July 5, 2011- Pasta at Pallino's

We left Redmond, OR, at 11am today.  After stops for coffee and gas, and then lunch in Madras at Sonic Burger, we were really on the road at noon.  It wasn't not a quick trip, but we did get home by 8pm with a stop at Pallino's pasta restaurant in Issaquah.  I had pesto genovese with penne and chicken.  The pesto was really good-- not too garlicky or sweet.  Ben had Mama's Meat Sauce with Rigatoni and added sausage.  Katie had a few nibbles on her cheese pizza.  Boy, it was a long day. I'm glad to be home!

June 25, 2011- Prost West Seattle

We took Katie to see Cars 2 late this morning.  It was her first movie in a theater.  She got up and down from her chair several times and asked to watch "Tangled" on my iPod once.  But, all in all, she did pretty well for being only 2 1/2-years-old.  It was actually not a very good movie to take her to.  It had a complex plot about espionage that she couldn't understand and a lot of guns.  I guess we need to do more research before assuming a kid's movie is okay for her. 

After the movie, we went to BJ's for pizza.  We ordered a small cheese pizza for Katie and a medium pepperoni and sausage pizza for ourselves.  The cheese pizza came out, shortly followed by an apologetic waitress.  She dropped our pizza on the way to the table.  Unfortunately, we had to be back home by 3pm to meet a paint contractor.  That didn't leave enough time to make us a replacement pizza.  We were told that the beverages we ordered and Katie's pizza would be free.  That was a fair compensation.  Ben and I each ate a quarter of Katie's pizza, and we went home.

We were determined to have pizza tonight, but it just didn't work out.  We drove to Zeek's pizza, but forgot that there was a community festival on the same block.  That meant, no parking and probably no space inside.  Ben suggested a couple restaurants we could go to, but we stopped at Prost West Seattle. Ben has wanted to eat at this German restaurant for several years and this was our first opportunity. Well, it was disappointing.  First, they were out of the beer he wanted to drink.  It was very sad.  Second, the only thing they had on the menu that we thought Katie would eat was a pretzel.  She took one nibble and said "I don't like that part."  That just meant she didn't like the pretzel.  My bratwurst sandwich was fine, but I'm not a fan of curry ketchup.  Ben's thought his curry wurst would be served on a rye bun.  Nope, it was served with two small wedges of rye bread on the side.  Ben and I both ate enough to be full, but were not satisfied.  Since Katie didn't eat anything other than goldfish crackers, we went through the McDonald's drive through to get her a burger.  

I guess it just wasn't our day to eat out. 

June 13, 2011- Pizza, Chicken Strips, and Phad Thai

Tonight I got a chance to go out for a movie and dinner with my good friend Melissa.  I realized that we've known each other for 10 years now.  I can't believe it's been that long!  Katie came downtown with me and had dinner with Ben.  They went to Gordon Biersch where he had a pizza and she had chicken strips and carrots.  After dinner, they took the bus back home.  Katie had a blast on the bus!  Ben said she did great on the bus, but wanted to be a bit too independent when walking from the bus stop to the house.  He had to keep moving her back to the side of the road.  Apparently, she prefers to walk down the middle of the street. 

After watching Bridesmaids, which was hilarious, Melissa and I had dinner at Thai Ginger.  I had Phad Thai with chicken while Melissa had a curry dish.  What a fun night!

June 6, 2011- Pizza

Well, it's been over a month since I last blogged. I have notes about what we ate for most of the past month, but the catch up game is just too daunting.  So, it's time to just start again with today.

Ben and I spent the past three days in a photography workshop in the Palouse hills.  The tour was led by Adrian Klein and Kevin McNeal of Northwest Photo Tours.  I gave Ben the tour for an anniversary gift, and he was kind enough to ask me to come along:)  Katie stayed with my parents while we were gone and had a blast!  The tour started Friday at 4pm and ended Sunday around 11am.  We were plain exhausted by the time it was over.  The 3:30am wake up calls and late nights did us in.  Thankfully we planned to come home today and not yesterday. 

