase them from the store, walnuts would be a cheaper alternative to pine nuts anyways).

• 3 cups fresh basil
• 1/2 cup olive oil (+ drizzle over the top)
  
• 4 cups walnuts
• 5 cloves garlic
• Salt and pepper to taste
  

Stick it all in a blender, and viola! They put them in glass jars (it made a ton) and drizzled olive oil over the top to create a seal to keep it fresh. MMMM.

Chilled Cilantro-y Tofu:

Adnama's aunt made a dish similar to this several week ago when Adnama visited their family in Denver. It is a perfect summer dish and can be eaten either hot or cold. The original recipe had dried tofu and bean sprouts. However, those ingredients could not be found in the Central Market, so they used extra firm tofu and celery (for that crunch!) as substitutions.

• 1 bunch cilantro
• 1 package extra firm tofu
• Sesame oil
• Soy sauce
• 1 stalk celery
• Hot sauce of your choice (we love chili bean paste that Adnama's mom bought in Chinatown)
• 1 package enoki mushrooms (optional - they are thin, spaghetti-shaped mushrooms - they don't really have much flavor but Adnama loves them).
  

1. Cut the tofu into 1/4'' cubes, celery in 1/4'' slices, enoki mushrooms in half and rough chop cilantro
2. Mix the celery and cilantro in a large bowl with 1 tbsp sesame oil, 1 tbsp soy suace & hot sauce to taste
3. Blanch the tofu for 5 minutes, enoki mushrooms for 4 minutes in simmering water and drain
4. Mix enoki mushrooms and tofu into the bowl with other ingredients - their heat will wilt the cilantro.

Enjoy either hot or cold.

Chow Mein Stir-fry:

• Shittake mushrooms
• Sugar snap peas
• Soy sauce
• Vegetable oil
• Chow mein noodles

Stir frys are so easy.. boil the noodles, pan-fry the veggies, combine and enjoy!

NOMMM :B

shreddin' the pow

Wheee just got back from a weekend from CO. It was SP's first time riding in a chairlift - he still gets nervous about falling but his pillowy stature protects him.


Getting ready to ride down the mountain!


Went to the Denver capitol building and .. met some weird friends.