Bloody Mary

At 3:00am(!) I get a text message from Jaime, inviting me for bloody marys and the Vikings game Sunday afternoon. Cindy called me in the morning to confirm, and after talking to my mom, I decided to kill two birds with one stone, kinda literally that is. I have been bird sitting for my mom and so I brought the bird out to my parent's house and then i met up with cindy & jaime for bloody marys and to watch the Vikings play and lose. I never thought i would be a bloody mary fan, but i think they may be one of new favorite drinks! Probably the reason I didn't like it was the thought of drinking V8 tomato juice as a kid, and that has always grossed me out. But my palate and tastes have changed. And so the bloody marys i drink have delicious flavors like Tabasco, pepper, celery salt and other great flavors. They don't even need to have the alcohol to be tasty either.

We hung out and ate pizza until Andy and Magnus showed up. Magnus was a foreign exchange student from Sweden back in the day, and Andy is my friend Heather's little brother. Well not so little anymore, andy is a chef in sweden! How cool is that! So both andy & magnus are living in sweden, but happened to be back to visit. We had a fun time playing pool and drinking the place out of bloody marys... I only had one thank you very much, (ok and half of Jaime's, but they are soooo good!) After all that I stopped back out at my parent's to say hello and to see my mom\dad\brother before i headed back to the big city.

Kelly is 30!!!

My cousin Kelly turns 30 today! Happy Birthday Kelly!!! We celebrated by having dinner at Azia, along with all of Kelly's favorite friends and family. Azia was a great restaurant and the food was delicious. Our other cousn Chris also made an appearance, along with his new lady friend Jen... who is hilarious and adorable. It was a great night and I'm glad I could be there to ring in this milestone with my dear sweet cousin. Happy Birthday!

St. Francis

The Prayer of Saint Francis

"O Lord, make me an instrument of Thy Peace!

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is discord, harmony;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light, and Where there is sorrow, joy.

Oh Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood as to understand;

to be loved as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive;

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life."

My friend Diana has this prayer posted on her blog today, and since this prayer of St. Francis is one my favorites too, I thought i would "borrow" it from her. Saint Francis of Assisi was a monk who had a deep love for animals and nature, something I have as well. But more than anything I think the beauty of this prayer is that it is simple in truth, yet rich in meaning. Sarah McLachlan made this prayer into a song and it is so beautiful. I hope that my life can always be an expression of this prayer... even though some days I fail miserably. Bad moods, bad feelings, bad attitudes. I wish I could be sweet and cheerful all the time, kind and giving and joyful. But life happens, and then what? Thank God for grace and that His mercy is new every morning. It's a journey, so i still have miles to go, and that ok too. Perfection is overrated anyway!

There ain't no party like a Natasha party!

As per request of my father's sister's daughter, I am blogging about America's Next Top Model. Last night was the first elimination of this cycle. (cover your eyes, spoiler alert!) Mila went home! And unfortunately, on my elimination pick list I had picked Mila as going home later in the show! Kelly leads with the most points, followed by Kyle and then yours truly! But I will make my comeback cause Kyle can't pick models worth a crap! One other noteworthy point is that all the models this cycle are just s0-s0. There are definitely no Natashas this time. Long live the Russian mail order bride! Meow!

BTW, I did my good deed today, by picking up 3 nails in the CUB foods parking lot. I have had the misfortune of having a nail in my tire on more than one occasion. So I just didn't want that to happen to anyone else.

Tonight my father's sister's daughter and my father's sister's daughter's husband are having me over for a little Office party! Vlach on!

Harvest Moon

I have a hard time getting up in the morning, when my bed is nice and toasty and it's still dark out. I just want to cocoon myself in my blankets and sleep until the sun comes up. The upside of getting up so early, is that I can witness beautiful sunrises and like this morning a big beautiful pumpkin looking harvest moon! What a treat to view such beauty early in the morning, I guess it makes up for having to get up early. I love big glowing orange moons, the best one i ever saw was when I was living in New Hampshire... beautiful and bountiful rising over the white mountains. It's hard to believe that 10 years ago I moved to NH, basically on a whim, or maybe it was my 20 year old naivety? Now at 30, I am quite impressed with myself for making such a bold move. Moving to a new state, to a place i had never been to, and i didn't know a soul! Who does that? But I suppose at that age what did I have to lose? What I gained in a year of moving to a new place is irreplaceable, my boldness in going still amazes me. Given the opportunity now, I wonder if I could so easily pack up and move some place new? At 20 I had nothing more than my clothes and a few possessions, now I have way more than that. But at the same time, I hope I am never too "stuck" in one place that if the opportunity was given I wouldn't be able to jump on board. Change isn't easy, but it can be the best thing for you. Life is too short to just sit back and watch it all go by!

