Abby and David's Napa Adventure

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-20T21:20:00.000-08:00

Yes, yes, we know that we haven't blogged in nearly two months. We've been pretty darned busy. And besides, we haven't really done anything blog-worthy.

Anyway, we sat down and exchanged our gifts to each other tonight and we thought we'd post a quick photo of Abby in her gifts.

That's right, it's pig mittens with a matching pink scarf!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Love,
David and Abby

Happy Halloween!!

2009-10-31T11:49:00.000-07:00

Snow! and the Fridge/Freezer Project

2009-10-09T09:56:00.001-07:00

This is what we woke up to today.

That's right, it's two inches of snow on the ground. If that's not enough, the forecast low for tomorrow morning is NINE DEGREES! So we've decided that we're not going to go and sit outside at the farmer's market. I guess winter is here.

Also, here's an update on our Fridge/Freezer Project. (For those who don't remember, we're trying to eat as much as possible from our fridge and freezer to make room for Pvt. Charles Lamb.) This week we've eaten pork enchiladas made from some beer braised shredded pork we had in the freezer, leftover tortillas from WFD, and a homemade green enchilada sauce made from these beautiful farmer's market tomatillos.

We've also had pork chops (from the freezer) with spaetzle and braised cabbage, a pot of chili made with leftover WFD bell peppers, canned tomatoes from the pantry, and shredded beef from the freezer. We weren't very good at taking food pictures this week. Sorry about that.

Keep warm everyone!

Love,
David and Abby

Hot Sauce and Snow!

2009-10-04T17:35:00.000-07:00

This last week we realized that we were coming close to a day we had been dreading. We were almost out of our favorite hot sauce that we had carried back from Belize three years ago! We haven't been able to find it here in Missoula and we don't really want to pay the shipping to order it. So we decided to try to make it ourselves. We checked out the ingredient list and found a recipe online that uses the same ingredients. Here's (almost) all the ingredients. We've got carrots, garlic, onions, habanero peppers, and a lime. Not pictured are some salt, water, and vinegar.

We sweated the onions and garlic, added the carrots and water, and simmered until the veggies were soft. Meanwhile, we seeded and rough chopped the habaneros and blanched them in some white vinegar.

Finally we put the veggies, habaneros, vinegar, lime juice, and salt in the food processor and pureed it all together. We thinned it out with some extra water to the consistency we were looking for and got some pretty darned tasty hot sauce.

Oh no, snow!

On Wednesday morning, we looked out our front door and saw snow on the mountain tops!

We admit it wasn't a ton, but it was snow never the less. We're not ready!

Keep warm everyone!

Love,
Abby and David

More Updates!

2009-10-01T17:34:00.000-07:00

Here are some more updates including more hiking, Wadeberries, a new sign, Portland, OR, and a hay maze. Whew!

Hiking around Missoula

Here are some photos from two hikes Abby and I made around Missoula a few weeks ago. These first two are from a trail that goes along the Clark Fork river just off the U of MT campus. First is an osprey on its nest across the river from us and the second is Abby in front of some nice scenery.

These next two are from a trail that runs up the backside of Mt. Jumbo (for those who've been to Missoula, it's the mountain with the big "L" on it.) They're just us in front of a nice view of the valley. In the picture of me, I'm in my newest homemade kilt!

Wadeberries!

They say that poverty is the mother on invention. With Abby’s one and only brother turning 30 on Sept. 30th we were faced with a problem on the gift front. We are a little light in $$ these days. (We are still able to eat! I swear Mom, Gram, Barbara et al) But fancy gift money, alas there was none. So we decided to make Wade jam for his birthday, but not any jam, blueberry/huckleberry jam. We named it Wade-berry. I hope he likes it. Happy 30th Wade!

WFD Sign

Abby got a sign for her car windshield from a printer that's in the barter network that she belongs to. We applied it ourselves, and now everyone driving around Missoula can see who's in front of them.

Portland, OR

Two weekends ago, we drove over to Portland, OR for a little getaway. Aunt Martha and John and the girls were also in Portland for a wedding, so we were able to meet them for dinner on Friday night and again for breakfast on Sunday morning. It was great to see them and get to hang out and visit! Here are some photos of us at the riverfront.

On Saturday morning, we headed to the farmer's market on the Portland State University campus. It was a rainy morning, but we had a great time. The produce was incredible, and there were people sampling their hard cider, wine, and fruit sodas. We also tried some artisanal cheeses and had an incredible breakfast of biscuits and gravy, pumpkin bread, and lamb sausage in a blanket with cranberry mustard. Here are some pictures of the produce.

On Saturday afternoon, we visited a few breweries and a distillery. My favorite brewery was called Upright Brewing. They make some really cool beer and have an interesting brewery set up including open fermenters in a positive pressure room. We got to chat with the brewer about his brewery and his beers. It was a great experience, but unfortunately his beer doesn't make it to Missoula yet. The Clear Creek Distillery was really interesting, too. They make a bunch of different fruit brandies and liqueurs. We brought a small bottle of their pear brandy home with us. Here's a photo of their fruit crates stacked up outside the building.

We ate dinner at a great little restaurant called Navarre that was recommended by our friend Sarah Thomas. We sat at a table on the sidewalk and watched Portland go by. We couldn't decide what to order, so we chose the "you feed us" option of three courses with wine pairings. Everything was delicious and we'd recommend it to anyone going to Portland.

After dinner we drove over to the world-famous Voodoo Doughnuts and got some dessert. We each got a maple bacon doughnut and Abby also got one with Cap'n Crunch and I got one with Froot Loops. They were quite a treat.

On Sunday, we went to Saraveza for the Packer game. It's a bottle shop all decorated with Wisconsin memorabilia. It was a great place to watch the game--even if they lost. I was also able to pour some free samples of Big Sky beer for the customers. It's funny how friendly people are when you're giving them free beer!

Sunday afternoon we visited Portland’s rose garden where they grow a ton of different kinds of roses. They have prize winning roses, heirloom roses, and experimental varieties, too. Here are a few pictures.

We ate a delicious barbecue restaurant for dinner. As a bonus, they had our favorite beer from Upright Brewing on tap so we could enjoy it one more time before we left. For dessert, we picked up a petite fours from Pix Bakery, yum!

Hay Maze

Last weekend, we went out to the Missoula Hay Maze. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon and we had a great time going through the maze. We even found our way out! Here we are deep in the twists and turns of the maze.

I think that we’re finally caught up on our blogging. We promise we’ll try to do better in keeping up with it.

Hope everyone is well.
Love,
Abby and David

Private Charles Lamb

2009-09-28T20:24:00.000-07:00

David and I finally broke down at the farmers market and bought a lamb. A whole lamb all for us. David is calling him Private Charles Lamb (its a MASH reference). To provide room in our freezer we need to eat all of our odds and ends to make room. The fridge and pantry are also collecting odds and ends rapidly. We have initiated our Fridge, Freezer and Pantry Challenge.

The challenge: Make the most delicious meals we can by using only what we have on hand.
The rules: We may purchase fruits and vegetables (for fear of scurvy), and staples. Otherwise its what we have on hand until we can see the back of the fridge and freezer.

Dinners for this week: Roasted Tomato and Italian Sausage Ziti. 100% on hand. Ziti pasta, ricotta, fresh mozzarella, 3 links Italian sausage, balsamic roasted tomatoes.

Green Pork Enchiladas - 100% on hand. Tortillas, onions and tomatillos (from farmers market) shredded slow cooked pork shoulder, corn and shredded cheese (freezer)

Purchases: Bag of sugar, bag of onions, bag of potatoes.

We'll keep you posted on how we do. Sounds yummy to me!

Lots of Updates--Part 2

2009-08-24T17:17:00.000-07:00

Here's the second installment of updates, enjoy!

David's Gelateria(By David)

I decided that we should make use of our ice cream maker this summer, and I found an absolutely terrific recipe book. It's called "Making Artisan Gelato" by Torrance Kopfer. We've only tried two recipes from it so far--blueberry and pistachio--but they were both fantastic. They're the first homemade ice creams we've made that don't freeze into a block of impenetrable ice overnight. I highly recommend the book to anyone with a home ice cream maker! Here are some photos of me making pistachio gelato last week.

First, here's a photo of the raw pistachios toasting on the stove and the milk and most of the sugar heating up.

Once the milk came to a simmer, I added the pistachios, simmered for 15 min, removed the pan from the heat and steeped for an hour. Then I pureed the milk and pistachios in the blender and let it steep another hour.

Here's the milk and pistachio puree heating up to 170F along with the beaten egg yolks to temper into the milk.

Once they were tempered together, I stirred them until the custard coated the back of my spoon. The finished custard went into an ice bath with a little heavy cream to begin chilling, and then into the fridge overnight to let the flavors marry.

The next day, I stirred in some vanilla extract and poured it into our ice cream maker.

I packaged it in 8oz containers so it would be easier for us to eat some without the rest getting all melty and then icy when it refreezes.

It's some pretty darned good pistachio gelato if I do say so myself--and I do say so!

Visitors from MN (by Abby)

In other new on our way home from visiting folks in MN and WI I got a call from my friend E who I went to Stout with. E is a flight attendant with Northwest and I have been bugging her to come and visit us in MT since the day after we moved here. She called and announced that she would be visiting us the weekend after we got home from our Midwest adventure. She had told her folks about her trip to MT and they decided that they wanted in too. It ended up that E’s dad got bogged down at work and couldn’t make the trip so it was David and me and the Hanson ladies.

We had a great time hiking, shopping, eating, and drinking far, far too much wine. It was so great getting to know Mrs. Hanson better, and getting to sit on my patio and have some much needed girl talk over a bottle of wine...or two…or three with E. She and I took wine classes at Stout and in Spain together and had a blast recalling those crazy college days over some vino. Here is a photo and E and I on a hike in the Rattlesnake. Don’t we look outdoorsy?

Julia Child’s Birthday Dinner

On August 15th we celebrated Julia Child’s Birthday with a meal Julia herself would have been proud of. We made Julia’s Roast Chicken (which has onions, lemon, herbs in its cavity, and is then smeared with a whole stick of butter) mashed potatoes, and beautiful green beans. We watched our DVD of “The French Chef” and watched Julia make the perfect omelets and watched as she used a saw to break down a whole swordfish. Where in 1960’s you could find a whole swordfish in Cambridge Mass? I have no idea. Or where the housewives in the Midwest were supposed to find one as they watched her show on PBS is anyone’s guess. But God love her. We hope all of you had a great Aug 15th, and toasted Julia’s 97th.

Don't worry, there are more updates coming shortly!

Love,
Abby and David

Lots of Updates--Part 1

2009-08-24T16:35:00.000-07:00

We have quite a few things to put on the blog, so here's part one:

Way back in the last week of July, we drove down the Bitterroot Valley to go on a scenic hike to the Blodgett Canyon Overlook. It started off a little shaky with a sign at the trailhead warning about an aggressive mountain lion that had chased some campers from their campsite that week. We read the info on what to do if we saw a lion and got all prepared to look big and throw things, but we didn't see it. Here are some photos from the hike, including lots of wildflowers and the scenic overlook at the end of the trail. You can click on any of the photos to enlarge them.

This last photo is a grouse we saw on our way down from the overlook. It's right next to the nearest tree trunk. It's much easier to see if you enlarge the photo.

The first week of August, we went home to Wisconsin to see our family and friends.

And what a whirlwind that was! After driving 21 hours, straight we collapsed at Abby’s Aunt’s. We got up; feeling very jet lagged, and went to visit Gram who was feeling a bit under the weather. 4 hours later we were in the ER with her. We were all terrified at the possible scenarios that were being thrown at us by ER doctors who looked younger than me. David and I were happy to be there for hand holding and supporting my aunt and little cousins, and eventually my mom and dad who drove to MN. She came through it and is recovering at a rehab facility. She’ll be back at her usual digs in no time. I told her it was quite a stunt to pull to avoid a humiliating loss to me at Old Maid (My grandma never loses Old Maid, she is so cute and little but deep down is a card shark)

With Gram out of the woods by Saturday PM we were able to keep our date with my friends from college. We hit Bucca’s and then went to a bar in uptown. Here are some photos of some of my favorite people doing what we do best. (Eating too much…Drinking too much… Laughing too loud…)

The one of David and Leigh I think should be their Christmas card. Aren’t they the perfect brown haired couple? How adorable! Oh wait he is my husband! SO in retaliation the blondes had to step it up.

After our crazy weekend in MN we headed home to Wisconsin.

David headed off to hang out with his folks in GB and I stayed in Shawano with my folks. While in Shawano my friend Zac took time off from getting his PhD to hang out with my folks and me. As our adventure/project du jour we went blueberry picking and made scrummy blueberry jam.

Mom and I made Zac work for his supper, but we had lamb chops that night, so it was worth the picking and jamming. Doesn’t he look so domestic in the photo of him jamming? The next Martha Stewart for sure!

Other excitement from Shawano was that I found a bat in my room, or he found me by dive-bombing me. Dad and I fearlessly (ok we were both a little freaked out by Batty) took on the bat and cornered it in Wade’s old room. We swooshed him out the door so he could play with his bat friends. A few days later my folks had another bat in the down stairs of their house. My mom thinks its because she has been reading books about vampire this summer!

Creepy!

Here we are with my folks at the chef’s table in the kitchen at Chives. Aaron Rodgers has sat at this table so we felt especially honored that we were allowed to sit there too.

While home we also enjoyed having lunch with David’s Grandma, celebrating Don’s (David’s dad’s) 70^th birthday, hung out with David’s best friends from high school, and their wives, and David and his mom went to see the new Harry Potter movie. Thank goodness I didn’t have to go and pretend to be into wizards ;) David and I also played a little pac man at the Spinning Wheel, a Shawano institution for the best perch fry. Chris beat both of us by about a million points, but he has had a few more years to hone his skills.

We had fun at home, but it was nice to be back to our quiet lives in MT.

More adventures to come in a few days, and then we'll be all caught up! Finally!

xoxoxoxo
Abby and David

Whats For Dinner News etc

2009-07-19T18:51:00.000-07:00

First off, sorry its been so long since we last blogged. Its been a little crazy!

David has been alternating between the over-night shift 9pm to 5am, and the morning shift 5am-1pm. He rotates every 6 weeks, and it seems like just when we get into one schedule he switches to another. Its been nice though, because either way we have evenings off together and can take in some of the fun things in Missoula in the evening. We have made a habit of going to Salsa dance lessons every Tuesday night, and going to the park to listen to live music on Thursday nights. We are trying to hike and play tennis as much as possible, and enjoy the nice (aka HOT) weather.

Today we went to our local public water park and cooled down in their lazy river, water slides and pools. It was in the 90's for the 5th straight day and time to cool off a little!!

In my news I finished my time at the bakery on June 29th. It's nice to be done with that chapter, and be able to focus solely on What' s For Dinner. Our meal delivery service is up and running and the website has gotten over 1500 hits in the last month. More and more orders coming in every week, which is promising.

David and I have also secured a booth space at the farmers market, which is pretty fun. We always have samples so we draw quite the interesting bunch of folks. The booth is a great way to get the word out about WFD. People seem really excited about stumbling onto our booth and we have had a few orders already from the farmers market. It's fun getting to talk to people about what we are doing and have them get excited about our business.

Mom sent me the apron last week, and people at the market loved it!

Work is keeping us busy, but at least now we can both say that we are doing something we love.

We hope everyone is having a great summer and we can't wait to see as many Midwesterners as we can fit into our visit the first week of Aug.

Lots of Love
Abby and David

A California Weekend and Copper River Salmon

2009-06-14T12:17:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, we went to visit Wade in Berkeley. We got there on Friday afternoon and had dinner at Wade’s (Ali was still on safari in Africa.) Our friends Jason and Kaitlin came over for dinner and we also got to meet Kaitlin’s sister, Molly. We had a great time visiting with everyone and we did our best to help Wade deal with his surplus of beer and wine. We didn’t take any pictures, but dinner was delicious and we really had fun.

