Favorites

Since I'm already at the computer, I'll post another blog today. I am going to start a new series about our favorites here. I'm sure 99%of the places will be eateries, since that's what we love most. Our first "Favorite" is . . . 

You pronounce it "Fuh We". It is just up Gessner from us and it is our Go To restaurant, especially take out. It has something for everyone. Bun (noodles) or rice with Lemongrass Beef and chicken for Jon and Collin and shrimp for me and Grace. 

 When we say "where should we go for dinner?" this is always Grace's first choice.  We pass this on our way to church every week, and every week WITHOUT fail, Grace says "Can we go to Pho Huy?" Akshee, on the way to church she says, "I love Pho Huy" and then on the way home asks for it. Last night as we were eating it she said, "This is the best food I've had in my life . . . at least so far".

Recipe Tag

I guess I got tagged last week to post a recipe so here goes. This is a recent one I found and tweaked that has come to be one of our favs.

Black Bean Pizza

1 Recipe Pizza dough (I use one for a 12" pizza)

1 clove garlic, minced

1 small onion, chopped

1 Tbsp. Veg. oil (or for more flavor I use chicken broth)

1 -  1 1/2 cans black beans, drained and rinsed

14 oz. salsa

Oregano to taste

Basil to taste (I probably use about 1/4-1/2 tsp. of these 2 spices each)

Chili powder to taste

S & P to taste

1 Can black olives sliced

Mexican Cheese blend

Fresh Cilantro

Press dough into a greased 15x10 (jelly roll) pan. Bake at 425 degrees for 4-6 min. until crust begins to brown. 

Saute garlic and onion in oil or broth till tender. Add salsa, spices and beans and bring to boil. Boil uncovered for 2 minutes or until most of the liquid is gone. (I have started slightly mashing the beans to thicken the mixture). Top crust with bean mixture, olives and cheese.

Bake for 8-10 minutes until cheese is browned. Sprinkle with cilantro before eating.

Only in Texas

We went up to Lake Livingston last month to check it out for future reference. I got my priorities straight and looked around the area for places to eat for dinner. All the referals said to eat at a place called Florida's, so we did. It was in an old house with a double wide attached. I wanted to get a picture of it, but there were some Bubba's on the "porch" watching us taking pictures of the signs and wondering what in the world we were doing, so I didn't, which of course I am regretting now, since I saw this sign right next to the steps. . .

In case you can't read the Florida's sign, it says:" Florida's Down Home Cooking. Home of the come back ribs". Somehow the two signs don't seem to go together. 

I also took a picture of one of my favorite Texas sightings, but with my phone, which I can't download. But it's a Ford truck ("Ford is the Best in Texas") with the license plate reading. . . BEER. I love it!

I think this might become a regular feature . . . 

Newest Additions

I guess the trauma I went through when we had Zebra Finches wasn't enough to deter Jon from reliving his childhood of running around the deserts of Las Vegas catching lizards shirtless and barefoot. Of scraping road kill off the highways to make Coon skin (if they were lucky) hats. Of raising Rex rabbits and then killing them for food. . .  Jon says "the kids need to learn responsibility and the facts of life" etc. but I KNOW he wanted any excuse to get pets. We spent the 4th of July weekend canvassing every Feed Store in and around Houston looking for some Rex rabbits and ended up at the nastiest, smelliest, hickish one out there. I was too busy trying to not step in anything, breathing as little as possible and trying to get us the heck outta dodge to take a picture of the place. I wish I would have though. 

Anyway, the point is, the kids picked out the ones they wanted (with some "help" from Jon). The black-spotted one is Collins, named Snickers. The grey-spotted one is Graces, named Hearty - oh wait, that was last week. This week it's name is Puddin'. We'll see what it is next week. Jon explained to them that they (I am having no part of this whole thing) are going to raise the babies for food. We'll see how Grace takes that when the babies are born. 

Jon also explained to the kids about the rabbits mating to make babies and this morning Collin announced that Snickers was on top of Hearty "vibrating" so I think rabbit stew is on the way . . .

