remember, i’m a gleek

Of course we went to the Glee Live Concert!  Are you crazy?  It was a blast and they pretty much sang all the songs I love and they sounded fantastic.  I don’t give a crap what people might say I love me some Glee.

Oh yeah.  These pictures are pretty much crap because I had Ray’s point and shoot that I don’t know how to use.  I wish I could’ve brought my Nikon but concert people suck.

 

My sister purposely won’t smile for pictures if I take them.  So I will purposely post them on my blog.

My bro-in-law however does smile because he’s cool like that.

Darren Criss & the rest of the ‘Warblers’.  They are awesomeness personified.

Amber Riley – also awesome.

Lea Michele & Chris Colfer.  This was when I really wished I had brought Emma.  The other day she told me ‘If I meet Kurt I will ask him for his autograph because I am a fan of him.’  The songs he & Lea Michele sing are her favorites.  Alas, it was too late in the evening and she wouldn’t have been able to see a thing.  Maybe next year.

Everyone else was there, but I can’t take pictures for shit on this camera so I suck.  I wish I had video of Jen who came with us because she pretty much had me laughing all night. 

mushrooms, they grow a lot here

Memorial Day weekend found us at the Morgan Hill Mushroom Mardi Gras.  For some reason this festival is a big draw here.  Morgan Hill grows a lot of mushrooms and it’s cool.  I love mushrooms, but you’d be hard pressed to find many mushrooms at this Mardi Gras.  Mostly you find drunk dummies dancing badly to local bands.

But whatev.

We went anyway because I wanted to do something.  We met up with our friends who have a daughter that goes to school with Emma. They’re pretty much best buds and it’s very convenient that they live so close and are so awesome to hang out with. 

Seriously people.  It doesn’t get any cuter than this.

They went down this giant sinking blowup Titanic ship slide.  It was huge.  I was having a heart attack.  The girls loved it.

Don’t they look so tiny?  It’s because THEY’RE SO FAR AWAY!!!

Just watching them spin around made me ill.

Our little daredevils just won’t quit.

graduation day!

Today was Emma’s graduation from preschool.

Both my parents and Ray’s parents came to cheer her on as well as my sister, niece, nephew & Auntie Marilyn.  Auntie Marilyn brought Emma her pretty lei too!

She looks thrilled, I know. 

They sang three songs for their presentation (it was super cute, of course).  Emma’s been kind of sad to be done with preschool, but I keep reminding her that tomorrow is Kai’s birthday party so we’ll pretty much see everyone tomorrow!  I’m so glad she loved her preschool, but I can’t believe she’s already ready for Kindergarten!

*sigh*

another day in geekdom

A couple of weekends ago we headed out to the San Mateo County Fairgrounds for the Maker Faire.  If you don’t know what that is (and you probably don’t) I don’t really know how to explain it to you … see there’s this magazine called ‘Make’ and it has all kinds of DIY stuff mostly having to do with electronics or something.  Ray likes it because he’s into Arduino.  If you don’t know what that is I really can’t help you.  I don’t know what it is.  But he builds little robots and it’s computer related.

But the Maker Fair also has food & crafts & junk.  Like showing you how to grow your own mushrooms using coffee grounds and making jewelry.  It is exactly what it sounds like.  A fair for people who make things.  There’s also a whole lot of steampunks around there.

So we went and saw some crazy stuff.  Here’s a glimpse …

Welcome geeks!  **Note, I use ‘geek’ in the most affectionate way as I will gladly describe myself as one!

A women inside a motorized blueberry muffin.  Her husband was riding around inside a chocolate cupcake.  They were cruisin’.  Next year I’d do the faire again if I could ride around in one of these.

Ridiculously amazing bubbles made by using poles, rope & a bucket of soap. 

More bubbles.  Later on we saw them using what looked like a fish net that made millions of little bubble clumps.  Emma wasn’t the only one who was fascinated.

Inside the LED & Robotics building.  This was a bicycle wheel displaying different designs and such.

A group of guys who are part of a club in which all members have built their own R2-D2.

Emma on the cover (or rather in the cover) of her own Make Magazine.

My favorite part.  This guy literally had an entire city built from LEGOs.  I loved the way he used the flowers to make this ‘cherry blossom’ tree.

A farmer & his crop!  Who would’ve thunk it??  So creative.

Sushi restaurant.  He also had parks with playgrounds, hotels, diners, stores, businesses, tons of cars and people walking around.  It was awesome.

Lots of little crafty things for Emma to do.  Here she was using Crayola Clay to make an animal cell.  Once it’s finished drying out completely we’ll slice it so she can see the finished product inside.

My sister-in-law Theresa came with us.  She was quite overwhelmed by the weirdness of the whole thing.  She told me, ‘I just don’t understand any of this stuff!  It’s all way over my head!’  She did end up finding a bag made of recycled materials she really liked but after finding out it was over $200 we decided to figure out how to make them ourselves!

It was a long day full of cool and strange stuff.  No, we didn’t see Adam Savage or Grant Imahara, but we heard they were around.  Maybe next year!

i ♥ her tons

it doesn’t get much better than this …

One of my favorite meals to make is posole.  It’s a Mexican stew.  Some people spell it pozole and some people (me) spell it posole.  Either way, it’s delish.  It’s also very easy to make (at least the way I make it) and I make so much of it when I do that I eat it for days for every meal.

