:-)

Hubby's home! I am complete again! :-)

Quinoa Salad Recipe

I've had some requests for the Quinoa Salad that was photographed as part of the Baby Shower menu. 100% of the credit goes to my dear friend, L - it's her delicious creation! She puts a new spin on it every time, but here is her basic recipe:

Prep Time: 2.5 hours
Cook Time: 20 minutes
Ready In: 3 hours

Servings: 20

Original Recipe Yield about 4 quarts

Ingredients

Salad:

• 2 1/2 cups Quinoa, rinsed
• 5 cups water
• 4 small Cucumbers, sliced and halved
• 1 pint Grape Tomatoes, halved
• 1 Red Bell Pepper, diced
• 1/2 Green bell Pepper, diced
• 1/2 Yellow Bell Pepper, diced
• 1 cup Kalamata Olives, quartered or halved
• 8 oz Feta cheese, crumbled
• 1/4 cup Fresh Parsley, chopped
• 3 green onions, sliced
• 1/8 cup Fresh Basil, chopped

Dressing:

• 3 Tbsp Lemon juice
• 7 Tbsp Olive oil
• 2 t. agave or honey
• 1 T. deli or regular mustard
• 2 t. dried oregano
• 2 t. dried basil
• 3 t. garlic powder
• salt and pepper

Directions:

1. Boil water and add quinoa grains. Cook until germ on grains "pop" and water is all used. (Basically cook as directed on package.) Once grains are cooked, cool them to room temperature.
2. Add to the cooled grains the rest of the salad ingredients; vegetables, cheese, olives, and herbs. Chill for at least a couple of hours or overnight.
3. For the dressing, in a separate bowl or jar add lemon juice, oil, mustard, agave and spices. Stir or shake until well combined. Note that you can vary the dressing as you desire - more or less spices, sugar instead of honey or agave, red wine vinegar instead of lemon juice, more dressing if you like it more heavily dressed, etc.; ultimately taste test and make sure you like it!
4. Just before serving the salad pour on the dressing and stir.

Footnotes:

• This salad is fairly versatile. If you have other veggies feel free to add them. I've made the dressing with vinegar and I've made it with lemon or lime juice. I've added other spices at times and every time it turns out great. Just use what you like!

While the cat is away, the mice will play!

I'm sitting here this evening... missing my dear hubby. He's been on the left coast for the past week. So, I thought I'd post some VERY random photos and thoughts that have crossed my mind since I've had much time to do... nothing! :)
**Disclosure - P. took the camera to the left coast with him, so most of these photos are horrid quality as they are via my phone**
Firstly, serious business. Our favorite little kitty has to have hip surgery again. :( It is the same diagnosis as last time. The problem is officially called "Physeal Dysplasia" and in his case is bilateral, or affecting both sides. Photo below of the x-ray - if you click on it hopefully you can read my very scientific comments.
And, while we're on the topic of surgery (oh, P. is gonna kill me for this). :-D
This photo is actually over three months old - Peter had sinus surgery in December. As you may already know, he survived and is alive and well. He'd be glad to tell you details if you're into that kind of gory-ness. :) (Love you hon!) ;-)
In just over a month I'm going to be laying on a beach that I suspect will look something like this:
And definitely scuba-diving - hopefully with some of these:
And most certainly lots of these:
In other news, my car was finally delivered this week. I'm so glad they got the paint color right this time. I'd hate to have to order a third...
Some of our friends took pity on single-ole' me and invited me for supper on Sunday. Homemade, from scratch Mexican food. Amazing.
Mmm. Has me salivating just thinking about it again. When I called and told P. what he was missing out on (hoping it would make him miss me, or at least the food I was eating!), he just reminded me that he had In-N-Out for lunch. Hmph.
One of the more hilarious events of the week... It obviously doesn't take much to entertain me when I'm home alone! Kitty thought he was being pretty sneaky in investigating the empty bag of chips... until he got his head stuck! HA!
Today I went to a lovely wedding of two of our friends out here. In no particular order are some photos of the festivities (remember, from my phone - not quality photos, but you'll get the gist of the event).
Sisters of the groom:
Menu - please note it was on Saturday, March 18th... wait, when WAS that???
Bride and Groom!
Mushroom Veloute (with an accent on the last e) ;-)
Potato Crusted Wild Bass:
Amish Chicken: (it rode up to my plate on horse and buggy)
Almond Sponge Cake:
T'was a beautiful wedding - very elegant. The food was amazing. The weather was gorgeous. Couldn't have asked for a much better day! Congrats to the Bride and Groom!
I s'pose that'll conclude my random thoughts for this evening. I best get some sleep before I turn into a pumpkin! Adios amigos!