After a very long drive home, including a stop to photograph the PSE Wild Horse Wind and Solar Facility, we were definitely not in the mood to make dinner.  Katie pushed every one of our buttons during the drive home. As soon as we hit I-5 Ben called in our order to Garlic Jim's Pizza.  We had sausage and pepperoni on a hand-tossed crust.  Katie didn't want the meat on her slices, but did a pretty good job eating her pieces along with some grapes. 

Ah, it's good to be home:)

Saturday, 4/9/2011

This was our third day at Disneyland.  I'll start with what we had for dinner and then give a quick summary of what we did today.  We had dinner at the Naples Ristorante e Pizzeria in Downtown Disney.  Our family, all six of us, shared a 1/2 meter, thin crust, pepperoni pizza.  When the pizza was brought to the table, we were all sure we weren't going to be able to finish it.  Well...we did:)  It was huge, but the thin crust made it easier to eat the whole thing.

While we were dining, we watched as two guys entertained by making balloon sculptures and hats for the people around us.  Their creations were amazing.  When one table was finished and the balloon artist was starting to walk away from us, Kate yelled "Hey, balloon boy!"  That got his attention.  While older than a boy, he didn't seem to be upset by being called "balloon boy."  He came right over to our table and made Katie this lovely princess crown. 

And now, back to the beginning of the day, which started n Disneyland California Adventure.

*We spotted Pilot Minnie within a couple minutes of entering the park.

*Jennifer, Spencer, Kate, and I went on Soarin' Over California while Ben and Katie walked around.  They heard drumming and found the green army men from Toy Story putting on a great drum show.

*Jennifer, Spencer, and Kate rode California Screamin' while Ben, Katie and I waited in line to meet Jessie and Buzz from Toy Story.  And, as we were finished going through the line, we found out that Woody was on his way to replace Jessie.  So, we got back in line to meet Woody who was then joined by a couple green army men.  She was beside herself with excitement!

*After we finished the Toy Story meet and greet, we met back up with the rest of our family. Jennifer took Katie on the Toy Story ride while the rest of us went to ride California Screamin'.

*After lunch, we went back to the Disneyland Park. Ben and I waited with Katie to meet Tinker Bell. Jennifer, Spencer, and Kate rode the Matterhorn at the same time.

*We all took a ride on the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage. 

*We finished our day by seeing the World of Color show at the California Adventure park.  What a spectacular water and light display.  We all loved it. If you decided to go on a trip to Disneyland, you really do need to include this in your plans.  Let me know before you go and I'll give you a couple tips on how to get the most from the experience.  In this photo, you can see the water spraying and fire spouting during the show.

*And then, we went back to our hotel to get some much needed sleep.  I must point out that Katie has been going for three days with no naps and very long days.  She's been a super traveler and amazingly patient. 

Wednesday, 4/6/2011

Tomorrow we head off for our family vacation to Disneyland.  We will be there through Sunday, spending three days in the parks.  I can't wait!!!  We, along with Ben's brother, gave the trip to their mom, Jennifer, for her 60th birthday.  Spencer is spending the night at our house tonight so that we can leave for the airport together, bright and early tomorrow morning.  

I prepared another puff pastry pizza for our meal tonight.  I finished using the crumbled sweet Italian sausage I prepared for our last pizza and added turkey pepperoni.  My friend Hilary suggested the turkey pepperoni.  I didn't like it as much as regular pepperoni, but it wasn't half bad.  In fact, I guarantee that I will finish off the bag next week:)  

While I was trying to get the pizza prepped for the oven, our neighbor came over to get the scoop on taking care of our cats, Spencer arrived, Ben came home, and Katie needed to give me updates constantly on The Princess and The Frog, which she was watching in the front room.  Goodness, talk about a bit of chaos. With pizza consumed, it was time to start, and finish, packing for our trip. 

