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Linger

After a year or more of almost strictly working (or staying in) on our date nights, Matt and I have resolved to get out and check out our city this year … particularly the restaurants. Last month we tried Osteria Marco (which I never wrote about, but I should, really, because it was great! – well I guess we’ll just have to go back!) and this month as we were looking for some new places to try, I happened upon an article in our local Hipster paper, Westword, listing the 10 best new restaurants of 2011. We looked through a few and Linger appealed to us the most – the concept is simple, small plates of street food from around the globe. Ummm … SOLD!

So we got on their site and tried for reservations. We were not successful. So we called and were told and luckily they thought they could squeeze us in at 5:30, but we’d have to relinquish our table promptly at 6:45. Yes, in a funny ironic twist, we were not going to be allowed to linger at Linger. Oh well. We decided to take the reservations since we didn’t know when we’d have another free night in the near future. Turns out reservations are quite hard to come by and we majorly lucked out!!

The restaurant is housed in the old Olinger Mortuary buildling. Hey … brain storm. That is probably where the name comes from. Duh, Jess. There are a few other tenants as well, but Linger got the most and arguably the best of it. It’s situated in a neighborhood that’s sort of NE of true downtown Denver and a bit up the hill and has a pretty great view of the city.

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Polenta Stuffed Peppers

Hard to believe March is almost done! We always start out the month with the next month’s calendar page looking clear and end up with it jam-packed with activities. Next month we will celebrate Ben’s 3rd birthday, start new activities for each kid (Ben is doing tumbling, Tabby ballet), run our 7th (?!!) half marathon, have a visit from Matt’s mom and a big bunch of other activities, including prepping for our camping trip in May. I will also tackle the 4th cookbook of the year, Thai Street Food.

But March isn’t out just yet. And I have a couple of recipes left to share with you from Moosewood Simple Suppers. Today I bring you tales of polenta stuffed peppers. I am always a fan of stuffed veggies, be they squash or peppers or pumpkins! There is usually a bit more cooking time, but the prep is usually pretty easy and the results are usually delicious. This recipe was made doable even for a weeknight. You start cooking the peppers without stuffing, while you are prepping the stuffing, then stuff them and finish off the cooking. We opted to prep these the night before, but they easily could have been done in the evening.

Polenta Stuffed Peppers, adapted from Moosewood Simple Suppers

  • 4-5 red, orange or yellow bell peppers, sliced lengthwise through the stem, ribs and seeds removed
  • 2 T olive oil
  • 4 C water
  • 1/2 t red pepper flakes (optional)
  • 1 C cornmeal
  • 1.5 C corn kernels (frozen works fine)
  • 2 C cheddar cheese, divided
  • 1/2 C chopped olives (Spanish are recommended, but they do not seem to be readily available in my normal stores, and the kids LOVE black olives, so that’s what we used)
  • 16 oz salsa of your choice
  • can of black beans, drained

Heat oven to 450. Put 4 cups water in a medium sauce pan on high to boil, with red pepper flakes if desired. Rub peppers inside and out with olive oil (or use your mister if you’ve got one!) and roast at 450 for 15 minutes. While the peppers cook, prepare polenta. When water comes to a boil, slowly whisk in the cornmeal and continue cooking, stirring until tender and thickened.

Remove from heat and stir in 1 cup cheese, corn kernels, butter, and olives. Season with S&P to taste if desired. Fill peppers with polenta mixture and sprinkle with remaining cheese. Return to oven for 5-10 minutes until cheese is melted. While peppers cook, mix salsa and beans.

Serve peppers with beans and salsa on the side or over top. We also topped our green salads with the mixture and a little cheese – YUM.

For the kids, we cooked just the mixture in ramekins and topped them only with some beans (no salsa). Of course they each had to take a no-thank-you bite of the pepper. They’ll be up for it some day!!

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This is Staring to Irritate Me

We had it all perfectly lined up – an early Saturday run with some good friends – a double date kind of run with two couples. We had a babysitter lined up, at our house and ready to go, and we were even running on time! We’d actually made oatmeal for the kids the night before. Definitely our A-game.