"Given a chance and a rock, see which one breaks a window, and see which one keeps me up all night and into the day." ~derek webb

Speaking of glorious New Hampshire, another blessing of that journey was the meeting of Rachel, by BFF... and I am most excited because last night I booked my ticket and come October 11, I am on my way to see her! It has almost been 2 years since I've last seen her, and that is 2 years too long! Charlsh & Platypus back together again.

Is is really autumn? Oh how i love the way the trees look these days... Here are some autumn scenes from NH. Enjoy.

Holy Habanero Hotness!

Chili Peppers just ain't cuttin' it anymore. My taste buds crave something with a little bit more kick. I have moved on to the habanero and literally there has been a full out assault in my mouth! Um, but just don't rub your eyes after chopping up one of these bad boys, I learned that lesson the hard way! I am going to try my hand at drying the habeneros and making them into crushed pepper flakes! My only fear now is that I will out grow the heat level of the hab and then what will I do? Am I setting myself up for letdown, or just the inevitable dismantling of my taste buds? Only time will tell!

Habanero Shrimp with Couscous

Ingredients (this was all done by just throwing stuff together, so play around with it.)

1\2 habanero chopped (seeds included!! at your own risk of course!)

1 Tbls fresh flat leaf parsley chopped

1 Tbls fresh oregano chopped

1 garlic clove minced

1 Tbls spoon lemon juice

10 medium shrimp, deviened & tails off

1 Tbls olive oil

2 Tbls white wine

salt\pepper\red pepper flakes
1 box of couscous

Make couscous according to package directions

In a large saute pan, saute garlic in olive oil until soft. Add shrimp, parsley, oregano, shrimp, lemon juice, habanero & white wine. Saute until shrimp is cooked. Add salt\pepper\red pepper flakes to taste. Serve over cooked couscous. Prepare for total annihilation!

This meal goes really well with a nice Riesling!

SWANK

The jig is up, I will now reveal what I did yesterday. I had a dinner party! I've spent the last 3 weeks planning for last night, planning the menu, revising it and designing it. Planning also included writing a grocery list and a wine list, along with pulling a table scape together and getting all the necessary decorations. A lot of time and effort goes into planning a dinner party, but it so worth it and so rewarding to then share the fruits with others. I invited 3 good friends, Kelly, Kyle & Sarah... I wish I could have invited more, but my table only holds four. Someday I hope to have a larger dinner party with more people and more decorations. For now, I will have to have my dinner parties in shifts, so don't feel left out if you are reading this, your turn will come! Even with only having 3 guests over preparations still took all day yesterday. Cleaning and grocery shopping, setting the table and decorating my home. It is now officially Autumn, so I pulled out all my harvest\Halloween decorations. Someday I know I will be one of those over the top women who decorate for every holiday, to the point where it is probably obnoxious! (but i don't care! ) The theme of my meal was harvest as well, incorporating all the wonderful produce now in season!The most rewarding part of the dinner party was the cooking and baking. Pulling together a 5 course meal can be a real challenge, but it is one that i was willing to take on with heart & gusto.

The menu consisted of the following meals:

Apps: Endives with beet & blue cheese spread

Soup: Thai-Spiced Pumpkin Soup

Main: Linguine with Squash, bacon & goat cheese

Sides: Tuscan Style Cauliflower, Broccolini w\ red currant vinaigrette & herbed garlic bread

Dessert: Sunken Chocolate cakes with cinnamon ice cream with honey crisp apples in syrup.

( the original menu had the chocolate cakes with coffee ice cream, but to follow the harvest theme, I changed it to a more appropriate apple topping.)

I had a great time cooking all the food, timing everything so it was all ready as my guests arrived. My guests were gracious and beautifully dressed in their swankiest outfits. Sarah brought me lovely flowers and Kelly & Kyle brought me little "dinks" (as kelly's aunt calls them) mini muffin tins and pink measuring spoons! Love it!

We chatted and ate and chatted more and ate more. It was so nice and relaxed and fun... that it never once seemed like work in the long run. I am now thinking that planning parties and menus and cooking might be a really fun job. hmmmm....

Here is to a bountiful harvest, good food and even better friends!

