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Chicken Satay and Peanut Sauce

A few nights ago I made homemade Thai food it was so good and easy!  I made the marinade early in the morning and allowed the chicken to marinate for 6 hours before grilling this picture was taken just before grilling…

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The peanut sauce was made 30 minutes before serving but it keeps really well because I have been eating it all week with the leftover rice and chicken…

img_9567we ate outside on our patio and enjoyed an early summer thunderstorm, everything turned out so well it tasted so much like Thai food from a restaurant I am so excited to make this dish again…

img_95711Chicken Satay:

Ingredients

2 (6-ounce) boneless skinless chicken breasts (cut into strips and pounded with a meat mallet to tenderize before marinating)

1 Cup unsweetened coconut milk (Thai Kitchen brand)

2 cloves fresh garlic, minced

2 Tablespoons finely chopped fresh cilantro (from our garden!)

2 Tablespoons fish sauce

2 Tablespoons curry powder

1/4 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper or to taste

Kosher salt, to taste

1. combine coconut milk, garlic, cilantro, fish sauce, curry powder and pepper in a large bowl.  Add Chicken strips and marinate for at least 30 minutes or up to overnight.

2. Thread the marinated chicken strips onto soaked skewers; season with salt. cooks for about 3 minutes on each side on a medium-high gas grill, make sure to oil the grill with canola oil prior to grilling to prevent sticking.  Serve warm with peanut dipping sauce and cucumbers.

img_9573Peanut Dipping Sauce

Ingredients:

1/2 cup unsweetened coconut milk

1 (packed) Tablespoon light brown sugar

2 teaspoons Thai red curry paste (I used Thai Kitchen brand)

1 1/2  teaspoons fish sauce (I also used Thai Kitchen brand for the fish sauce)

1 1/2 Tablespoons creamy peanut butter (I used smart balance brand peanut butter)

1/4 teaspoon paprika

1 clove of fresh garlic minced

1 Tablespoon crushed roasted peanuts for garnish (I omitted this and it was still delicious)

1. Shake the can of coconut milk vigorously to combine the thick cream with the thin milk. Combine all of the ingredients except crushed peanuts in a small sauce pan over medium heat; stir to combine.

2. Bring to a simmer and cook until slightly thickened, about 3 minutes.  Taste and adjust the seasoning as needed. (I didn’t adjust anything it tasted great to me)  the recipe notes: if the sauce breaks or becomes oily, vigorously whisk in 1 Tablespoon of peanut butter to re-emulsify, this didn’t happen to me either.

3. Allow to cool before serving, serve at room temp.  I also heated my peanut sauce the next day and had it over Jasmine rice it tasted good hot too.

img_9574Yum!

The nook project…continued and finished!

This painting project took way longer than I would have wanted but so it goes when you are renting and at the mercy of your landlord.  Anyway, the hold up was a giant crack that was hiding behind the wallpaper; I had to wait for Rod to patch it up before I could paint, this was no small crack, it was about 3 inches wide at the biggest opening and extended from the ceiling down to the bench, sadly I did not catch a picture of the crack before it got patched but you can see the patch in this picture below…

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Surprisingly Rod did an amazing job patching the crack, here is the wall after I put two coats of primer on it…

img_9460And then one coat of Lemon Chiffon…

img_9463a shot without all the tape…

img_9466I am so happy to have it done, it really does brighten things up and it is so much fresher than the old wallpaper!

Spring is in the air

The days are getting longer, the hills are greener and my garden tools are getting anxious to get growing!  I was told that once there is no longer any snow on the Ochre Mountains (that is the name of the range to the West of SLC) then you can begin to plant your garden without fear of frost.   We might have one more snow day ahead of us but man it feels and looks like spring around here!  Taking inventory of the yard I found a giant Mullein plant which is a desert thriving, drought loving easy to care for garden treat, it will likely bloom next year which will be cool since it shoots up a stalk that can reach a height of 10 feet!

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My chard seedlings are coming along…

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I planted a few pansies and they have held strong through three snowfalls yet again proving they are tougher than their namesake…

img_9444a few more tulips are popping up late to the scene…

img_9448I planted some calla lilies along the driveway strip that we cleared out last summer, I am still working on that area so no pictures yet but I will be looking forward to my sorbet assortment of callas to pop up in the late spring/early summer.  Jason and I had some friends over for a bbq yesterday after yard work and a long bike ride.  I was in the mood for pie so I tried out Jason’s Great Grandmother Atwood’s no fail crust recipe (thank you Kathy for the recipe cards in my Christmas stocking!) it turned out great!  I was really hoping for peach pie but those aren’t in season yet so I went for apple instead…

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I have been having pie for breakfast, lunch and dinner, it kept me going on my long and ridiculously busy 12+ hour shift today.  I am hoping that I will have time to work on the Nook painting project Thursday so long as I am not totally exhausted after working for three days in a row, ugg.  Anyway, I know I shouldn’t complain, so I have been chanting to myself in the morning when I wake up for work “I love my job, I love having a job, I am good at what I do” and this makes me feel better at least for a little while :)  I have been looking into internships to advance my nursing career and of course the NP program at University of Portland is on my tentative plans for when we move back to Oregon.  time to go have some pie, happy spring everyone!