On Saturday, we headed up to Napa for the day. We met our friend Denise and her kids for a picnic and visited our former co-workers at Dean and Deluca. It was great to get to chat with everyone. Next, we went to our favorite winery, Elizabeth Spencer. We’re wine club members, so we got to do a complimentary library cabernet sauvignon tasting with cheese pairings. The wine was terrific and we were in their new tasting cottage. Here’s a photo of Abby and Wade at our table with all the wine.

After the tasting, we went to dinner at our favorite restaurant there, Ad Hoc. Dinner was great as always. The entrée was grilled lamb loin and dessert was tiramisu. Boy, we miss that place.

On Sunday, we went to the Berkeley campus for coffee and a pastry. Here's Abby and Wade by a statue--they'd just had some pretty strong coffee.

In the afternoon, we went to the Sho Chiku Bai Sake Factory. It was really interesting. They had a movie about sake making and a museum of traditional vessels and tools. Then we went to the tasting room and got to try a whole range of different sakes. I had no idea that there were so many different kinds of sake! Between the three of us, we tried twelve different sakes. Here’s a photo of us enjoying some sake and one of the display of bottles.

We had to head back to Missoula on Sunday afternoon, but we sure had a fantastic weekend staying with Wade and visiting so many of our friends who live there.

Happy Eating

Last week, our neighborhood Safeway had Copper River Salmon so we splurged on a side and grilled two servings for dinner last night. It was an absolutely beautiful piece of fish and was completely delicious grilled with just a little salt and pepper. Abby made a garlic beurre blanc sauce to serve over it. We also sauteed some carrots and pea shoots from the farmer's market and boiled some pearl couscous in homemade chicken stock. And we opened a bottle of Elizabeth Spencer sauvignon blanc, the white wine from our wedding. We decided that there was no one in Missoula eating as well as we did last night. Here's a photo.

For dessert, we made a bread pudding with some brioche from Abby’s work. It had walnuts and brown sugar in it and we finished it by topping it with sugar and putting it under the broiler till the sugar caramelized like on a crème brulee. It was pretty darned good with some sliced farmer’s market strawberries on top.

We hope everyone is well.

Love,
Abby and David

Our Patio Garden and a Delicious Lunch

2009-05-31T18:51:00.000-07:00

Now that the nights are warm enough, we finally got some window boxes mounted on the railing of our deck. On Saturday at the farmer’s market, we bought herbs, leaf lettuce, and a Thai hot pepper plant. Here’s a photo of farmer Abby watering them in.

Here are photos of each box. The first one has Thai basil, red basil, and sweet basil. The second has oregano, cilantro, and mint.

The third one has rosemary, thyme, parsley, and our pepper plant. The fourth box is all assorted leaf lettuces and arugula.

It’s just a small garden, but it really makes us happy to have it. Our porch has a whole new ambiance.

And now on to the food. For lunch today I made Bulgogi, which is Korean marinated and grilled beef. We had it Kalbi style, which means wrapped in lettuce leaves with rice, grilled green onions, and Korean hot red pepper paste. (It’s also traditional to include sliced raw garlic, but we skipped that.) We also ate the grilled stalk of the Chinese lettuce from the farmer’s market. It turns out that Chinese lettuce grows on a thick stalk like Brussels sprouts do. You can peel and eat the stalk just like with broccoli. It was mighty good and tasted a little bit like sweet corn. Here’s a photo of the spread.

Finally, and most exciting, in What’s for Dinner news, Abby received her first payment for an order to her reorganized business. Hooray for Abby! I’m really proud of her for starting her own business. Be sure to check out her redesigned website at www.whatsfordinnermissoula.com.

David

Our anniversary weekend and WFD news

2009-05-27T09:29:00.000-07:00

David and I went to Walla Walla WA for our anniversary. We had an absolute blast and stayed at this adorable B and B. We had the whole top floor of this house to our selves with our own bathroom. Here is David in the garden in the back of the house enjoying the koi pond in the garden.

The flowers were all in bloom and smelled amazing.

We did a fair bit of wine tasting in Walla Walla and also went to a goat/sheep fromagerie. The baby lambs had just been born a few weeks before, and they were too cute.

Here I am in the breakfast room on our last morning in Walla Walla. We had a menu to pick from for breakfast both days. On our first morning we had quiche with bacon, asparagus, and cheese served with fresh fruit, an English muffin, and apple pecan coffee cake. The second morning we had blueberry waffles, bacon/ham, fresh fruit and scrambled eggs with Tillamook OR cheddar cheese. Yikes!

Then at night the inn keeper would make creme brulee and leave it in a mini fridge for us to have in bed when we got back from dinner. We literally had to tear ourselves away on Monday to drive home.

In What's for Dinner News I have found a commercial kitchen space, it has been inspected by the health department and they have given me the green light to go ahead with my business. My new website is up and running and has the ability to take orders online, and handle credit cards. Check it out at www.WhatsForDinnerMissoula.com

In addition to offering meals, fresh and frozen, my friend Laura from Le Petite is going to do desserts for WFD and sell them on the website as well. I'm really excited about being able to take orders and getting the business going in full swing.

Keep your fingers crossed!

We hope that everyone is enjoying the beautiful spring weather. My herb garden will be planted this weekend, and I am too excited about getting plants into the window boxes.

Lots of love
Abby and David too

Spring has Sprung

2009-04-11T21:00:00.000-07:00

Is it just me or in the spring does everything seem like new? David and I both have been feeling more than a little stressed out with taxes (this year we were a little complicated...$425 to an accountant complicated...ick) and credit card bills (who knew moving was expensive...did I mention that one or both of us have done it 4 times in the last two years? double yikes!)

But friends and family we are pleased to an announce that the fog has lifted, and we are once again the happy kids you have grown to know and love. We are sorry this winter we were such downers, but the credit cards have been consolidated and we are making huge dents in them every month. Our goal is to be debt free in a year and then start saving! We are finally feeling good about being here... enough with the yucky financial stuff and on to the fun stuff!!!

Abby's Business

In my business news, David and I have been looking at commercial kitchen spaces for me to rent. The idea is that I could rent a kitchen space, and then make meals in this rented space, and then deliver the meals to people's homes. Lots of ladies in the Missoula Businsss Women's Network said they would love to have the meals delivered. We have looked at one kitchen, and hope to have another meeting with another kitchen this week. In the mean time I have had some more bites in my personal chef service. Another reason things are looking up for us.

Hike in kilt

Our weather has been decidedly springy lately, so we went for a hike on Friday morning. One of my co-workers told me about a trail that goes up into the hills around town, so we went to check it out. David wore the kilt that he made this winter, and may I say, he looked quite dashing. We had a great time on a beautiful day and we really wish we had had time to hike further on the trail. Here are some photos of us.

Barbara's agent weekend

And in non-us news, Barbara went to Madison the weekend before last to shop out the manuscript for her book to some agents. She met with several, all of whom were interested. She's taken some suggestions on the manuscript and is doing some work before she sends it out. We're both really proud of her and we know that there will be a publisher in her future sometime soon!

Happy Eating

We haven't posted much of our food lately, but we have been eating--I promise. The only thing we've remembered to take photos of lately is this...

It's Thai green curry pork with a nice salad and peanut dressing. We made the green curry paste from scratch and cooked boneless pork ribs in it low and slow. It was really good!

We've also made our own mustard from scratch and grown our own mung bean sprouts, but sorry, no pictures. They both were delicious, though!

We hope everyone is enjoying spring!

Love,
Abby and David

Happy Eating Times Two

2009-03-23T17:58:00.000-07:00

Hi All! Sorry it's been so long since we've posted to the blog. Abby has been cooking twice a week for her first client and we're both working hard to find a commercial kitchen space for her to rent. Her client absolutely loves the food, and I'm really, really proud of her for starting her own business.

For happy eating number one, here's our dinner from last weekend.

Since it was finally warming up, we fired up the grill and cooked two ribeyes. We also made a caesar salad, twice baked potatoes, and roasted asparagus and yellow bell peppers. We were two happy eaters!

Our second happy eating is a late St. Paddy's day dinner. We decided to brine our own corned beef like we did last year. Unfortunately, we forgot that it takes TEN DAYS to brine a corned beef! So on Saturday this weekend, we put our brisket in the crock pot with some carrots and celery. We roasted some potatoes in the oven and braised some red cabbage. It was delicious, but we neglected to take a photo.

Sunday morning, however, we made corned beef hash from the leftovers. And we remembered to snap a photo.

I think the red cabbage really adds something to the hash, don't you? It was an awesome breakfast, and we had just enough corned beef left over to make delicious reuben sandwiches for lunch today. If you've never corned your own brisket, I highly recommend it. (We use Alton Brown's recipe from Food TV.)

We'll try to be better about blogging. Hope everyone is well.

Love,
Abby and David

2009-02-25T22:48:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, Feb 25th, 2009

Valentine’s Day and What’s for Dinner
David and I had an amazing Valentine’s Day as a married couple. We made each other a delicious dinner of honey soy salmon, ginger risotto with peas, and roasted brussels sprouts. David made an awesome double chocolate malted tart for dessert.

We ate at the dinning room table with candles. We couldn’t figure out what wine to pair with our dinner so we made cosmos (cranberry juice, vodka, triple sec, lime juice) but swapped the cranberry juice for blueberry pomegranate juice. We also exchanged gifts. We had a $0 limit, so I was really excited to see what David would come up with. I made him an illustrated fairy tale of how we met, and he wrote me a beautiful hand written love letter. It was perfect.

In totally unrelated news I have decided to change my business plan. The good people of Missoula MT want their meals delivered, and who am I to deny them? So I am looking into renting commercial kitchen space, to make meals, and deliver them to the good people of Missoula. In this financial market I feel like the least I can do is be flexible! Lots of the women in the Missoula Businesswomen’s Network (MBN) have said that they would love to have meals delivered. This network, which I am a member of, has 300 members and is a great group of busy working women.

I also have a personal chef client who is interested in starting in March!! I am really excited about having my first client!!

I hope that everyone is having a good week, and a good Ash Wednesday!

Lots of Love
Abby

It's a Kilt!

2009-02-17T10:56:00.000-08:00

Well, I finished my kilt yesterday before work, but I didn't have time to take photos before I had to go. Here's the finished product--front, back, and pleats:

I really love it! Of course, it will be a few months before it's warm enough to wear around here, but I think I can wait. It's been at least 15 years since I've done any sewing, but I think I did pretty well and my new used sewing machine worked like a champ--even through six or more layers of fabric. I can't wait to start my next one.

David

Happy Eating Plus a Craft Project

2009-02-14T16:43:00.000-08:00

We’ve had some pretty good weeks since we last posted. We’ve been making it up to our local ski hill, Snowbowl a few times a week and we’ve been eating especially well. Our first photos are from Snowbowl. First, the view of Missoula from one of the runs.

Second, here’s a photo of Abby in the middle of a nice glade run we were skiing last week.

And now on to the food! First up is a photo of our Superbowl feast. We made Velveeta salsa dip in the crock pot, hot wings in a Korean-style sauce, and a big pot of chili (not pictured). Add a few bottles of quality Big Sky Brewing Co. beer and it was quite the spread.

Next up is our meal from last Saturday. We made Moroccan lamb tagine with a lamb shoulder from this summer’s farmers’ market. On the side we had couscous with almonds and dried apricots and some homemade naan with a delicious flavored dipping oil.

For the crafting portion of our evening, I’ve been working on making myself a kilt. I’ve been wanting a Utilikilt, but they start at $150 and go up, so that’s not in the budget. (If you've never seen a Utilikilt, you can see them at www.utilikilts.com) I found a set of instructions online and I used some Christmas money to buy a used sewing machine and the materials I need to make a contemporary kilt. Here are some progress photos. First, this is the piece of fabric I started with. It’s 57 inches by 2.25 yards.

This is the fabric after I cut it in half and sewed it into a piece 4.5 yards long.

Here it is after sewing in all the pleat edges.

And finally, here is a shot of the pleats all bar tacked down.

Since this photo, I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to taper the waist and have it sit straight. I think I’ve got it pinned down how it needs to be. So what’s left is to sew down the tops of the pleats, tack the aprons in place, and apply the waistband. Then I’ll have my kilt!

Hope all are well.

Love,
David and Abby

Happy Eating Returns!

2009-01-31T16:18:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since we've posted a happy eating entry, so here goes. (By the way, we have been eating, we just haven't been taking photos.)

Last weekend, we both had two days off in a row. We really enjoyed the time together, and we made some really good food. Here's a dinner in honor of the lunar new year:

It's a pork chop with a Korean marinade cooked on the grill. We served it with brown rice and some stir-fried vegetables. To drink we had a French farmhouse-style beer called a biere de garde. It was a pretty good way to ring in the year of the ox. And there was dessert, too...

Abby made this caramel peach upside-down cornmeal cake. She caramelized some sugar and poured it into the cake pan before adding some farmers market peaches from this summer. The batter, with a little cornmeal, went on top. This cake was amazing!

And finally, David made some crystallized ginger this week. He didn't really have a strong need for it, but he saw it on Good Eats on the Food Network and wanted to try it. It was a really neat process. You cook the peeled, sliced ginger in water until it's tender, drain it, and then cook it in sugar and water. The water boils away until the sugar recrystallizes almost instantly. It was a really cool process and the end product is quite tasty! Here's a photo:

We hope everyone is well, and wish you a happy year of the ox!

Love,
Abby and David

Christmas and Whistler

2009-01-23T10:14:00.000-08:00

Hello Everyone!
First off an apology for not writing in forever! First off Christmas! My mom and dad flew out to spend a few days with us. It was so great to see them and we had a great time, and ate way way too much, in true Zander style. We stayed in our PJ's all day on Christmas (even Mom and Dad!!!), which is in true Abby/David style. We also had the chance to celebrate my mom's birthday together.

Photo 1: Our Christmas tree and way to many gifts
Photo 2: David and I in our cool "What's for Dinner" retro bowling shirts, and hats that Barbara made us. My hat is a ski slope hat, white with evergreen trees, David's is a reef hat, blue with seaweed and fishes. They are both too cute!!
Photo 3: My mom opening her birthday present. We got her moose poop incense, which mom and I saw at the farmer's market in Missoula last summer and she thought it was hilarious. She kept talking about why there would be a pile of moose poop on a table next to vegetables and jams. Turns out it was very nice smelling incense made from dried moose poop.

After a quick New Years trip to Big Sky Montana to go skiing with Chris and Stacey Kent, we were home to pack for Whistler. We left on the 10th, and met my family at the airport in Vancouver BC to head up the Whistler together.

Our Whistler trip, as always, was filled with lots of skiing, eating, Dad's birthday celebration, and lots of family fun. One new part of our Whistler trip was a new lift, a gondola that goes from the peak of Whistler to the peak of Blackcomb. Its 2.73 miles long, and 1427 feet high in the middle, and take 11 minutes. It was pretty crazy being that high with just a cable holding you up. We had a great time being with my family. It was so great to be together! Here are some of our photos.
Photo 1: The peak to peak gondola
Photo 2: David and I
Photo 3: David and I at the tube park. Who can resist painted plywood with holes cut out for your head?
Photo 4: David and I on a chair lift. Its the photo we take every ski trip we go on.

We hope everyone had a happy holiday season! Lots of love from Montana!!
xoxoxoxoxo
Abby

2008-12-16T22:05:00.000-08:00

Christmas is coming!!
Here are some photos of our recent holiday merriment. We promise we have been eating too but nothing photo worthy.

First off - here is David making his annual gingerbread house with our beautiful tree in the background.

Here are our finished houses

This past Friday we braved the -20 wind chill and went to the ballet to see the Nutcracker. It was fabulous and we were the best-dressed couple there.

Last but not least here is a photo of our Christmas tree all decorated.

Hope all is well and everyone is getting ready for Christmas.

Lots of love
Abby and David

Our First Tree

2008-12-12T00:12:00.001-08:00

Sorry for the lack of recent posting on our blog, everybody. We’ve been in full Christmas sweatshop mode trying to get all the gifts together and in the mail. We’re finally done and everything is going out today. Anyway, on to our first tree—well, our first tree as a married couple.

