An Incredible Egg-sperience

I consider myself to be fairly successful in the kitchen, but sometimes the simplest tasks provide me with an absurd challenge. Today I wanted to hard boil an egg. I do not love eggs, and I have never hard boiled an egg before. I called my mom and got these directions: put an egg in cold water, bring it to a boil, let it boil for 10 minutes. I did this, in fact, I even let it boil for 11 minutes. I rinsed it off with cold water, peeled it, and prepared to cut it in half. The moment of truth. I sliced it, it fell open, only to reveal that the yolk wasn't quiiiiite done enough. It wasn't runny, but it was a dark-ish yellow. Ew-eh. I know mom said to put the egg in cold water, but I already had a nice pot of water going so I put egg in it. Almost immediately the water started filling up with this nasty white swirly stuff. Apparently the egg had a slight crack and was leaking into my water. Gosh, this is getting to be more trouble that it's worth! I eyed the original egg that was aaaaalmost done and decided I would nuke it for just a second. Sometimes when you're in the kitchen you just have to wing it. I put it in the microwave for 30 seconds. At 28 seconds one of the little yolks popped, jumped up out of the egg white, sprayed the inside of the microwave door, and landed far from its departure point. Woops, that didn't work. When Matt got home from the gym, I shared the fiasco with him and made sure it was okay if we did not have egg in our salad tonight.

On the menu:

Steak Salad - yes please!

Is there anything else to do with leftover steak? Our salads included lettuce, tomatoes, avocado, bacon, cucumbers, and blue cheese crumbles with the steak. They were awesome.

Flowers For No Reason

I discovered the most amazing flower at Kroger. They were sunflowers, but they had fiery red petals, a yellow reddish center, and deep purple leaves! How amazing?! So amazing that I spent $7 to have them on the dinner table since we are having company over tonight. I'm pretty sure they are spray painted, but that's okay with me. The stems even dyed the water purple. I think maybe we should work "weekly fresh flowers" into our budget; they just make a girl happy.

Oh, that reminds me. This might be my favorite newlywed story so far, because it's just a perfect example of the kind of little ups and downs I think every newlywed couple experiences. A few weeks ago I got dinner with a girl friend and left Matt alone for the evening. I stopped by the house after work before heading to dinner to start the dyer so we could have clean sheets on the bed that night. I got home a little after 9... very tired and very excited to be coming home to my way-cute husband. First, I pulled in to my parking space to find that he had drug the recycling bin out front when I thought we had decided that I was right and that the recycling was not going to be picked up the next morning. So, in a very small way, I had gone from happy to frustrated in an instant. I walked in and saw flowers in the living room with an amazingly sweet note. Aww! Happy again. My way-cute husband however, was nowhere to be found. I concluded that he must be waiting for me in our bedroom. I open the bedroom door and not only is he not waiting for me, but there are not even sheets on the bed. Frustrated again. I was focused on the fact that I was so tired and unable to get right into the bed that I couldn't fully appreciate the flowers or even notice that he had put a movie in the dvd player for us to watch. I refluffed the sheets in the dryer, made the bed myself, and crashed. He said he was going to get himself ready for bed. I felt better once I was horizontal, and I was once again happy to be ending the day with such an amazing man. I laid there waiting for him to return. After ten minutes or so I realized he wasn't coming back. Frustrated again. I wandered out into the living room only to find him sitting on the edge of the couch, eyes wide, mouth propped open just a little. One look at his position and expression and I knew exactly what had happened. He got ready to turn the movie off, got sucked in by a scene, lowered himself onto the couch (slowly now, because gonig from standing to sitting while watching tv constitutes multitasking and this is no simple feat for those way-cute boys), and there he sat, as if frozen in time, until I came out and found him. The movie was Ice Age, mind you. No high speed car chases and captured his undivided attention and prevented him from joining me in the bed. No thrills or action or suspsense. Just a really cute sloth with a lisp and a pear shaped bottom. The up and down of my emotions that night made me laugh. If not then, at least the next day.

On the menu:
Taco Night!

Fresh Garden Salsa
4 tomatoes, chopped however chunky you like your salsa
1/4 red onion, chopped fine because they're hot
1 jalapeno, minced
8 sprigs cilantro, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
juice of 1 lime
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp salt

Chop it all and mix it together in a bowl. It makes about two cups.

