the goose loves new recipes

Happy Thursday, Friends!

I think it's time for me to change things up a bit - instead of boring you with ten things on a Tuesday (or Wednesday, since I'm a procrastinator), I'll update you on what we've been cooking/eating recently. That's fun, right? It's really that I didn't want to waste my ten Tuesady things on food items, so I'm sticking them all in the same post. You can drool on your keyboard along with me.

We're trying to be very economical with our shopping and cooking, so we're meal planning every few weeks and then buying the appropriate groceries that will lend themselves to several meals. We're also working through our pantry items and being creative with what's on hand. Of which there's plenty. The idea is that the less we go to the grocery store, the less we spend on groceries. Clever, right?

Probably 10 days ago, we took these things...

added them to these things:

poured this stuff on top:

and came out with this! Salmon mac n cheese. Yes please.

 We use the non-seasoned frozen salmon filets from Costco, and let me just tell you, for a moment, how much those things rock.

They thaw super fast, so if you're one of those people that gets home at 6pm starving, with "nothing" to eat in the house, you can just grab an individually wrapped (sorry environment) piece of salmon from the freezer, stick it in a bowl of warm water while you rip your work clothes off, and then grill it in a pan for about 3 minutes on each side.

Not that I have personal experience here - I always plan ahead for dinner and I'm never that excited to get into sweats and comfy t-shirts immediately when I get home. Right. If only they weren't $25/bag.

The weekend before Easter, I whipped up some mini quiches for breakfast. These are super easy - you basically take whatever meat (optional) and veggies and cheese you have in the fridge and throw them together with some eggs. I like putting them in the mini cupcake tin for bite-size perfection.

Just don't forget to spray your pan with a little PAM action first, lest you pour all your uncooked-quiche-batter-stuff back into the bowl before baking because you forgot to grease the pan, only because you know that if you bake them ungreased, those suckers will never come out of the pan.

Again, not that I have much experience there.

After daydreaming about them for days, I finally made the Pesto Parmesan Scones from How Sweet Eats. And they were as divine as in my dreams. I'm sorry the picture does not do them justice.

They basically taste like buttery pesto clouds from heaven in your mouth. Never knew you wanted that, huh. But now you do.

We ate them with over-medium eggs over fried tomatoes. Two eggs for Billy, one for Lucy.

And finally, we are walking away from our comfort zone to tackle a few of the recipes in the free cookbook we got from UP awhile back. We've already made two of the curries in the book, so we only have about 598 left to choose from. Oh my, so few choices.

Most recently, we made a version of Chicken Vindaloo, which was mostly chicken, vinegar, coconut milk, and spices. We added some craisins for fun. And boy were they fun.

Currently on our food plan, we're targeting a potato-spinach curry, along with a white bean & ham soup to use some of our Easter bounty (yeah, the Easter post is coming soon, I promise) and pasta puttanesca.

Fun fact for you - Wikipedia (the ultimate source of accurate information) points out that literally translated, pasta puttanesca means "whore's style spaghetti", which makes it sound very fun to try. It uses capers, anchovies, olives, garlic, and tomatoes, among other things, which oddly enough, we have on hand. And it actually sounds kind of tasty. So we'll update you on that.

Anybody else making any whore food recently? (Sorry about all the whore-talk, Mom!)

the goose loves tuesday's ten (#7)

Well, friends, I've done it again. I've managed to post nothing for a whole week, and I haven't even been able to have a timely Tuesday post. But we'll pretend it's Tuesday instead of Wednesday and get to the good stuff.

"Today" is Tuesday, April 10th, and so I have Ten Tuesday Things on the Tenth for you! Yay alliteration.

1. Last Friday was Good Friday, and here is what made it good.



Shrimp Po'Boy at Miss Delta



I know that Good Friday is about reflection and quiet time and understanding the weight of the day - and don't worry. I did that all day. Work was busy and stressful and we were working hard. I was reflecting on strength and patience and sacrifice!

So then, by the end of the day, it was time to spend a few peaceful moments with the one I love over a tasty meal. And that's just what we did.