Here in Western Montana, you can buy a $5 permit from the forest service and cut your own tree from the national forest. So last Friday, we grabbed a saw and some rope and ventured out into the forest.

Here’s Abby standing next to the tree we chose and then me cutting it down.

The tree is home and decorated, and I promise that we’ll include a photo of it all decorated in our next post.

Also last Friday was the Big Sky Brewing Company Christmas party. It’s a costume party and this year’s theme was super heroes. Abby and I decided to go as the Jolly Green Giant and Sprout. A few sweat suits, some green RIT dye, and lots of green felt later…

I have to admit that it felt a little weird walking from the car to the party downtown on December 5th, but we fit right in once we got there.

We hope everyone is having a good holiday season so far.
Love,
Abby and David

Happy Eating Thanksgiving Edition

2008-11-29T15:35:00.000-08:00

We had our Thanksgiving dinner on Friday this year because Abby was working on Thanksgiving day. We divided up the cooking and made most of the dishes earlier in the week. On Friday, we got up and made the pies and turkey. Here’s a photo of all the food.

Beginning at the turkey centerpiece that Abby crafted and going roughly clockwise we have a basket of onion bread and crescent rolls, carrots with onions and bacon, pumpkin pie, homemade cranberry sauce, the Angermeier family green bean casserole, a brined turkey breast, corn pudding, a huge amount of stuffing, mashed sweet potatoes with a pecan streusel topping, the Zander family green jello salad, pecan pie, and mashed potatoes. You can also see the Elizabeth Spencer Grenache we had with dinner. And we did have gravy, but we couldn’t fit it on the table.

If you can’t tell, we made enough food for at least 8 people. We barely made a dent in any of the dishes during dinner. At this point we’re just hoping to finish our Thanksgiving food by Christmas.

This is what the table looked like when we removed all the food and sat down to eat.

Here are photos of both of us in our turkey headbands that Abby crafted for us.

We hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving and we want all our family and friends to know how thankful we are to have you in our lives.

Love,
Abby and David

David's 30th Birthday Week

2008-11-16T21:27:00.000-08:00

My 30th birthday was last week (on the 11th) and my lovely wife made sure that I’d have a present every day of the week leading up to the big day. Here are some photos of my presents.

This is the beer and books that I bought with the mad money I got from various gift givers. I had a great birthday shopping spree looking around the beer store and the book store. Thanks to Grandma Carol, Jeff and Holly, and Ann for the fun shopping and all the drinking and reading yet to come.

This is me modeling the beautiful kilt I got from my folks, my birthday t-shirt from Abby, and my birthday beer glass from Aunt Martha. (I’m also wearing my hand-knit kilt hose from Ann as a wedding present. I’m still incredibly impressed by them.)

I got this t-shirt from Abby. It’s from Wilson’s, a BBQ spot we ate at on Route 66 in Oklahoma. It’s kind of hard to read, but the slogan is one of the best I’ve ever heard—“You need no teeth to eat our beef.”

And now for Happy Eating!

For our birthday entry, we have campfire pie. It was my favorite dessert in Napa Valley from Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen just a half block from our house in Saint Helena. We made our own version. It’s an oreo crust painted with homemade chocolate sauce and then layered with homemade marshmallow fluff, chocolate pieces, toffee pieces, and oreo pieces, then more marshmallow, chocolate, toffee, and oreos, and finally topped with another layer of marshmallow. Then we browned the marshmallow under the broiler. I think that it’s safe to say that it’s the tastiest and most unhealthy pie in the world. Here’s me blowing out my candle.

For non-birthday happy eating, we rubbed a pork shoulder with roast garlic, mustard, and herbs and put it in the slow cooker. We shredded it and topped it with mole, avocados, radishes, and cilantro for tacos. We accompanied it with some braised red cabbage and a Hennepin (Belgian-style beer called a Saison) from Ommegang Brewery in NY state.

Hope everyone is well.
Love,
David and Abby

Our Day Off Hike

2008-10-28T14:00:00.000-07:00

On our mutual day off David and I went on a hike, and by hike I mean picnic. Those of you who know my know I'm not so outdoorsy, so a hike with the promise of food at the end is right up my alley. We drove up into the Blue Mountain Recreational Area and hiked (300 yards tops) into a pretty overlook and had a yummy picnic. Here are some photos.

Lots of love to everyone
Abby and David

Happy Eating and more!

2008-10-26T18:18:00.000-07:00

Well, we're sneaking this entry in just under a month after our last post. Sorry it's been so long, but our last blog-worthy food got posted my Mom in her blog over at http://hookingbookie.blogspot.com. We do have some good pics of their visit though...

These pics show my parents, Don and Barbara Malcolm, playing Wii bowling like it's going out of style. I almost had to check their luggage to make sure they weren't making off with our Wii!

We also have the final photo from the 1st annual Big Sky Brewing Company Face Off. This is my facial hair after one month of growing as I groomed it for the competition. I'm proud to say that looking through everyone's photos was like a yearbook from a skid row gentlemen's hotel.

They're tough to see, but I had mutton chops down to my jawline on both sides. And I thought the narrow moustache really added to the creepiness. (Don't worry, Mom. I shaved it off the next morning.) The photos got posted in the tap room for the public to vote on. The results haven't been posted, but the prize money is around $150 and the loser gets his entry fee back. I'll let everyone know if win the grand or the booby prize.

Finally, here is this entry's installment of Happy Eating. At the last farmer's market of the season last weekend, I made a great find and picked up some absolutely gorgeous lobster mushrooms and some Jerusalem artichokes. Here are some pre-cleaning photos of the mushrooms. They're 1/4 pound apiece--the mushrooms, not the photos.

For dinner, we stuffed a chicken with lemon, onion, and garlic and then layered bacon on the top. We roasted it and added the mushrooms and Jerusalsem artichokes to the roasting dish about halfway through the cooking so they'd cook in the chicken juices and bacon fat. We also baked some potatoes and accompanied it with a lovely Scapegoat Pale Ale brewed by yours truly.

I think that dessert is worth mentioning, too, even if we didn't make it. We enjoyed some fantastic Haagen Dazs Toasted Coconut Sesame Brittle ice cream.

Hope everyone is well,
David and Abby

Happy Eating

2008-09-30T00:32:00.000-07:00

We have two installments of happy eating for today. First, our dinner from Saturday. We made bacon cheeseburgers on the grill topped with caramelized onions, lettuce, avocado, and barbecue sauce. We also made cole slaw and sweet potato oven fries. We paired it with a delicious Obsidian Stout from Deschutes Brewing in Bend, OR.

Second, this is our breakfast from Monday. We've been feeling very autumnal, so we made caramel apples with apples from the farmer's market. We dipped some in crushed chocolate toffee squares, although as you can see in the photo, they kind of slid down to the bottom. But that makes the first few bites extra good! The caramel apples made a great breakfast with a cup of coffee.

Hope everyone is well,
David and Abby

Arts and Crafts Time

2008-09-25T09:58:00.000-07:00

Abby and I decided that we needed something to lean against when we read in bed, so we made ourselves a headboard this week. We found instructions for an upholstered headboard online that seemed to match our construction skills. We drove to Lowes and took advantage of their saw for the wood and picked up hardware. Then we went to Joanne's for fabric, batting, buttons, and foam. We didn't get the foam because it was $30 a yard and we would have needed at least 4 yards. That $120 would have defeated the purpose of our DIY project. So, in a flash of common sense (if not brilliance,) we realized that a foam matress pad would work fine. After a quick trip to Wal Mart we had all the materials.

Yesterday, we laid out the fabric, batting, foam, and plywood and stapled the fabric to the board. Then we attached buttons with a needle and thread and screwed on legs and some supports. We intended to attach the legs to our bed frame, but it seemed pretty sturdy just being held up against the wall, so my laziness won out. We're quite happy with it, and it cost us less than $100.

Here's before:

Here's after:

And here's Abby giving it a test lean:

It looks like it works to me! We're very happy with ourselves and we feel like we have a real grown-up bed now.

Hope everyone is well,
David

P.S. Mom, I feel like a bum.

2008-09-22T22:41:00.000-07:00

Happy Eating and David’s Facial Hair

Eating First –
Last week we ate pretty well even for our standards! I had Tuesday-Friday off, so I made chicken cordon bleu, which is just fun. I bought a family pack of chicken breasts, ¼ # of Swiss cheese and ham from the deli and made breadcrumbs from leftover bread ends, which was free bread from Le Petit. A quick note on that, make don’t buy your breadcrumbs, the canned ones taste like it, and are too fine in consistency. Instead indulge your inner frugality (I can always feel my grandpa Roy smiling down on me for being so resourceful) and use up the ends of bread! So I stuffed my little chicken breasts, then seasoned flour, egg wash, and bread crumbs. A quick spray with the oil mister and into the oven for 30 minutes they went. We enjoyed them with roasted cauliflower, and green beans steamed with a little o.j. As a starch I made a brown rice salad, which was pretty delicious. I got the idea from a bulgur wheat salad recipe from Real Simple magazine. The rice was cooked and cooled and drizzled with olive oil, and lemon juice, and tossed with flat leaf parsley, dried cherries, and toasted pecans.

I also baked a cinnamon swirl bundt a la my mom. She was still in Ireland, so I searched the interweb for a recipe and I think I found a pretty close one to hers. Here is the link, and enjoy the photo.
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Cinnamon-Swirl-Bundt-Coffee-Cake/Detail.aspx

Saturday we found ourselves again out of food for dinner. I was hungry for something with a lot of spices, so I found a recipe for Moroccan beef roast on foodtv.com. It was a slow cooker recipe so David threw it in the slow cooker in the morning, while I was at work, and he headed for the farmers market. The pot roast was super tender and very flavorful from all the spices and the apricots and parsnips that it had cooked with all day.

Yummy with a little Elizabeth Spencer Pinot which we just received last week!! David decided that a dessert in Gourmet magazine was too interesting to pass up. It is watermelon sorbet on the bottom and a topping of sweetened condensed milk, whipped cream and lime juice and zest. Here is a picture, and again the recipe is in this month’s Gourmet, (with the blackberry dessert on the cover)

Today David and I had the whole day off together. We had grand plans to do some serious hiking, but we woke up to 50 degrees and raining, and I am a fair weather hiker at best. Sooo we decided to go out for lunch at a deli and then came back to make eggplant Parmesan. I talked to my mom today and she requested my eggplant parm recipe, because she enjoys it a lot. The recipe is in my head, so here it goes.

First slice the eggplant. Try to pick small normal egg plants (not the expensive cute Japanese ones) cut them into ¼ inch slices and sprinkle them with salt on both sides. Put them on a cookie sheet on the counter for 15 minutes.

While the eggplant is hanging out, make bread crumbs with 4-6(ish) slices of bread, a few old hamburger/brat buns or whatever you have. Process in the food processor until they look like bread crumbs, pour onto a jelly roll pan and toast in a 350 oven for 7-10 minutes.

Now rinse the eggplant under cold water, and set up a breading station. 3 pie plates, 1 with flour with a little salt and pepper in it, the second with an egg or 2 and some water, and the third with the bread crumbs mixed with some Italian seasoning if you would like and grated parmesan cheese. Coat eggplant slices in flour, then egg, then crumbs, and then pan fry in batches or spray with cooking spray and bake for 10-15 minutes.

Now you could go two ways, you could make a casserole or you could keep all the components separate which is usually what David and I do with stuff that gets soggy because we eat it for a few days and by day 3 the eggplant and sauce will become one soggy breading mess.
Either way, sauce and noodles are needed. If the casserole road is taken mix noodles with pasta sauce and place eggplant slices on top cover with mozzarella cheese and bake until cheese is browned. If the individual road is taken take two servings of eggplant slices that you have baked or pan-fried, and top with mozzarella and place on a cookie sheet in a 450 oven until hot and cheese is brown. Plate on top of pasta and tomato sauce. Yum yum. I hope this does it for you mom, and devoted readers.

Here is a photo of the finished yummy product.

The facial hair part of the title of this post is because David has entered the Big Sky Brewing Co. First Annual Face Off. The boys are seeing who has the best facial hair after one month of growth. They all had to be clean shaven on Sept 17th.
Here is David on the 17th.

Now here is David on the 22nd

He looks, as my brother would say, like a mountain man. 5 days down, 25 to go. I’ll keep you posted. While David is consumed with his facial hair, I have begun the daunting task of scrap booking the wedding festivities. I hope to get it done and off the kitchen table by the time David’s parents Don and Barbara come to visit on October 9th.

Everything else is going well with us, and we hope all is well with you.
Lots of love to one and all
Abby

Happy Eating 2!!

2008-09-11T22:36:00.000-07:00

David has been a busy boy!! Last Saturday he bought a large box of peaches and a flat of blackberries. They were quickly turned into jam. The bulk of the peaches found there way to the freezer thanks to our new food saver (hurray for wedding presents). Saturday is also our evening off together, so in celebration we made grilled pizzas with mozzarella, roasted peppers, and sausage and basil from the farmers market. After dinner we had a little ice cream from cold stone (thanks Aunt M!!) We had a ton of basil left so Tuesday we made a big pan of lasagna which we are still working on.

In other news we are doing well and were both enjoying our jobs. We are though finding it hard to meet people and make friends. I'm going to start going to church and check out there young adults group, and David and the boys at the brewery are trying to find time to all get together and hang out. Its hard for David because he works alone at the brewery during his shift, and the folks at the bakery (the two couples that I work with) have known each other for years and seem like a tough club to get into. I'm trying to really focus on getting the whole bread thing down and not worry about it.

David and I have been trying to get out and exercise a few times a week and have been playing a lot of tennis and going on walks on a river front trail before work.

Hope everything is well at home, where ever that may be, and we miss you all!!
Abby

Photos from this week

2008-09-07T11:48:00.000-07:00

Pretty sunset from our patio.

The white stuff on the mountain yeah, that is snow. It rained in Missoula on 9/1 but above 6500 feet, it snowed! How awesome is that!

Last Monday David and I took a nice long walk on the down town trails in Missoula. It goes through a bunch of parks and one had trout sculptures in it. My husband, ladies and gentlemen.

2008-09-01T10:50:00.000-07:00

Omnivore Meme a la Abby
This is a list of 100 foods that every omnivore should eat sometime in their life. The idea is to bold the ones you've eaten.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters - ick
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl – A bite in San Fran – Im not big on clams
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea – At the plaza hotel in NYC with Mom!
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects – Wild berry culvers ice cream. The legs stuck in my teeth! Eeww.
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth $120 or more – Again a sip of dad’s
46. Fugu- yikes, and no
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel--disgusting
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut – still warm, insanely good
50. Sea urchin – thanks cooking school
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi – Japanese plums – I had them pickled
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine – I freakin love poutin! Jan 10 I will be stuffing my face with it!
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake – yes to all 4
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost – the most disgusting cheese I have eaten
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky--Men's Pocky is the best!
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant – French Laundry has to be 3 stars!
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

82 for me! Thanks culinary school!

A New Blog Addition!! Happy Eating!!

2008-08-28T10:45:00.000-07:00

A new blog addition, introducing Happy Eating! David and I make some pretty awesome food together and we thought we would share with you all what we are up to in the kitchen. I also was a little envious about Ann (David's sister) and her new blog feature "Caturday" about her new cats, having no pets to blog about I will talk about yummy food instead.

Last Saturday David and I went to the farmers market and purchased some pretty cool stuff. For dinner Saturday night (photo above) we grilled a huge T-bone steak which we split, made smashed purple Peruvian potatoes with horseradish imported from Shawano. For the veg we cooked a French apple sausage in some olive oil and then tossed a ton of yellow swiss chard is the sausage. The bread is from Le Petit, and the wine is Elizabeth Spencer Cab.

In this months bon appetit magazine they gave Thomas Keller's fried chicken recipe form his restaurant ad hoc in napa. The restaurant was our favorite when we lived in napa last year, and we adored the fried chicken, so we just had to make some for ourselves. Sunday we had fried chicken with the left over purple potatoes and chard. Served with a delicious Big Sky IPA beer it was quite a meal.

