Sigh of Relief x 2

We finished putting the siding on the east side of the garage last night -- just as they dropped off the wood posts and slats to build the fence. Ken rented a pneumatic nail gun and did most of the work. I sanded things as necessary, hammered errant nails, held the level, etc. Karl got in around 7:45 and it was great to see him. He's lost a lot of weight -- about 60 lbs and looks fabulous. He's still tall though, which is why we made him help us hang the highest siding boards. We're on stools; he's standing. Hilarious. Also, since he's a baker, I put him to work making the cherry coffee cake while I made dinner and strained the toddy coffee for this weekend.

Chuck and Dana did not get on the aforementioned 10 am flight -- but they did get on the 6 pm flight and called me from the tarmac in NYC. They were exhausted but due to arrive in Seattle in the wee hours this morning. I'm sure they'll spend most of the day sleeping. And showering. 48 hours of plane/airport is icky.

So that's about it. It's a half day for us, then we'll pack up the car and head out around 1:30. Adam is staying at the house and watching Kinley and Hughes while we're gone.

Is it naptime yet?

We've been going, going, going for several weeks now. Lots of good stuff -- but even lots of good stuff is exhausting. In the past few weeks:

* Ken's softball tournament in Washington was the 2nd weekend of June. It poured the entire time. I mean POURED. Yuck. I went for a few of his games after I picked up 700 lbs of basalt to build a garden border. I am still in the process of building it.

* Had another Top Chef showdown. A potato battle. I wasn't in it, I just ate. Among the dishes were: scalloped potatoes with a truffle oil (my #1 dish), a red thai curry with udon noodles, a grilled skirt steak with mashed potatoes and chimichurri sauce, 3 kinds of kabobs: a potato chicken, an apricot potato chicken and a red potato/shrimp/mango, and lastly, a sweet potato phyllo dish that was excellent. It was a close competition with just one point separating the two.

* Dodgeball every monday night

* Ken's men's softball league every tuesday night

* Ken's co-ed softball league every sunday night

* Tom and Amy visited from San Francisco for the weekend of June 15/17th

* Last weekend was my 30th birthday; we went camping at Olallie Lake (south of Mt. Hood, about 10 miles north of Mt. Jefferson). We were going to go to Horseshoe Lake, but there was still snow on the ground. Yes, it is June. I made eggs benedict for breakfast on my birthday with mimosas and bloody marys. One of my best camp breakfasts, if I do say so myself. Turns out it's easier to make than one would think. I even cured and smoked my own canadian bacon. That was exciting. In all, we had a great time but camping is always exhausting.

* For said camping trip, I was looking for a breakfast idea that I could make ahead... something like a coffee cake (so I could sleep in a bit and not feel guilty about the hungry early risers). I ended up finding my favorite recipe for coffee cake yet. A nice change from the cinnamon varieties that are everywhere. I made it Thursday night and it was awesome (and demolished) when we cut into it on Saturday:

Cherry Almond Coffee Cake
White Rose Inn, Emporia, KS; Bon Appétit, November
1995; Serves 12

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sour cream

1/2 21-ounce can cherry pie filling (I used some cherry jam with whole cherries)
1/2 cup thinly sliced almonds (about 2 ounces) (didn't add due to friend's allergies)

Streusel topping: 1/4 cup butter, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1 cup flour. Mix together and crumble on top.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter 10-inch-diameter springform pan. Beat sugar and butter in large bowl until light. Add eggs, vanilla extract and almond extract and beat well. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt into medium bowl. Mix half of dry ingredients into butter mixture. Mix in sour cream, then remaining dry ingredients. Pour 2/3 of batter (about 2 cups) into prepared pan. Drop pie filling by tablespoons evenly over batter. Drop remaining batter by spoonfuls over pie filling. Using back of spoon, carefully spread batter over filling. Sprinkle with almonds. Bake until tester inserted into center of cake comes out clean, about 1 hour 5 minutes. Cool in pan on rack. (Can be prepared 1 day ahead. Cover with foil and store at room temperature.) Cut around sides of pan. Remove pan.

* We ordered and received new siding for the garage (we have yet to install it; Ken took off the old stuff last night. The old usable stuff will be donated to the Rebuilding Center.)