2. After driving up to Seattle on Friday night, I hung out with Monika while Billy went to Canada for a drum competition. Mon & I went to her friend's baby shower, and we wrapped up two onesies (one is below) and a little clutch/diaper case/pouch for the soon-to-be-mom-of-two.

3. On both Saturday and Sunday mornings, we walked Greenlake - a three-mile path surrounding a giant manmade lake in Seattle. The weather was gorgeously sunny, so we soaked up the rays and enjoyed the fresh air.

4. And it was Easter! So we said goodbye to Lent and ordered ourselves some delicious coffees - a latte for me and a (soy) mocha for Billy! Mmm lattes never tasted soooo good. (We got the regular 16 oz, even though I did talk earlier about getting a super-grande 64-oz-er...)

5. Here's your Easter post teaser - we celebrated with Monika on Sunday, and then had a little extra fun on Monday with the dog... details coming soon. 

 6. While Billy was still in Canada, Bents and I took a walk through Carkeek Park, a nice trail near Monika's house. LOVE the sun. 

I tried to get the dog to get up on the rock and lay down so I could photograph him, but he was way too interested in the bird/squirrel/leaf/stream noises to sit still. 

And why wouldn't I try again when we got to the field of daisies? 

 7. While I took pictures of the dog hung out in Seattle, Billy met his band in Vancouver, BC for the first competition of the season. He looked a little bit like this. Click here for his performance!

 8. One of these days, I'm going to get crafty again. And one of my first projects will be turning these beads into a gorgeous necklace for work. I'll add it to my long list of weekend projects.

 9. I made more cookies. Billy is a spoiled lucky boy! 

 10. Finally! Remember when I got that spraypaint (#10)? Well, here's the results! Spraypainted hampers. Those suckers used to be plain-old-ugly white. And now they're gorgeous!

I covered them with a layer of primer first, to make sure the paint wouldn't flake off. I covered the insides with plastic and newspaper to keep the paint only on the outside, and that worked well. I also let each of them dry for at least a week in the garage so they fully set. Oh and there's Billy's teddy and the art I made awhile ago that's waiting to go on the wall... 

So there you have it - another ten down for Tuesday. And I promise - food and Easter and Bentley posts coming soon!

the goose loves wednesday's ten

Okay so I don't really love Wednesday's Ten. I love Tuesday's Ten. But Tuesday was crazy, so we'll work on our Flexibility and post ten things on Wednesday. To make up for the delay, I've got twenty beautiful mostly focused photos for your enjoyment. Let's get going then.

1. It's been rainy here - no sign of the Spring that's showing up around the rest of the country. I'm more than ready for Spring, but the dog isn't. He's perfectly happy going exploring (in the backyard) in the rain, getting his shiny coat wet and getting his cute little paws muddy. Some days, the paws aren't enough. He decides he has to get his beak muddy too, so he goes digging for treasure. In the mud. But then we get cute photos like these.

2. When he's not playing in the mud, he's playing neck-warmer-slash-ice-cream-guardian with Carolyn. Check out their matching eyes - they both look guilty, but for very differnt reasons. Haha. It's all fun and games until Bentley's tongue gets close to the spoon...

3. How's Moose, you ask? Doing just fine. Slightly less fluff-ful, but that's never hurt a moose. These days, Bentley  has been going moose-diving through the head, where there's currently a big gap (where the eyes used to be). We may or may not be encouraging him by putting peanut-butter covered treats in the moose's belly...

After a few days hours, when the floor is covered with fluff again, we pick it up play with it. Bentley especially likes the extra warmth of his fluff-scarf. Looks like a Lion!

Then Bentley gets tired of de-fluffing Moose and goes to sleep under his giant moose arm.

4. I promise we do things besides playing with Moose. Like on Saturday, when we took a stroll down Hawthorne and stopped by this retro thrift store. You probably had to be there to appreciate this awesomely ugly shiny green couch. And yes, that's Billy cradling the bag of yukon gold potatoes we got at the farm stand a block away for $1. Yes, 5 lbs for $1. What a steal.