In addition David has been a pickle making machine this past week! He has made bread and butters, harbin dills (a spicy dill pickle), spicy pickled carrots called firecrackers, and curry pickled cauliflower. The last two are refrigerator pickles so we are already enjoying the pickled carrots.

Hope all is well with everyone and happy eating this week!

love
Abby

Abby's New Job

2008-08-21T17:06:00.000-07:00

What a view, right? So as this beautiful picture suggests that dark cloud that surrounded my employment has lifted and I found a new happy job. I am working at a bakery in Missoula about 5 minutes from our house. Its a really fun job and I'm learning a ton about bread baking. The website for the bakery is www.lepetitoutre.com. I'm working the same hours (ish) as David so we are both soo much happier. My boss said I was doing an awesome job.

In other news, my mom and dad came to Missoula last weekend. Dad and David braved the heat wave and went white water rafting, while Mom and I shopped the Missoula boutiques and had a delicious Mexican lunch. We had a blast and it was sad to see them go on Sunday.

I hope all is well with everyone!
xoxoxo
Abby

Lots to catch up on!

2008-08-11T21:43:00.000-07:00

Well, we've been hearing that people still check our blog and want us to keep posting, so here goes. (We're not at all sure that we're interesting enough to keep blogging, so read at your own risk.)

After the wedding, which was pretty much the most fun we've ever had, we had to face reality and find jobs. I (David) posted my resume online and found a job with Big Sky Brewing in Missoula, MT. We packed up our stuff again and drove to Missoula, and I started work one week after the day they offered me the job. I'm really enjoying my job; it's a great group of people and I get to make about 3300 gallons of beer every day.

Abby found seasonal work at a luxury camping resort outside of town, but is still looking for another job for when this one ends. She's got promising leads with a local bakery and another restaurant here in town.

We spent our first week living in a hotel room while we were looking for somewhere to live. We found a great apartment on the south side of town and were able to move in after a week. Here are some photos.

First, our kitchen with a bit of our dining table visible at the bottom.

This is a view of our living room with the other side of the dining table visible.

This is our couch and coffee table. I included this photo because I'd like to point out the incredible tiling job that Abby did on this table. We got it without any insert for $5 at a thrift store, and Abby tiled and grouted it herself. It is my favorite piece of furniture in the house.

Next is the master bedroom and spare bedroom/office space.

Here is a shot of our porch and the view from the porch. We have chairs, a table, and our grill out here.

Finally, for house pictures, here is the autographed lyrics of Take the Money and Run from Steve Miller that I got from Wade and Ali for my birthday last year. I'm thrilled to have it displayed in the house.

Today, Abby and I decided to hike up to the M. Up the side of Mt. Sentinel, adjacent to the U of Montana campus, there is a huge concrete M. Evidently, these letters are common in towns across the western US. It is probably the most popular hike in Missoula and was voted the best view in the Missoula Independent newspaper. We were huffing and puffing due to our low level of physical activity lately, but we had a great time and enjoyed the spectacular view.

Here is a photo looking down the M to the campus and city below. Abby is standing at the bottom of the M. She's really there, I promise.

Here's one of me hiking down from the top of the M. Yes, I'm wearing my khaki kilt and I really appreciated the breeze on a hot, sunny day.

This is both of us at the bottom of the M.

And finally, here is a bonus photo. This is from our trip home down Route 66. This is a famous truck trailer in a small town in Illinois. I believe that it is from the Cambell Trucking Company. It may be the greatest slogan I've ever seen and it has launched me into a search for a t-shirt. I made Abby get out of the car in the rain to take this photo of me.

Hope you enjoyed, and we'll try to keep up with the blog.
David and Abby

David's Job Search

2008-04-20T11:41:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone. We're settled in here in Shawano, WI and are very busy doing wedding planning stuff. We now have both food and cake, and I'm going to brew the beer this Thursday. I'm trying to immerse myself in the culture of Shawano during the short time we're here so I can really understand where Abby comes from.

Yesterday, we went to the sturgeon parade downtown. It was a children's parade, so it was pretty much just a bunch of kids in paper sturgeon hats and one scrawny high school aged boy in a black sturgeon costume running around saying, "I'm a sturgeon, it's all about me!" The whole shebang was over in about 3 minutes, but the kids were very cute in their hats. We're keeping tabs on the dam near our condo so we can go see the sturgeon when they begin spawning. It should be any day now...

On the job search front, I've been watching a few brewing websites online and I've been in contact with a friend who lives in Portland, OR and knows about the brewing scene there. I've got resumes out in response to 5 job postings in Portland, ME; Lake Placid, NY; Nashville, TN; San Luis Obispo, CA; and a mysterious northern CA brewery. I'm also sending resumes to breweries I admire (Deschutes, New Belgium, etc.) and applying to some brewpub chains (McMenamin's, Rock Bottom, etc.) Frankly, I'll take whatever I can get to gain experience brewing.

I was thinking about changing the blog title to "David's adventures in small town Wisconsin" but I figured that would just confuse all our adoring fans.

David

A fond farewell to the Mother road

2008-04-01T19:09:00.000-07:00

So since we last talked we drove through Missouri, stopped at the St. Louis Arch and the museum of westward expansion. We drove to Springfield IL and ate at the Cozy Drive In, which was founded by the man who invented the corn dog I'll have you know! We spent the night in Springfield for the sole reason of eating at the Charlie Parker diner. We saw it on Diners, Drive ins, and Dives (a food tv show) and they make this thing called a horse shoe which is two slices of toast, eggs, breakfast meat, and cheese sauce or sausage gravy. It was voted David's "best meal of the trip" Mine was still the texmex dinner from Grants NM of a taco, enchilada, and chimichanga with green sauce, and sopapillas with honey for dessert. Im such a sucker for Mexican food! After Springfield we diverge from the Mother road, bidding it a fond farewell.

Today after our horse shoe breakfast we went on a wild bread chase, in search of the elusive Rosen's Rye, no seeds, not sliced. After 4 different grocery stores, in two different IL cities, we found seeded sliced rye but Don, who is a connoisseur of bread and toast, does not like the caraway variety. We sadly bought one loaf of the seeded sliced rye and sulked away to drown our sorrows in lots of beer at lunch. We drove to Kenosha WI for a relaxing night at the Country Inn and Suites to rest up for our big moving in / unloading the crap from our car day tomorrow in Shawano.

Our whole Napa adventure ends tomorrow, when we drive into Shawano. Dave and I are excited to get home and plan the wedding that my mom has been working soo hard on, and see our friends and family that we have missed over the past nine months. I hear some of them have even managed to add to their family's numbers since we left. We can't wait to see everyone and meet the new ones (little Ali!!!!).

See you soon Shawano Green Bay folks, and the MN folk soon I promise.
Lots of love and we'll keep you posted on David job search and our wedding plans.
Abby and David

Somewhere in Middle America

2008-03-30T18:56:00.000-07:00

So we're staying in Lebanon, MO tonight. We just got back from an incredible barbecue dinner at a restaurant next to our hotel. Between the two of us we had half a smoked chicken and a half rack of ribs along with sides and beer. The restaurant didn't have beer on the menu, so we asked our server what kind of beer they had. He said that they didn't serve beer, but we could go to the liquor store next door and bring it in for them to serve to us. Well, I didn't feel like buying beer next door, but I did have a six pack of Black Butte Porter in the car. So I brought two bottles in and they chilled them and served them with our dinner in sneaky red tinted plastic coke cups. Sometimes the Ozarks rule! Needless to say, we left a huge tip.

Tomorrow we're planning to drive to St. Louis and go up the arch and do a little other sight seeing.

And as promised, here are some photos:

This is a view of Route 66 from the interstate. See how close it is!
This is me sitting on the Jackrabbit at the famous Jackrabbit Trading Post in Joseph City, AZ. They are well known for their cherry cider, but sadly they don't have it any more.
This is the Wig Wam Motel in Holbrook, AZ. I really, really, really wanted to stay here, but it was only 4pm and we really couldn't stop so early in the day. Oh well, maybe some other road trip.
(This text isn't a link, I don't know why it looks like one. Sorry) This is the blue whale in Catoosa, OK. It is in an old swimming hole just out of town and was built sometime in the 70's. It's officially closed, but I suspect it still gets lots of use. You can walk in the mouth and either go down one of two slides (you can see a white slide just behind the mouth) or climb a ladder up to the top of the tail and jump off.

This is me running away from the whale that's about to eat me.

Enjoy the photos and hopefully we'll post more tomorrow.
David and Abby

Making progress

2008-03-29T19:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we woke up in Needles, CA and crossed into Arizona. We drove all the way across Arizona and into New Mexico. We tried to go to the Grand Canyon, but there was a huge accident on the road leading into the park, so we missed it. Today we drove from Albuquerque, NM across Texas, and to Clinton, OK.

We've been driving more on the interstate than on Route 66. We figured out pretty quickly that unless we're in a city, driving on Route 66 means going 20mph slower on a road 20 feet to the side of the Interstate. So we decided to stop off and drive through the cities. We've been seeing tons of cool old neon signs and eating at great restaurants. So far the culinary highlights have been strawberry rhubarb pie in Needles, CA, sopapillas in Grants, NM, breakfast burrito in Albuquerque, NM, and fajitas in Elk City, OK.

Tomorrow we're headed through the rest of Oklahoma, a tiny bit of Kansas, and into Missouri. We're having a great time and we have both gone through some states we've never visited before. We do have some pictures to post, but I left the camera in the car and I'm too lazy to go retrieve it.

See you on the road,
Abby and David

Good Bye Napa...Hello Route 66

2008-03-27T21:19:00.001-07:00

At our Last wine tasting at William Hill. What a view.

Driving through central California, on the way to Needles CA, on the CA-AZ boarder. There were tons of windmills all over the ridges around the highway. We'll drive out of CA early tomorrow, and through AZ, with a quick stop at the Grand Canyon and the painted desert.

Hope all is well at home, its 75 at 9:30 in Needles CA. I think we're in for a bit of a shock when we get home!!

Lots of love to all
Abby and David

Alcatraz and Graduation Photos

2008-03-26T07:59:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,
We had a great time at Alcatraz with Jason and Kaitlin. We went on a perfect day, sunny and warm, and took the audio tour. The tour had recorded stories from past guards and inmates and was really interesting. Here are some photos.

Here's a photo of the whole family in the entrance to the CIA.

And finally, here's a photo of the bottle of wine our friends Marcus and Denise gave us as a going away gift. It's a double magnum of Pinot Noir. It holds 3 liters, or four standard bottles. I've included a regular bottle in the photo for scale. That is one big bottle of wine!

As far as moving goes, we spend all day yesterday scrubbing our apartment from top to bottom and getting rid of everything we don't need. Today we're spending the day driving around the valley and doing a little wine tasting. Tomorrow we'll get up early and hit the road. We're going to catch Route 66 in Lenwood, CA (about 7 hours south of here) and then we're heading back east. See you soon!

David

Week 29 and Graduation!!!

2008-03-18T12:27:00.000-07:00

Week 29 was techniques of healthy cooking. It was a fun class, which was co-taught by the creator of the Sonoma Diet, which is based on the traditional Mediterranean diet. The class was fun, we played with different grains and cooking techniques. We all learned a ton.

The weekend between weeks 29 and 30 we went to Alcatraz with Jason and Kaitlin, which David will post about soon.

Week 30 was Advanced culinary techniques. It was a tough week, our Chef, Chef Almir, was not about to let us slide to graduation. We had lectures on caviar, foie gras, sous vide cooking, and wild mushrooms. The lectures were all done by suppliers/producers of these specialty products, except for the sous vide lecture. (Sous Vide is a method of cooking where food is vacuum sealed in a bad and then poached really slowly for 4-48 hours at around 148 degrees. The food comes out insanely tender) By Wednesday we were in full production mode to make our 50 canapes each. My canape was a coconut curry poached salmon on an asian pear, with kumquats, cilantro oil, toasted coconut, and kaffir lime salt. (what a mouthful!) Here is the photo!!

Now, I don't want to toot my own horn, but mine was totally the most delicious. Chef Almir made yummy noises when he would walk past me working on them, and snitched them off my trays when I wasn't looking. The family, Malders and Zanders alike, loved them as well. I was really happy they turned out. I loved them so much that I'm making them again for dinner at our friends Marcus and Denise's house on Thursday!!

We had a blast with the Zander clan this weekend. Lots of eating and drinking.

Now were working a few days and then packing up. We have a day in SFon the 24th and then we are hoping to be on the road by Thursday of next week.

We'll keep you posted from Route 66 on the way home.

Love to all,

Abby

Practical Fun!!!

2008-03-02T11:21:00.000-08:00

Week 28
My practical was on Monday and I passed with flying colors. I got the lamb medallions with mustard and calvados sauce, duchess potatoes, and glazed carrots, fish course was rolled sole fillets with veggies and sauce vin blanc. Sooo I was more than a little nervous but I managed to get everything done with a whopping 10 seconds to spare. I also managed to cut my hand pretty badly. I'm all healed up now and ready for my next class, only two weeks left! I only had class for two days this week so there isn't much to say, Wednesday we ate dinner at the restaurant at school and the rest of the week we were off.

This week is Techniques of Healthy Cooking, and next week is Advanced Culinary Techniques, which is getting ready for the graduation reception. I can't believe it is almost over. We've started packing and most of our furniture has been claimed by people we know. Two weeks to go!

Lots of love to one and all

Abby

2008-02-25T19:58:00.000-08:00

I passed my final practical today!! More details to come.
Abby

Week 26-27 of Culinary School

2008-02-24T09:18:00.000-08:00

Week 26 of school was the end of our Asian class. We put on a lunch that we could invite guests to, which was fun. David came, of course, and got to have a delicious Japaneses meal. I was the executive chef, so I got to run around and trouble shoot for everyone and make sure everything got done.
Here are some pictures from our Japanese meal.

Week 27 you could cut the tension with in the air with a knife. Our final practical exams started Tuesday. Some people passed and some people didn’t and get another shot at it on March 4th. The test is the same format as the last semester practical, we draw our menu 30 minutes ahead of time, and have 2.5 hours to cook a fish course and a main course with veg. and starch for 4 people. Mine is on Monday, ie tomorrow, and I’m pretty much in a mild panic at all times. I have been having strange dreams and I think it’s the stress coming out in my sleep.

The class we have been in is Food and Wine Pairing for Chefs. We had presidents day off, and had a field trip (wine tasting in Sonoma) on Friday o we have really only had three days of class. We cook food to go with specific wine, and have a lot of lecture. Next week we have 2 days of class, and then a dinner on Wednesday at the restaurant at school. We get Thursday and Friday off! I cant wait to be done with my practical and have a few days off to recover! I’ll post on Monday PM or Tuesday and let everyone know how I did.

Lots of love to one and all
Abby

Feb 16--The Ocean

2008-02-24T07:38:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday Abby and I got up, packed a picnic lunch, and headed over to the coast for the day. We went to Bodega Bay, which is where Hitchcock filmed The Birds. We drove out onto Bodega Head and found a picnic table overlooking the water. We had a great view of the seals playing in the surf while we ate. After lunch we hiked around the head and took a few photos.

Next we drove up the coast to Fort Ross, an old Russian settlement from the 1800's. It had exhibits about the settlers and the local Indians. It was a cool place to walk around. Here's Abby by the well.

On our way back down the coast, we saw a bunch of seals sunning themselves on a beach next to the road, so we stopped to check them out. It was nice and windy there, so we decided to fly our kite, too.

All in all, it was a great way to spend a Saturday in the middle of February.

Week 23-25

2008-02-10T08:41:00.000-08:00

Week 23-25

Week 23 was the end of B and P. We made some fancy decorated cakes and prepared for our practical. The practical consisted of baking 36 rolls, in two different shapes, 2 sponge cakes, 12 chocolate éclairs, and 1 pie crust. We had to make all of this and present it in 4 hours. I finished in 3 and got a 86% which was one of the highest grades in the class. This was the first practical that some of our class didn’t pass, so it was pretty intense. The girl taking the test next to me did her piecrust 3 times and didn’t have one that she wanted to turn in. She didn’t pass the test…Yikes!