Unfortunately, the first words out of our friend’s mouth when she came in the front door were, “Do you know Matt’s tire is flat?” I didn’t know. Neither of us knew – Matt had taken my car to pick up our sitter earlier that morning. I went outside to check it out, somehow already knowing what was going to be the cause – a knife slash right through his tire. And so it was. This had happened before, a year or so ago, to a few people on our block, us included.

So we got ready to head out, figuring we’d call the police and file a report later. Somewhere in there, the guys went out to have a look at it and discovered that a charming epitaph had been inscribed on the driver door, plus a bunch more keying. It started to feel a little personal and we wondered if it might be our midnight (2AM) knocker. On the way out of the neighborhood, we went around our block and discovered two more cars that had suffered the wrath of the knife. The second one we came on also had the same charming word inscribed on the door as well as the windshield bashed in and some sharpied-writing on it. How did we know it was a sharpie? The little miscreants dropped that particular instrument at the scene of the crime.

Not wanting the evidence to disappear, Matt called the police. They would be there soon and I volunteered to stay back and wait since Matt frequently waits out my runs with girlfriends. But my wrath for our vandals increased – not only had they damaged our personal property, THEY MADE ME MISS MY RUN. A run with friends, a run I’d hired a babysitter for no less!!! Hell hath no fury.

So I waited and met with the officer and showed him what we’d found and he took statements from me and the other neighbors involved and had another cruiser go through the ‘hood to check and see if there were any more vandalized cars. He did tell me that they could probably get DNA and possibly fingerprints off the Sharpie. I told him I was all for going CSI on their asses. All things considered, it was all over with pretty quickly. When everyone got back, the guys changed the tire on Matt’s car and we got on with our day. The rest of the weekend was very nice and fairly uneventful (though we did go to an AWESOME restaurant on Sat night).

So Sunday night after we stayed up too late watching the last ep of Season2 of Downton Abbey, I was lying in bed trying to go to sleep. Matt was nearby doing whatever it is Matt does on the computer, presumably feeding his Reddit addiction. Suddenly we heard our garage door open, seemingly of its own accord. Needless to say, after all the crap that’s gone on, we’re a bit on edge with weird stuff going down around our house and so we spent the next 30 minutes trying to diagnose if this was fluke or foul play. We still don’t know. It seems remote (haha) that it was a random remote causing our garage door to go up. There is something like 1,000,000:1 odds. BUT we also have a keypad on our garage and the code has been given to a few people who if they weren’t careful enough with it, may have gotten into the wrong hands. There are also three remotes, one from each car and one programmed into Matt’s car (he has the 2nd for backup I guess) and we were concerned it had been lifted out of his car by the vandals (it was, he tells me apparently unlocked). But all remotes were accounted for and we’re still unclear on what the cause was.

Think I’m about done with this variety of excitement for quite some time.

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Washer Necklaces

It was a pretty good weekend, overall, but there was some more mischief about in our ‘hood. More on that, tomorrow, probably. But for now, something fun. Washer necklaces!! I’d pinned this cute little craft for making necklaces out of washers … but it was a bum pin and ended up leading nowhere, so I googled washer necklaces and came to this site with a great tutorial. You don’t need much to do it (I actually had everything on hand after stealing a couple of things from Matt’s woodshop).

Here’s what it takes:

  • washers, whatever size you fancy
  • scrapbook paper … smaller print is better
  • adhesive to affix paper to metal (I ended up using some kind of fabric adhesive, but the site recommends E6000 which would be good too)
  • sandpaper
  • an exacto knife
  • dimensional medium
  • cord to string it on

Here’s how:

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Accentuate the Positive

I don’t know if it’s hyper-sensitivity, but it seems like everywhere I look these days, I’m seeing comments about how people, specifically mommy bloggers are skewing their lives purposefully to make it look as though everything is perfect – that their kids never have tantrums and eat only organic locally sourced food and their houses are always spotless and their Christmas gifts nothing but homemade. I know these comments aren’t directed at me – I fly so far under the blogging radar with popularity they can’t be (and don’t get me wrong – I LIKE THIS) but these comments rub me the wrong way. Because, duh, if you look around my archives you will rarely find me saying a negative word about much of anything. My complaints are mainly about being busy/tired are about as deep as it gets. But there are some very good reasons why:

  1. I TRULY believe in the power of positive thinking, being, existing. I find that when I focus on the negative by writing about it, talking about it, dwelling on it, I get immersed in the negative and then it’s a positive feedback loop where I stay there. That doesn’t mean I gloss over or hide the bad stuff, but I deal with it and move on. This is the same reason why I don’t watch the news. It depresses me and I can’t really do much about it, so I focus on what I can control and do good in my own life.
  2. Complaining about the bad stuff just seems … petty. I have a damn good life. I am incredibly lucky and I know it. I have an wonderful circle of family and friends, a roof over my head, food to eat and even a job I like! Complaining about the small “first world problems” I have just seems petty. I’d rather celebrate the good stuff and be grateful for it instead of whining about the bad.
  3. This blog is not anonymous. I know probably 60% of my readers in real life, from family to friends to coworkers to clients to online friends who have become real-life friends. It’s great, but that being said, it doesn’t give you a ton of freedom to vent. And I’m not talking about inter-personal problems, necessarily. My kids and husband deserve some privacy and when everyone knows you and your family personally I’m not about to share private details of our lives that they’d rather I keep to myself. It’s not fair.

But just to make you feel better, some (negative) truths:

  1. I have been fighting to lose the same 10 lbs for what seems like years now. Really it’s months. Up 5 lbs, down 7 lbs, up 4 lbs, down 2 lbs. Over and over. It’s maddening and I am the only person to blame for it as I really like food way too much.
  2. My house is never clean. Ever. It is not filthy – we have someone come clean it every other week and I clean our kitchen every night, but I wage a constant battle on most other fronts. There is always too much clutter. The laundry is never done and I don’t just mean in the way that we’re wearing clothes that are currently getting dirty. I mean I usually have a load in the dryer that needs folded and a couple hanging around that are folded but haven’t been put away and frankly may never be put away. I don’t iron ANYTHING. My windows have been washed only once in the almost 8 years we’ve lived in the house and it was only the first floor ones when we painted and I didn’t even do it, my dad did.
  3. I yell at my kids. I try not to, but sometimes I do. I get impatient with them when they take too long to do things sometimes. I know it isn’t fair and I try hard to curb my reactions, but I do not always succeed. I am also LOUSY at playing make believe with them. Games? Cooking? Crafting? Yes. Playing pretend? Absolute crap. Bores me to tears. I also hate singing the same song 50 thousand times in a row. I will also occasionally put them to bed early because I am tired myself and/or I have something to do that they cannot interrupt.
  4. Loki is neglected. He gets fed, he has a small yard to play in, but he rarely goes on walks and the only time he gets bathed is when he goes to the vet to be boarded when we’re out of town. I try to make up for it with  snuggles and hiking and camping trips, but honestly, he is farther down on my priority list than I want him to be.
  5. My personal grooming is limited to clean clothes, neat hair, tinted moisturizer and lip gloss. That is all. Sometimes I feel like I should change this, but once again with the priority list.
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Shrimp Curry with Snow Peas

We are getting real close to the end of March! But happily, I’ve been quite good about working my way through Moosewood’s Simple Suppers and we’ve done 5/8 recipes from the book so far (though I haven’t posted one of them). This weekend and next week I’ll wrap up the rest and then it’s on to the Thai Street Food cookbook.

Tuesday night, we made the tasty little curry pictured above. Like everything from this book, it went together very fast. I didn’t think to time this one, but I would bet it was on the table in under 30 minutes. Our rice cooker actually took longer to cook the rice than I did to make the curry. These recipes have all been very doable on a weeknight, which I love. Love. LOVE.