Spring Cleaning

As some of you know the huge selling or renting point  for our current house was the breakfast nook.  I have a history of renting houses based on one feature alone (purple toilet in Corvallis anyone?) but really that is the luxury of renting you can be ridiculous without signing your life away.  Ever since we moved in I have been dying to rip down the hideous wallpaper in the nook and put a fresh coat of paint up instead but I held off on asking permission from the landlords for fear of being rejected.  Well, this spring weather got me in a painting mood and I couldn’t take the nasty wallpaper any longer, I mustered up the courage to ask and they said YES!  I am so pumped, I have all the wallpaper down, it surprisingly came off without any aid.  Now I am nearly done washing the walls to remove the old glue and then I should be painting in just a few days, once I recover from my night shifts that is.  Here is a picture of the nook without wallpaper (there was old pink paint under the old wallpaper)…

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As you can see I have some shades of yellow, right now I am leaning towards Lemon Chiffon, I like the way that sounds, it is a little more sophisticated than when I painted my room in college a shade of green called “Salty Margarita”.   Below is a picture of the nook with the wallpaper…

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Coming soon pictures of a fresher nook!

April Fools?

Woke up to a fresh blanket of snow this morning!  What?! I thought it was spring and so did the daffodils! The mountains are apparently getting hit with tons of snow, we are still really behind our average snowfall for this year so hopefully this will help with water levels but honestly I was done with winter and had already traded in my snow shovel for my garden hoe!

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New Year’s resolutions…

1. keep bulletin board free of useless clutter…done!

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Check out my sweet new flip calender from Hollye featuring her original artwork!

Happy New Year

I have been in a blog posting rut lately, so here’s to a more consistent blogging year filled with lots of new adventures!

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Winter is here?

Maybe I spoke too soon, woke up this morning to this…

img_8199That is snow people!  Guess I better get out the hats and gloves while I am at it!  When I asked neighbor Nancy when the first snow storm would hit I didn’t quite believe her when she said October, guess she was right on the money, although this doesn’t really count as a “storm”.  Anyway, it is suppose to warm up today and be in the 60s the rest of the week, that sounds more like fall to me!

Portland, Bach party, Wedding and back to SLC

Well that week flew by!  Jason and I left for Portland Sept. 13th we spent the week getting things ready for our big day, while occasionally squeezing in some friend time we managed to pull everything together and the whole thing went off without a hitch, except for us of course :) I had all good intentions of carrying my camera around with me during our reception and documenting, ha!  I guess I am notorious for thinking that I will be able to do a million things at once.  I can’t wait to see the pictures that Alyssa took, if you haven’t already, you must check out her blog http://www.alyssajulblog.com/ and company website http://www.alyssajul.com/ and if you have any kind of event coming up I couldn’t praise her skills as a photographer enough so you should totally check her out!  Also huge thank you to Hollye for her lovely design work on our invitations and save the date cards you can check out her company website at http://www.theaestheticsdept.com/, she also designed some awesome labels for Steph’s wine which made its debut at the wedding so if you are ever in the need of some design work Hollye is your woman.   Now, I did manage to document some fun pics from the night of the awesome bach party that Steph planned, we started out the evening at the Portland City Grill for happy hour, dinner at Jimmy Mack’s and the highlight of the evening was at the famous Darcelle’s!  Here is a classic picture of me and no other than the Queen of the show Darcelle!

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Can you believe that Darcelle is going to be 79 this year!  We had a pretty good group, my Cousins Shelly and Ally from Ohio were there as well as my friend Kirsten from nursing school, Erin came up from Corvallis, Katie rode her bike over from the Hawthorn district and Lindsay met up with us after her MBA orientation at PSU.  Group shot with all the ladies….

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After the show we hit up Voodoo doughnuts, the magic is in the hole…img_8114

Voodoo is a late night doughnut shop and it is not your ordinary doughnut shop either, you can get a maple bar with a strip of bacon or a “gay bar” that is a maple bar with fruit loops lined up in the order of the rainbow, just to name a few.  Here we are sharing odd doughnuts…

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Next we stopped in at the Shanghi tunnels, mostly to show off the woman’s restroom…a two seater…

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We ended the night at a karaoke bar, judging by Katie’s expression I think everyone had a good time…

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Some other weird things that happened that night, we managed to run into a group of people that went to High School with Steph, Lindsay and I.  Here is Lindsay handing a note to a fellow West Linn HS-er for him to give to his mom (who was Lindsay’s Biology teacher freshman year)…

img_8123It was a very memorable evening thanks to everyone for coming out and celebrating with me!!

Furniture Hike and Little Cottonwood

AK came to visit us and it worked out that I had a three day weekend so on Friday I took her on the furniture hike up Red Butte.  We found this cute “remote” on the coffee table, as you can see someone crafted this mock remote that is complete with buttons to either dial up or down the sun, moon or clouds.img_7559

I love that this hike is practically in our backyard!

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Yesterday Jas came along with us to explore Little Cottonwood Canyon (this is the canyon that has Alta and Snowbird ski resorts in it), it was lovely up there I can’t wait for ski season it is going to be awesome having world class ski resorts 20 minutes from our home.  Jason already spoiled it with his blog but, while we were at Snowbird we spotted a mama mo0se and her calf!!!  I was so excited I have never seen a moose in the wild before but now I can say that I have seen two!

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We had a nice picnic at Alta before going on our hike…

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We went on a hike to Twin Lakes which is a drinking water reservoir nestled between Alta in Little Cottonwood and Brighton which is in Big Cottonwood (elevation 9,991 feet).  It was 2.1 miles to the top with an option to walk 1/2 a mile down to the lakes edge…

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When we got home we made eggplant rolls, we sliced them lengthwise, breaded and fried them, spread ricotta and parmesan cheese on them and then rolled them and baked them with tomato sauce over them, a picture before the sauce was poured over them, yum.

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Not sure what we are going to do today yet, there is an arts festival in Park City this weekend or we might go see Bridal Veil falls; I have decided that naming a waterfall bridal veil is like naming a lake clear.