Moved to new URL

Hi everyone,

I have moved my blog over to Wordpress, since their site is a little easier to use. My new URL is http://amalou83.wordpress.com/. Hope to see you there!

Wow, where did 2010 go?

Wow, I have not posted forever!

Lots has happened since my last post. So here are some events to catch up on:

On May 27, 2010 we welcomed Jacob Daniel into the world at 6 lbs 12 oz, and a full head of hair.

Jacob Daniel

Throughout the summer and into the fall he had some very special visitors come to see him:

Jacob - 1 week old meeting Grandma Judy

Jacob - 1 month old meeting Grandpa Chris & Uncle Kyle

Jacob - 1.5 months old meeting Grandpa Mike

Jacob - 1.5 months old meeting Grandma Debbie

Jacob - 4 months old meeting Uncle Joel

Throughout the year he managed to get to do some fun things including

His 1st Mariner's Game from the 5th Row behind 1st Base:

Jacob - 3.5 months old

He got to dress up as a Pumpkin for Halloween

Jacob - 5 months old

He got to experience his 1st Snow

Jacob - 5.5 months old

He enjoyed his 1st Thanksgiving by sticking his hand into the sweet potatoes (and loved them!) - of course we didn't get a picture of it :(

Jacob - 6 months old

Had a tasty 1st Christmas

Jacob - 6.75 months old

Enjoyed his 1st airplane ride and 1st visit to California, including a whirlwind tour starting in Orange County, heading to San Bernardino, then to Santa Maria.

Jacob - almost 7 months old

Got to meet more very important people (he actually got to meet all 4 great-grandmas, and 1 great-grandpa!)

Jacob - 7 months old with Great Grandma Pat & Great Grandpa Dave

Jacob - 7 months old with Great Grandma Shirley

First Trip to the Beach (his Mama LOVES the beach, and it just doesn't work if you can't put your toes in the sand)

Jacob - 7 months old at the Beach

Well, that gets us through 2010... 2011 updates to come soon, hopefully!

2009 Veggies

veggies

Once again we decided to join a CSA (community supported agriculture) for the summer. Since we live in a condo and don't have a ton of sun it is the best option for us to get fresh grown veggies every week. Each week you go pick up your share and you never know exactly what you will get. The picture above is this week's veggies and is a pretty good sampling of what we get this time of year. The last few weeks we got corn instead of spinach and summer squash (zucchini or crook-neck) instead of sunshine squash.

Dinners this weekend

On Saturday we didn't have anything planned, which is an anomaly. So when Matt asked what I wanted to do I said we should pick something to make for dinner that is different.

I asked Matt what he would like the main part to consist of, and he responded with Lamb. So we flipped to the Lamb section of my Meat cookbook. We looked at many recipes and settled on a leg of lamb recipe.

So we wrote our list and off to Safeway we went. Safeway did not have Leg of Lamb, so we then went to Trader Joe's after picking up other groceries. Again, we picked up groceries at TJ's and got to the meat department to discover they too did not have Leg of Lamb, but I did see they had whole chickens, so I picked one of those up for Sunday's dinner. So off to TOP we went. TOP did have Leg of Lamb (and only one of them), so we finished our shopping there.

Came home and made the rub for the lamb, let it sit, and then put it in the oven. It took about an hour and a half to get to temperature. In the meantime I chopped up some red potatoes and tossed them in olive oil with the rest of the rosemary, garlic & onions to roast up. Made some green beans *the last of the ones from our Co-Op this summer* with caramelized onions.

Dinner was delicious. Later this week we will probably have gyros out of the leftover lamb.

The reason I picked up a whole chicken is because the other day Matt mentioned the butterflied chicken I have made, and I thought, great tomorrow I can do that and we will eat leftovers this week :)

So I used Alton Brown's Broiled, Butterflied Chicken The hardest part about this recipe is getting the Keel bone out of the chicken. Also, I have found his cooking times are quite a bit shorter than it ever comes out for me.

With our chicken I served Sourdough Garlic Bread and Salad. Later this week we will be having tacos with the leftovers.

Life

It has been awhile.  So here is a recap on what is happening in my life.

I am still working at BlueKai, and loving it.  I stayed very busy in December when we were working on due diligence for the round of funding we received.  We are very excited to continue to see growth throughout the rest of this year.

We are still working with the high school youth group at church and that keeps us busy.  There is Bible Study once a week, Fellowship nights twice a month and a communion Sunday service once a month.  We love all the kids and are excited to see what God is doing in their lives, but will definitely miss the seniors when they graduate and head off to college.  For the first time our youth group is going on a mission trip this summer.  We are going to the Yakima Indian Tribe in eastern Washington.

For Christmas we went home to California for a little over a week.  It was great to see our families and some of our friends.  It is always amazing how quickly the time goes when you are home.

My older brother, Joel, is getting married in June, so we will be down to San Diego for that.  We are excited to have Cindi join our family!

Food!!  We love food, both homemade and restaurants.

We have gone to a few fun restaurants within the last six months:
Poppy - Indian Inspired, owned and operated by the former chef at The Herbfarm (a fantastic restaurant)
Olivar - French and Spanish influence, a great place to order many different dishes and share them among the table
Matt's in the Market - a Pike Place Market tradition, fresh food from the market
FLO - a Japanese restaurant/sushi bar, off the main drag, but wonderful.  We did the Omakase, and it was amazing
Splash Cafe - this is a must when we are back home

These were all good and fun.