* We are struggling to hold everything together in our lives. They're putting up the fence between our house and the lot next door this weekend. That means we have to install the siding pronto. We also are building 7 ft high tomato cages since that's how big our tomatoes got last year before they toppled over the measly old 4' cages. Only we've been swamped and have only finished 5 of 15. The tomatoes continue to grow. It will be a photo finish to see if we can get the cages in the ground in time before the plants get too big.

* Karl arrives tonight from Tucson.

* Driving to Seattle tomorrow for the potlatch tournament (ultimate frisbee). We'll be camping on the fields -- along with the 1000 or so other people that will be attending. Taryn organized the team. Chuck and Dana are meeting us all there (although I got a call this morning saying they may not make it because rain cancelled most flights out of NYC. They slept in the airport last night - yuck. The first "guarateed" flight leaves July 1. They were on standby as of this morning and if they didn't get it, they were bailing on their trip. I don't blame them. I haven't heard from them since.... does that mean that they are in the air?).

* June 20th was Ken's mom's birthday. Yesterday was my parents' 37th anniversary. And Taryn's 31st birthday. Tomorrow is my mom's birthday. Congratulations to all.

* Also congratulations to Rob and Jana -- I just heard that they are expecting their second child.


I think that's about it. At least I hope that's it. I can hardly keep track of everything. My only saving grace is that Ken is feeling the same way. It's nice that even though we're stretched so thin, we are still on the same page. That's a great feeling. Hope you're all doing well. Lots of love, Lisa

K-dog pics....finally

Long overdue, here are some photos of Kinley (K-dog as he is affectionately known around the house).

Lisa and Kinley getting ready to snowshoe at Trillium near Mount Hood.


K-dog running rampant through the snow


"Quit taking pictures and throw the damn ball!"


"Kinley, where's daddy?"


"He's up this hill!!!"


And then from the other day with our new camera and K-dog at the dog park:

Concrete Slab!

We poured the concrete slab in the garage yesterday, giving us an awesome new floor. I even inserted a 2007 penny in it like my parents used to do when I was little. We are very excited. Very tired, but very excited. I did the finish work along the edges while Ken smoothed and brushed the flat surface. Harley came and helped us, too.

Top Chef: Grudge Match

When Beti and I both got nominated for dodgeball queen, we joked that we should cook for it. And so it began. Last week, Beti and I competed in a head-to-head cooking competition. Secret ingredient was picked in advance by our peers and, once revealed, we would have 30 minutes to walk across the street to the grocery store and pick up whatever else we needed. Then we would have an hour to cook. Meanwhile, we picked a secret drink ingredient for the others who would have the 30 minutes (while we were at the store) to make a cocktail and set it on the table for a blind taste test. When we came back from shopping, we sat down our groceries and enjoyed picking our favorite cocktail before starting to cook.

Last week, the secret ingredient was bacon. We had 4 lbs of bacon and an hour to each make three dishes for 8 people. The secret drink ingredient was the beer, PBR. Alyson won the drink competition with a strawberry cocktail version of the PBR. Jafo scored second with an inventive and refreshing anise-flavored cocktail. Third went to Kathy for a different fruity-style cocktail. You would never know any of them had beer in them.

Beti and I had a great time cooking. Beti made a perfectly-cooked asparagus dish with mushrooms and bacon in a lemon garlic sauce, new york steak bites with bacon in lime and a twist on a classic spinach salad featuring orange, raspberries and bacon crumbles. She also made, for fun, a dessert: a sundae of vanilla ice cream with espresso caramel sauce that was topped with bacon bits. INSANELY good. For my three dishes, I made clams casino, a BLT with avocado and bacon-wrapped dates. (Here are the recipes: Steam clams until they open. Break off the top shell and detach the clam. Add a little garlic butter, a slice of cheese -- I used provolone, then top with parcooked bacon. Broil until the bacon gets crisp. Then squeeze a lime over the top. You can make sheets and sheets of them -- especially when you get an assembly line going. The bacon-wrapped dates are also super easy and I hadn't made them before last night. (get dried dates, slice open and put in some goat cheese and, if you're trying to kill brian, some slivered almonds. push the date back together and wrap in bacon (raw or parcooked). Bake until the bacon is crisp. BLT is standard fare. I tried using fancy bread, which backfired since it was too big and crispy. I did get to add avocado though. I love avocado.)