I thought I’d share my recipe with you but then I realized I don’t really have a recipe per se.  I mainly throw together the same ingredients each time in somewhat varied quantities.  It kind of drives Ray crazy because each batch is an experiment and may not ever be repeated, but that’s the way I do things around these here parts.  Here’s how I make it and feel free to substitute, add, change or completely ignore my recipe and find your own!

Start with a few fresh jalapenos.  I dice up between 6 to 8.  This time I used 8.  Notice my lovely cutting board.  I just got it and I luuurve it!

I throw it in the most gianormous pot I have and add a butt load of chili powder.

Hominy is by far my favorite part of this soup.  You really can’t add too much hominy.  I use the biggest can I can find which is around 208 ounces from Costco.  I rinse it out and get it all umclumped.

On medium high heat I start boiling chicken stock.  You can use either chicken stock or broth.  Our Costco only sells chicken stock in large quantities so that’s what I use.  I’ve used both and really, can’t tell the difference.  I used four 32 ounce boxes of chicken stock for this batch.

Another reason why Costco is so awesome: they sell already shredded(ish) rotisserie chicken breast in vacuum sealed bags.  Sometimes they’re in the premade meal section and sometimes you have to ask for them.  They use it in their chicken salads and whatnot, but they’ll sell it to you if you ask nicely.  It’s already cooked so you’re really just warming it up.  You can shred it more or just leave it as is like me (lazy).  If you can’t get it from Costco you can either buy a rotisserie chicken and shred it or buy a whole chicken and cook it yourself.  To do that I would pour in the chicken stock and whatever kind of chicken parts I bought and boil it until the chicken pieces were cooked.  Then I take them out and get to shredding.  It is the only difficult or annoying part of the process so that’s why I buy it already done for me.

Now add 3 to 4 cans of diced tomatoes.  You could use fresh tomatoes, but again, I’m lazy and this works for me.

Heat to boiling and stir occasionally.  Here’s where I’ll add some hot sauce.  You can use whatever you like, but I use Lime Cholula.  It’s my fave.  Once it’s boiled for a bit I turn it down to low-medium, cover it and let it simmer.  I’ll check the broth after about 20 minutes to see if it’s spicy enough or if it needs anything else then I just let it simmer for as long as I can stand waiting for it.  Sometimes I’ll start it in the morning for dinner just so it simmers all day and makes my house smell yummy.

While simmering I listen to some tunes.  Right now I’m obsessed with the second Country Strong soundtrack that has the rest of the songs Garrett Hedlund & Leighton Meester sang in the movie. 

You can garnish your bowl with all kinds of stuff.  My father-in-law likes his with shredded cabbage, my hubby likes his plain but he wouldn’t complain if I had some tortillas.  I like mine with lots of lemon juice and cilantro.

Doesn’t that look purty??  Enjoy!

becoming a locavore

I’ve wanted to sign up for a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and here in Morgan Hill it’s even more tempting because we’re so close to so many farms selling local produce.  If you’ve never heard of CSA let me explain.

Every week a box is delivered to a specific location.  The box contains whatever fruits and veggies are in season at that given time.  You sign up for a membership, pay your dues and pick up your box on that given day.

When I looked into it last year the only one I found (I didn’t really do a very thorough search) delivered once a week and it was $35 a week for what they called a family share. When they broke it down it really seemed like a lot of produce and I wasn’t sure if we could go through that much.  At the time, the only people I knew who lived nearby was my sister and her family and they’re not the biggest veggie consumers so splitting it with them wasn’t really an option.  So I let it pass.

Then a week ago I was talking to one of my friends who was also interested in joining.  It got me thinking about it again.  Then I was looking at Swank Farm’s website and saw they were part of a CSA called Timptations.

Timptations offers both weekly and every other week pick up and they will substitute items for you as well.  Every week they send out an email newsletter listing what will be in that week’s box.  If there’s something there that you know you don’t like then you can choose something off their sub list.  You can also add things to your order off their a la cart menu like olive oil or extra produce.  The portion sizes are a little smaller and they only charge $24 a week.  Perfect for us!

So I was thinking about it when we came across their booth at a local festival this past weekend and it just seemed like fate.  So we signed up for the every other week trial membership for a month and today we picked up our first box!

I was so excited to see what was inside even though I already knew!  Carrying it in from the car I could smell the strawberries and it made me so happy!

So we got strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, cherries, asparagus, broccoli, butter leaf lettuce (both green & red), radishes, English peas and an heirloom tomato plant!  Everything looks and smells wonderful!  I’m not sure yet what to do with the radishes, but I’ll figure something out!  Out of the eleven items eight of them are organic.

I’m hoping this will encourage me to fix us some healthier meals and try new things.  I used to cook a lot.  And not just whatever meals, but I experimented a lot and considered going to culinary school, but I’ve been lazy for awhile and I really need to get back into that.  Here’s hoping this helps.  And it definitely doesn’t hurt that I know we’re supporting our local farmers too!