Friday, 4/1/2011

A friend of ours mentioned that her family was going to be "spring cleaning" their freezer.  That meant they were going to eat or toss everything in it this spring rather than continue to add to it.  Once it is cleared out, they will start adding things to it again.  It seemed like a really good idea.  I started to work on our freezer tonight and made a pizza.  

I started by defrosted one sheet of Pepperidge Farms puff pastry.  After about 40 minutes, I unfolded the pastry sheet on a lightly floured surface. I rolled the pastry into a 15 x 10-inch rectangle and place on a baking sheet. The directions said to prick the pastry thoroughly with a fork, which I did. The oven pre-heated to 400°, and then the pastry sheet baked for 10 minutes.  Even though I pricked it with a fork, it was quite puffy when I pulled it out of the oven.  I pushed it down a bit before adding zesty pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese, shredded rotisserie chicken, crumbled sweet Italian sausage, and grated parmesan.  I put it all back in the oven to bake for another 10 minutes.  The result was a delicious pizza.  The good news is that we still have some pizza sauce and another pastry sheet to use some other day!

Sunday, 3/6/2011

I knew I was going to want to make pizza this week, but was pretty sure I wasn't going to want make my own dough.  So, I went with a package of two eight-inch pizza crusts from Boboli.  Tonight Ben made up a batch of Zesty Pizza Sauce, added it to the crusts, and then covered them with mozzarella and pepperoni.  Boy, did it ever hit the spot.  Katie ate a little of it, and was kind enough to share her left overs with with two of us.  Score!

Also, the sauce recipe makes enough for a couple medium pizzas.  We put the extra sauce in the freezer to use some other time.  

Saturday, 2/12/2011

If a good day can be measured by how many people in the house got to take a nap, then today was a fantastic day.  We all took naps:)  

Last night we ordered pepperoni pizza for Shellie and Katie to have while we were on our date.  We finished it off for our dinner tonight.

Wednesday, 2/9/2011

Katie and I had a little bit of everything for dinner tonight.  She had some left over stir-fried steak, gold fish crackers, pears, and peanut butter.  I had the left over pizza, some pear, and a few bites of steak.  The steak continues to be delicious, but the snow peas didn't hold up as well. 

Monday, 2/7/2011

I was very indecisive at the grocery store this morning. I basically bought stuff for breakfast, lunch, and only veggies for dinners this week.  I figured I had enough protein in the freezer, that I could improvise.  And, improvise is exactly what I did for dinner tonight.  When Ben called to say he was on his way home, I still didn't have a clue what I was fixing for dinner.  I asked him what kind of food he was in the mood for.  When he said "spicy," I had to come up with something quick.

We had some zesty pizza sauce, hot Italian sausage, and shredded mozzarella in the fridge, but no pizza dough.  I went online to the Bisquick website hoping to find a quick pizza dough recipe.  I was surprised to only find recipes that required yeast and far more time than I had available.  What I did find was a recipe for Reuben Fold-Overs, which looked like calzones or empanadas.  I took a chance and it worked pretty well.

For the dough, I took two cups of Bisquick and added 1/2 cup of boiling water.  I mixed until the dough formed, split the dough into four balls, pressed them out into 5 inch rounds, and placed them on a cookie sheet.  I topped each round with the sauce, cheese and sausage and baked for about 15 minutes.  They tasted pretty good, but were really just flat biscuits with pizza toppings:)  The pizza sauce really saved it.  Yes, it is that good;)  All in all, it was a successful improvisation. 

Saturday, 1/29/2011

I ordered a pepperoni pizza from Garlic Jim's for Spencer and Katie to eat for dinner last night.  We finished off the left overs for our dinner tonight.  