Everybody ranked the dishes from 1 (best) to 6 (least favorite). The clams casino took first, followed by the steak bites, then the asparagus, dates, BLT and salad. I ended up winning by one point: Lisa (10) to Beti's (11). It was fun. I also realized that 4 lbs of bacon plus a couple of drinks left me with a wicked hangover the next morning. I think all the salt in the bacon sucking water out of my cells. Another friend felt the same way.

We decided to try this again and two people volunteered to cook. This time it was at our house. Here's the play-by-play from last night:

Natascha arrived first and started getting set up. Levi arrived a few minutes later. Levi said he was nervous. Natascha let out a big sighand agreed she was, too. Then they hugged and started discussingtheir most-hoped-for ingredients. Among them were: cheese, mushrooms and sausage.As people started arriving, they put their secret ingredientcontributions in a covered container in the dining room. We tappedthe warm keg and people slowly started making themselves drinks. I think most were waiting to see what the secret drink ingredient wasfirst. Brian was the last to arrive due to traffic and the secretingredient was unveiled at 5 past seven. Beti explained how we were going to do mushrooms, but that they guessed it so we were going to do a meat substitute before deciding on cheese. Levi and natascha looked excited that it was cheese and started looking at all the different kinds. There were lots of options.Then they unveiled their secret ingredient: Hornsby's Hard Apple Cider. As a group, we looked confused since nobody really knew what to make. Levi and Natascha wrote their grocery lists and headed to the store. Everyone started making their drinks. I think there were 13 drinks or so when they were all presented. I think the most commonly heard thing as we were making them was "I keep adding things but it keeps tasting worse". Beti made a killer mint julep-type drink, which was amazing but too strong for the tender palates of Levi and Natascha. The top three drinks were Kathy's (used goldschlager and hornsby's to have theapple cinnamon thing going on), Brian's (tasted like fruity bubble gum) and mine (an apple twist on a moscow mule). I ended up winning, which is always sweeter when you beat brian.

People cleaned and moved out of the kitchen so Levi and Natascha could get to work. Since cheese can be a pain, both had help with some of the prep. We tried to stay out of the kitchen.When things were plated an hour later, each produced three dishes. The winning dish was Natascha's grilled peppercorn steak that was sliced thinly and placed on a baguette slice, topped with carmelizedonions, blue cheese and a balsamic glaze. It made me drool when I ate it. Second place dish was Natascha's dessert of marsacapone cheese, cookies and fresh berries. There was a tie for third among three dishes: Levi's olive and cilantro marinated grilled steak topped with blue cheese. It was Brian's favorite. Levi's amazing cantaloupe dish featuring fresh cantaloupe, fresh mozzarella cheese, olives and otherthings that I would have never thought of but blew my mind. It was amazing. Also tied for third was Natascha's grilled quesadilla usingthe pepper jack and cotija cheeses, grilled portabella mushrooms androasted poblano peppers. And in 6th was Levi's pasta: a rigatoni-type noodle with a fresh tomato sauce made in the magic bullet, fresh herbs and slices of parmesan cheese. Everything got ravaged. Ken made a spreadsheet with everyone's names where we got torank our favorites. Ken and Brian then tallied the votes and announced a winner. Natascha 6, Levi 12. Most folks left after the winner was announced. A few stayed to watchTop Chef. Everyone left around 11-11:30. Super fun.

Dodgeball Queen

We had our end-of-season dodgeball tournament this weekend. Our team lost in the second round but we all had fun. We stayed to watch the final match and then met up at the end-of-season party later that night. The league organizes free beer and food for the players; it's a blast.

Here are Ken and I in our uniforms:



and some of our team at the party (L-R: FanEric, Alyson, CanErik, Adam, Brian, Ken, me, Marne)


It turns out I was nominated for and won "Dodgeball Queen" this season. They give you a tiara and sash that you wear around all night. Hilarious. I was quite honored though. Here's a picture of me with Scott the King.






So that concludes spring season. Summer Dodgeball season starts June 8th.