5. After all the excitement at the retro store, we were planning a quiet night at home when we got a call from Billy's coworker. UP was taking a group of donors to go see the musical Wicked, and they had three extra tickets! Would we like to go? Of course! Those are my polka-dot-covered-knees in the bottom of the picture there. (Those tights are awesome, and remind me of the white tights with the blue velvet bears I used to have when I was 3 - right Mom? You still have those for future granddaughters, right?)

Yeah, I dragged Billy out in the cold for a photo at halftime. Or intermission.

And we brought our good buddy Carolyn! This was only her fourth time seeing Wicked...

6. Sunday afternoon was spent celebrating our friend Caryn's birthday! We went over to her house for some eating, drinking, and fun. She's the one in the purple, dead center.

Carolyn and I got her a mug that says "Bobby Newport, 2012" - get it, you Parks & Recreation fans?? All you others, start watching that show now. On NBC. Go.

We also spent some time hanging with Caryn's adorable baby boy, Brennan. The baby's practicing his boob-grab in this photo. (Sorry for being so graphic, Mom!)

I even changed a diaper. Or two. Three actually, because he decided to pee in #2 while we were mid-change. That's okay, better in the diaper than on me.

7. Billy won his work's March Madness basketball bracket! The picture is a little hard to read, but Billy's name is there at the top, with the team name of "Winning." At least the boy doesn't lie. He brought home $52, which we agreed he could spend on anything he wants, regardless of our budget. Sounds like $52 worth of beer will be joining our home soon.

8. And now, three things from yesterday - the REAL Tuesday, to make up for posting on Wednesday instead.

I woke up to some double-rainbow action on Tuesday morning! Can you spy both? Followed almost immediately by 12 hours of rain.

9. And in the evening, instead of posting my Tuesday post, I spent about 25 minutes emptying all of our plastic bags of bulk grains (etc) and putting them into the appropriate tupperwares. Let's go through them, class-picture style. Starting on the top row, we have arborio (??) rice (for risotto), dry garbanzo beans, dry white beans. Middle row - cous cous, unsalted- unroasted almonds, and basmati rice. Bottom row - whole flax seeds, unsalted-unroasted peanuts, and pumpkin seeds.

And to make Billy mad for fun, all stacked up in one tall stack. As you can see, very productive things kept me from posting yesterday.

10. Finally, I also spent Tuesday night making 40 chocolate chip cookies for a work meeting on Wednesday (today). Except somehow (BILLY!) only 36 cookies made it onto the plate. Hmm.

 

That's all for Wednesday, folks. Next week, we'll include a photo or two on the excitement of Easter. Mostly how I'll be drinking a 64 oz latte on Sunday, with FULL-FAT milk, to make up for all the lattes I've given up during Lent. What will you be gorging on Sunday to make up for lost time during Lent?

the goose loves tuesday's ten (#5!)

 What up, friends.

Today has been an adventure. We started with an early morning, then 8 hours of work, then $500 in car repair,  and then 3 hours of snare drum practice at our house for Billy's scottish pipe band. Fun? Yeah, for the dog - he just got like 8 new friends. Me? Notsomuch. But I'm accomodating. All great stories for another day.

So finally we get around to the fun stuff. 10 Tuesday Things at 10pm.

1. I think the first day of Spring was this past week. I don't know officially since we are still in snow-ville. Yes ma'am - we woke up to snow on Wednesday morning. Or was it Thursday? Pretty though.

 2. Oh wait. Maybe it is spring! We did enjoy several gorgeous hours of sunlight on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. And so of course, like 95% of all other normal Portlanders, we headed outside.

We only got as far as the backyard, but it was heavenly.

 Bentley loved it too. That dog likes sun almost as much as he likes chicken. Almost.

 3. On Saturday, we went out to pizza and a north portland bar for our friend Allison's 2th birthday! The pizza was delish and we spent awhile playing trivia at the bar, which was also terrific.

There's the birthday girl on the left, and some crazy guy Chris, our good friend from college, who happened to get his tooth knocked out hours earlier in a basketball game. Ouch. He's going gangsta-gap-toothed in this photo.