Sunken Chocolate Cakes with Cinnamon Ice Cream & Cinnamon Apple Syrup
Cakes:
Ingredients:
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut in pieces, plus more for pans
1/4 cup sugar, plus more for pans
5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
2 large eggs, separated
2 large egg yolks

Cinnamon Ice Cream

Directions:1. Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly butter 4 cups in a jumbo nonstick muffin pan, leaving the 2 center cups empty. Coat lightly with sugar, and set aside. Place butter and chocolate in a heat-proof bowl; set over a pan of simmering water. Stir occasionally, until melted and thoroughly combined. Remove from heat; set aside.
2. Combine the 4 egg yolks with 2 tablespoons sugar, and whisk until the mixture is pale yellow and thick. Stir in the melted chocolate-and-butter mixture.
3. Whisk egg whites until soft peaks form, add remaining 2 tablespoons sugar, and whisk until stiff and shiny but not dry. Fold into chocolate mixture. Divide batter among prepared muffin cups, and bake until set and slightly springy to the touch, about 25 minutes. Remove from oven, and transfer to a wire rack. Allow to cool for 15 minutes in pan; carefully run a knife around edges of cakes, and unmold. Serve each with a scoop of coffee ice cream and apples & syrup poured over the top.

Cinnamon Apple Syrup:

Ingrediants:

INGREDIENTS
1 Honey Crisp Apple - sliced
1/4 cup white sugar
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons water
DIRECTIONS
In a saucepan, combine the apples, sugar, cinnamon and water. Stir to dissolve sugar, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, and simmer for 10 minutes, or until apples are soft and syrup has thickened. Serve over pancakes or ice cream.

Turtle Bread brings on the Memories

Yesterday was pay day, it was also Friday and I didn't feel like fighting traffic on my way home. The thought of driving to Linden Hills and stopping at the little shops was just so appealing. Linden Hills is such a quaint area of Minneapolis, and it holds plenty of memories. When I was 22 I was a nanny for a family in LH, and the two little girls Avery & Nathalie, and their wonderful nanny Sabrina spent many days traversing through Linden Hills. There are so many great shops and lovely homes in LH that you feel like you are on a set of a movie. (oh wait, they filmed parts of Jingle All the Way in LH.) I also lived in Linden Hills for a year a few years ago, it was such a transitional part of my life and everything was so up in the air. I had just left my full time job to go back to school full time to learn the craft of Jewelry Making & Gemology.

Anyway, back to yesterday. I stopped into Victory, one of my favorite Shabby Chic stores. They had these really fun candle votives with skulls & spiders & ravens. I settled on the raven, so very Edgar Allen Poe. I then went over to my favorite bakery Turtle Bread. I had a delicious bowl of split pea soup & a baguette. Split pea soup always reminds me of my friend Rachel. Back when we used to work in the kitchen at His Mansion, we would weekly have to make soup. On one particular day Rachel was in charge of making split pea soup. And since we made all our soups from scratch, we used ingredients like split peas that start out hard, but soften as they cook. Well for some reason or another the soup was a little too thick, a lot thick... and no amount of reassuring could convince rachel that it was edible. People ate it, I thought it was good. But if you asked her today she would probably still say that it was gross! I miss my times cooking with rachel in the kitchen. Lots of laughs and adventures, which the kitchen manager never thought was amusing. I think the final nail in the coffin is when I threw a huge cheese cutter across the room at rachel. Of course it didn't hit her and it was all in fun, but i think that was the last time we ever worked in the kitchen together at the same time! so sad! We had plenty other fun adventures in New Hampshire, so much so that one day I should write a book about them all. If you've ever read or seen Anne of Green Gables, Rachel and I were the modern day version of Anne Shirley & Dianna Berry. Kindred Spirits.

So back to Turtle Bread, I enjoyed my meal and then I ate my all time favorite cookie: Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookie! Meow!

I stopped into a few more stores and just meandered around to my little hearts content. My find of the day was a set of glasses that match my dinnerware! And they were 50% off! score!

Eventually I headed over to kyle & kelly's for a light salad and good times.

Today I have something up my sleeve that will be explained tomorrow...

hint: it has something to do with food!

Let's Gorge!

A fun night of food, friends, fun and more food! Tabitha hosted us at her place and served up some delicious lasagna with Italian Sausage and 2 lbs of cheese! whooo wheee! We gorged ourselves and thankfully Tabs made a full pan, and cute little one too. Then if that wasn't enough, I was ambitious and i made a pie. The same pie that I helped Kelly make this past weekend; Cinnamon Struesel Topped Pumpkin Pie. We gorged on that too. Tabitha also has a cute little bunny named Twitch, that is just a bundle of energy!


Paula digesting her food...
Bonnie, what's wrong with your finger????