Friday, 1/28/2011

Tonight, Ben and I had a fantastic date night.  A year ago my name was selected in a drawing for a free night's stay at the Hotel Monaco, Downtown Seattle.  That is the same hotel we stayed at on our wedding night and our first anniversary.  How very cool!  Anyway, we had to use the gift certificate by the end of this month.  It's January 28th.  Yes, it was time to use it or lose it.  Thankfully Ben's brother, Spencer, was willing and available to stay with Katie while we took a night off.

After getting Katie and Spencer settled, I took the bus into Seattle to meet Ben.  We checked into the hotel and went out in search of food.  We ended up being able to get a table quite quickly at the Purple Cafe and Wine Bar.  What a great meal!  Here's what we ate:

Appetizers

I had the pork and chicken sausage with cranberry-apricot chutney and pecorino sardo gran cru cheese.  Ben had lamb chili with polenta croutons and rogue smokey blue cheese.  The cheeses were served with a fig jam which was delicious.

Drinks

We each enjoyed a flight of wine--four wines to sample.  I had the red wine flight from Italy with these wines:

• cabanon ‘augurio’ . provincia di pavia . 09
• fattoria pogni . chianti . 08
• il trullo . primitivo del salento . 08
• vinosia aglianico . irpinia aglianico . 08

Ben had the red wine flight from Washington with these wines:

• substance merlot . washington . 08
• l’ecole syrah . columbia valley . 07
• gamache ‘boulder red’ . columbia valley . 07
• brand cabernet sauvignon . columbia valley . 08 

The Substance merlot in Ben's flight was fantastic.  We each had a glass of that with our entree.  It was divine.  

Entree

We shared the artisan cured meat pizza with soppresata, coppa, spanish chorizo, mozzarella, fresh oregano and tomato sauce.  The flavor of the meats took us back to our vacation in Italy.  On that trip, we purchased a variety of cured meats in Greve and ate them with cheese, bread, and wine for a meal at our bed and breakfast.  Who would have thought this meal would take us back to that wonderful vacation.  Here's a photo of that picnic meal for fun:) 

Dessert

The desserts were perfectly sized--small:)  I had the ruby port chocolate torte with cocoa nib whipped cream and port fudge sauce.  Ben chose the bittersweet espresso truffles.  He said the truffles were good, but mine was definitely the better of the two desserts.  Yum!!!  

After dinner we saw Black Swan.  I'm so glad we saw it in the theater.  There were parts of the movie that just needed to be presented in a bigger scale than our TV would have.  While it was definitely a disturbing movie, it was beautifully acted and had amazing cinematography.  

Friday, 1/14/2011

Tonight I had my first singing gig outside of church with my group "Trillium Soul" at C & P Coffee Company.  After getting Katie settled with the babysitter, Ben and I slurped down some yogurt before heading out to get set up.  We had a great audience of friends and family.  The show went really well. One of my friends said I sang better than I ever have before.  What a great compliment:)  Ben took these great photos of us at the show. 

Me, Bron, Betsy, and Jeff

Me at the keyboard

Betsy on guitar

Bron on guitar

After the performance adrenaline ran out, I quickly realized that the yogurt was no longer doing anything for me.  I was starving.  We packed up all our gear and went to Zeeks Pizza for food and drinks with our friends.  The drinks and breadsticks came out quickly.  The pizza took forever.  After a very long wait, the waitress told us that our first pizzas were cooked too long and were being recooked.  Ugh.  I was still very hungry.  Our Cherry Bomb pizza, Italian sausage, sweet-hot roasted red peppers, parmesan, fresh basil layered over mozzarella and fresh tomato sauce, was finally served five minutes after we hoped to be heading home.  I quickly ate one piece, boxed up the rest, paid, and headed home so that I could take our babysitter home.  Oh well.  At least we have good left overs for tomorrow:) 

Saturday, 1/1/2011

Welcome to 2011!

We planned to meet Kate and Spencer at Buddha Ruksa for dinner tonight.  It was closed.  Our backup, Cactus, was also closed.  We ended up meeting at Hi-Life in Ballard and had a good meal.  Hi-Life is managed by Chow Foods, which also manages Endolyne Joe's in West Seattle. 