Week 24
Week 24 – 26 will be my last real class, cuisines of Asia. Monday we went on a field trip to a Sake factory in Oakland, Oakland China town, and an Asian mall in Berkeley. Tuesday – Friday we did Chinese, Japanese and Korean food. The food was fun and we all really enjoyed eating all of the different foods.

Week 25 we did one more day of Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. I helped my teammate Cara kill a live crab, which was pretty interesting, and delicious when she coated it in yummy chili paste and stir-fried it. Some of the ingredients are a little weird, like dried whole itty bitty fish, dried itty shrimp, shrimp paste (which needs to be toasted before used which smokes and smells up the entire kitchen. EEwwwww!!!) and last but certainly not least fish sauce! Fish sauce is like Asia’s ketchup. It is one of those things that is ok until you find out how it is made. They take millions of whole little fish and pack them in giant open top barrels in between layers of salt. They let this ferment for 1 year bringing it outside to sit in the 95 degree heat of Thailand until it becomes juicy (eeww) and then they drain off the juice and you have …fish sauce! My chef, Chef Ken, had us make a dipping sauce for our Vietnamese food. The sauce was made from fish sauce, sugar, lime juice, chili peppers, and raw garlic. We made this sauce at 7:02 in the morning. Pre-coffee fish sauce tasting is not fair!

Besides fish sauce I was elected to be the executive chef for our last day of class restaurant project. Next Friday we are having a Japanese restaurant at our school during lunchtime. Sushi, hibachi, and tempura galore. It should be really fun.

Only 5 more weeks of school and we're selling our furniture to our co-workers. We're already thinking about the move home.

I’m off to make crepes for David for our faux Valentines Day. We made a big steak dinner last night and crepes with strawberries this morning. We both work on Thursday so we thought we would celebrate early.

Lots of love to everyone, and I cant wait to see you all soon!!!

Abby

Weeks 21 and 22, Leigh, Jelly Belly, Whistler

2008-01-23T17:24:00.001-08:00

It has been so so long since we last posted that too much has happened to tell you everything. We are going to hit the high points, include some pictures and promises to do better for the tail end of our time in Napa.

First off school – I’m in baking and pastry class (weeks 21-23). My home work consists of piping whipped Crisco into frosting borders on a sheet of cardboard. Now we have advanced into writing Happy Birthday in chocolate on the board. When Leigh came out she referred to it as my “board of fat” for the whole weekend. My group for this class is great, Joel and Doug, my boys, so I’m happy. My Chef’s name is Stephen Durphy, and he was the original pastry chef of the French Laundry (The super fancy place where we ate dinner in the fall)

Next off Leigh!!! - My Leigh –Anna came out to Napa Jan 10-13. We had a blast hanging out, watch Gilmore Girls (sorry David) eating pizza and drinking tons of wine. We went wine tasting at a few places, one of which Sterling Vinyards, we got to ride their tram to get the tasting room. It was very fun to have her here to hang out with. We both really missed her when she left on the 13th.

In no particular order – Jelly Belly factory!!
We went to tour the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield Jan 3rd, which was on our list of things we wanted to do before we moved. It was a fun tour watching the jellybeans being made. We bought a ton of belly flops, which are the reject jellybeans, which we are sending out to people to share.

Finally Whistler – Abby was sick and it was chilly, but was still had a great weekend. We met Wade and Ali’s friends Jason and Kaitlin at the SFO airport and flew up to BC with them. The 8 of us had a blast. We celebrated both Dad’s and Kaitlin’s Birthdays over the weekend and skied a ton.

Enjoy the Photos and love to one and all
Abby

Jan 2nd 60 degrees and sunny

2008-01-02T16:54:00.000-08:00

Today David and I both had the day off of work, after working 5 days straight at D and D. I know that most people work 5 days in a row every week, but the holidays in retail is no fun at all, and we were more than ready to get out of there last night.

Today started with David and I making a delicious breakfast of homemade biscuits and sausage gravy. Then we were off to target, to do some shopping and continue on our registering quest. Then we had a lovely burrito lunch, which we ate out side in the sunshine. Then we came home and played a little tennis, again outside. I know when I was home I said I missed the snow and cold, but man was it fun to play outside today.

Tonight we are grilling a little pizza, and then our friend Ricardo is coming by for a glass of vino (how very Napa).

Lots of love to all, and I hope everyone is keeping warm in the Midwest.
xoxoxoxoxoxoox
Abby

Guess who Abby helped today at D&D?

2007-12-24T18:23:00.001-08:00

Thats right, its Oscar winning actress Hillary Swank. If you have been under a rock she is from the movies Boys Don't Cry, and Million Dollar Baby. She and her husband came into D and D today and I helped them pick out 3 cheese and 2 meats, although the meats were just for the husband.

I think that this is hands down the most exciting celebrity citing yet. David pointed out that she too was in a karate kid movie, the last one I think.

I hope everyone has a great holiday!
Lots of love
Abby

Celebrities

2007-12-22T17:17:00.001-08:00

There were two exciting celebrity sightings this weekend. Abby and I saw Martin Kove on Friday night. For those of you who don't know who that is, you may know him better as John Kreese, sensei of Cobra Kai Dojo in The Karate Kid. (Fear does not exist in this dojo! Pain does not exist in this dojo! Defeat does not exist in this dojo!)

Let me say that I was having a crappy day of Christmas time retail hell, and seeing this guy really cheered me up. Abby had no idea who she was and was not nearly as amused as I was.

The second sighting was today. Abby had off, but I got to help Joe Montana with cheese, olives, and pate. He was very nice and unassuming. I was still more excited about John Kreese. What can I say, I've always been a Packers fan.

I hope everyone has a great Christmas.
David

2/3 of the way through the CIA!

2007-12-22T09:53:00.000-08:00

Weeks 19-20

These last two weeks have flown by as they tend to as Christmas gets closer. Even as I write this with the screen door open in a T-shirt, I have a hard believing that it’s the 22nd of December. It’s hard to get into the holiday spirit when it’s sunny and 55 outside. David and I finally got our Christmas cards out, and all of our shopping and candy making is finally done.

School was interesting these last two weeks. My instructor and the teaching assistants are having a power struggle, ending with the chef director getting involved. It made for a uncomfortable learning environment for the last two weeks, with lots of lectures about us leaking our instructors dislike for the teaching assistants to the teaching assistants. Talk about unprofessional behavior! Besides that the class went well, we made mole, tamales, ceviche, Peruvian popcorn (which pops on the inside, not the outside, kind of like a corn nut) and lots of other fun foods of the Americas.

The most interesting part of the week was on Tuesday when we had a “snow day”. The winery up the road for the CIA blew an electrical transformer, so the CIA was without power. It’s not safe to cook only by using emergency flood lighting, so we were sent home early. By 8:30 I was back home and David and I were able to do some last minute Christmas shopping and had lunch at a brewery in Santa Rosa. It was a great day off.

I’m really looking forward to coming home for Christmas, even if it is for a few minutes. I hope everyone has a great Christmas season.

Xoxox
Abby

Week 18

2007-12-11T15:57:00.000-08:00

Week 18, 19, and 20 are “Cuisines of the Americas”. Week 18 we cooked food from the US, southern, northeastern, pacific northwest, mid west, etc. The food was fun to make and the lectures are pretty interesting. I have a new instructor, Chef Ken, who is also my next door neighbor. He is a pretty interesting guy. Tons of fun, and a good teacher.

David and I had fun last week as well, we made Christmas cookies, and TOM AND JERRY MIX!!! It is super yummy and we have been drinking one pretty much every night. They make us feel all warm and fuzzy and Christmas-y which is hard to do in CA. Its still pretty warm out, 60 degrees and sunny today. The palm trees make it hard to feel Christmas-y as well. We’ll keep listening to Christmas music and drinking Tom and Jerry’s until we get into the Holiday spirit. My class Christmas party is on Saturday night, at our house. It should be fun and put us both in the holiday spirit.

Dave and I also went to the redwoods on Saturday. The photos are on the post below. We had a blast. It was too fun.

Lots of love to all
Abby

Photos!

2007-12-11T10:30:00.000-08:00

Here are some pics from the last two weeks...

These two are of the mustard grass blooming between the vines.

This is our Christmas tree.

Abby made the star, David strung the popcorn, and all of the corks are ones we liberated during our time here in Napa. Not too bad, huh?

Here is a picture from last Saturday's trip to see the redwoods at the Muir Woods. (By the way, Andy, it's much safer and more fun during daylight.)

It's kind of hard to get a sense of the size from the picture, but trust me, they're really big.

David

Week 17 and 1est term practical Week 17 and 1st semester practical exam

2007-11-30T18:47:00.000-08:00

This week was a doozey! Im glad its over!

First off we had out grand buffet in my garde manger class. All week we prepared for it, and on Thursday we had an insane amount of beautiful food. I took tons of photos and here they are.

As I said the entire week was devoted to getting ready for this one buffet, so there isn’t a lot to talk about. A lot of chopping and such but nothing too too exciting.
Thursday was amazing though. My team had 3 action stations where we were preparing food live in front of the guest. These stations included a bananas Foster station, and oyster station, and a spinach salad station with warm bacon dressing (I swear that one was not my idea, but how Wisconsin is that!!) In addition to the live action stations, we made a smoke duck breast salad, with tangerine vinagrette, a canapé with homemade marscapone cheese and lobster, and the most beautiful cheese display in all the land (which I made).

The semester test was today, and it was a little scary. We had 2.5 hours to make four portions of protein, sauce, starch, and 2 vegetables. This morning I drew menu 2, which for those of you who haven’t spent every waking minute of the last two weeks studying these menus, I’ll fill you in. Menu two is chicken breast, with sauce fine herbs, fresh pasta, tourned zucchini and carrots, and shrimp bisque. My food turned out great and I made it just under the wire. The test is pass fail, I passed with a score in the mid 80’s which is pretty respectable.

Now I'm looking forward to a nice bottle of wine and a pot roast dinner with David when he is done with work tonight. We really need to stop working opposite schedules..ick.

Random tidbits for the week are that I sliced proccuito for Francis Ford Coppola at Dean and DeLuca. He was a little needy, but it was pretty cool. The CIA is also decking out for the holidays. I'll include a photo of school next week.

Hope everyone is doing well and isn;t too cold in the mid west.

Lots of love
xoxoxoxox
Abby

8 random things about David

2007-11-29T08:55:00.000-08:00

Sorry it's taken me so long to come up with my list. Also, I just don't know enough bloggers to link to, besides Ann, Mom, and Abby who are ahead of me in this meme of random things. Anyway, here are my 8 random things...

1. I love paper airplanes. They are the coolest homemade toys. In fact, I own several books on paper airplanes—my public reason is that I’m keeping them for when kids come over, but they’re really for me. (Don't tell Abby, but I moved them to California in case I feel like making some.) Oh, and in 6th grade I won 1st place in a multi-event paper airplane contest.

2. I also love (and am really good at) tying knots. I was always the knot expert in Boy Scouts and on Blackbeard’s I taught lots of new crew their knots.

3. In spite of the fact that I am now working as a fancy cheese monger, I think that Kraft Macaroni and Cheese is one of the world’s perfect foods.

4. I have very sensitive skin. Any exposure to cleaning supplies or beer sanitizing chemicals makes my skin get all rashy.

5. I don’t function well without breakfast. I need at least a bowl of cereal or a PB&J or I’m crabby until lunch.

6. I’m terrible at wine tasting. Last weekend at a sensory evaluation wine tasting, the only descriptor I could think of for one of the scents was Ann’s Strawberry Shortcake dolls from when she was little.

7. I love family time—the more cliché, the better. I love holiday meals, pumpkin carving, gingerbread house construction, card games, movie night, fireworks, you name it. (It doesn’t even have to be my own family.)

8. In spite of the fact that I have friends all over the world from the Army and Blackbeard's, I’m a terrible correspondent. I really owe an apology to just about everyone I know for not keeping in touch better.

And as a bonus, I have a 9th thing that I feel like is worth mentioning...

9. I can wiggle my ears with an unusual degree of skill. I can move them both together or each individually. I can also move them in any direction ranging from up toward the top of my head to straight back behind me.

Thanksgiving and A Celeb spotting

2007-11-27T15:55:00.000-08:00

This last week was Thanksgiving, which meant that I had off the whole week of school. I had a great time lounging, practicing for my test this Friday, and hanging out with David. My parents came to CA on Thursday and we spent Thanksgiving with Claire (Mom's childhood best friend) and Richard Hatch who live in Pleasanton. Friday and Saturday we went wine tasting and had a great time together.

This week is the end of my Garde Manger class, which culminates with our Grand Buffet on Thursday, and then a semester practical on Friday. I hope everything goes well and I pass both :)

Today at school I saw Aisha Tyler, if you are one of the many saying "who?" I understand. She was the actress who played Ross' scientist girlfriend Charlie on Friends. Here is a photo to help you out. She is at school taking a week long wine class.

Hope all is well with everyone and I hope I survive my week :)
Love
Abby

8 Random things about me

2007-11-19T11:24:00.000-08:00

Ann - I have no idea how to link this to your blog, nor do I know anyone other than you and Barbara who have a blog I could tag, so here are my 8 random things.
Have a great Thanksgiving :)
Love,
Abby

1) As much as I put out the “go getter” vibe, I am really one of the laziest people I know.
2) I’m double jointed in my thumbs.
3) My biggest vice is crappy TV shows. The more mind numbing the better, eg The Girls Next Door, Made on MTV, etc. The dumber the better.
4) I can’t consistently make good coffee or oatmeal. I’m going to culinary school and I cant make decent oatmeal! How embarrassing. Oatmeal and coffee are left up to David.
5) I have a refined wine palette, ie I can be given a glass of red wine and I can tell you what kind it is, what it tastes/smells like, etc. but I have absolutely no skill in tasting beer. I can’t tell one beer from another. I know if I like it or not, but don’t know why.
6) I want to live by water. I love the beach and coastal landscapes. I’m not particular, west coast, east coast, island, whatever.
7) I’m afraid of the dark. Terrified actually.
8) I was a vegetarian for five years, until my favorite aunt (My dear aunt Martha, who loves to spoil me with countless presents) sent me a summer sausage at college and David watched in amazement as I ate ¾ of a large summer sausage in one sitting.

David's Birthday

2007-11-18T12:35:00.000-08:00

David being fancy and the view from Domaine Carneros. (PS this is the last photo of David being 28)

vineyard fall photos

The town-y bar where we found some really good hamburgers.

2007-11-18T12:26:00.000-08:00

Week 15 and Week 16

Week 15-17 are Garde Manger class, which is the cold part of the kitchen. In this class we are making things like terrines of foie gras and pate encroute, and huge buffet platters of itty bitty canapés. It’s a fun class where we get to make tiny little knife cuts and turn food into art. My teacher is Chef Tom Wong from Hawaii and has cooked for some pretty cool people in a resort hotel in Hawaii where he was the exec chef. He cooked for Elvis Costello and Diana Krall and tons more. He is a great instructor who demands perfection, and pushes us to be creative. In this class we present food every three days so on day 3, 6 and 9 we put up food. The other days are prep for our presentation days. Day three we were to present very common foods in the style of a canapé (one bite) small plate (3-4 oz) and an appetizer (4-6 oz). Our group had to make chicken and biscuits, cod cakes, and shao mai (which is dim sum). It was fun trying to make chicken and biscuits in one bite.

On day 6 we made duck confit salad with potatoes, scallops and lobster tabbouleh. These its are pictures (mine was the duck confit) The canapé is a fried potato cup with greens, and a roasted shallot vinaigrette. The large platter, which is appetizers for four people, is potato gnocchi tossed in the vinaigrette with greens and duck confit. The point of this is to take the ingredients of the recipe, and make them into something totally different. I loved this challenge so I took some photos.

