From Our Garden

Our Garden At 1+ Month

Even with not the warmest temperatures ever our garden is trucking along!  We've also added some new plants;

• Artichoke
• English Lavender
• Carving Pumpkin
• Pansies
• BBQ Rosemary
• Sun Sugar Tomatoes
• Jalapeno

Our romaine was being nibbled away by some kind of creature, so we put up a cage around that planter. The arugula, dill, tomato, and tea plants are growing like weeds. And we're getting swiss chard sprouts from the seeds we planted!

Birthday Banner

We celebrated Zeke's birthday yesterday and I made another banner out of the burlap & jute bunting that we originally made for the wedding. I followed pretty much the same instructions as I did for the holiday banner except I used navy blue cotton fabric with cream colored thread.

Since we still have a lot of bunting left to use, perhaps I'll put some time in to actually making a tutorial one of these days...

Naturally Dyed Easter Eggs

We used these instructions from Apartment Therapy to dye eggs naturally! And the results were pretty great for a first try!

Step 1: Hard boil eggs and set aside to cool.

Step 2: Roughly chop up purple cabbage and place in a large pot with enough water to cover the cabbage and to completely cover the number of eggs you plan to dye. Bring to a boil and cover and simmer for about 30 minutes. Set outside to cool to room temperature.

Step 3: When the pot and contents have cooled, strain contents into a flat bottomed pot or jar large enough to submerge the eggs in.  Add about 1/2 cup vinegar (all we had was Apple Cider Vinegar) and stir to combine.

Step 4: Place the eggs in the mixture and place in refrigerator.  We let ours sit overnight.

A couple observations to consider for next time...
- The un-dyed spots you see on the eggs were the sides siting on the bottom of the pan.
- I picked the eggs up out of the dye matter with tongs and it appears to have scraped the dye off!  So next time I'll be more gentle!
- Apartment Therapy suggests rubbing the outsides with a bit of olive oil and I bet that would be a good idea too!

Our 2011 Spring Garden

We've started off the spring with a tea plant, romaine lettuce, chives, dill, thyme, sage, chamomile, mint, rhubarb, blueberries, arugula, and tarragon!

More Spring Blooms

We've got tulips spouting everywhere!  These beautiful pink ones are blooming in our front yard.

And brilliant red ones in the back.

Happy New Year from Seattle!

Happy New Year from Seattle!

We went down to Gas Works Park in the Wallingford neighborhood to watch as they shot fireworks off of the Space Needle at midnight.  Very neat experience! Seattle sure knows how to put on a fireworks display...

The First Seattle Thanksgiving

Our first Thanksgiving in Seattle was wonderful!  The first turkey we've ever cooked was a success and we had Mary, Zeke's mom, in town visiting. We made pretty much all of the traditional dishes with just a few tweaks to them to fit with our tastes and my food issues, you can find all the recipes we made at my Gluten Free Travelette Blog.

The day before, we brined our turkey in a maple sage brine that we concocted.

We cooked up a pecan pie in a gluten free whole foods pie crust.

We also cooked up some eggnog which stayed cool in the fridge overnight for us to enjoy later in the evening on Thanksgiving.

The day of we got a nice fire going and had the house all cleaned out.

We got all of our recipes lined up and ready to go for the day.

The turkey ended up being done about 2 hours early, so we ended up pushing our whole dinner to more of a "linner". We set the turkey aside under tinfoil for awhile, so it stayed warm until it was time for Zeke to start carving. Which he did with excellent skill!

Our Thanksgiving spread, minus the turkey, of gluten free stuffing, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes with all the fixings, lingonberry, and gravy.

We had our table set up in the little breakfast nook we've got, with some hot mulled cider.

Our First Seattle Snow

As I'm writing this the temperature is supposedly dropping to 13 degrees.  Mighty mighty chill for us California kids!

Slow Cooker Sundays: Bean and Potato Chili

This was fully experimental chili as I've been feeling a bit meated-out as of recent but they had a chili cook-off at my work which left me craving some chili and cornbread!

Perfect timing too as today was our first snow of the season here in Seattle!

