My portabella pride.

It's been a while since I posted anything on here concerning vegan eatings but let me reassure you, the reader, that we are vegan and well!  We have slimmed up and wised up to the follies of man-made "food." I'm happy to report that my body now repels any and all dairy, and meat for the most part.  We eat out once or twice a month and I try to stay with the diet, occasionally eating some chicken or turkey.  But what I really wanted to talk about in this post is... the portabella mushroom!

As it turns out, these mushrooms are the meat in the vegan society.  There is also nothing I hate more than mushrooms.  They are a fungus.  People spend their entire lives avoiding fungus and they want me to EAT it?  No thanks.  But let's be sensible, being a vegan requires a bit of fearlessness when it comes to eating.  You have to eat new things especially when your diet only consisted of Wendy's Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers and Sterzings chips (ooooooooooh Sterzings, how I love thee).  We decided to try 3 different ways of preparing portabellas.  Okay really more like 2 different ways, but we'll say 3.

1. Portabella mushroom steaks:

Season prepared mushroom with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.  Grill for about 10 minutes.  We served this with baked beans (definitely not vegan friendly with Miss Queen Bean ruling her can-kingdom) and a baked potato with Stewed Tomatoes (a Forks Over Knives recipe) on top.

-Result-

The mushroom tasted REALLY good but the texture kind of did it in for me.  I figured out that if you season it like you would a piece of meat you'll get it to taste EXACTLY like your favorite kind of meat.  You just won't get it to feel like one.  Maybe I cooked it too long?  Who knows.  I probably won't be making it again for the texture reason.  The potato was good, as usual and the beans were satisfying the desire for fake sugar, salty meat, and FAKE SUGAR.  Bad Abby.

2. Portabella burgers:

Season prepared mushroom as you do the steak version; with olive oil (on both sides), salt, pepper, and garlic powder.  Grill for a few minutes (I tried a little less time to see if it might not be so squishy).  Served with sweet potato baked fries - bake slices at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes.

-Result-

SO AMAZING.  Honestly one of the best burgers I've ever had.  So tasty and satisfying.  I would definitely make this again and am looking forward to making these somewhere in the mountains this summer!  The texture was again, not very mea-like, but it wasn't distracting either.  It worked with with the bread texture of the bun and was overall quite wonderful for all of my senses.

3. Portabella sloppy joes:

We bought small presliced portabella mushrooms (we were going to make the burgers again but they only had these little prepackaged, presliced deals so we tried it out) threw those in a pan with a little oil (oil wasn't necessary but we did it because our pan makes everything stick to it) and added 1/4 cup of Heintz Ketchup (no high fructose corn syrup or nasty preservatives) along with lots of onion powder, lots of garlic powder, pepper, cayenne pepper, parsley, basil, and Montreal Steak Seasoning... I think that was it.  Served with baked sweet potato fries.

-Result-

I would make this again in a heartbeat.  Who needs meat when you can get the same taste and half the price??  I don't.

My killer Vegan Pancakes.

Revisited!  We changed the recipe a little to help the pancakes stay together a little better.  They tended to be a bit crumbly with the previous recipe.  It's much better now.

These pancakes were a scary substitute for our Sunday pancake breakfast.  I say scary because there is zero dairy/eggs/such things that make bready things happy.  Joseph found the recipe online and I refined it to exactly what my taste buds will force me to make a special trip to the store for.  You wouldn't guess for a second that there is no milk or eggs in these bad boys!  Yes, I did just make them for dinner.  YES, I enjoyed every single bite.  So good!  Sorry I have no picture, I was going to take one tonight but they were gone way too fast!

