02.14.10

A holiday named for the patron saint of love and friendship is a pretty good day to slow life down a little and celebrate exactly that.  

 And, what better way to start such a day than with heart-shaped pancakes, right?

Especially, if homemade raspberry jam is involved...

 

 We really enjoy cooking together, and decided to spend our evening together trying some completely new dishes, rather than standing in a long line of hungry couples at the restaurant.  We stocked up on the sauces and spices common in Thai food, and tried our hand at a couple of dishes (with our own alterations of course)

Main Dish: Stir-Fried Crispy Duck Moose

1 package of tenderloin moose steaks

2 Tbsp flour

4 Tbsp oil

1 bunch green onions, cut in 2" strips

2.5 cups shredded cabbage

8 oz. water chestnuts (if you like 'em)

1/2 cup unsalted cashew nuts

1 cucumber, cut in strips

3 Tbsp plum sauce

1 Tbsp light soy sauce

salt and pepper

Fry the meat first in oil until golden and crisp, remove.  Add the onions to the pan and cook for 2 minutes.  Stir in the cabbage and cook 5 minutes more.  Return meat to the pan with the water chestnuts, cashews and cucumber.  Stir-fry 2 minutes, then add plum sauce and soy sauce and season it all to taste.  Heat everything together for 2 minutes.  Garnish with more green onions and serve!

  

 Side Dish: Asian Lettuce Cups Salad

romaine lettuce (large uncut leaves if you want fancy cups)

2 carrots

2 celery stalks

3.5 oz baby corn

2 green onions

1 cup beansprouts

2 Tbsp chopped roasted peanuts

Dressing:

2 Tbsp smooth peanut butter

3 Tbsp lime juice

3 Tbsp coconut milk

2 tsp Thai fish sauce

2 tsp sugar

1 tsp grated fresh ginger

1/4 tsp Thai red curry paste

Wash lettuce and arrange on serving plate(s) .  Cut carrots and celery into fine matchsticks.  Slice corn and onions diagonally.  Toss prepared vegetables together with beansprouts; arrange over lettuce.  For dressing, place all ingredients in a screw-top jar and shake well until thoroughly mixed.  Spoon dressing evenly over salad(s) and sprinkle with chopped peanuts.  Serve immediately.

  

 Reviews:  The stir-fry was to die for!  The kind of yummy that makes you take your time eating it just so you can savor all the flavor of each bite.  The salad was...different.  Imagine eating your veggies with sweetened peanut butter.  It grew on us after the first few bites though, and we polished it off!

We watched a movie and then planned to make Mango Coconut Smoothies for dessert:

2 large, ripe mangoes

1 Tbsp powdered sugar

2 1/4 cups coconut milk

5 ice cubes

shredded, toasted coconut to serve on top

Coarsely chop the mangoes and place in a blender or food processor with the powdered sugar and blend until completely smooth.  Add coconut milk and ice and blend again until frothy.  Pour into 4 tall glasses and sprinkle with coconut.

Why are there no pictures of these yummy-sounding smoothies??  Well, in my efforts to make sure we had all the oddball ingredients, I forgot that we didn't have any ice cubes!  So, being 5 ice cubes short of our fancy dessert drinks, we decided to experiment with a childhood favorite for both of us. 

  

 Honey grahams and frosting!  Except this time, Andy had the grand idea of adding peanut butter to the mix...hmmm-hmmm good.

  Hooray for a good excuse to spend quality time together!

(the ice cubes are forming as I type, so we'll be trying the smoothies tonight)

Do I Look a Little Flushed?

...because I feel a fever coming on!

 

  

The Man of Many Projects

I snapped a few pictures at the end of January to show ya'll what the Mr. Andyman's been up to.

Here, he's working on templates for boxing in the frame where the new clip and old frame connect on the '49 GMC.

  

Here's a future project.  I'll let you use your imagination with this one!

  

This monstrous freezer the neighbor is helping him unload will one day be a huge oven for powder coating the larger car parts - bumpers and rear ends and such.

  

So, the project collection continues!  Fortunately, the progress on those projects continues too :)

Off to a Great Start!

 2010 is off to a great start here!  We've been enjoying some almost-spring weather this past week (if you don't count the snow yesterday).  Today, I went out in a t-shirt to take this picture and didn't even get goosebumps!

We brought in the new year playing our new Monopoly City game with Beth.  She and I bankrupted Andy and went on to have a pretty close game.  This version of monopoly is definitely more interesting than the classic one.

 You have houses, industrial buildings, parks, schools, prisons, sewage plants, solid waste dumps, railroad stations, and even skyscrapers.  There are auctions where you set a timer and bid on a property until it goes off and the highest bid wins.  These can get pretty intense when you're trying to keep a player from owning all of the same color of property because that is the only way they can build a skyscraper.  I came away with $54.99 million and Beth had a good chunk too with $47.7 million when we called it quits.  Fun times!

Andy has been working away on the '49 GMC, doing most of the work on shop nights when Forrest can make it over to help out.  Since he started his side job for the local machine shop and laundromat, he hasn't had many free evenings.