Shrimp Curry with Snow Peas

adapted from Moosewood Simple Suppers

  • 1 lb shrimp, peeled and deveined
  • 5 oz snow peas, cut in half diagonally
  • 1 lg onion, sliced thin (I dice mine as I detest stringy things in my stirfrys)
  • 2 C chopped tomatoes
  • 2 red bell peppers chopped into bite sized pieces
  • 1 T oil
  • 2 T curry powder
  • 14 oz can coconut milk (look for lite – taste is good and way healthier)
  • juice of one lime
  • 1/4 C chopped thai basil, sweet basil or cilantro
  • 1/2 t salt

Heat oil over medium high heat in a large skillet. Add onion and peppers and cook about 5 minutes or until they start to soften and the onions turn translucent. Add the shrimp and curry powder and stir well to prevent sticking. Add the snow peas and tomatoes and cook for a few minutes until the shrimp have started to turn pink. Add the coconut milk, lime juice, salt and chopped basil and bring to a simmer. Turn shrimp to cook to even pinkness. Season with additional salt and pepper to taste.

Serve over rice or maybe noodles.

I loved the way this looked and smelled while it was cooking. Such vibrant colors! When we first served it, it seemed a bit bland, but just a hint more salt really brought out all the flavors and Matt and I both enjoyed it a lot. The kids? Not quite as much … they chowed down on the shrimp and snow peas and liked the sauce, but they were a bit suspicious of the peppers and onions. Tabby is convinced that pepper=hot right now. OY.

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Mini Photo Book

This little project was inspired by a few different pins, but particularly this one who links to this great site, Printstagram, where you can turn your Instagrams into cute little books! Well SOMEONE can, but not me because Instagram has not yet come to Android (though I hear it is imminent!). Anyhow, not enjoying being left out of the cute little book party, I decided to make my own.

I started out by making a template  in photoshop: 3 rows of 4 2-inch squares and 580×580 photos that fit handily into the squares with just a nice little white border. Print and cut out. [wpdm_file id=1] Continue reading “Mini Photo Book”

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The Robot Mouse

One of Tabby’s most favorite gifts from her birthday was the robot mouse Matt got for her, or rather the robot mouse KIT. It had to be built, soldered together. One night after Ben had gone to bed and I was otherwise occupied, Matt and Tabby built this little guy together. As she has excellent fine motor skills, she held the solder while Matt held the iron. I wish I had seen (and been able to take photos!) of them working together, but I’m glad they had their special time together.

The cool thing is that when it’s done, it chases the brightest light in the room. It works best in relative darkness, but you can use a flashlight to lead it around the room. It is fun to play with and both kids are getting a big kick out of it.

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Vail Weekend Wrap-Up

We had a very nice weekend in the mountains. The weather was not cooperating with us and we didn’t have very much or very good snow to ski on, but in some ways that was better. We got to have lots of down time and fun hanging with our friends. We took lots of walks  and went on the great playground tour of Vail.

Sure it was still icy and wet and icky, but it was great for the kid to get out and have lots of fresh air. Our friends’ baby is 18 months old and the kids loved having a little buddy to pal around with. He is a darling little guy and so good! Matt and I got to relive some of the kids younger days while we watched him – and we loved every minute of it.

We saw some cool things while around town. Dogs, other kids, lots of buses and my personal favorite, a full-sized Volvo SUV made from Legos. IT.WAS.AWESOME.

The last day we went for a ride on the gondola to the top of the hill. It’s always a beautiful view and a fun ride. Unfortunately we timed it a bit late and we couldn’t hang around at the top of the mountain for long since the last ride down was about 5 minutes from when we got to the top, but it was getting colder anyhow so we headed down.

We mostly ate at home, but we went out to dinner a couple of times. It’s always dicey taking little kids to nicer restaurants, but we had a good time and the kids behaved themselves beautifully.

All too soon our fun had to come to an end. A snowstorm moved in on Sunday night and my parents and sister who had left earlier that evening had a nasty drive down. We had a few more drinks and nice conversation and bid our guests adieu. Luckily by the morning things were much improved and we drove down in relatively dry conditions.

Now we’re putting everything away and getting ready for the (short – yay!) week.

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Having a Rest … Sort Of

We are away in Vail for a long weekend. Our good friends from college are in town for a few days and we are making the most of what’s left of the snow with some very spring-like skiing. We are spending the rest of our time playing with the babies, chatting, watching movies and eating good food.

Overall it is very relaxing, aside from the sore muscles and small amounts of work we all seem to have brought with us. 😉 Ahh to be a kid again when your biggest worry was how hungover you might be the next morning.