Staycation Day 11

I made it!  Last day of staycation and it went pretty great – who knew I could fall into lazy life so easily?   As you saw, we did manage to tackle some key projects around the house, but we did also manage to rarely get out of bed before 10:00am (lesson learned:  it takes about a week to sleep train the cats…)

Today consisted of eating some leftovers while watching football,

taking down the Xmas tree

and watching it snow.  WHAT?  yep, it started snowing, leaving us all with dreams of a snow day to continue staycation, but alas it didn’t accumulate…

One last fancy meal at home, and then back to the real world.  It’s been fun house…

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Staycation Day 10

Almost last day of projects around the house, focused on my office and craft corner, still not great but way better than it was:

In the evening, my mighty Sun Devils were playing in the last bowl game of the season, the Cactus Bowl, so we had a few folks over for Fajitas, margaritas and Mexican Mules – mmmm.  Food and friends were great, losing to West Virginia by one point was not so awesome…

Staycation Day 9

Another day at home for the most part, finishing our 2015 recap which you’ve hopefully watch by now – the biggest highlight is our trip video from Vancouver Island, make sure you watch it!

Then capped off the first day of the new year with a delicious dinner with some of our nearest & dearest

Staycation Day 8

New Years Eve!  Spent most of the day downtown with the in-laws , watching football from a waiting room

Eventually escaped to home for a yummy dinner – crab cakes & fancy champagne, a repeat splurge from last year – plus BK poached some pears with his new sous vide machine…

Then headed east to LCW to take on KC2 in a mostly friendly match of Mexican Train dominoes – girls rule!

 

Staycation Day 7

worked in the home office for the morning a bit, then headed over to Greenwood to stay with my cutest neighbor Izzy for a few hours so SS could get some work done – D is 4 delicious!

Then in the evening went north to Edmonds for Trivia night celebrating TA’s birthday – so fun to catch up with them and others, plus we won!  It helped that we had the birthday girl on our team 🙂

Will it Waffle?

It was my turn to host my monthly girls dinner last week – I had hoped for a last blast of warmth so we could grill outside, but with a chill in the air and some drizzle I launched Plan B, Will it Waffle?

BK, mom & I attended an author talk from this guy last year at Book Larder but we had yet to try anything out.  I planned my menu during the Seahawks game on Sunday, shopped that night and was excited to experiment at dinner.  Nothing on the menu actually went together, but I chose the random recipes that intrigued me to most – tapas style right?

Started easy with quesadillas just to get everyone seated and snacking – of course they waffled.

Next up, some chicken sausage patties and “Toasted” Ravioli – both pretty good.

And then the biggest experiements of the night:  Zucchini parmesan fritters & Shrimp wontons.

The fritters were quite puffy, interesting texture.  The wontons worked, but I think I still preferred them fried – I mean, who doesn’t right?

I had also planned to make some waffled cookies as well, but just served up some of BKs delicious ice creams instead – yum!

and the following Sunday, since I had yet to put the waffle iron away, we tried French toast and grilled cheese.  Yes, they both waffle….

E&E wedding

Recently we had the honor of helping plan and cook for our friend EC’s wedding – it was a small event at his parents house, on a beautiful Seattle summer evening.

Video of the event can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPeM7-IXqqE

Food wise, not a big drinking crowd so we bought some booze but not a ton 🙂 I was surprised how quick the red wine went since it was so hot out – but that just left more rose for me!

Appetizers were charcuterie, veggies, bruschetta & a crostini with goat cheese & grilled peach:

Our contributions to dinner were grilled salmon & chicken, grilled veggies, and a roasted garlic potato salad:

success!

Cooking the Mo’ rockin’ (Moroccan) Spice Trail

Awhile ago my parents gave us a gift certificate to Hipcooks and we finally put it to use for a Moroccan cooking class – I always try to be more adventurous at cooking classes to really learn something new, and this menu looked pretty yummy.  Plus we have a tagine we received for our wedding that we haven’t used yet, so we were hoping this class might inspire us a bit!

There were 12 people in the class and chores got divvy’ed up around the group – first up for everyone was picking parley leaves off their stems for our parsley salad and grinding up spices.  Added to the salad later was red onion and a simply vingrette – it was good, but a lot of parsley.

Along side the parsley salad we ate Bastiya – a Moroccan spice pastry with beef and/or lamb, cinnamon, raisins and pine nuts.  We made the filling, then rolled the mixture up into phyllo triangles to bake.  These were yummy – it seemed weird to top a savory meat dish with some powdered sugar, but it worked!

     

Our main course was Tagine of chicken with melting onions, saffron, preserved lemon and green olives over cous cous.  Because of the large group we could this in a giant oven-proof pan versus a traditional tagine.  the saffron gave it a great color, and we used the liquid from the dish in the cous cous as well to give it extra flavor.  The preserved lemons were a nice touch and BK already has a couple jars of his own stewing in one of our cabinents now that he knows how to make them 🙂

Dessert was the one item I was a bit leary about but it turned out delicious:  Beet, olive oil and spice cake.  Its even gluten free!  You barely taste the beets and I loved all the cardamom we put in it.  Alongside the cake we had Poached apricots stuffed with mascarpone and pistachio.

Delicious date night!

Sirvana

A few weeks ago we noticed Paul McCartney was coming to town.  We obviously both like Beatles, and while I also love his duets with Michael Jackson, we’re pretty weak on our Wings familiarity.  But the more we thought about it, the more it seemed like a show we should go to – I mean, he’s 70.  The likelihood of Sir Paul touring much more, especially to Seattle, seems pretty thin so we decided to look for cheap seats and count it as a bucket list event.  BK succeeded and found us tix for $50 each, so a fun friday day night was in effect!

We parked downtown, and walked over to the Market hoping to check out the new RGB Soda shop but it wasn’t quite open yet.  Ready to quench my thirst, we got a quick beer at Pike Brewing while looking for a dinner option (I went with the Dry Wit):

Using our smart phones, we secured a reservation at Steelhead Diner just up the street, which is always delish:

 

DUNGENESS CRAB & BAY SHRIMP TATER TOTS with Tiger Sauce & Celery Leaf Salad

KASU MARINATED OREGON BLACK COD with Shiitake Mushrooms, Baby Bok Choy & Carrot ~ Ginger Salad

SAUTÉED OREGON PETRALE SOLE with Preserved Lemon, Caper & Parsley Meuniere Sauce

And then it was off to the concert!  This was the first show they had done at Safeco Field and it should – getting folks into seats on the field level too a long time so the show started 45 minutes late.  It was a beautiful night out and even though we were up at the top, it was a great spot to be – Sir Paul performed for 2.5 hours and in the encore we were even treated to a Nirvana reunion!   http://seattletimes.com/html/picturethis/2021431339_paulmccartneyplayssafecofield.html

dang, we definitely are Northwest Yuppies

It’s Saturday & Memorial Day Weekend. As usual, the forecast is chance of everything, but we decided to take that chance and try out our new Thule bike rack which BK had affixed to our Subaru Outback while I wandered around China.

After a quick stop at the in-laws, we bike from Redmond to Woodinville on the Sammamish River Trail up to DeLille Winery for a tasting and to pick up our quarterly wine club.

Rolling back into Redmond we stopped by Trader Joe’s quick before heading home. And with our dinner of random leftovers, we popped open a really nice bottle of Harrison Hill. Happy Seattle Saturday…