 And the three of us girls! Billy is to Jackie's left, hiding.

 4. If you don't already know that I'm obsessed in love with the color purple, then you haven't been paying any attention. It's been my favorite practically since the womb. Once, when I was about 12 and in mid-middleschool-crisis, I thought about changing my favorite color to blue or something. But I didn't, primarily because I didn't want to let my dad down - I knew how much he knew that I loved purple, and he was always so awesome at picking out fun purple things for me from business trips or trips to home depot. I love me my purple maglite!

Anyway, that long story is just to let you know that today, my new admin assistant was watching out for me too, and it reminds me of my dad, which is nice, since I miss him and my mom a lot (a visit to CA is coming soon, though, I promise!). She brought me 6 packs of purple post-its, two of which are a gorgeous dark purple, not just the pastelly-easter purple I normally see! Yes. Made my day.

5. On Sunday, Billy and I bravely avoided the to-die-for Portland Brunch scene and instead whipped up some English-Muffin-French Toast. What does that make it? English toast? French muffins? Who cares. It makes it tasty. There's even a ghost fork in the photo.

 6. Since Sunday morning was still sunny, we took advantage of the dry day and got some projects done outside. More on those later. But now I remember how much I love the sun. And how much I miss it.

Bentley loves the sun too. And loves being lazy. I'm pretty sure he's at least 27% cat. (Most likely along with 12% bear, 31% wolverine, 24% dog, and 6% bunny.)

 

 

 7. We Billy continued our cooking spree on Sunday night, with a bbq-ed beer-can chicken. We were pushing our luck on the good weather, and by the end there were rain drops harassing our chicken, but it came out REALLY good.

 I made the rest of our brussel sprouts as our green side, but we skipped the carbs. Who needs carbs when you have perfect chicken?

8. Just as I predicted last week, we started on our planter box this weekend. We checked out the ready-made ceramic and plastic planters at Home Depot, but options in the size we wanted (big) ranged from $35 to $65+ each, and we'd want two or three of those (they're usually circular pots, about 2 feet in diameter?). So we figured the build-your-own route was cheaper.

Based on a tutorial and plan we found online (more on that later), we picked up twelve 2"x6"x8' doug fir boards (about $3 each), one 4"x4"x8' doug fir post, 24 3/8" carriage bolts, 24 washers, 24 nuts, and a 3/8" drill bit. We do have the full-on drill bit kit, but it doesn't come with anything smaller than a 1/2" bit... really??

The nice man at Home Depot made our cuts for free. He cut six boards in half (for the short sides of our rectangle) and cut our  4"x4" post in 18" pieces. But we're basically building a 4'x8' rectangle, 18" high. Except that when we got home, we decided a  3' x 9' size was better for our side yard. So we recut and pasted boards together. Pasted with screws. But enough blathering on this for now - full post later, once Portland convinces us its ready for spring and done with snow. So maybe by June.

9. Onto other crafty arts, I haven't sewed anything for a little while, and my fingers are itching for thread and fabric and the whir of the machine. I've been dying to buy some cotton voile (never actually felt it, but heard it drapes beautifully), perhaps in this Tula Pink Dandelion Olive.

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Or maybe I'll buy some of this wispy pink.

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My end goal is one (or several) beautiful spring-y infinity scarves. I wear scarves at least four days a week during winter, but most of them are too warm, even for our shoddy "spring" in this town. But these would be a perfect bridge to the free necks of summer. And maybe I'll even give some away.

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10. Easter is almost here!!! I'm not as into Easter as normal, but since I gave up lattes for Lent, I'll be more than thrilled to get a veinte-20oz-full-fat-milk-foamy-latte on Easter morning. Doesn't Starbucks sell a bathtub size now? I'll have that.

In other Easter news, I think that we should get Bentley a bunny for Easter. Or maybe two. And real ones this time, not big fluffy ones. I think I like these. Maybe I like them because they have Bentley ears. Maybe I'm obsessed with big-eared animals. What can I say, I love ears.

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Looks like that's it for tonight. Come back later this week for more photos of Bentley than you ever wanted needed.