Easiest Bestest Spanish Rice
1/2 cup white rice
2 cups chicken broth
1 cup salsa

I have this pot that I got from my mom that I use for absolutely everything. If you don't have one like it, I recommend getting one. It's a 10" "skillet" with raised sides and two short handles. I also have the same pot, a little bigger, with one long handle and sometimes it's just too hard to clean in the sink to be worth the trouble of cooking with it. Ok, back to the rice. Heat up the olive oil on medium heat and brown the rice for a few minutes. Few a few. Stir in the chicken broth and salsa of your choice. I prefer medium spicey, chunky salksa, and for this recipe I just use the cheaper grocery store brand. Bring to a slight boil, reduce heat to low, cover and cook for 20 minutes. Done! Give it a stir and serve. This is such a hit every time I make it and it couldn't be easier.

Math is hard

This week's math puzzle:

A rectangular sheet of paper is folded so that two diagonally opposite corners come together. If the crease formed is the same length as the longer side of the sheet, what is the ratio of the longer side of the sheet to the shorter side?

Neither of us were able to figure this one out on our own.

Steaks on the grill

Steaks on sale

Mrs Dash's spicy pepper seasoning

I don't know why we're eating so much steak lately... we got these because they were on sale when we walked by. We seasonged them with Mrs dash's spicy pepper seasoning (a light sprinkle on both sides for Matt, and a thick coating on one side for me) and tossed them on the grill for 7 minutes.

Loaded Baked Potatoes

2 baking potatoes

olive oil

butter

sour cream

shredded cheddar

bacon

I just poke my spuds with a knife (a few pokes on each "side"), coat in a little olive oil, wrap in a paper towel, and toss in the microwave. Do you know how long these guys take to bake in the oven?!! Not worth it. I nuked these for 6 minutes, gave them a squeeze, and cooked them for 3 more minutes. They were perfect, and done by the time Matt had the stead off of the grill.

Spiced Shrimp

Prepackaged, peeled, seasoned, and cooked. Just heat them up and go... a well-spent $2.50.

Grilled Corn

See July 19th

Stories about us!

Matt and I attended a new small group today to test it out and see if it's a good fit for us. Our current small group is going through some natural transitions right now, just life pulling people in different directions, so we figured this would be a good time for us to explore our options. As part of an ice breaker we went around and told a funny story about ourselves and our relationship. We told two short ones that I will share in a nutshell.

First, Matt's proposal included bumping into me (and nearly knocking me over) with a huge huge box wrapped in red celaphane and tied up with a giant pink bow. It was a nice beginning. The proposal also involved me popping three balloons with a straight pin. Just a few days prior, my mom and I were talking about how afraid I am of popping balloons. Somehow Matt missed this important piece of information in the initial get-to-know-you part of our relationship!

The second story was about our drive from the reception hall to the hotel after the wedding. The hotel was literally right across from the reception, the but parking lot (since it was down town) was not right across and not as easy for us to find. We drove around and quickly ended up in a part of Durham that we did not need to be... with bouncing cans and rubber balls announcing our arrival. We circled back around and all we knew was that we could not end up back on the street with the reception hall, driving past all of our guests 15 minutes later. At a time when we just wanted to "escape" to our hotel room, this wild goose chase for the parking lot was pretty hilarious.

Blueberry BBQ Chops

1/2 c blueberry jam

1/2 c bbq sauce

3 pork loin chops (1 for leftovers for your way-cute husband)

We recently found a huge pork loin on sale for under $6 and were able to cut 12 1-in chops from it. Let the meat that's on sale determine what you get for dinners that week. Because we were still craving the dinner we had at the Gordon's the other night, we decided to make it ourselves tonight. This time I added blueberry jam to the bbq sauce and had green beans instead of peas. We kept the sweet potatoes the same and they were amazing! We used Sweet Baby Ray's tonight. Preheat the oven to 350, mix the blueberry jam and bbq sauce in a square baking dish. Dredge both sides of the pork in the sauce and then bury them in there really well. Bake for 20-30 minutes depending on the thickness of the chops. 20 minutes is probably good for 1/2 in, 25-30 minutes for 1 in.

Sweet Potatoes

Nuked for 20 minutes. They come pre-washed and individually wrapped at the grocery store. I definitely think this is the way to go.

Green Beans

Same as we did on July 20th.

Congratulations to Mr and Mrs Welch!

I got out of bed at 11 today. Oh man! Matt went to the gym around 10 and I was supposed to be productive while he was gone. I greeted him at the door when he got home with a big smile saying, "Don't worry! You didn't miss a thing!" Gosh I love a lazy day. One day there will be kids running around demanding every second, so I am not going to let myself be disappointed if I'm less than productive on a Saturday morning every now and then. We rode with the Gordon's to the Welch's wedding this evening and they apparently had a similar day. They said they did nothing all day with the excuse that they wanted to make sure they could get ready for the wedding in time. I appreciate that line of thinking.