Vegan Pancakes

1 cup flour
2 Tbs sugar (we like to put 3)
2 Tbs (no less!!) baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
1 cup soy milk  (I use vanilla almond milk)
2 Tbs vegetable oil
apple juice

1. Heat pan to medium Heat.
2. Combine the dry ingredients.
3. Add milk and oil to the mixture until smooth.
4. (optional) add apple juice until you like the consistency.  I personally like my pancakes thinner so I add 2 or 3 Tbs of water, don't add anything if you like your cakes thick.
5. Make some stinking pancakes!
6. Serve with syrup or some delicious homemade fruit topping; just boil your favorite berry or fruit in a little water and a little sugar.  Boom done.


And people say that vegans eat boring food.  These are, by far, the best pancakes I've ever eaten.

My very own Vegetable soup!

Serves 2

1 potato
1 celery stalk
1 carrot
1/2 of a medium shallot
2 cups vegetable broth
about 1 cup noodles
water
2 Tbs flour
salt (optional)
garlic (optional)
pepper to taste

Chop shallot and celery and fry in a little water in a pot until shallot is almost translucent.  Then add chopped carrot and potato and the vegetable broth (and the seasonings if you want them).  In a separate bowl mix about 2 Tbs flour with just enough water to cover the flour and mix with fork until there are no clumps.  Add to pot.  Cook for about 20 or so minutes (I think I let mine cook for half an hour so the time doesn't really make a difference) then add noodles, cook for about 10 more minutes and serve!

Really yummy!  And I just made it up!  I'm feeling much more comfortable now cooking vegan meals.  I love it!!  It's got such a good flavor.  I wouldn't be opposed to doubling the amount of vegetable broth either.

I'm watching this right now, it's probably my FAVORITE movie.  Soooo good!!! 

Also, I will be putting up pictures from Thanksgiving in Iowa!!  I got to see my cousin Evan who I haven't seen in about 12 years!!!!  He's the nicest guy ever.  You would never know he was in prison for that 12 years.  

My Hearty Minestrone.

I've never really liked minestrone, though, I only ever had it at restaurants.  But today was a chilly day and soup sounded good for my insides.  I absolutely had no idea how much I would love this homemade version!  It was great and very filling.  Everything I put into the pot (which, by the way, was an astronomical amount of food) made my mouth water.  Let's see, there were onions, celery, carrots, green beans, cannelloni beans, kidney beans, tomatoes, vegetable juice, cabbage (!!!), noodles, and seasonings.

It was super amazing and thick.  There were as many veggies and beans as there was liquid which I REALLY appreciated.  There's nothing more annoying than soupy soup.  It had great flavor and texture and everything.  This would be a great meal for large gatherings and big families because we have some very serious leftovers.  We'll be eating this for a few days.  

A good meal!

My applesauce.

I made Saoirse some homemade applesauce and it is really good!  I'm really excited about this because there aren't any preservatives in it and no sugar!  It's JUST apples!  The best part is that she loves it.  And of course I forgot to take any pictures.

All I did was google how to make applesauce and went here. Super easy.  Although I don't think this lady mentions how important it is to keep an eye on the water level, because it goes down quickly and it doesn't take long for your house to fill with the smoke of burning apples.  Just saying.  Strangely enough, slightly burned (I like to call them 'browned') apples taste pretty good, so I still made applesauce.

My life is amazing.

I'm playing a little catch-up with this blog post because I haven't posted anything in forever and a lot of food has been cooked and Christmas trees put up!!  

I'll get this out of the way first, I made the Split Pea Soup from our cookbook Forks Over Knives, it lacked.... almost everything.  It was really bland and very watery.  If I make this again I would add noodles and probably celery and ... just more vegetables or something.  And probably 2 cups less water. Soo not the best thing I've ever eaten.

THIS WAS DELICIOUS.  We were watching Destination Truth and were really craving a dessert, so Joseph looked online for some good vegan desserts because, if you don't already know this, every delicious dessert under the sun is made with butter and milk and BUTTER.  But! we found this recipe for cookies that was amazing.  If I remember correctly, it was 3 cups instant oatmeal, 3 bananas, some amount of prunes, 1/4 cup vegetable oil (or applesauce), 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp nutmeg.  I put a little peanut butter in it as well.  If I were to make this again I would probably put some nuts in (I didn't have prunes so I have no idea if it's good or not).  This was seriously a delicious cookie and it made the house smell AMAZING.