Bonnie & Tabitha enjoying conversation, tea & pie...

Bonnie, Tabitha & Paula so happy together...
Amazingly wonderful lasagna! Yummy pumpkin pie (and I don't even like pumpkin pie!)
Twitch!

More Wedding Pics

Here are more very random pics (thanks james) of Joe and Teri's wedding... so much love and friendship in one room, its funny the world didn't explode!

Cindy Sideways... you should've seen her red pumps!!
Me through the eye of the lens through the eye of the lens...Joe & Teri doing the sideways dance....Jamie & Cindy toasting to me...Me and Shannon... are we dancing? crying on each other's shoulders? or saying goodbye? only we will ever know...

ANTM + Pasta Primavera (again)

It's back! my very very guilty pleasure: America's Next Top Model Cycle 9! I have been watching this show from the beginning and I love it! So fierce! I am not the only one who digs this show, my cousins kyle & kelly follow religiously too. So much so that kyle put together a ANTM pool to see who can pick the models in the order they will be booted off. After watching the premiere, the competition looks tight and I am hesitant to make any guesses. yet. Tyra's got her pictures in her hands representing the girl who will go on to be America's Next Top Model!
My favorite cookbook right now is Dorie Greenspan's Baking. Love the pictures and the recipes are wonderful and very insightful! I found my copy at a thrift store for $3 and it was best $3 I've spent in awhile! I've already made a couple of pies from the recipes in the book, and I was very happy with the results.

Oh and I just couldn't resist more of the pasta primavera I made the other day, of course I had to make more. So good, so good for you!

I am also finding that although I love my crushed red pepper flakes, even the really good ones from Penzey's, they just aren't cutting it anymore. Call me crazy, but i need to take it to the next level; Crushed Habanero Pepper Flakes! I am going to try my hand at making my own... can you feel the burn???

Pasta Primavera & Homemade Pie

Another weekend come and gone. Yesterday I had a nice day of just taking things slow. I slept in and when I work up around 10:00am, I was hungry. So being on this pasta kick I decided to yet again make another pasta dish. However, I wanted to make it as healthy as possible so I made my own version of Pasta Primavera w\ shrimp. (the recipe will magically appear at the end of this post.) I also stopped over at the cousins so Kyle could change the fuel filter on my car and I could hang with Kelly, who is bummed about still being crippled. :(
I brought her a harvest bouquet of flowers and some Fiery Habanero Doritos. And if you haven't tried them, you must! you must! After kyle so kindly fixed my car we chilled and decided the Little Oven would be a great place to eat. Grilled cheese never tasted better. When we got back Kelly was on a pie baking mission... so together we made a delicious Pumpkin with Cinnamon Struessel Pie. But since it was for a friend, we didn't get to sample. But it sure did smell good, and very autumnal too!

Pasta Primavera with Shrimp
serves 2

1 cup of Whole Wheat Penne Pasta cooked
1 Tbls Olive Oil
1 Clove of garlic, minced
1 Tbls dried Oregano
1 Tbls dried Parsley
lots of crushed red pepper flakes (if you can handle it!)
1 cup shrimp, deveined
1 cup chopped Zucchini
1 cup chopped tomatoes (i used the kind in a can with basil)
salt\pepper to taste
grated parm cheese

Cook pasta according to package.
In a large saute pan. Heat olive oil and garlic until soft.
Add oregano, parsley, crushed red pepper, zucchini & shrimp.
Saute until zucchini is tender and shrimp is done.
Add tomatoes and cooked penne, until warm
Season with salt & pepper and grated parm cheese.
sprinkle more crushed red pepper flakes for extra butt kicking!

Wedded Bliss

Yesterday I headed out to my ol hometown area of Carver County, for my friend Shannon's brother's wedding. I have known Joe, well for as long as I have known Shan. So little Joe is not that little anymore and he is now a married man. He was always Shannon's obnoxious little brother and now he is all grown up. I told him at the wedding that he was making me feel old, and his response was, "Nah, I remember when you used to tight-roll your jeans and everything was about Guns N' Roses." I don't know if that is the exactly what I want to be remembered for, but that's ok, that was a fun time in life!
This is what H20Town girls do at weddings...

The wedding ceremony was very nice and the reception was a lot of fun. Jaime & Cindy were there too, so we had a fun night of dancing, laughing and taking endless pictures with random poses. Fun Times!
I think I know you from somewhere? the meeting of james & cin...
someone special is out there they think to themselves, that or they're siamese tripletts....


ooh I love to dance and it feels so good when you are beside me...
cindy wants no part in this...