Some things I have made lately:

Fish Tacos
Chicken Pot Pie
Pork Saltimbocca - butterflied pork stuffed with prosciutto and sage, with a sauce that has mushrooms, wine, stock and parsley
Red Beans & Rice
Lemon Chiffon Cake (for one of our high schoolers 18th birthday)
Seared Swordfish
Smoked Salmon and Dill dip
Christmas Candy (toffee, peanut brittle, peppermint bark, fudge, pistachio craisin bark)
Stir-fry - nothing like what mom made us when growing up though - no bean sprouts and rice, instead noodles and lots of different veggies with a sauce made with Hoisin Sauce

We are also excited because we got reservations to French Laundry in March.  We are hoping to try at least one of the other restaurants by Thomas Keller while down there.

I have received a couple cookbooks in recent months and am excited about both of them:
The Complete Meat Cookbook - this talks about how to prepare different cuts of meat and also different recipes.  The Saltimbocca I made came out of this book
Baked - I haven't made anything out of this yet, but the recipes are making my mouth water
Grill It! - this has some yummy recipes in it and just sparks my creativity

Well, that is what is going on with us, maybe I will try to post more often ;-)

Life goes on

I know it has been forever since I have blogged. So I decided I would finally take a little bit of time and do so. I am thinking of changing up what I post. I used to mainly posts pics of what we had done, but at times that is overwhelming, so instead I will try to post short blurbs about what we have been up to or maybe a recipe that I have made that we enjoyed (thanks for the idea Becky!)

So I noticed last time I blogged was last December, so here is what has happened since then.

• The company I was working for went out of business, therefore I spent a couple months helping close out an office. This was a new and very different experience. One thing that was frustrating was timing. We made the announcement to everyone at the beginning of December. Thankfully God has blessed us and we do not need my income to pay our bills, so I was more worried for all of my coworkers who lived paycheck to paycheck.
  
  
• In March I started working for another start-up, which I definitely had to think about before taking the job. I am the Office Manager and HR Generalist, but I do a bunch of different things. This company is more in the advertising realm, therefore I have learned more about that and continue to learn more. I work with a great team which is so key in any position. Last week I traveled for work to work on setting up our Bay Area office. It was a busy couple days trying to get the basics pulled together for them to start working in the office on Tuesday, but they were able to work out of the new office this week. While I was in the Bay Area I was able to go to dinner with Kim who I worked with while at 3Guppies. It was so much fun to go spend some time with her, she is such a blessing!
  
  
• This summer we decided to join a CSA farm (Community Supported Agriculture). We joined Root Connection which is only about 5 miles from our house. It is so much fun to go out there on Saturday and pick up our vegetable share. When we arrive we have no idea what we are getting that week. Normally we get about 6 different items. Last week we got yellow beans, green beans, carrots, beets, and lettuce. The variety has been great and to see different varieties is fun, a few weeks ago we got some gorgeous rainbow carrots which I had never seen before. Because of all the veggies we are getting every couple of weeks we have a night where all we eat are veggies. We did this last night, here was the menu:
  
  

• Green Beans with Mushrooms and bacon
• Yellow beans with just a touch of butter
• Caramelized Onions (went great with the green beans)
• Roasted Fennel (this was something I had never done before but it was tasty)
• Sauteed Carrots with just a tad of butter
• Garlic Bread, because I need some carbs with all those veggies :)
  

• A few weeks ago I decided that I would like to add a fruit share to our veggies share, so for about $20 per week we get a bag of organic fruit. It has been nice to get ripe fruit that you can eat right away. Tonight I made banana bread from some of the bananas we got last weekend. Since we have the fruit in the house we have been having fruit as our "dessert" in the evening. One evening I sliced up nectarines and tossed some blueberries with it and sprinkled it with just a pinch of sugar. It was a delicious snack and good for us :) The only thing we have a hard time with is getting a whole melon because we don't always remember to grab some and put it into a container for work, so it is hard to eat the whole thing in a week.

• I finally joined a gym back in July Costco was offering a two year membership for 24 hour fitness for $300, so I took advantage of it. My goal is to make it to the gym twice a week, but that doesn't always happen. I figure any time I get to the gym is better than not going at all though.
  
  
• Family Visits - Matt's parents came and visited near the end of June, then my parents came, left, came back, left, came back then went home. It was great to see the family and they enjoyed seeing the Seattle area. We fed them lots of good food and even took Matt's parents to one of our favorite restaurants, Cafe Juanita.
  
  
• Since I mentioned restaurants I will talk about some of my other favorite restaurants we have been to this year. Herbfarm is an absolutely amazing experience. It is a 9 course meal with 5 wine pairings. For my birthday & celebrating my new job we went for the Steak in Seattle menu. It was amazing, but definitely not for the non-meat eater. Another wonderful restaurant in our area is actually in Seattle and has a gorgeous view of Lake Union and Gas Works Park from their dining room. This is Canlis which has made Northwest Cuisine what it is today. All three of these restaurants have won a James Beard award. We don't eat out too often, but when we do it tends to be very nice.
  
  
• In March we went to Leavenworth for a long weekend. Originally it was going to be a Valentine's thing then with the job search we pushed it back and finally I said we just need to book this. We stayed at a Bed & Breakfast called All Seasons River Inn. The breakfasts were amazing, the rooms were very nice and our hosts were wonderful. It ended up snowing the day we headed out there. This was surprising because the snow had already melted quite a bit, though we were thrilled. One thing we had wanted to do was go snow shoeing, which we got to do. It was a wonderful relaxing weekend.
  
  
• We have continued to be involved with the high school youth group at church, and plan to continue with that this coming year. This keeps us busy, but it is such a blessing.
  

Well, now that I have babbled on for quite some time I will stop for now. I hope you have enjoyed getting caught up with some of our adventures.

December Snow

So instead of posting all of my photos from the snow we had today on my blog, I have placed them in a gallery on Matt's SmugMug account here.

This picture is one of my favorites from the day.

snowy branches