Layered Tex-Mex Lasagna

5 stars. So good.  I really didn't miss the meat or the noodle in this!  It had pinto beans, corn, green chiles, corn tortillas, and some serious red sauce.  If you like your local mexican restaurant you will really like this, it tastes exactly like something you'd get there.

I LOVE CHRISTMAS.

Our neighbors had us over for dinner on Sunday and surprised us with helping them put up their Christmas tree, BEST IDEA EVER.  Dinner was yummy and tree was beautiful!  Kendra helped me make some origami ornaments since we had three ornaments last year.  They turned out so amazingly awesome and now our tree looks fantastic!!!!!

Tim-Tam Slam.

Our neighbors, Adam and Kendra, enjoying their very first Tim-Tam Slams.  Aren't they cute?!

Haha, I don't even know what he's doing.

So I hadn't had milk in a couple of weeks and when we drank some at A & K's house it was so weird!  It was really strong and just kind of strange tasting.  I think I made Joseph drink some of my milk because I just couldn't handle it which is kind of exciting.  I love eating vegan meals and feeling generally more healthy.  We're not completely vegan yet because our supply of meaty and dairy foods seems to be never ending but in all the time we've been eating vegan meals we stopped drinking milk.  So I guess I'm just excited my body is okay with not drinking it and I don't really miss it too much anymore especially now that it tastes crazy.  

I LOVE MY BODY!  It really is kind of amazing how it knows things.  For example, Saoirse had her first taste of bananas about a week ago and she never really liked them much although I would force feed them to her everyday.  As it turns out they were likely causing an allergic reaction and she was super off the whole week until finally her body produced a lovely rash.  No more bananas, rash gone, happy mommy.  Well.... kind of happy, this means that while I'm breastfeeding her I probably shouldn't eat bananas either.  Bummer.  I guess Joseph will have to enjoy those cookies all by himself.  Anyway, I think she didn't like them because she already knew they were no bueno for her tummy.

P.S. A banana allergy is often accompanied by a latex allergy!  Weird.

My Wild Rice Stuffed Squash.

This was surprisingly wonderful and surprisingly cheap to make.  For the two of us it cost around 5 or 6 dollars.  It was also fairly easy to make, but I had two issues, number 1, Acorn Squash is almost impossible to cut in half and number 2, it took me almost 2 hours to complete this meal.  I think my lack of knowledge on leeks donated some of the length of cook time, I had to youtube how to cut/cook/whatpartdoyoueat.  Once I learned that it was a fairly painless process of waiting around for the squash to cook in the oven and for the rice to cook on the stove.  LOTS of waiting.  But when it was finally done it looked like a masterpiece.

I used half as many squash(es??) as it said to use but still kept the same amount of everything else.. so if you're planning on making this recipe I would double the amount of rice and all that if you're sticking with making the 2 whole squash.  The rice was just enough to completely fill two halves.

Look at that handsome man and his half squash-bowl.  

I highly recommend this meal!  It's very good if you have just 2 or 4 adults.  I'm not so sure this would be something convenient to make if kids were going to eat it, I feel like rice would be flung all over the place while they're trying to dig the squash innards out.

My not-really-vegan-but-WOW lunch for one.

We went shopping last night for some AMAZING ingredients for some meals this week, BUT I am also trying to eat what we have.   So I fried three corn tortillas with one egg a little salt and put half of an avocado on top.  It is incredibly yummy.  I almost can't stand it.

It may not be the best thing for my arteries or future nutritional diseases, but the immediate satisfaction I'm getting is quite good.

Also, I have a project I'm going to post soon!  I'll give you a hint, it's a thing that goes at the bottom of a door to keep cold air out and warm air in.  I'll give you another hint, I don't actually know what it's really called..