Day 7-9 we made sausages, which was interesting. It makes you look at sausage differently when you watch it be made…icky, slimy ground meat and fat. But, as Chef Wong said, it’s better to know what’s in it, and know its quality ingredients, than not to know. Day 10, Friday, we did cheese and caviar tasting and cooking. I got to pick out 8 of the 20 cheeses that we had. Chef wanted some different ones that the school couldn’t get so I got to pick cheese from Dean and Deluca. It was fun and both AM and PM ACAP classes got together on Friday, so people could make their flights home. It was nice having different people to talk to.

Other exciting things in the last two weeks, David turned 29, and is doing well coping with the fact that he is knocking on 30’s door. We went out for a nice diner and wine tasted on the 10th to celebrate. Yesterday we had the day off and went to the Petrified Forest, which is in Calistoga. We had a great time looking at the trees transformed to rock. Last night I practiced for my big test on the 30th. It’s a semester exam and I need to pass it to keep going with school. We will draw 4 possible menus and have 2 and a half hours to cook them. My goal for the week off is to cook all four menus for David as kind of a dress rehearsal. Last night we had French onion soup, roast chicken, fresh pasta and green beans and turnips. I made it all in 2.5 hours with time to spare. Yum Yum.

I hope that everyone has a great Thanksgiving week! I know David and I will be eating well. ☺ Love, Abby

Beer and a culinary (mis?)adventure

2007-11-06T13:17:00.000-08:00

Today was my day off and I decided it would be a great time to brew some beer and make a recipe I've been wanting to try. I know that I said my next brew would be the wedding beer, but I forgot that I have the ingredients for a batch of witbier. For those of you keeping track, it's Wade's Wit, the beer I brewed to exchange for his couches. It's a fairly light Belgian wheat beer spiced with coriander, cumin, and orange peel.

As for my culinary adventure, I made a recipe called Koolickles. On the latest season of Feasting on Asphalt, Alton Brown learned about Koolickles when he was traveling in the south. Apparently they are a traditional southern food. He gave a recipe on a recent episode of Good Eats. For those of you who don't know, here are the ingredients:

That's right, dill pickles, Kool-aid, and sugar. To be exact, the recipe calls for a 1 gallon jug of dill pickles, one pound of sugar, and two envelopes of cherry Kool-Aid. I reduced it down to a 1.5 quart jar of pickles, because frankly I'm not sure I want a whole gallon of these things. All you do is drain the pickles, reserving the brine, slice them in half lengthwise, put them back in the jar, dissolve the sugar and Kool-Aid in the brine, and pour it back into the jar. After two weeks you've got Koolickles. Here's what they look like today:

This could easily be the weirdest thing I've ever made. I can't wait to try them. I'll let you know if they're any good.

David

Some photos

2007-11-05T09:07:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to post some photos for a few weeks, so I have a bit of a mixed grill for you. Enjoy!

This is Abby on our hike up coyote peak a few weeks ago.

The view of Saint Helena from the trail.

These are some cattle we saw while we were driving. They don't look nearly as happy as the ones on the happy cows commercial. I think it's false advertising.

This is a loaf of oatmeal bread I made a few weeks ago. It made great toast.

Here is a shot of my beer on the day I bottled it. By the way, it turned out quite well. My next brew will be my first attempt at the wedding beer.

I hope everyone is doing well and that you enjoyed our photos.
David

Week 14, Home and the World of Flavor Conference

2007-11-04T11:33:00.000-08:00

Week 14 of Euro went pretty well. We made food from Eastern Europe, so lots of goulash, and stews and quick pickles. The food was good, although Chef was in quite a bad mood. On Friday we had decided that we wanted to make breakfast foods, so what better time to do it than breakfast time (which is pretty early, in case you didn’t get the memo). I arrived at school on Friday at 3:45am for class at 4am. I was all prepared to pop in my overnight cinnamon rolls, which I had made the night before and let raise in the fridge. Chef then announced that we was embarrassed that no one wanted to make eggs Benedict, so I decided to make it to pacify him, although that meant that I got to make hollandaise at 5:30 in the morning. The hollandaise came out perfectly, as did my poached eggs. The chef instructors all wanted the eggs benedict, and Chef Stephen who was the pastry chef at the French Laundry said that the eggs benedict was done perfectly. What a compliment! So we had fun making breakfast, although we were all soo sleepy. I have a new appreciation for guys and girls who are working at Denny’s and Perkins making 20 omelets at a time at 5am.

At the end of breakfast, 9am, we all went to the classroom and chef announced that he would be leaving to go back to New York at the end of the World of flavor conference. He said that he couldn’t sell his house, and his teenage daughter didn’t want to leave her high school so he is going back. I have to admit no one was very sad. So no more Chef Mike, who thinks I’m swell, but I’m convinced others think I’m swell too.

After Euro I went home to Shawano for a few days (Sunday-Tuesday). It was nice to be home and hang out with mom and dad. Mom and I shopped Shawano, we all had dinner with Chris and Stacey at Luigi’s…yummy ravioli. The next night we went to the Launching Pad, and had yummy burgers. On the way to the airport, Mom and I had lunch with Dave’s mom Barbara. It was so nice to see her and catch up a little bit.

Wednesday was the start of the World of Flavors conference at school. Which was pretty cool to be a part of. I saw a ton of celebrity chefs, the owner of the Slanted Door in SF Charles Phan, Morimoto from the Food Channel, and Martin Yan from PBS “Yan can Cook”, among a ton of others who non food geeks would not be excited about, but I was super excited. The school looked beautiful, the theme was Asia, and there were huge paper birds and dragons hung from the three story stair well. The barrel room, which where all the wine was produced when the building was the Christian Brothers winery, became an Asian Market, with huge silk multi color awnings, and bamboo food stands. It was too cool. I helped Wednesday-Friday, and then spend Saturday cooking and cleaning for a little dinner party we were having. When I was in Shawano mom and I got a bunch of food together that I cant get in CA, and we shipped it out. Dave and I thought it would be fun to have Joel and Victoria over for a little Wisconsin feast. We had cheese spread, and summer sausage for an appetizer (with old fashioneds), which they both loved and had never had before. Then we had been cheese soup with kielbasa, again something they had never had before. Then we made brats on the grill with our homemade sour kraut, and German potato salad, again things they had never had. For dessert, a family favorite, Grandma Yeager rolls, which are kind of like butter horn cookies, but they have meringue and cinnamon in the middle. Victoria wanted to help, so she came and we made the rolls, as David made the soup. Here we are making the rolls.

Both Joel and Victoria loved the meal. David premiered his latest beer, “Napa Red” which was a hit as well. We played games after dinner and had tons of fun. It was nice to have people over for a grown-up dinner.

Lots of love to everyone
Abby

Week 13

2007-10-22T18:52:00.000-07:00

My euro class is going well. We are all getting a little fed up with the teacher, but for the most part everyone is going fine. We cooked our way through Spain, and Italy this week and for the most part everything was good. Spain food is not really my thing, so it was a lot of empanadas and random fish bits. We got in suckling pig and were going to roast them whole, which is really really yummy, but the pigs were rotten. It was sad that the little baby pigs died for no good reason and ended up in the trash. What a shame.

Besides the pigs going to waste we have been bombarded with the history of each of the countries that we have been talking about over the last two weeks. Long lectures, with lots of misinformation. Our chef lived in Europe in the 1980’s and he still thinks Europe is in the 80’s. He announced in class that everyone in the basque region of Spain wears a beret. Victoria and I just giggled in the back row, and could count on one hand the number of berets we saw in the basque region. We think they were big in the 80’s, and he didn’t get the fashion memo.

Everyone at school is getting a little stir crazy, like the weeks leading up to Christmas break. Everyone is getting on everyone elses nerves, and we are all ready for the week break after this class. The school holds a conference every year called “The world of Flavors”. It’s a big deal in the industry, and we get the week off of school for it, and can volunteer if we want to. This year’s the theme is asia, so it should be really fun. Morimoto of Iron Chef, on the food channel is coming, as is Martin Yan from PBS, as well as every other famous Asian chef that I should know, but don’t. It should be fun to meet them all. The best part about the conference is that it starts on Wednesday, so I get to go home Sun-Tuesday ☺ I’m too excited to see mom and dad, and have lunch with Barbara!

Since there has not been a photo in a while, here is a photo of David, Victoria, Joel, and myself in San Francisco Saturday Night. Victoria, Joel and I spent the day in the city and David met us for dinner. The restaurant had this sign on the front window, and we were al a little confused by it, although it was an Asian restaurant and there was no cheese. Enjoy the photos. ☺

Week 12

2007-10-14T13:35:00.001-07:00

Week 12

Week 12 -14 will be European/Mediterranean food. The first three days was dedicated to Northern Africa, Turkey, Greece, Iran, and the middle east. I was the Sous Chef on Wednesday, which is a rotating position of authority. I made sure everyone had everything they needed, made sure we had all the food. I helped Chef Mike set up the demo and then I set up the buffet of all the food that we made. It was fun to be in charge and I think I did pretty well.

Friday we switched to Spain, and had a three hour lecture on Spain and is food. Three hours was a lot of lecture, and the information was a little dated, but most of it was still true. Next week Monday and Tuesday will be Spain as well and then the rest of the week will be Italian.

Saturday David and I were feeling adventurous and decided and go on a hike (stop laughing Leigh-Anna. I’m out-doorsy!) We got some salads from a gourmet market in town, and some fried chicken and drove to Napa Valley State Park to eat it. It is a 5 minute drive from our house, so it was a nice afternoon activity. We parked the car and hiked up a small hill (1000 feet or so) and had our lovely little picnic from the top. It was nice to get little exercise and the hike was beautiful, although it was a little more strenuous than I thought it would be. When we got home we made a delicious four cheese mac and cheese, a warm spinach salad with bacon dressing, and broccoli. Victoria came over, as she usually does for dinner on Saturday night. We had a yummy dinner and then watched a little Family guy (one of our favorite TV shows).

Now David is at work and I’m about to do some homework, and fold the laundry. It sunny and beautiful outside, although I wish it was a little cooler, and more fall-like. 70 and sunny does not say October to me. Oh well, I should enjoy it while it lasts.
I hope everyone had a great week,

Lots of love
Abby

Week 11

2007-10-14T13:34:00.000-07:00

Week 11

My class for week 11 was Flavor Dynamics with Chef Tucker Bunch. We talked about how different flavor combinations occur is different types of food, ie Basil, tomatoes, olive oil = Italian food. My group had Asian foods, which meant that I got to play with a bunch of weird (to me ) ingredients. I made chicken in clay pot, which was chicken cut up and marinated in fish sauce (which was new to me and smelled like swamp) and chilies, ginger and soy. It was really really good, even though the fish sauce smelled like swamp. The lectures for this class were by far my favorite, thus far. We tasted salts, olive oils, and vinegars and talked about why we liked certain ones and disliked other.

My favorite lecture was about smells relation to taste. We shut our eyes and picked out a jelly belly, held our nose and popped it into our mouths. We chewed and it was so weird, I couldn’t taste anything, because my nose was held. I couldn’t tell what flavor it was. Then we were told to let go of our noses and I could tell it was coffee flavored. It was kind of fun.

On Friday we did a market basket assignment. We went to the farmers market, and had $10 per group to buy something to make 30 portions of a one-bite appetizer within our flavor profile, (ours was Asian). We found some fun mussels, and these mini tomatoes. We steamed the mussels in a curry, coconut, lemon verbena, and lemon grass mixture; we then took the muscles out, and skewered them with the mini tomatoes. It was supper yummy and everyone really liked it.

The Saturday after week 11 we went to Monterey with my friend Victoria and her friend who was visiting from Miami. We got sandwiches at Campango’s again, and then went to the aquarium. It was fun hanging out with Victoria for the day. We drove back on Saturday night, and David worked on Sunday while I did homework. I had off on Monday for Columbus Day, which was nice, and David switched shifts with a girl we work with so he was off on Monday too. We went out for tacos and went wine tasting and had a really fun day together.

Lots of love
Abby

Week 10 - wines class

2007-09-30T17:48:00.000-07:00

This week we had afternoon classes, which I think upset my chi somehow, and I came down with a cold on Wednesday. We had wines class, combined with the PM class, so our class was held from 2-8:30. I worked a few mornings and then went to school, which seemed like longer days than going to school and then working until 8:30 which I usually do a few days a week.

My class was fun, a good refresher from the last few wines classes I had at Stout. We tasted wines and went to a few wineries to watch the crushing process. Watching the grapes being crushed and tasting the juice at all stages was really interesting. The class was mostly lecture for 6 hours a day so it was a little boring, but the information was good, and I was hearing it all for the third time.

Besides class my friends from cooking school and I went out for Chinese on Wednesday night. David was able to join us, which was fun. Yesterday I felt my cold lifting, so I made lasagna and my friend Victoria from school came over for dinner. It was fun to have her over, but I think I had a little too much excitement and Sunday (today) I’m feeling yucky again. I’m taking it easy and lounging in my Pj’s and drinking lots and lots of fluids. I’m planning a full recovery for tomorrow for class with Chef Tucker Bunch again!! I can't believe I'm 1/3 done with school.

I hope everyone had a great week, in Wisconsin/Minnesota, in Europe on a fabulous cruise, or celebrating your 28th Birthday with a Packer Win! (Wade!!!).

Lots of love to all,
Abby

Yay Beer! (Part 2)

2007-09-29T20:44:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday (the 22nd) the weather was cruddy and rainy, so we needed an inside activity. Our best idea was to drive over the hill to Sonoma Valley and visit the brewpubs there. We invited our friend Victoria to come along with us. Our first stop was Dempsey's in Petaluma. We chose to start there because they had the best-looking lunch menu. We had a very nice lunch there and shared their beer sampler between the three of us. There were five beers on their sampler and they all were nice. Our favorite was their stout.

Next, we drove the 18 miles to Santa Rosa and visited the 3rd Street Aleworks. They had quite a selection in their sampler.

There were 13 beers (as you can see) ranging from a Kolsch to an Oatmeal Stout. Abby and Victoria's favorite was a cherry ale called "Bada Bing Cherry Ale" which was certainly not made with bing cherries. It tasted like it was made with sour cherries and in spite of my general dislike of fruit beer, it was actually quite good. My favorites were their English Bitter and the IPA on cask. All the beers were solid and several were terrific. Here are some photos of us with the beer.

After the 13 samples plus the five from Dempsey's, we needed a break. We went to Target and spent about an hour taking care of our general merchandise needs. After a little walking around time, we decided we were ready to visit Santa Rosa's second brewpub, the Russian River Brewing Company. Russian River had a great presentation for their sampler.

You can't really see it in the photo, but the glasses slip out the edge of the tray. Since the 12 beers here were numbers 19 through 30, we had a pizza to help us maintain some level of decorum. Russian River is well known for its Belgian-style beer. I thought the Belgians were fantastic. They had great names, too. The golden strong ale is called Damnation, the biere de garde style is called Perditition, and one of the brettanomyces-soured ales is called Sanctification. They also had four or five blisteringly hoppy IPAs including an imperial IPA called Pliny the Elder. The beers were all pretty tasty. Abby and Victoria didn't care much for the IPAs or the sour Belgian ales. My favorites were the Damnation and the Perdition, but I loved all of the Belgians because they were so unique.

We had originally planned to continue North to Healdsburg and hit the Bear Republic Brewing Company, but our safe return home would have been at risk, so we called it a day and headed back to Saint Helena. We had a great time and personally, I can't think of a better way to spend a rainy day.

P.S. I racked my beer from last Friday into a secondary fermenter and I'll probably get it bottled next weekend.

Week 9 (already!)

2007-09-23T09:34:00.000-07:00

This week started off with me dreading our cooking test on Friday. When I got to school on Monday morning the chef said he thought we should get the test over and should have it Monday instead. Pop Test Time!! The whole class freaked out and at the end I got a 9/10 on my beef stew.

