Beach, May 2014

Beach, May 2014

Friday, September 10, 2010

This moment

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Let's talk food

In my description it says this blog is about food somewhere... but I rarely talk about it. I do love food (this may be the reason I am still 25 pounds heavier then I was when I got pregnant with Aiden.. hum... ) SO I chose this beautiful almost 90 degree day to make one of my favorite pasta sauces.... roasted. My absolute favorite is our family recipe and you will never find me posting about that. So anyway Roasted Sauce. First get a bunch of veggies.

I use lots of stuff, not just tomatoes.  It's a good use of veggies that have been in the fridge a little to long, or little bits of this or that.  I have used greens and I had some frozen tomatoes I added in to this batch too.
Cut them all up into chunks.  Hard stuff should be smaller (like carrots) since they take longer to cook.  While you are cutting pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees.
Oh and if you were wondering about the 2 heads of garlic? yep, use them all.  just smash them with your big knife and pull the skins off.  It might seems like a lot but it's roasting and roasted garlic is much different then raw.  Then drizzle it all with a lot of olive oil.  When you think that must be enough, add a little more. Season with salt and pepper and some red pepper flakes.  Mix it all up and put them in the oven.  At this point you should have your oven door pop back up and hit your arm causing you to dump the contents of one pan on the oven door and on the floor of the oven...No?  oh that was me!  So pardon me if there are some middle pictures missing.  I had to have Aiden take Natalie into our room, shut the door and I had to extract all the spilled stuff from the bottom of the oven and clean then pre-heat again (did I throw them away? no.  That was a lot of food. I'm poor, and I know that Loren doesn't read the blog so what the hell.  It will get roasted to kill germs and my oven is clean).  So mix it all around every 15 minutes or so and if you have two sheets like me rotate those bad boys.  As  you get about 30-45 minutes in to it they will start to soften up so I smash/break them up as I go and I start stirring more often.  Eventually they shrank down enough to put them into one sheet.
I don't know why blogger turned this but oh well, this is how it looks when you take it out.  My mom stops here (she taught me this) with yummy chunks, but Aiden picks things out that he 'doesn't yike'
so I pulse it in the food processor to a uniform color so you can't tell what is what.  Let it cool first a bit.
now mix it all up and enjoy.  I had a heavy hand with the red peppers, and I lost some of my olive oil in the 'accident' (bad Italian with no extra oil) so it ended up thick and spicy. It'd be great bruchetta or since I needed to cool it off I added some v8 I had in the fridge, tomato sauce would work too but the v8 was open.  So yeah, yum.  See the spoon in the container.. I might or might not have been just eating it.

this moment

{this moment} Inspired by Amanda Soule- A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

the big 4!!

Yep, my little boy is 4, I can't believe it.  I bet you thought I'd never post about it.  Blogger has been so slow I keep loosing my patience.  I have better things to do then stand at this computer. 
So as our birthday's often do Aiden's Birthday celebration started the weekend before with a visit from Grammie!
and a dinosaur ice cream cake!
opening Grammie's gifts
Then on his birthday eve (after he went to bed) I decorated for the big day!
His crown, a birth picture of my little peanut at about 5 pounds! gifts from mama and a pin to wear all day.
I got Aiden a balloon and left it outside his door with his wallet tied to it.  Here he is just after he woke up, he was cold and a little confused I think!~
Opening his activity book from Grandma and Grandpa Gustafson
a snack of red beagles before we went to town to have our traditional breakfast out, then to his friend Elia's house for some play time, Costco for lunch and some samples, and finally to the pet store, just for fun! All the things Aiden wanted to do!
The erupting volcano dinosaur cake.
Aiden helped decide where the dinosaurs (felt mama made ones) would be on the cake
blowing out the candles!!
The next day Nonna came down and we met at the Lane County Fair for some MORE birthday fun!!
Lot's of Rides for this little boy who's now tall enough for a lot of the rides!
On Friday we headed down to Uncle Ryan's for his birthday party.  No party he said just let's go to Uncle Ryan's.  So we did.  Like I need convincing to go to the beach on a beautiful weekend!!
Natalie picking up rocks to throw in the bay.
We had a great weekend playing at Uncle Ryan's, building fairy houses, mowing the law...
Having fires, and roasting marshmallows
Jumping off things... Lots of Jumping!
Here he is on the last day, with his wings out in front of the big fairy house we  built.  It's really for the Root Children he told me.  Next time we have to work on their back door.  So that was our wonderful birthday week.  I think he had a great time, he got lots of fun stuff... a generator lantern, a remote control car, a new case tractor to go with Uncle Ryan's old implements, a bell and a horn for his bike, art supplies, an art cupboard, a wallet, new underwear (aww mom.. what fun is that??) and some money that he put in his piggy bank.  We hope you all had a good week, and I hope to catch up with another post tomorrow of our trip to Fire Camp to see the Helicopters.... there is also a blackberry jam post... yeah...I'm behind!