My Minty-Lemon Lentils with Spinach

Right, this was kind of gross!  Joseph liked it for some reason.  I was kind of afraid to make it because it has mint in it and I know how I am with mint in anything that isn't toothpaste.  Aaaaaaaaaand, I don't like it.  It took me about half of the bowl to get used to the seemingly overwhelming mint taste, it was then that I could kind of enjoy the other flavors, like the lentils, which I apparently don't really like either.  Haha, at least Joseph liked it.  I'm making him eat all of the leftovers for lunch so I never have to eat it again.  

I'm so disappointed because it was SO promising!  Sweet potatoes?  Spinach? Vegetable broth?  Garlic??  My favorite things!!!  Unfortunately, it didn't have a ton of flavor except for the mint, which was (I believe I already said this) gross.  At least I know.

On a slightly different note, I decided last week that I would start cooking only vegan meals, and after seeing everything we didn't have in our cupboards for such a quest I had some very serious shopping to do.  While I was cooking said vegan meals this week I realized how much junk we DID have.  And it was seriously junk.  TONS of meat in the freezer, lots of boxed foods and JUNK.  So, I decided that we at least need to eat the meat in the freezer, so we've been having a meat binge the last coupe of days (hence the not posting our vegan delights).  We're finally kind of getting rid of the meat in the freezer.  SOO, we'll be making some of my favorite meaty meals a few days this week THEN we'll officially be vegan.  Wish me luck!  I already feel sick after eating so much meat.  We don't normally eat so much at once, but I just want to get it out of my fridge so I don't feel like I'm wasting it.  AHH.  At least, I'll probably never want to eat meat again after this.

My Polenta with Rice and Beans.

Last night we had some leftovers (because holy cow does this vegan food making thing make a TON) so tonight I made something absolutely del-to-the-icious.  Polenta with rice and beans.  WOW.

The polenta I just bought at the store pre-cooked.  It was in a meat tube-like thing.  Super appetizing sounding, I know.  I used that for the crust in the biggest pie pan I could find.  The stuff in the pot is brown rice, tomatoes, an onion, vegetable broth, water and chili powder all cooked until there was no liquid left. 

Then I mixed in black beans and poured that into the pie pan and put some salsa on top and baked!  On each piece served I put a dollop (best word ever) of avocado mixed with lots of lemon juice.  It was SO AMAZING.  

I would definitely make this again.  The avocado really rounded it out well.  Super good.  

AND I followed the directions to a 'T'.  I think I'll have to start doing that from now on because the results are quite good.  The weird thing is that I don't even miss the meat that would normally be in a meal like this.  It's all very filling and tasty.  I'm impressed.

P.S. if anyone wants to try making any of these recipes, just let me know and I can give it to you!  

My Garbanzo Bean Loaf.

Last night was my first time cooking a vegan meal and I messed it up.  Haha.  It still tasted really good, but I have a problem measuring things - I just don't do it.  It wasn't until it was all mixed up and ready to go into the loaf pan that I realized that I had waaay too many garbanzo beans.  So it never set right and never *really* turned into a loaf and was just a hot delicious mess.

Sooo delicious.

So it was supposed to be a vegan version of meatloaf, something I LOVE.  It didn't really taste like meatloaf but it had the components and substitutions that somehow all worked together.  It was mostly blended garbanzo beans and rice which was the meat substitution with shredded carrots which I'm saying substituted the crackers and tomato sauce that substituted the ketchup.  I was very surprised by how WELL the tomato sauce stood out and tasted with everything!  Without that it wouldn't have been nearly as good.  All in all, I should probably measure things I put in the oven, but it was a tasty success!  

And we have TONS of leftovers.  

Another thing I forgot was sides.. I was so concerned with getting all of the ingredients for this that I completely forgot that you can't really eat meatloaf by itself nor would you probably want to eat garbanzo bean loaf by itself, so I opened a can of green beans.  They went surprisingly well together.  

