Egg sandwich

Lately if I have time I have been making myself an egg sandwich for breakfast.  And they are so good and simple. 

All you have to do is toast some bread, fry an egg or two to your liking, melt some cheese and add some hot sauce.  Mmmmm.  And it is pretty healthy especially if you use whole wheat bread. 

Gardening and Father's Day

So last week over Father's Day weekend my dad and brother came out for a visit.  With them they brought an old patio set from the Stilleys.

It use to have cushions but the mold kind of took over and they had to be thrown out.  There was also some nasty mold all over the chairs but we went to a car wash and now they look much better. 

That weekend we also deep fried an 18lb heritage turkey and has some people over, but of course no photos were taken.  And as you can see in the photo above my dad went on a rampage around the yard and cleaned up the limbs.  They also took random metal parts in the yard out and took off the gaudy antenna on top of the house.  So it looks so much better now.

They also bought wood and set an area for the garden.

CSA: Week 2

In this weeks share we received beet greens, spinach, cilantro, dill, borage greens, lettuce, peas, green onion and a basil plant.  So of course we made another massive salad the first day.  We also made an awesome stir fry with the beet greens, green onion and peas.

We also added some carrot and sweet mini peppers.

The great thing about stir fry is you can add whatever you want.  It is us to you and what you like.  We mixed our veggies with some baked tofu and brown rice.  We used soy sauce, hoisin sauce, red chili sauce and hot sauce to spice it up.  And it was delicious.

Since it is summer I have been in the mood for some sangria, so I made some to enjoy with our stir fry.

You can see our basil plant in the window too.

So in this sangria there is:

750 ml of dry red wine
1 lime juiced
1 orange juiced
1/4 cup of sugar
1/4 Brandy
1/4 cup orange flavored liquer
1 orange thinly sliced
2 apricots sliced
2 plums sliced
Then you let this chill for at least an hour, then you add in 750 ml of sparkling water and enjoy.

So it is officially summer with the sangria, it is great to enjoy when it is hot outside.

CSA

So this year we have a CSA (Community Sustained Agriculture) share.  This is when we pay a local farm a certain amount of money and then we get a share of their produce.  Our particular farm is a bio-dynamic farm.  We are doing a summer and winter share plus a fruit share.  Our shares started last week and with that share we received, snow peas, dill, cilantro, sauerkraut, turnip greens, lettuce, green garlic, amaranth greens, and borage greens.  With all the greens we made a massive salad with some local goat cheese and a homemade honey vinaigrette . 

And it was one of the best salads I have ever had!

With the sauerkraut we made some reubens, one with portabella mushrooms and one with tempeh. 

With the cilantro we made taco salad, and with the dill we made tzatziki. 

So far we have been very happy with the share and cannot wait to see what we get in the coming weeks.

Recently we also enjoyed some yellow watermelon, a nice heirloom that is not seen often.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

While on my vacation I decided to read this book.  I had never heard of it or really seen it anywhere, but it was on display at a used bookstore that we go to frequently, so I decided to go for it.  And it was really good.  It was funny and entertaining and a little sad.  It is about the pathetic life of Oscar, but the author made it comical.  At least that is my opinion.  It was a good vacation read because it wasn't very long (around 300 pages) and it was a quick read.  There are some references that I did not get because Oscar and his family are all Dominicans.  The book references many famous Dominicans that I have not heard of but it was still very enjoyable. 

So if you are looking for something new and different I would recommend this book.

Vacation

So if you read this, you may have noticed I have been slacking on the posting lately.  This was a combination of moving and a vacation.

We are all moved in and are working on getting everything situated, can I just say we have way too much crap.  And we got rid of a lot before we moved, it is pathetic the amount of stuff we have.  Some stuff that Jeff insists we keep that he hasn't touched since we moved.  But anyway, we have a lot of rearranging to do.


And then I went on a vacation with my family, Jeff decided not to join us.  We went to Table Rock Lake in SW Missouri.  This was the lake that my grandpa had a house at when I was growing up.  Because of this I love this lake, it is one of my favorite places to go.  One of my Dad's brother and his family also went.  It was a very nice and relaxing trip.  I didn't really want to leave but I know we will be going back next year.  I am already looking forward to it.  While at the lake I swam in the lake, the pool, rented a boat, jumped off a cliff, drove a jet ski, and went to Silver Dollar City.

 Harley and Skylee in the pool, my niece and nephew.

And once we returned from the lake I had just enough time to stop by and see Henry, my other nephew.  

And that is about how many pictures I took the whole time, I kept forgetting about my camera.  

I also took a couple videos of Henry that you can see at my YouTube page.

Visitors and a Trip

This past weekend we had some visitors, the in-laws to be exact.  Friday night they arrived and we welcomed them by making some real fried chicken and it was delicious.  Saturday they enjoyed the Denver Art Museum and that night we went to dinner at Solera, in celebration of my graduate school admission and Jeff's birthday.  Solera was wonderful as usual, I had the truffle macaroni and cheese with scallops, and oh my goodness it was amazing. 

Sunday we went to Estes Park, walked around their art fair.  Bought a photograph to add to our art collection.  Then went driving through the Rocky Mountain National Park.  There was an insane amount of elk!  You can see how close they were in the photo below.   

We then went on a hike.

The hike ended up at a massive waterfall.  That night we stayed in Estes and ate at Mama Rosa's, some very good Italian.  Then relaxed in the hotel room.

Monday we woke up early and went on another hike, this time not in the park but right next to it.  It was Lily Mountain and at the top there were some very impressive views, and awesome 360 view of the entire area.

Then we took the scenic route back to Denver.  That night we had some amazing asparagus pesto and relaxed some more.

Overall a good weekend, but a tiny bit sore now.  If you wish to see all the photos, you can visit our Shutterfly site.