Xenomorph

Hi all! I'd like to introduce you to Ripley.

I love how the photo looks all dreamy

Ripley is a Kitchenaid stand mixer 620 Professional. Basically, that means it holds up to 6 quarts and is grey. I've wanted a stand mixer for a very long time. Baking has been bringing me so much joy, and anytime I can make something from scratch, I do. I love her. The very first thing I made in her was butter! 

I was surprised the butter came out yellow. Since milk is white, I thought the butter would also be white. After looking it up, I now know that when churned, the butter cream separates from the watery liquid (which is sold as skim milk, so I guess I'm also making my own skim milk!). The butter cream contains all the fat which has a high concentration of vitamin A. Vitamin A has a natural, yellowish tint. Who knew? Now you do! 
Tomorrow I plan to make some shortbread cookies using this butter in Ripley followed by pizza dough. The twins are coming over for the weekend and we are making pizza from scratch. Dad and I took a really great pizza making class last year and I've been wanting to make the really silky pizza dough we made in class. It took, like, 25 minutes in the stand mixer they provided to get it done, but it was really worth it. 

Hmmm. Really wish I'd taken a picture of the pizzas...

I'm sure I'll be posting a lot of food stuff in the near future, but I am also going to try some other types of posts. For now, though, Bill Cosby and Groucho Marx!

Superb Owl!

Hm. Something looks wrong with my title... Ah, I'll worry about it later. Let's talk about the Super Bowl! More importantly, let's talk about what my hubby bunny made for eats. He likes to cook and is occasionally absolutely inspired! This was one of those times. He started with the marinara. Oh, it's heaven. Tomatoes, oregano, red wine, a touch of vinegar a few other loose odds and ends and, voila! a pot of the best tasting marinara evah!

He then made meatballs. I am not a big fan of meatballs, they remind me of meatloaf. Guess what? I don't like meatloaf. The meatballs were good, but I think maybe next time we'll add some spicy, flavorful sausage to the mix. I think that'd zing it up nicely. 

When he finished baking the meatballs, he tossed them into the sauce and let them simmer for awhile. 

I had made whole wheat hoagie rolls the day before. He heated them up and, I gotta tell ya, wow were those sammies good!

The sauce was perfect with the meatballs and the bread. Ravens and 49ers? I will watch every year as long as the good food keeps on coming.

Oh! Now I remember what's wrong with my title!



Corny, but, well, not even cute. This one kinda creeps me out...

Weekly Wha?

I work at a very popular restaurant with an amazing view of downtown Seattle. Every weekend we do an almost more amazing brunch. Brunch is busy, but a couple of young ladies always find a few minutes to create a piece of 'art'. The art is made with whatever is available to them at the time. It's funny to me because I never see them actually make it. It's not there, it's not there, it's not, oops! There it is! I thought it would be fun to post a picture every week of their creations. This one is from last weekend. I think we should name it. What do you think?

Work

I worked a double at my restaurant job yesterday.  It was very,  very slow. We did maybe,  150 covers the entire day. The one thing that really saved the day was this.

(Hmmm,  trying this on my phone and not sure how it's going to come out)
We cannot see the sunset from where we are,  but the reflection of the sunset off the buildings is magnificent! The buildings look, at first, golden and like a digital display.  Then,  they turn a fiery copper that is very intense.  Finally, we get this deep,  rich orangey-red-pink glow.  All this by 5:30. Not a bad day.

A project!

A project, a project! Yay! A project! I've done several things recently and had a V-8 moment where I realized that a couple of pictures of the process of whatever I was doing and (pop!) I coulda had new blog entry! So, you can count on future blogs where I make my own body whip (the last batch wasn't quite right, so I need to try it again anyway), and my own Irish cream. Um, yum!
Okay, the project. My bonus mom really wants a scarf to go with her brown jacket. There is a fabulous book out there called Scarf Style and I have tried several scarves from there. She chose this one in particular.

I love how the yarn looks like crushed velvet!

The pattern doesn't look like something I cant do. It wouldn't matter anyway because you can learn how to do just about anything on the web. YouTube has great tutorials on complicated knitting techniques. Bonus mom and I went to the local yarn shop and found this amazing Muench Touch Me yarn in copper. Absolutely gorgeous! Unfortunately, they only had 3 skeins and we needed 5. We settled on this beautiful dark green color instead. Oh! And it was 40% off!

I'm going to go now, so I can get started! I'll keep ya'll posted.

A Visit to Bellevue Botanical Gardens

I've been wanting to get out and about in nature recently. My birthday and one year wedding anniversary were last week and the idea was to go camping in Mt. Rainier Nat'l. Park. Unfortunately, I wasn't feeling very well all last week, so my entire vacation was spent mostly at home. Ah, well. It was nice having some quality time lounging around at home. My Dad showed a lot of interest in getting out and about also, so he suggested going to the Bellevue botanical gardens.

This is a lovely garden. Some of it is wild, like this nurse tree above, and the rest is manicured and planned.

I took some random shots of beautiful plants and features. Here they are!

One of my favorite parts of the trip was the 'Ravine Experience'. It's a suspension bridge, but you'd think you were at an adventure theme park based on the sign.

 

 

 

 

 

The bridge is one of those great bridges that bounces around a little as you walk over it. I guess that's why the sign says 'take a walk on the wild side'!

Here is my last picture to share with you today. the best picture taken all day was taken by D and D.

 

I love how they both look so very amused with themselves!
If you get a chance and you happen to be on the east side, I'd recommend getting yourselves out to the Bellevue botanical gardens.

 



Ah, chickens.  I want chickens. This is something that keeps coming back into my life and helps propel it forward. Currently, I rent. It's not something I want to do, but coming up with a down payment for a home is challenging. Saving it is going to take much longer than I had hoped. Knowing that started me thinking about community P-patches, or more specifically, how one might start and run a community henhouse.  How would that work? There is the land to come up with. Privately owned? By whom? Publicly owned? How? How many chickens? How many people will participate? How much $ to start?  Some of it is less worrisome. The chicken coops themselves could be built by people who want to be involved that have the know-how and helped by the rest of us. Could it be integrated into a larger P-patch? I really like this idea, but am not sure where to start. Seattle Tilth may have some ideas. I'll have to think on it more. If anyone has any ideas, pleast don't hesitate!

But it doesn't end there. Eventually, we will begin Worm composting. It will be great for the garden I'd love to have. Yes, a lot of work, but I am really enjoying doing some of the small things I can right now like making things we enjoy eating (pizza, cookies) from scratch. Still junk food, but junk food with ingredients I can pronounce. Someday, someday...