All in all, I would definitely make this again.

Our whole foods plant-based diet.

I have one question.  Being one of the most advanced countries in the world, why do most people die from poor nutrition?  Most people die from heart disease and many die from diabetes, Alzheimer's, cancer and most of this is accompanied by obesity.

Joseph and I watched a documentary called Forks Over Knives a few nights ago and it left a pretty big impact on us.  Not that I hang on every word of a documentary - because you can make a documentary about anything you want to and talk about the results you want to (think "Michael Moore") but with this I do believe what they were professing, to be true.  It fits perfectly with what my church teaches with what is called The Word of Wisdom.  The diet (I hate using that word, it's more like, new eating lifestyle) is vegan (Joseph hates that word, it's more like, whole foods plant-based diet).. but when I picture someone who is a vegan I think of a hippy who does too much thinking and likes to hug animals and trees and has hairy pits. I want the world to know that my pits are not hairy, animals are okay and, well, I do like trees.  But I definitely keep up with the body hair thing.  My quest for a vegan lifestyle is because I have learned that animals and their byproducts are not something that we need to be eating regularly, in fact, we should be eating it sparingly.  If you want to good description of why I'm doing it, read this.

I have absolutely no idea and no experience cooking anything other than midwestern hearty meat and potato meals so this will be a challenge for me cooking things I've never even heard of before.  So I'll be blogging my daily struggle cooking for vegans.  I have the help of the ever-so-wonderful cookbook Forks Over Knives and will be cooking most of our meals from that.

Wish me luck!

It took me a while to realize the genius of this picture - eat before you cut yourself open.  Love it.

My homemade baby food.

I've decided that I'm making Saoirse's baby food from scratch at home!  It's way easier than I thought it would be and way, way less expensive.  I started her out on rice cereal which she liked, but a box of Gerber one grain rice cereal was about $3, that she went through in a week.  So I decided to make my own rice cereal.  Now, making my own cereal won't save us TONS of money but I'll save wherever I can and that's saving about $5 every two weeks, excluding the massive amounts of formula you use with the Gerber cereal.
I bought an $.80, 1 lb bag of brown rice that will last me for a couple of weeks at least.  You want brown rice because it has more nutrients than white rice because it still has the shell on it.  Rice cereal you buy at that store is white rice that had the shell taken off (along with all of the nutrients) so they then 'added' the nutrients back in.  It seems like a waste of time to me and completely unnatural.

1/4 cup brown rice
1 cup water
2 oz formula or breast milk

I'm still trying to master grinding up the rice, and all I have is a blender so I make due.  You can also use a food processor or maybe even a wheat grinder.  This is the part that takes the longest.  You put small amounts in the blender at a time so it will blend evenly/blend at all.  Try to make it as fine a powder as you can, it's alright if it's not super powdery because you're going to blend it again after to make it for small babies.  I store this powder in a jar and use it when I need it.

Boil 1/4 cup rice powder with 1 cup of water for 10 minutes while whisking constantly to keep lumps from forming.  Once the ten minutes are up add the breast milk or formula then blend to puree for little babies. I noticed the first time that it seemed kind of paste like after I blended it, but my daughter seems to like it so it doesn't bother me.  Refrigerate until you need it and microwave the amount you need until it's at least not ice cold.

I like to make this in big batches so I will cook once and it will last me several days.  I think I doubled the recipe and it lasted about 3 or 4 days.


Next, I made Sweet Potatoes and Carrots

1 sweet potato
or
3 full sized carrots
water

Boil, steam or bake the peeled sweet potato or peeled carrots.  I like to boil them because it's easier for me, when I do I use just enough water to cover the sliced sweet potato or carrots.  I'm not sure how long I boil it for, just long enough for the pieces to get soft enough to easily cut through with your stirring spoon.

Let cool a little.  Put in blender with a little of the water you boiled it in and puree!  It's ready to eat.  You might have to do this about once a week or once every two weeks depending on how much your baby eats.