Kate had a butternut squash pizza, which both she and Spencer liked a lot.  Spencer ordered the hickory smoked spareribs, but they were out of them.  His ravioli backup wasn't as good as he hoped it would be.  Ben and I both ordered cast-iron bronzed rockfish-- spiced & seared Pacific rockfish over smoked polenta & adouille hash with sauteed kale.  We both loved it.  It was our first time trying kale.  Ben really liked it.  I liked it okay, but mainly because it was tossed in some yummy dressing.  The texture was a little difficult for me.  We ordered Katie a plate of grilled chicken and carrots.  She ate a few carrots, but wouldn't take a bite of the chicken.  She mainly wanted to drink water and color:)

Thursday, 12/30/2010

Kate surprised Ben and me today by having a deep dish pizza delivered to the house from Chicago.  The pizza came from Giordanos, one of the most famous pizza restaurants in Chicago.  It was half-baked and packed in an insulated container with dry ice for shipping.  Kate had asked Spencer what she should get Ben for a gift.  Spencer joked that Ben would love a deep dish pizza.  Kate ordered, UPS delivered, and we all enjoyed it for an early dinner.  Katie gobbled it down:)

Wednesday, 12/22/2010

After dropping my mom off at work this morning, Ben, Katie and I drove out to visit with my Grandma Kate.  While Ben kept Katie occupied, Grandma taught me how to make peanut brittle. What fun! This was the first time I have ever made candy from a recipe that depended on using a thermometer.  I helped Grandma make the first batch, and then she watched while I made the second batch.  I am pleased to say I didn't mess it up.  The brittle was delicious.  Now, I just need to get myself a marble slab so that I can make it myself;) 

We left Grandma's house and met up with Josh and James, two of my friends from youth group, at a Starbucks.  It was wonderful to catch up with them.  It's been several years since we crossed paths at church.  After finishing our hot beverages, we picked up my mom from work and headed to church.  I am going to be singing Christmas Eve at church with my dad and a few church friends.  We gathered at the church tonight to go through the song a couple times.  Before we sang, we ate pizza and chocolate chip cookies for dinner. 

Monday, 12/20/2010

We are leaving for our holiday vacation tomorrow.  I didn't want to dirty any more dishes or add more left overs to the fridge.  Instead, we worked on getting rid of the left overs we already had.  We finished off the pizza we made last week as well as the two extra chicken sausages we cooked up for the pizza toppings. 

Thursday, 12/16/2010

Happy 2nd Birthday Katie!!!

My company's annual meeting took place today.  Since both Ben and I had to work, my Aunt Margie came over to be with Katie for the day.  Thanks Margie!  We wanted to give Katie one birthday present before we left for work.  We woke her up shortly after 7am, got her dressed for the day, and brought her downstairs to see her new drawing easel.  Margie tells me that they spent the majority of the day drawing on the easel.  What a hit!

For dinner, I put together a pizza using a Pillsbury pizza dough, homemade sauce, mozzerella cheese, shredded rotisserie chicken, and thinly sliced Italian chicken sausage.  We were thrilled when Katie decided she would eat the pizza too.  She wasn't interested in the sausage or shredded chicken, but ate the crust, sauce, and cheese willingly. 

Sunday, 12/5/2010

Katie still had a bit of a fever this morning, so Ben stayed home with her while I went to church.   The children put on the most fantastic Advent Pageant today.  A ten-year-old in our church wrote the play and our music director wrote the music for it.  I was moved to tears by the whole production.  The props and costumes were perfect, the songs were touching, and the script was humorous and clever.  Wow...nicely done! 

For dinner, we finished off last night's pepperoni pizza.  Katie's fever is down, but she is still not back to her normal self.  She ate some pizza, but just doesn't seem to be hungry.  Hopefully she'll be better tomorrow.