Tuesday was business as usual, making food for lunch for the school. Then Wednesday another Pop Test on Steak with béarnaise sauce, mine was super good and chef gave me a 9.25. Yay Abby. Thursday was fun because it was the day we were supposed to have our final, so we drew which protein we would have as a group, to divide up the proteins, and we were allowed to make whatever we wanted. Lisa and I made lentil soup with ham hocks, our protein, and Sham and Andrew made like 9 Indian dishes. Sham is from India and is the kid who really tests my patience. He was in my group the first week, and again somewhere in the middle. I end up in his group a lot, I think because God likes to see how I’ll react, and then giggles at me when I lose my cool. Any way we have been with the same groups for this entire 3 week class and I’m glad it’s over. The soup I made was good, it got a little chilly here this week 50-60 and drizzly, so it was a soup day. The Indian food that the boys made was yummy too, all 9 different kinds of it.

Friday was vegetarian day, and our chef, chef mike, was gone so we had the afternoon class’s chef, Chef Amir, who was amazing. He talked to us a little about vegetarian cooking as a niche market, for example his friend who got really into vegetarian food and is now Sting’s personal chef. Too Cool! He was fascinating, so it was fun to have someone else who was a little clearer about what we were supposed to do. For my vegetarian food, which I have a wee bit of experience in, I made vegetarian chili and Grandma Jackie’s monkey bread, which I stuffed each ball of dough with caramelized onions and Parmesan before I baked them. It was pretty amazing.

Before he left, Chef Mike, my chef for the last few weeks, asked if I would help him figure out the curve for the written final exam. When I was helping him he said that in his 20 years at the CIA 1 in every 400 students or so catches his eye. He said that I had “it”, and that he expected nothing less than amazing things from me at school and in the future. That made me feel great! It’s nice to be noticed for trying hard and being a good person, and dare I say a good cook? How nice!

Another week done with school. My next class is wines, which starts at 2!! So I get to go in late, and sleep in!!!! David is working closing shifts as well so I will get to hang out with him in the morning. How fun. This week was a good week, it was nice to not have the tests looming all week long, we got them out of the way and then could really relax and be creative.

I hope everyone is doing well
Lots of love
Abby

Yay Beer!

2007-09-22T08:37:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,

First of all, here is a photo from last Saturday. Abby and I went to see the historic Bale Grist Mill just north of town. It's a restored flour mill from the late 1800's where they actually do milling demonstrations on the weekends. It was much cooler than it sounds. I think that the most interesting part was learning about how the face of the grindstone got re-surfaced periodically. (Don't worry, I won't bore you with it.) I was surprised at how fast the water wheel turned. Here's a photo of me standing by it.

As for the post title, it's finally getting cool enough here in Napa for me to brew. So on my day off yesterday, I got to brew a batch of beer. I made a red ale in the hopes that it will be ready early enough to show a prospective employer what I'd like to do with his current red ale. Here is a photo of my crushed malt in my mash tun.

The lightest grain on the right is pale 2-row, the medium colored grain on the left is caramel 40 , Munich, and biscuit malts, and the darkest is chocolate malt. The metal piece is part of the mash tun and helps to filter the liquid coming out.

Here is a photo of the boil. In professional brewing parlance, I had a rockin' boil. I started with 16 quarts of wort and boiled it down to 10. I was making a 3 gallon batch, so I had to add more water to keep my volume up.

Here is the boiled, chilled, oxygenated beer. I realized that the spot I chose to ferment it was right next to our hydroponic garden, so I had to cover it to keep uv light from damaging the beer. I had made a few covers back in WI, but I didn't bring them here, so I had to think quickly.

Week 8

2007-09-15T19:12:00.000-07:00

Week 8 of cooking school

This week went by in a flash, partly because I only was at school for three days. Tuesday I had a migraine and was out for the count all day. I missed school, and thank goodness I didn’t have to work. Yikes. So that was no fun at all.

On Wednesday I was feeling much better, which was good because we had a field trip to San Francisco and Berkley. We all loaded onto a bus and drove to San Francisco and went to a farmer’s market downtown. Then we went to a meatpacking plant which was a lot more interesting than it sounds. It was first freakishly clean, which was good since this place supplies most of napa valley with meat. Next it was so interesting to see guys French a rack of lamb in 3 minutes, where it takes me 10 times that amount. They were amazing. We then went to Mel’s dinner, which is a SF classic. It’s all done in chrome and is the typical 50’s dinner. It was too fun. Next we went to the Ferry building, which has a bunch of food stores, (Scharffen-berger chocolates, Acme sourdough bread etc) and some restaurants like the slanted door which I still haven’t been to, but need to go to. Next we went to Berkley and went to Berkley bowl, which is a huge gourmet/hippie supermarket. We were all pretty tired by then so we all just clumped around and then got back on the bus to go home. It was a really fun day though and it was nice to spend time with people from school in normal clothes and do normal stuff.

The rest of the week (the other three days) went really fast and was kind of a blur, food was made and served and enjoyed. I'm 25% done with cooking school and I feel like I have learned a ton, and I'm really enjoying it. Lots of love to everyone and come and visit us in Napa!!! (Its 80 and beautiful right now!!) Abby

Some field trip photos

Sorry its side ways, this is me at the meat packing plant. How cute am I in a hair net. Too cute, right? The ex vegetarian and the hanging side of beef. yikes.

Ok, don't worry moms and grandmas and Leigh. This is Joel, one of my friends from school. We were at Mel's Dinner and couldn't resist the sock hop/ 50's dinner pose. You all know me far too well to think I would share my chocolate malt with any man, maybe not even David.

Always gray and cold in SF.

Some Photos

2007-09-11T17:18:00.000-07:00

Here are a few pics from our day off last Saturday.

This is a bin of grapes waiting to be de-stemmed and crushed at the Dutch Henry Winery.

This is a view of the backyard of the Summers Winery. They had great wine and a bocce court. (Yes, of course we played a game of bocce.)

The reason we went to Summers is that we read that you could see Calistoga's Old Faithful geyser erupting from the tasting room. Also, it costs less to taste at Summers than the admission to the little park by the geyser. The guy pouring for us said the geyser kind of looks like a broken sprinkler or a guy spraying his hose up in the air.

He was right. Yellowstone's is much better. But we went home with a few bottles of wine, so it was worth the trip. One of the wines we got was an Italian varietal called Charbono. Neither of us had ever heard of it, but it was quite nice.

We had a great time at the movie that night. We packed a picnic and smuggled in a bottle of wine. We sat out under the stars in between the vineyards and watched Rear Window. It was a terrific day.

Cooking school week 7

2007-09-11T10:49:00.000-07:00

This week was the first week of my third class at cooking school, entitled skills 3 – production. In this class we pretty much make the rest of the school lunch. At 12 they line up, put in an order and then we make what they order after they order it. Like a real restaurant, no? yes!

So anyways, in this new class we get a lot more freedom to be creative in the kitchen. One of the first days we made roast chicken, and the next day I made curry chicken salad for the lunch menu. It was quite a hit, so I felt good about that. My group is more than a little crazy, some intense personalities, and we will be together for the whole class, which will be a test of patience on my part. On Friday I made chicken Kiev, and tonight I am making it for David, because he has never had it before. I’m excited to make him something I learned how to make in school.

My professor is ok, he is really knowledgeable but sometimes gives us too many things to think about. It is information over load, and hard to sift thought and figure out what exactly he wants us to do. Like the other day we were making mashed potatoes, and he said “Mashed potatoes are nice, maybe you could put some cheddar cheese in them , and some chives and some bacon..that would be nice right? You could also add some flour and some eggs and make gnocchi that would be real nice to right? What about berny potatoes we should find some truffles and you could totally make berny potatoes…” After saying things like that we walks away, and I’m left to figure out which of the three different potatoes he would like in an hour… It’s a little tricky, but I’m figuring out how to read him.

Other than that everything is going well. David and I spent Saturday together, which is pretty rare for us. We went wine tasting, and out for lunch, and then we went to a movie that was outside in a winery. It was really really fun, and Victoria, my pal from school came along to the movie. Next week we have a field trip to San Francisco to look forward to.

Lots of love,
Abby

Wine Tasting

2007-09-03T10:16:00.001-07:00

St. Francis Winery - Dont we look cute.

Chateau St. Jean Winery

These are the wineries that we went to in Sonoma with Wade and Ali.

Cooking school week 6

2007-09-02T10:40:00.001-07:00

This picture is the view from th highway between Napa and Sonoma.

Week 6 of Cooking School This week was a short week, only four days, because our blocks are 14 days long. This makes for a nice long Labor Day weekend. Wade and Ali are in town so we have been having fun with them and their friends Jason and Caitlin. So school.

This week was again testing week. Wednesday and Thursday I had tests, Wednesday was a written test, and a knife test, and Thursday was my cooking test. For the knife test I had to produce 2 cups of small dice (1/4” cubed) onion, 2 cup or julienne (2” x 1/8” x 1/8”) onion, ½ cup fine dice shallot, ½ cup minced garlic, and 1 cup tomato concasse (which is tomatoes that are boiled for 45 seconds and shocked in ice water and then peeled, seeded, and cut into little pieces). All of this in 30 minutes. Lets just say that there was onion flying everywhere. The funniest part was my friend from school Victoria who was right next to me for the knife test, kept singing dankeshane everytime anyone said concasse (which is pronounced Con-ca-say). It was too funny and we were all giggles during the test, but we both did well even with the giggling.

Thursday went really well, as well. The test was sautéed chicken breast with sauce of fine herbs, berny potatoes, which are mashed potatoes with black truffle pieces in them, shaped into pear shaped and rolled in breadcrumbs and deep fried. Another reason to be made at the French, they take forever to make. Lastly green beans were the veg. All of my food came out pretty well, and I again was freakishly clean. If I could only make myself be freakishly clean all the time in the kitchen, not just on test days. Oh well. Chef Tucker Bunch said I looked like a rock star, referring to how nice my food and my station looked, so that made me happy. I am currently 1/5th of the way through my program and I am really starting to like it. I feel less scared and more in control, which is nice.

Everything in sunny CA is going well outside of school. The grape harvest has begun and should last until the end of September. We have been having a major heat wave which has been pretty unpleasant in our not air conditioned apartment. Right now 10:30 AM on Sunday, the shades are all drawn and windows all shut to keep in the nights coolness. How funny. I hope everyone has a fun and safe holiday weekend!

Lots of love,
Abby

Week 5

2007-08-26T21:49:00.000-07:00

Cooking School week 5

This week was pretty fun, and I didn’t have to get up as early as I thought I was going to have to, so that was nice. It turns out that we are not allowed into the kitchen before 7 due to legal liability. Sooo instead of 5:30, which is what time I got to school on Monday…yuck, I was able to get to school at 6:30 which was soo nice. At school we made beef medallions with spicy tomato sauce, roast beef, roast chicken, risotto, braised veal cheeks, and a whole lot of seafood, shrimp, crab (live when we got them, dead and yummy when we were done with them) fish, which had to be gutted (eeww) and scaled and filled and boned ..eww. Too much fish.

The highlight of his week was that I had time to get my hair cut, which I hadn’t since done since Wisconsin. I also went out to lunch and played tennis with one of my friends from school, Victoria. It was nice to put on real clothes and do normal stuff.

Next week is again a week of testing. Wednesday written and knife tests, and Thursday the cooking test. We have Friday and labor day off which I am really looking forward to because Wade and Ali are coming!! I can’t wait to hang out with them!!!! Lots to do before then though. Right now David is still at work (9:30pm) and I just got home because today was inventory day at D and D. Not a lot of fun, although the guys in the department were talking about drinking when they got done so I don’t think it will be too rough for David the rest of the night. I hope that everyone had a great week!
Lots of love – Abby

Celebrity Count

2007-08-26T08:08:00.000-07:00

I had my third celebrity sighting at Dean and Deluca's yesterday evening, and Abby and I thought it might be interesting to post our celebrity sightings to the blog.

#1 During our first week here in town, Abby saw Michael Chiarello of the Food Network at the Safeway by our house. He is her culinary nemesis because he uses grey salt in all of his cooking, even to season pasta water. Grey salt is an expensive sea salt from France and its virtue is in its appearance, so any use but for finishing is extravagantly wasteful. (Grey salt can cost over $20 per pound.) I think she showed commendable restraint in not kicking him in the shin.

#2 My first week working at D&D, I served Tory Belleci, one of the builders on the Discovery Channel show Mythbusters. I helped him find some prosciutto, salami, and cheeses. He was pretty friendly and when he was ready to leave he asked me if we were allowed to accept tips. I told him that I wasn't sure, so he gave me a tip--"Have that shirt cleaned and burned." No, not really, he gave me a few dollars.

#3 Earlier this week, Joe Montana came into D&D while I was working. I didn't serve him, but I saw him.

#4 Yesterday I helped Robin Quivers of the Howard Stern show. I sold her some cheese.

Unfortunately none of these are juicy stories we can sell to the tabloids for lots of money. We'll let you know if we get any of those.

David

David's New Pursuit

2007-08-23T16:12:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

My weekend from the cheese counter is usually on Monday and Tuesday, so I have lots of free time while Abby is in school those days. It's still too hot in our apartment for beer to ferment safely, so I've been trying my hand at the other historically (slightly less) important grain product, bread.

My first attempt was about three weeks ago and I let the bread rise while we went to the laundromat. It rose a bit too much, so I wound up with a huge loaf that overlapped all four sides of my baking sheet. It was huge, but not very tall. I deeply regret not taking a photo of it. In spite of its ludicrous size, it tasted pretty good.

My second attempt was last week Monday. I made the same recipe, but watched it carefully during my bench proof to make sure it didn't over rise. It didn't, but I really should have made two round loaves instead of just one. It was also quite tasty but comically large--I'd guess it was about 16 inches across and 6 inches tall. (Wade can confirm how huge it was.) Regrettably, I neglected to take a photo of that one too.

This week Monday, I picked out a new recipe and tried again. My new recipe had only 1 pound of flour instead of the nearly 2 pounds in the first recipe. It also started with a yeasted pre-ferment in the fridge overnight--a new technique for me. I shaped this one into an oval and baked it. It turned out very nicely.

The crust browned a bit more than I wanted it to because I used two tricks to make the crust brown more--next time I'll just use one. The cooler of the two is that I added a burst of steam just like in a professional bread oven. When I preheated the oven , I put a cast iron skillet onto the bottom rack. When I put the bread in, I poured 1 cup of boiling water into the preheated skillet and closed the door quickly. Luckily, I thought to wear gloves when I added the water because it was quite violent.
Here's a view of the top. I slashed it with a knife just before it went into the oven so it would open where I wanted it to rather than splitting anywhere. The bread turned out great; delicious and crusty. (Just like me) It made nice toast for breakfast this morning with the Door County cherry jam Abby and I made last summer.

I hope everyone is well. If you're in the neighborhood, stop by for some toast.

David

School Week 4

2007-08-18T08:58:00.001-07:00

This is my second chef, Tucker Bunch, which is the silliest name ever. I thought you could all use a picture of what someone named Tucker Bunch looks like.

First for the not-school news. The 13th is my parent’s anniversary! Dave and I celebrated by going to the French Laundry and dropping an insane amount of money that we don’t really have on dinner for two. The French Laundry is debated as being the best restaurant in America, and is super hard to get into, so it was really cool that we were able to get a table. Dinner was really good, although not what we expected. It was much simpler than we thought it was going to be, but it was delicious. In addition to our fancy dinner on Monday, we had our first guest to our apartment, and we have the same face. That’s right it was Wade, who was in Santa Rosa for business and came to hang out with us n Tuesday. Dave made an awesome dinner as always and it was fun to catch up. On Thursday I got to eat with Wade and mom and Dad, because David took my closing shift at work. What a nice guy.

In school everything went pretty well. I had one group member who I wanted to strangle the entire time but besides that it was ok. This group member is from India and is still under the impression that women should not carry heavy things or use dangerous things like knives or the stove so it’s a little education process for him. Our items that we made this week were real food, sautéed chicken breast with spinach and au gratin potatoes, grilled beef tenderloin, grilled salmon, grilled pork chops. We are actually making our lunch and our extras are put on the lunch buffet for the rest of the school, so that’s kind of fun. Next week I am a sanitor, which means that I need to be at school around 5:30 to help with the set up of everything for our class, which start at 7. Yikes.