I like to put the pureed food into an ice cube tray and freeze it so it lasts as long as I need it to or make a bunch, put it in ice cube trays then store it in freezer bags to use when I need it.  Veggies should last about 6 months in the freezer.  AND ice cube size is the perfect size for baby!  Just microwave 1 or 2 cubes when you want them.  Super easy.  Super affordable.  Super healthy for babe!  And they'll LOVE the yummyness of the food.  I'm pretty sure Saoirse could bathe in the sweet potatoes and be the happiest baby on the block.


I think the reasons I wanted to make my own baby food was first of all, the expense.  Each jar of baby food is about $.70 or $.80 which is going to add up if your babe is eating 1 jar 2 or 3 times a day.  I also want to give Saoirse the best start to life by not filling her body with a bunch of preservatives.  Preservatives that are supposed to preserve the food and preservatives that help keep the color of the food to something appetizing.  That's too many preservatives and too many dollar bills for my taste.

My tomato soup.

Alright, so last night I made some seriously DELICIOUS homemade tomato soup.  This was not without trial and error, but I finally made it perfectly after trying different methods to delish-ify.  Here is the recipe.

Okay, fine, this isn't a picture of *my* soup, but it looked a lot like this.  It really didn't last long enough to take a picture of.

6 medium tomatoes
1 green bell pepper
1/2 large onion
3 garlic cloves
1 cup tomato juice (or V8)
pepper to taste

2 beef bouillon cubes

2 1/2 Tbsp butter
2 1/2 Tbsp flour
1 cup milk

Remove the skin of the tomatoes by "blanching" them or put them in steaming (not boiling) water for about 10 minutes.  Then put all of the tomatoes in cold water for a couple of minutes and peel the skins off.  They should come of easily with your fingers.  Core the tomatoes, cut them in half and put in a blender along with the quartered bell pepper, onion, garlic and tomato juice.  Blend until the desired consistency.  I enjoy a little chunky, but you can puree it if you want.  Put the blended soup in a pot along with the beef bouillon cubes and pepper and boil it for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

In another pan melt butter and whisk in flour until smooth.  Slowly pour in milk while whisking vigorously to keep lumps from forming.  Whisk constantly for 5 minutes and pour this gravy into the tomato soup and mix it in (only do this after the tomato soup has boiled for at least 15 minutes, so time it right).

This is even MORE delicious if you smash up Ritz crackers into your bowl of soup.  This serves 2 people.

This is the best tomato soup I've ever had.  TRY IT!


There are more of my favorite homemade recipes to come!!  Stay tuned.

My old roommate.

And when I say "old" I mean elderly.

Miss Emily Rebekah Hewlett came on an impromptu visit to dear old Utah a week and a half ago and we had SO much fun!  It was great hanging out with her!  It was just like old times - including the harassment I seem to have no problem throwing in her direction.  No wonder she loves me so much.  She lives in New Jersey now and the day she left there was an earthquake that delayed her flight out of Philadelphia and the day she was supposed to go back hurricane Irene was going through her state.  So she ended up staying a few more days.  No problem.  It just gave us more time to harass each other.

Here are some pictures of the event that I stole from her Facebook.

 These two are so cute!  

 So we might have attempted to take the stroller hiking.  Probably won't do that again.

 If there is one thing I'll miss about Utah, it's going to be this view.  Holy cow it's beautiful!  Taken up in Rock Canyon.

 What's a party without deliciously homemade Pot Stickers?  These little guys are soon to meet their fried death.

Geez we look good.  I love this girl!!  

I'm soo happy Emily came to visit!  It was seriously amazing seeing her!  I can't wait until we see her again. 

Our unicorn farts.

After watching Tron with our neighbors, the Thompsons, two nights ago we ended up talking about cake.  I'm not sure why.  Cake is good?  And not knowing the name of that one delicious cake with the sprinkles inside (later discovered to be "funfetti" cake) we began to call it "That Unicorn Fart Cake" because obviously, unicorns fart rainbows.  Then last night Kendra and I decided to make everyone's dreams come true and while the husbands were at their meeting we decided to make a Unicorn Fart Cake.  It was pretty glorious.