Baby Shower!

Today my friend Liesl and I hostess-ed :-) a baby shower! We had it at our place, for a friend of ours, Carol who's having her baby boy in about a month. The preparation was so FUN - I loved thinking about details and how things would look, work, flow, etc! It turned out wonderful. Here's a quick journal of the afternoon:
Safety-pins decorated for the buzz-word game~
The "cake" table. :) A diaper cake on the right and cake pops on the left. Carol's nursery theme is safari, so we tried to stick with that a bit throughout the party~ (Never-mind the drywall mud and tape in the background!)
A side view of the cake table presentation~
Gifts for the game winners~
Cake Pops! By far these were the hardest, most time-consuming, but most FUN part of the preparation! Liesl came to our house Friday afternoon to start the rolling, balling, refrigerating and dipping. I joined her after work and we decorated together!
Lions, Tigers and Bears, OH MY! :)
Sunflowers to brighten the table~
...What's a party without food?! We had a lovely spread... once I got over my fears of not having enough food I was able to enjoy it a bit too. :-)
Liesl's ever-famous Quinoa salad... my favorite!
Meat, cheese & olive skewers ~
Veggies~
Fruit~ (A ripe watermelon in the winter...? YEP! Score!)
Sweet A.S. and her baby~
J.N.
S., R., and E.
J. & J.T
S.K & B.L.
M.D. and R.L. - sorry I caught you with your mouths full... it's the only photo I have tho!
A.V.
K.V.
The lady of the hour!! Carol playing the game "What's that smell?"
A.V. and Liesl. :)

Liesl and I~
Sweet little K.
L.L. and the momma-to-be~
H.R.
We had a lovely afternoon... fun games, friends and lots of presents for the new baby.
Congrats Carol and James ~ we wish you and baby boy F. all the best!

Dry suit scuba certification

A few weeks ago we temporarily lost connection with our brain cells and thought jumping into 38* water (twice!) would be a fun idea. Actually we signed up and PAID someone to LET us do this! (Insert sarcastic, "boy, you really got taken" comment here). In all reality, we were training for our dry-suit scuba certification, which I can proudly say, two VERY frigid dives later we have! :-)
First, we had to don some extremely unflattering matrix/ninja type apparel which would keep us (mostly) dry. Because, you certainly won't get cold if you're dry, right? Not true. :-) I have at minimum, five layers of clothing underneath my dry-suit. My body temperature was bearable during the dives, although my hands and face were fuh-reeeee-zing (they have direct contact with the H20). This photo was pre-dive #1. I didn't take any photos after the first dive as my fingers were too frozen to push any type of button!
Our instructor, Martin.
Not to brag or anything, but we're now Open Water, Advanced Open Water, Nitrox and Dry Suit certified! Ok, that WAS pretty shameless but really, wanna come dive with us? Join us in Cozumel in April for some amazing drift diving!

Master Bath Progress

Hi folks. Time for an update, eh?
The huge jacuzzi tub has been set and plumbed. I'm really not a big bath-taker ...rest assured I do shower periodically ;-)... however this tub makes me think a bath wouldn't be so bad! We could almost have a hot tub party in our bathroom! :-) Hmm, maybe not such a good idea.
Shower drain, pan and curb are prepped:
Hot and cold water to the vanity (or rather, where the vanity WILL be ) are pulled:
The toilet is installed & functional (Whee, something works!)
Shower supply lines are pulled and hooked up:
Concrete board for shower surround in installed:
And that brings you up to speed to within the last 24 hours!! :) Hope you have a lovely Sunday and a wonderful week ahead!