A Day in Brenham

Yesterday I thought, forget that it costs $75 to fill my car up with gas . . . we need an Adventure!! So, we headed out to Brenham (AKA The Ice Cream Capitol of Texas). The kids didn't want me to tell them where we were going, so I didn't. We first stopped for lunch at Must Be Heaven and it really was a heavenly lunch. 

Next we headed to the Blue Bell Ice Cream Factory. For $2 you get a tour of the plant to see them making ice cream, ice cream sandwiches etc. and then get a cup of ice cream at the end of the tour. I always love how the Texas flag is everywhere here. 

This is while we were waiting for the tour to begin. And before we went around to the other side of the truck and saw the sign that said, "NO standing, sitting or touching the truck".

Tucking in to their ice cream . . . pre spill. 

After the FIRST spill . . . 

After the second spill, I was too covered in sugar to want to take any more pictures. You know you had a good Adventure when you are covered in gunk and need a nap when you get home. 

Dressed for any occasion

In case you're wondering . . . no, I really don't take pictures every hour of our lives! Monday,  I answered the door and a guy said, "did you know that limb had fallen?" I looked out and a limb had broken and was blocking our driveway. I called to tell Jon and he couldn't visualize it, so he asked me to take a picture and send it to him. That's why there is a picture of this fallen limb. 

So, what does a broken limb have to do with being dressed for any occasion? Well, Jon came home from work and went straight to work on getting the limb down. He didn't even change clothes which I thought was funny, so I did get my camera out for that. 

I guess since I was noticing clothes, I looked at what my kids were wearing and got a good laugh. Collin, the colorblind (red and greens) boy and Grace, the pattern girl with a striped shirt, plaid skirt and polka dot flip flops. 

Kids Say the Darndest Things!

I am getting backed up in my blog ideas now that summer is here! These are some of my recent favorites about the kids that I thought I'd share. This video of Grace makes me so excited for the teenage years. I videotaped her at swimming lessons (that video was too long to upload here). She had been scared and crying so I wanted to tell her she did a good job etc. and she would NOT look at me:

After school got out, I was going through the kids notebooks to see if they were worth saving and found this in one of Collins. Interesting to see his perception of me:

Mum (he has read the Harry Potter's at LEAST 5 times - all of them)

strong

Pretty

VERY helpfull

HATES soda

loves water

nice

Has glasses

Exercises ALOT

Culture

We had quite a cultural weekend . . . One of the great things about living in such a big city is the cultural diversity. We spent Saturday running errands for Jons Fathers Day dinner (it was so tasty, I have to put it here - shrimp scampi pasta, artichokes, salad etc. and chocolate mousse and mixed fresh berry parfaits).  We live in a very Asian area of town so our first stop was a new store Jon had found called H Mart. He had told me that they have great fruit and fish. I said Yay! But that if it stunk (literally), I was out of there! After entering the store, I realized we were the only non-Asian, lone English speaking ones there. It was like walking into another little country. I could write a whole page about that store, but won't. Jon was right. They had a seafood section about as big as a regular grocery stores produce area; shark fins, abalone, conch etc. They had great prices too. I had my camera, but since everyone was already looking at us like we were out of place, I didn't want to whip my camera out and start snapping. We also found some fresh lychees, a whole jack fruit and durian (the rotting flesh smelling fruit). 

  Our next stop was the Middle East at a store called Phoenicia. Again, we were the only non-Middle Eastern ones there. We spent about an hour in the store, and could have spend 5 days and not seen everything! We didn't even know what some of it was. But somehow Collin found the lamb head, lamb brains and tongue. As a side note, in his prayer that night he said, "Please help me not think of the lamb heads!" :)

In case you are wondering what Jon is eating in the picture - a smoked mackerel, lamb sausages, flat bread, crackers, cheese, stuffed grape leaves, hummus, lychees, assorted spreads and Turkish Delight (the kids were so excited to try that). Can you tell we had turned the TV on right before I took the picture? If not, look at where the kids are looking!