 We made our own delicious frosting so that we could have as much as we wanted as well as make all the colors and happiness we wanted.  I think it turned out really well.

We based our farting unicorn knowledge off of Adam's shirt.

Such a FUN night!  Happy friends, happy food, happy happy happy.  Saoirse even enjoyed some of the frosting and promptly fell asleep.

His heritage.

Yesterday was a fabulous Sunday filled with Church, meetings, "Pirates of the Caribbean" Munchkin (a combination of Munchkin Booty and Zombies), and Dominican foods!  It was my first shot at a traditional Dominican meal that Joseph's mom makes and it turned out fantastic!!  The beans were a tiny bit sweet - but I didn't have the right kind of tomato sauce.  Oh and it took me FOREVER to figure out how to make rice right. That's one of the more frustrating things.  Ever.  Seriously.  Whatever you do, do NOT follow the cooking directions on the rice package - they're wrong, and your rice will turn into a slimey globule.  P.S. if you're not into mixing all of the food on your plate then this is not the meal for you (or you need to get over your weird anxieties about your food touching).

It's pretty easy to make, just make some NOT sticky rice, drained pinto beans with a tomato sauce and onions (and probably about 1/2 a can of water, and any kind of delicious seasoned roast - thinly sliced.  BEST MEAL EVER.  

The best part is that we have some serious left-overs.  

Our Sunday.

Ahh, yes.  Sundays are quite wonderful - especially in December.  We get to sing all the Christmas hymns at church ALL WE WANT and when we get home Joseph and I make our Sunday dinner.  Which is really more like linner - since we eat around 2.  These last couple of Sundays Joseph and I made the same thing that I have named "Slow-Cooked Steaks".  The originality of my title is unparalleled.  Because we literally slow-cook some steaks, but only after leaving some potatoes in the crock pot for 3 hours (while we're at church) to cook in some water.  When we get home we stick the steaks in for about 30 minutes (an hour if frozen) after smothering them in olive oil and massaging (yes) in salt and some delicious steak seasoning.  After that we grill them for about 5 minutes and make some gravy out of the watery goodness stewing in the crock pot.  AND VOILA!  A delicious meal of meat and potatoes completely smothered in the most delectable gravy.  Unfortunately I don't have any photographic evidence of such a meal because it gets eaten too quickly by my ravenous husband and myself BUT I do have a picture of Joseph cooking the steaks in a pan....

...... isn't he cute?!  

By the bye, that's the apron he got me for my birthday.  IT'S AMAZING.  

My bad.

I failed at hard-boiling eggs today.  You literally JUST have to put eggs into boiling water.  What the heck?    I've reached new heights of chef in my house.

Our lazy days

First, I will be posting soon our hike up Timp and our vacation out to the mid-west.  The title of this post is completely appropriate to my mood in posting those things.  There are a lot of pictures I need to go through and witty commentary I need to think of.

Second, I love this movie,

I'm going to watch it and it will be magical.  I found on the back of the movie case that (the genius) Bosley Crowther from The New York Times said it's "a ginger-peachy show."  Mr. Crowther, you stole the words right out of my mouth.

Third, I love this movie,

Even if Adam makes me want to punch him in the face with his arrogance and stubbornness I do love a good 'ole fashioned musical (with amazing choreography mind you).  What better movie is there when there's an entire scene of choreography featuring the massively useful tool, the axe?  I'll tell you what, there is no better movie.  I could probably watch this every day.  If you haven't seen it, you're a fool.  But it's okay, I own the movie, and I'm willing to help a brotha out.


By the bye, (Joseph's mom) Deya made me some salsa and I'm pretty sure I could bathe in the stuff.  But I don't suggest actually doing that..