Last you saw, the '77 Nova was torn apart and in a pile waiting to go under the '49 GMC.  Well, now the '49 GMC is in pieces!

 

 

 The original front clip of the truck was cut off and replaced with the Nova front clip.  It is just tack welded in place for now while more measurements are taken.

 

 The new clip lowered the truck quite a bit and it's going to look really cool!  I'll post more pictures as it goes back together.

Yesterday, we took a trip down to Lewiston to see our good friend Nick and to look at another potential project...and we brought it home!

 The newest addition is this fabulously small 1931 Model A sedan.  The body fits perfectly in the back of the pickup!  And, you know what's even more exciting than that?

This one's mine!!!

I'd been trying to decide what kind of project would suit me...although I realllly love the big ol' cars of the late 50's I'm kinda scared to drive them because they are so huge!  Sure, I grew up driving station wagons, but I think a '59 Cadi might be even bigger than "the Bomb"!

 

Needless to say, a Model A is much smaller than either of them, and Andy pointed this out as we were driving with it in the back of the pickup.  And, he said, "I just bought you a Model A for your birthday".

Uhhhh, you did?!  Are you being serious?!  Hmmm!

And, I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since.

I am ecstatic to say that my very first car will be a homebuilt 1931 Model A!  Seriously, how cool is that?  I'm giddy just thinking about designing it...

Thank you, Andyman, for this thoughtful early-birthday present!

Merry Christmas to All

We traveled to Spanaway, Washington to celebrate the birth of Christ with Andy's mom's side of the family.  We stayed with Nana and Papa and really enjoyed being there before and after the holiday chaos.  Nana made dressing and stuffed the turkey...

 

...and made a whole bunch of pies to boot!

 

Andy and Papa took advantage of the pre-holiday quiet to play the Wii together.  Here they are flying fighter jets, aiming for Ace status:

 

 

Then, the rest of the family and piles of presents arrived and after a fabulous dinner at Aunt Beth's, we gathered back at Nana and Papa's for the gift opening party.  Beth and Bryan's creative gift-giving had us laughing most of the night, and it was really fun to see people open the etched glass gifts we made for them. 

We ended Christmas Eve evening with pies and catching up with those we hadn't seen in a long while.

Christmas morning, we went to Ryan and Aimee's house to watch their kids open presents and to play with them for the day.

 

Who needs new toys when you have bubble wrap?

 

Ayden was most excited about his new Nintendo DS, and thoughout the day, you'd find him camped out somewhere, trying to beat his latest high score.

 

 

Meysa got her own pink one too, and showed me all sorts of things she could do in Tinkerbelle land.  Lauryn was very proud of her "DS" too and played the coloring book game very contently while her older siblings learned their new games.

 

Then she and I played a game of Guess Who...

 

...with Meysa's help to point out which ones to lay down.

 

Meysa and I worked on her paint-by-number horse until lunch.  It was fun to play with paints again!

We really had a good time spending the day with Ryan, Aimee, their kids and Andy's dad and stepmom who were staying with them for the holiday.  We hung out there 'til past everyone's bedtime and then it was back to Nana and Papa's for two more wonderful days.  Saturday morning, most of the family went to Wolf Haven where Aunt Beth volunteers.  They came back full of information and admiration for the animals!  Andy and I spent our morning and afternoon visiting cousins we'd missed the night before and Andy's good friend, John, who taught him years ago that a person really can build anything he wants - it's not that intimidating.  Saturday evening, we filled the house again for leftovers and game night.  Pictionary and Cranium kept us guessing and laughing for hours!

 

Sunday, Andy went back to John's to spend more time with him while Nana and I worked to update her computer.  We spent the afternoon resting and napping until Ryan, Aimee, and the kiddos showed up for dinner and more playing.   Andy turned the rocking chair's footstool into a bucking horse and had the kids squealing and fighting for their turn to ride.  You might notice that Lauryn managed to have every turn!

We were very glad to make it this year and catch up on all the changes that happened in the two years since we'd seen everyone!  It was a very merry Christmas.

It's Cold Outside...

Being as behind as I've been on this blog, I was posting warm summer pictures when we got our first snow of the season.  So, just in case you were wondering...yup, it is winter here!  Falling snow is blowing against the windows as I type this, even.  But, it sure is beautiful on those days when the sun comes out and it seems like the whole world has hit the mute button.   Awww...the silence that snowfall brings...

Scavenger Hunt of a Creative Kind

The Saturday after Thanksgiving Day, Don and Andy went steelhead fishing and Faith and I came up with a little adventure for our day!  Faith had gotten a new camera for her birthday and hadn't had a chance to break the ice with it.  So, we came up with a list of things to photograph and went out looking for them!

 

This entertained us for a good five hours (with a short lunch break where Faith introduced me to the Reuben sandwich.  Yummy!)

Below are our creative attempts to cross off the list (my pictures on the left, Faith's on the right)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had a grand time!  It was really fun to see how different our ideas were to cross each thing off the list.  We just might have to do this again...