School week 3

2007-08-18T08:41:00.000-07:00

This week at school was pretty much devoted to getting ready for our first examinations. After each unit at school we will be tested in the same format. The first day of testing there is a knife test and a written test. The written test is pretty straightforward scantron, the knife test is pretty interesting though. We were given an hour to cut ½ cup potatoes into ¼ inch cubes, turn 6 potatoes (Which means to cut into 2 long footballs with seven equal sides) 6 turned celery pieces (2 inches long again with the top and bottom of the u shape removed so it becomes a flat piece) 6 fluted mushrooms, ½ chiffonade cabbage, ½ potatoes cubes 1/8 inch, and julienne of carrots 2 inches long 1/8 x 1/8 inch. It was a lot to get done in an hour. When we were done we were called to evaluate it with the chef. The evaluation was the chef grabbing a random handful of our vegetables and taking a ruler and evaluating the sides of out itty bitty cubes and sticks of vegetables. I got a 86% which I was happy with for three weeks of practice.

The next day was our cooking test. We had 3 hours to make cream of tomato soup, consommé, a sample plate of the different colors of roux, and a hollandaise. I got mine all done in plenty of time, and had the cleanest station in the class. I presented my stuff to my chef, and she said that everything was pretty much prefect. She knocked me off 2 points for my soup not being reduced enough (I hate tomato soup so it was hard to tell if mine was good tomato soup or not) , and my roux had a bit too much oil in it so she knocked .5 points off of that one. I got a 97.5, which not only was the highest grade in the class is pretty unheard of at the CIA for your first cooking test. So yay me!! I am feeling pretty good about everything and am excited for my next class skills 2 with a new teacher, Chef Tucker Bunch.

Photo 1 is of Turned potatoes (not mine, which are a little lumpy)
Photo 2 is of a fluted mushroom which is actually what mine look like.

Oo-ooh that smell...

2007-08-06T07:16:00.000-07:00

Here they are...the long awaited, much anticipated Gilroy Garlic Festival pictures!

We decided to visit the festival on Sunday (July 29th) in the hopes that the crowds would be smaller toward the end of the weekend. (Ha!) We got directions and checked the weather forecast to see if we needed to bring warm clothes. (Yeah right!) We're about 1 1/2 hours from Gilroy, so we left around 11am thinking that we would be garlicked out after only a few hours. (That's the only thing we got right all day.) It turned out that there were so many people going that the highway was backed up the last 20 miles to Gilroy. Once we got through the back up and got off the highway, there were so many people that it took us another hour to get to the festival. We finally parked just in view of the entrance...

We were hoping that the entrance would show up in this picture, but it's just beyond those trees in the background. It's so far away that we could barely see the 12 foot long banner over the entrance. (We took this photo on our way out. Abby is holding the garlic braid that is now hanging in our kitchen.)

The weather was at least in the mid-90s without a cloud in the sky. (The heat index must have been at least 350 degrees.) We walked in and finally made it onto the grounds. It was a lot like a small county fair. It was laid out in a square with tons of food booths around three sides and a music stage on the fourth. There were a few rows of craft booths in the center, but they had regular fair-y crafts, not a bunch of stuff made out of garlic or made to look like garlic. Here are some of the food booths.

By the time we got in, we were both starving so we had garlic fries (with at least a head of garlic on them--maybe two), garlic kalamari, garlic bread, and crawfish etoufee. We tried to get a pepper steak sandwich (with garlic), but the line was too long.

As you can see, there wasn't much shade, so we stayed away from the garlic beverage options. We couldn't pass up the chance to eat garlic ice cream, though.

They didn't have just plain garlic, but they had the five flavors listed on the sign with garlic. We really debated what to get.

The garlic roasted almond sounded the least objectionable (since we both like garlic almonds) but we thought the garlic vanilla sounded like it would let the garlic come through the most. In the end we decided to go for the garlic vanilla.

Here is Abby "enjoying" some garlic vanilla ice cream. (Doesn't she look convincing!) She wasn't such a fan, but I didn't think it was too bad. I probably never have to have it again, but it wasn't horrible. When I took a bite, it tasted like plain vanilla ice cream, but after I swallowed it, all I could taste was garlic.

Anyway, we wandered around a bit, bought our garlic braid, and got some refreshing treats to eat on our way out. Abby had frozen strawberries and peaches on a stick dipped in chocolate and I had a shaved ice (I passed up the garlic flavor in favor of lime.) We walked out and made it back to the highway (the same route that took us an hour to get in) in under 10 minutes.

It was a once in a lifetime experience. (We're glad we did it, but we probably don't need to go again.) I'd recommend it, but try to go on a day when it's cooler or at least cloudy.

Cooking School week 2

2007-08-04T12:02:00.000-07:00

This week at school we made consomme, and worked our way through the mother sauces. We made a veloute , which is a thickened stock, a bechamel, which is thickened milk, espagnole sauce, which is a brown sauce, and finally a hollandaise. Tomato (the last of the 5 mother sauces is Monday)

Friday was hollandaise day. We have a lecture every morning, and in our lecture we were reminded that all hot foods must be served and kept above 141 to be out of the temperature danger zone (the zone where bacteria and microbes multiply like crazy). So we all march into the kitchen confident that we can make this sauce. I make mine taste it and its perfect, I bring it to chef, she temps it and its at 90 degrees (our school issued thermometers are on back order so I didn't have one). She asks me if that is above, or below 141. I tell her below and she tells me to go and get it hotter. I go and put it on my pot of simmering water and 5 minutes later it breaks. The eggs and butter separate. I try to fix it. Start with new egg yolks, add the broken sauce...and it doesn't work. I try to blend it in the food processor. nothing. I try to add some water, another CIA approved method. nothing again. I make a new one. Its beautiful, and tasty. I try to make it hot enough, I put it into a heated bowl. Chef temps it, 111 degrees. not hot enough. I try to heat it up again, it breaks and get angry at my bowl which gets angry back and I burn every finger tip on my left hand when I try to fix that sauce. I make a new one and am convinced that I will just go and ask her about the flavor and tell her that I think its impossible to make it hot.

I walk my bowl of sauce over to Chef, she asks me if its hot. I say well its hot ish, but not 141. I also tell her that I think its impossible to make it hot without it breaking. She says "Oh really, you do do you?" I am terrified. She asks me what temperate eggs coagulate (which we learned in our consomme lecture) I say 120 and as soon as the words leave my mouth she smiles and says my sauce is great, and that its physically impossible to make a hollandaise above 120, because it will separate. I spent 2 hours making a sauce that was impossible because the book told me that it must be served and held at 141.

What Abby Learned -
+The even thought it is regarded as such, Th New Professional Chef book is not in fact the bible of cooking, and that common sense is good too.
+Although it is commonly known that the CIA of today is a more snuggly CIA than that of the 70's and 80's the chefs still like to mess with you to make a point.

Sooo this week was a little rough at the end, but this coming week will really test me. This next week is out test for our first unit. We have a timed knife test and written test on Thursday and a cooking test on Friday. Wish me luck and send good thoughts my way this week. yikes.

Lots of love
Abby

Consomme night!

2007-08-04T10:24:00.001-07:00

Consomme!!

Last night I taught David how to make consomme. Consomme is a stock that is clarified by adding raw meat, egg whites, and ground up veggies and then simmering for 1-1.5 hours. Its pretty hard to do well because if you simmer it too hard the raft (raw meat and eggs and veggies) wont form into a solid mass, and then you stock wont be clear.
(Isn't David cute) :)

Here is step one, it is milky looking raw meat and eggs in stock. Pretty gross.

Now the raft (firm mass that raises to the surface) is starting to form and the chicken and eggs are starting to coagulate. Now we simmer for 1-1.5 hours so the impurities in the stock bubble over the raft and get stuck in it, leaving the stock clear.

The raft after we strained the consomme off of it.

The consomme! Crystal clean and amazing. We made this three times at school this week and I thought it would be right up David's alley. How weird that raw mean and egg whites, cooked in stock makes it crystal clear!

San Francisco Pictures

2007-08-04T10:16:00.000-07:00

David and I went to San Fran the weekend before school started. Here are a few of our pictures.

The Golden Gate Bridge

In this one I have chocolate ice cream all over my face, but thank goodness it doesn't look like it.

My First Week of School

2007-07-28T09:26:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone!

I am done with my first week of school, which went by in the blink of an eye. I am now 1/30 done with school. Yay!!

The first real day was more than a little scattered and crazy but the second was a ton better, thanks to Joel and Andrew our Sous Chefs (a randomly assigned rotating position). They really took control and laid out for us exactly what was expected and when it was due. The rest of the week went really well, crazy and fast paced, but well.
This week I learned how to cut vegetables into a zillion crazy shapes. We, as a class made stock, white chicken and brown veal, french onion soup, and chicken and rice soup.

Next week is consommme (which is a stock that is clarified using egg whites, ground meat, and veggies which come together and form a raft which then traps all the impurities). The stock ends up crystal clear and will be part of our Skills I test at the end of our first 3 weeks. Its super complicated and finicky so that will be he hardest part of my test, Im sure.

Last night Dave and Doug (6'7" guy from Iowa in my class) and Caroline (from Minneapolis, by way of Madison) and I went to see Ratatouille and it was awesome! What a funny movie. Tonight we are going to a party at some of my classmates house, and then Sunday we are off to the Gillroy Garlic Festival in Gillroy CA. Hurray!

I love you all tons and thanks for the cards and phone calls of encouragement. It meant a ton during this crazy stressful week (The instructors call week one RUSH week or hell week).
Lots of love and hugs to all

Abby :)

We're employed!

2007-07-25T18:03:00.000-07:00

Abby and I interviewed at Dean & Deluca on Tuesday. It's a specialty grocery store chain with a deli and espresso bar. It also sells cookware and kitchen gadgets. We found out that we both got hired today to work in the Cheese and Charcuterie--fitting for two people from Wisconsin. It's a pretty amazing cheese counter. The manager said they usually have about 250 types of cheese at any given time. So we should both be cheese experts by the time we leave. Their website only lists the items you can order online, but you can check it out if you want. The url is www.deandeluca.com Horray for paying rent!

2007-07-23T21:59:00.001-07:00

As promised, more Monterey photos.

Here is a jellyfish we saw off the Coast Guard Breakwater.

Here is Abby holding up her tiny pet seal.

This is the jellyfish-inspired art by Dale Chihuly.

The jellyfish tank at the aquarium. I wish I could live here...sigh.

A photo of one of the two mola molas in the blue ocean tank--just for Ann.

Photo of the week (Last Week)

2007-07-23T18:37:00.001-07:00

For those of you not fortunate enough to know this man, his name is Bennett Compagno. He is the man behind Compagno's Deli in Monterey, CA. It is impossible to convince anyone who hasn't tried his sandwiches how amazing they are, so I'll just say that Bennett's chicken parmesan sandwich followed by a slice of chocolate peanut butter cake would high in the running for my choice as my final meal.

This photo was taken on the 13th of July when Abby and I went to Monterey for the day so I could show her my old hang-outs from my time at DLI, the military language school I attended there. (And as additional evidence of his greatness, Bennett hooked us up with free passes to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.) We had a great day escaping from our apartment.

We're just about to go to dinner for our 2nd anniversary, but I'll post more pictures from Monterey tomorrow. And I'll get to this week's photo of the week tomorrow or Wed.

We live here now!!

2007-07-22T14:03:00.001-07:00

Our new home :)

Here is our kitchen :)

Bedroom

living room

Office

The Link to More photos

2007-07-22T13:56:00.000-07:00

The last time I put it in it cut it off so here it is, and you do not need a facebook account to see them. Please let us know if you have any problems viewing them :)
Lots of love
Abby and David

http://uwstout.facebook.com/album.php?
aid=2063294&l=a79a5&id=185101732

This should be all one link when you paste it in. You might need to do it into two parts, Blogspot refuses to wrap the whole link to the next line of text, so it just cuts it off. There is no space after the "?" it just continues on to the aid=206... Hope this works!!

2007-07-17T13:24:00.001-07:00

Here is a view out the truck window in Wyoming. The road as you can see is super twisty and we almost died...or so David told me after we were through the mountains.

The cow that you can see above Davids watch was right on the side of the road and other ones were on the road and all over the shoulders.

Here she is...Old Faithful

More of our photos can be seen at:
http://uwstout.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2063294&l=a79a5&id=185101732
click on the link, or copy and paste it to your browser

We're Here!!!!

2007-07-14T13:04:00.000-07:00

We got to St. Helena on Monday morning and are finally unpacked. Today we are going to go wine tasting , finally and ride our bikes around town. We'll post about the end of our trip in a few days when we get the internet at home. We have lots of funny pictures to share.
Until then- Lots of love,
David and Abby

We’re still alive despite suicidal deer, wildfires, and driving a U-haul through the mountains.

2007-07-08T20:09:00.000-07:00

We are currently diving through Nevada, which is having some serious wild fire issues. We can see the fire damage about 500 feet from the highway and the news this morning said that 50,000 acres are on fire. Ick. I feel sorry for the firemen we see in orange suits in the 110 Nevada dessert heat.

Soo we last updated you from South Dakota, since then we drove through Wyoming, and stopped to have dinner with Amy Heikes, who is newly engaged. Congratulations to Amy and Arik, have fun at wedding counseling ;) . We then drove to Yellowstone and saw Old Faithful and the bubbling mud pits, which were super cool. The drive back out of Yellowstone to the little town we were staying (we dumped the u-Haul at the hotel and took my car up into the mountains) took forever and there were some huge deer/antelope on the road who wanted to end it all. As always, Dave did a great job of getting us through safely.

We are hoping that this is our last night in a hotel (7/8) and that tomorrow night we will be in our cute little Napa apartment and then maybe we’ll be in cell phone range and can call and talk to you all!!

Hope everyone is doing well ☺

Abby and David

P.S. There were several spots in Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada when we lost our radio station and hit the seek button, and the radio just scanned through the whole band for 5 or 10 minutes or even longer before it found another radio station. There were people living there and I can't imagine living where there aren't any radio stations. Yikes. Just one of several reasons we don't want to live in any of those states. (No offense, Amy)

Our Adventure thus Far

2007-07-04T20:14:00.000-07:00

Everyone -
Yesterday was long one. After coffee (and new shoes) at the Mall of America with E and Lauren, we had lunch with Leigh-anna and then hit the open road. Minnesota and South Dakota are both really boring and flat. Our first sightseeing excursion was to Mitchell SD, for the Corn Palace, which we both thought was a little weak.

We spent the night in the middle-of-nowhere SD and then we hit Wall Drug, The Bad Lands, a Prairie Sod House, the Black Hills, and Mt. Rushmore. It was a fun day of super lame tourist traps, which made Dave and I giggle. The Bad Lands were a lot cooler than either of us thought and we would highly recommend it.
Now we are watching the food channel ( go figure) after a dinner at a local brewery and running around the water slide park at our hotel.

I hope everyone had a great fourth.
Love,
Abby
PS We are doing really well on our no chain dining rule. Yesterday we ate dinner at a family restaurant called the Roll'n pin, and chocolate malts at the frosty king somewhere in SD. Today we had a diner breakfast in Murdo SD, lunch in Wall across from Wall Drug (mmmm indian tacos), 2 chocolate sodas at Wall drug, and dinner at the Fire House Brewery in Rapids City SD.

"The Big Rig"

2007-07-04T19:55:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,
Here is a photo of Abby and me in front our moving truck. Wade took it for us before we left the Twin Cities. Keep in mind that there is a trailer with Abby's car up on it. We've got plenty of pics to post from our trip, but our camera cable is somewhere in a box in the truck, so we'll post those later.
Happy Fourth!
David and Abby

You've found it!

2007-06-27T15:41:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,
You have successfully found your way to Abby and David's blog of our time in Napa. We probably won't be able to post anything until we get to St. Helena, but be sure to bookmark this page so you can keep up with our adventures.
Your hosts,
Abby and David