At Phoenicia they also had a lot of German and British items. We found these Kinder brand filled cookies called Happy Hippos. They caught my eye because they were so cute and when I saw the name I had to laugh. One of our favorite games is Hungry Hippos and Grace is always the pink one - named Happy Hippo (did you know each color had a name?).  The kids thought they were so cute that we needed to take a picture before they ate them. 

P.S. Grace's card to Jon said, "Dear DaD, I love you so much. Ispeshile (especially) on Fathers Day." :)

Budding Chefs

We've had quite an interesting first week of summer! We've been to the beach a couple of times (that's a post in itself - coming soon) and the kids have been "cooking" a lot, which is what this post is about. We also had our afternoon reading time interrupted by 3 huge orange explosions outside that the firemen (my first time, and hopefully last time, calling 911) and power company determined was caused by a branch falling on a power line. The kids were bawling, and it scared me to death too! The next day we were coming back from getting cupcakes for our Friday Night Fun and got rear-ended. Thankfully we were in slow moving traffic so no one got hurt (and amazingly the kids did NOT bawl!). I was glad we had our Montero because our bumper only got pushed in a little and our extra wheel cover got torn. The Mercedes that hit us didn't fare as well as we did. Anyway, back to my little chefs. . . 

                                           Collin has been cooking for us for years, but this week made pancakes on his own.  He got out his Kids cookbook and decided he wanted to make a Lemon Layer cake. He made the batter etc. and when I went to get out 2 round cake pans, there was only one! I remembered I had thrown the other one out before we moved because it was rusty and had never gotten another one! So, we have one square layer and one round one. I felt so bad that his first masterpiece was off kilter because of me! He didn't mind it at all though and thought it was cool. He named it the Topsy Turvy cake. It had lemon curd filling and lemon glaze and was very tasty and lemony.

Grace has started to get and interest in food too - but she seems to be more of the food artist. The picture on the left is of the fruit salad she took about 1/2 hour to cut and arrange on the plate. The one on the right is of her first dessert creation - blueberries and pecans with chocolate sauce and cinnamon sugar (it was really tasty!). 

 

Moab '08

Or as we affectionately refer to it, "Flash Flood Fiasco"!!! 

We had quite the trip this year. When I found out we were going at the end of May I thought, Oh Great!! It is going to be so hot!! But every time I checked the weather forecast before leaving, the temperature was lower and the chance of rain was higher. That was fine with me since I would rather have to wear a jacket in Moab than endure 110 degree heat and sun. 

I didn't tell the kids we were going until the morning we left which was so fun for me to have such a good secret to keep. I videotaped the kids response when I told them which was pretty funny. They just sat there looking at each other trying to decide whether to believe me or if it was all a cruel joke. Then they started yelling and jumping on my bed. We made it to Utah and Moab and started our fun vacation . . . 

This is what we call the "Indian Ladder" on the East side of the river and Collin climbing by some Petroglyphs along Potash Road. . . all pre-flood. 

As we started hiking out to Corona arch it started lightly raining and Collin fell along the way, which I should have taken as a bad omen but we kept going. The rain was getting worse and the temperature felt like it just kept dropping and then it started hailing. We were almost at the arch, but our pants were falling off from being saturated and Grace and Lia (the "Pink Posse" as Jessica was calling them) started crying so we finally turned around. That's when I heard what sounded like a waterfall, but that was impossible because there hadn't been any on the way up. I looked around to see what it could be, and this is what I saw . . . not one, but many!

            Picture courtesy of Ems

This just does not do justice to the weather we were experiencing. I could barely see what I was taking pictures of because of the rain and hail. When we got to where we had climbed up some rocks on the way up, we found a river so we had to find a new route out. 


The kids were soaked to the bone with freezing rain and hail and were both BAWLING when we got to the car (notice the rain on my camera and it was so cold it was fogging up). I think their rain jackets actually made them more cold than if they hadn't had them on! I gave them cookies, turned the heater up and promised them we'd get in the hot tub when we got back to the hotel. And they made me promise we wouldn't do any more hiking in the rain, which I was glad to oblige. 

The next day we hiked to Delicate arch and this year, we all made it so it was a new experience. 

Christian, Grace, Lia and Collin on the way up.


It was a very memorable trip and we can't wait for next year!!