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 large sweet onions, chopped
6 cloves garlic, minced
1/3 cup chili powder
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tsp paprika
1 1/2 tsp ground allspice
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp ground coriander
1 1/2 tsp oregano
1 tsp ground ginger
2 cans kidney beans
1 can pinto beans
1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes
2 green bell peppers, chopped
2 large yukon gold potatoes, scrubbed and chopped with skin on
1 1/2 cups chicken stock
3 1/2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
2 bay leafs
1 tsp salt

Heat the olive oil in a skillet and add the garlic and onions.
Cook on medium low heat until translucent and softened.
Add the chili powder, paprika, cumin, allspice, cinnamon, coriander, oregano, and ginger.
Cook on low heat until fragrant, about 5 minutes.
Transfer the mixture into the slow cooker.
Add the crushed tomatoes, green peppers, potatoes, beans, chicken stock, apple cider vinegar, bay leafs, and salt.
Set time for 5 hours on high.

We'll be serving this tonight with the same cornbread recipe we made here along with honey butter.

4th of July

We drove about 5 minutes to the downtown Fremont area, parked our car, and walked the Burke Gilman trail to Gas Works Park in Wallingford. We walked straight through security since we had no bags for them to go through and easily through the crowds to find a seat overlooking Lake Union.

It was so easy and stress free. Almost unbelievable.

The fireworks display was amazing and sychronized with some great popular music. We both agreed, the best we have ever seen.  Zeke even has some new favorite fireworks!

After the fireworks, the Presidents of the United States of America, played some of their hit's from when Zeke and I were younger, so that was great fun to sing along to! And it was just such a cool experience, especially considering that it was free!

We're Moving! Again!

Well...we tried. And tried. And tried.

But our new Seattle home just was not working out.  We came to a mutual agreement with our landlady about a month ago that we would amend our lease to a month-to-month version and start to look for a new place to live.

Lucky for us we found a place pretty fast!  We signed our lease last week and we're moving in next Friday!

It's a two bedroom, 1 bath house with a garage, doors, closets, a dishwasher, washer and dryer, custom painted rooms (the living room is an awesome maroon color), hardwood floors, and a covered patio in the back yard!  The house also has been certified (except for the maroon wall) by a Feng Shui expert! It's also only only a move across town in Ballard, we're going from 22nd to 9th, which is farther East.

So anyway, here's to our a better start to our new life in Seattle!

10 Minutes Away

Is a lovely lovely park that we can walk to.  It has a name, but I can't remember it.  Either way it has a beautiful view of the sound and the Olympic Range.  I don't think we mind trading sunsets over the Pacific Ocean for sunsets over the Olympics.

Speaking of the Olympics, we just scheduled a little weekend getaway in May to accomplish some wedding related tasks.  We're headed to Kalaloch Lodge on the western side of the Olympic Peninsula.  Last summer we camped at the campground just down the road and really enjoyed the location, this time we're staying in a cabin with a full kitchen and a fireplace.

We Made It!

Well we successfully packed up all of our stuff into my CRV, Zeke's dad's Safari, and a 12 foot U-Haul trailer.

I'm still not sure how everything fit...

We packed up everything on Saturday and then started out on Sunday morning for Springfield, Oregon where we stayed overnight at a quite posh Holiday Inn that looked more like a Sheraton.

And on Monday we crossed into Washington State...

And made it to our new home town!

We're Off!

But just for the weekend to find a place to live in Seattle.  We have a couple appointments lined up with places in Fremont and Ballard and we're going to check out the Broadview area as well since it's a bit closer to where I will be working. We also get to go with these brand new nice suitcases that my dad got for me today! :-)

Wish us luck!

Our First Seattle Scouting Trip

While we didn't find our new home yet, we did get a better sense of the areas we want to live in. Fremont and Phinney Ridge are at the top with Wallingford and North Ballard coming in next.

We looked at 3 places and were interested in two of them, but not for a long term rental. One had an amazing view....




We also did some scouting on good GF/DF places to eat out. We went to Cafe Flora, Blue C Sushi, and the Flying Apron Bakery.



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The Rumors Are True

freckles and blondie (aka Zeke and Adina) are moving to Seattle, Washington in March 2010!

I just recieved my official offer for and accepted a job with the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Region 10.  I will be working in the National Preparedness Division as a Training and Exercise Specialist.

So 2010 is going to be an exciting year with a new state to move to, new jobs for both of us, and of course, getting married!