wish us luck at the tables!

more pictures can be seen on my photostream…

let’s just say, since wil’s baking class, we’ve been on a bit of a detox from baked goods. our freezer was literally overflowing when you’d open the door, and we’ve been spoiled with making sandwiches on bagels, crossiants and french bread (it’s hard to think about going back to plain sliced wheat bread). at one point he came home with this much stuff in one day. luckily his school must have known what they were thinking when they scheduled to him to go to ‘garde manger’ next…focusing on salads, appetizers and cold fresh foods.

he came home with a dressing last week, that i thought was too good to not share. a vinaigrette celebrating the flavors of grape juice, sage and lavender, it seemed appropriate to enjoy with some wine and cheese. my parents visited this weekend when it happened to be 60 degrees and lovely out (in February in Portland!), so we tossed a salad, grabbed some cheese and a trusty baguette from the freezer to head to the hills of a williamette valley winery for an outdoor picnic.

for the salad itself, we chose good balances of bitter and mild lettuce, sweet fruit and pungent cheese, and soft croutons and crunchy nuts. all tossed together with the dressing, it’s an experience not short of the animated fireworks and swirls that burst around remi’s head in ratatouille. we combined frisee, red leaf and butter lettuce, craisins, julienned apples, gorgonzola, shallots, croutons and toasted walnuts. you could easily swap your favorite ingredients, keeping the same flavor relationships, to suit your personal tastes.

Sage & Grape Vinaigrette

9 oz olive oil
8 oz grapes, crushed (ideally, you want to come away with about 4 oz grape juice, some grapes are juicier than others..)
2 oz white wine vinegar
1 tbs shallot, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tbs fresh sage, minced
3 – 5 lavender florets, crushed
salt and pepper to taste

1. crush grapes and strain juice into small saucepan. reduce by half – cool.

2. combine shallots, garlic, crushed lavender, sage, vinegar and juice into a bowl and whisk together.

3. whisk in oil, a few drops at a time. continue until desired oil/vinegar balance is achieved – taste often.

4. season with salt and pepper.

wil is in a meat fabrication and identification class right now (think butchering…from a little shrimp, all the way to a cow), and while i know he’s enjoying it, they aren’t cooking as much, so he’s not coming home with free meals and millions of ideas at this point.

the last few days have been quite eventful with some expected and unexpected guests…and that’s led to some quick meals out on the town. although my mom was unfortunately stranded in portland after trying to fly home into freezing fog, we got an impromptu sunday morning with my mom and dad. after church we unknowingly landed at a homey diner that had a surprisingly healthy and unique menu. that evening, we were lucky enough to get to go to a blazers game with the cavaliers in town, with laura/stefan. we (or maybe just me) were excited to see lebron james and shaq in person.

we couldn’t pass up the late night opportunity of finally experiencing voodoo doughnuts after the game, and for me, it was definitely great. i’m not a big doughnut person most of the time, but my offensively named treat with chocolate, oreos and peanut butter was fantastic, with a nice yeasty dough that balanced all the super sweet toppings.

after stefan had to head north for another fishing trip, wil entertained us two girls, with sandwich carts, walks around downtown, wings, and then to the movies to see the chick flick ‘leap year’. i’m not sure what’s on our plate for today, but i’m enjoying vegging in my pj’s.

we did end up buying a calendar (woo! it’s the little things in life), so maybe we’ll get ourselves back on schedule and in the kitchen with camera in hand. we’re hoping for some progress on our site redesign…we’ve (ok, i’ve) been dragging our feet writing a bio and typing up all the info our ‘graphic designer’ and developer needs- sorry michael!

meanwhile, the beasts are sleepy and i’m settling down with a giant glass of ninkasi’s oatmeal stout.

happy holidays everyone!

isaac was looking forward to seeing the monkeys at first, but walking away from the zoo, he said he liked the dinosaurs best…i think i missed that exhibit??

anyways. felt great not only to hang with the kids and dena all day, but to get the camera out of the kitchen, and to experience the portland fall! (the image links to the set)

we’re here…for good this time. we had a great time in california, and i am so glad we took advantage of our bohemian life before school and potential work to see the faces we don’t get to see all that often.

got to meet our new nephew josiah and poked his chubby cheeks multiple times. we loved getting to see heidi and joe as well…and cruised through the redwoods on the zipline at the mount hermon family camp that they call home. thanks to leila for sprinkling in a bit of adventure to our weekend! we enjoyed having an unexpected friend date grabbing coffee in santa cruz…wil got to see an old friend from before moving to sisters in 7th grade (and i got to meet her for the first time!). fun fun!

instead of taking the regular i-5 down to the southern part of the state, we cruised along 101, moving in and out of agricultural areas and the coast…very pretty, and we wished we were going the opposite direction as we passed so many veggie stands with fresh picked items for dirt cheap! got to see grams and stay in arcadia, but of course, quickly made our way to the beach house. loved spending two beautiful days on the shore with grams, the vans, and michael and claire…but we were on to the next!

i don’t know what got into us that we voluntarily timed our trip to move more furniture and boxes into a freight truck (haven’t we done enough of that the last month or so???), but we got michael all packed for his return to oregon, and packed the truck in record time. ok, he did have only 6 boxes, compared to our 100.

another impromptu stop was to see our dear friend laura, who made the journey back to the west coast about a week prior to us. she lives in oakland now and we were sad to not be able to spend more than an hour with her and her boyfriend kevin. at least we’re only 7 or 8 hours away from one another instead of 7 or 8 states! we rounded off the trip in napa. and you can’t go to napa and see wil’s family without experiencing wine in every facet. this time, we had fun watching his grandpa and friend crush grapes they had picked earlier in the day and sip tastes out of oak barrels.

but, we are here now. i quickly unpacked my bag (i’m usually a ‘let it sit on the floor for about a week before unpacking’ kind of girl) because i was so excited to stop living out of a duffel bag. the dogs readjusted to the apartment and their daily routine in a matter of an hour or so, and we even went grocery shopping for real food instead of just frozen pizzas and peanut butter/jelly sandwich supplies.

for everyone who was about to ask, wil has orientation to start classes on 19th, and no i don’t have a job yet. i haven’t done anything since before we left tennessee, just being disconnected and uprooted for a few weeks. for the time being, we are chilling around the place…took our first rides on the max, wil got a new phone (and we also got new numbers…email or comment if i didn’t have your email to notify you, if you want me to give you the new digits!), and have watched a lot of favorite tv episodes online. the place is pretty much unpacked and set up…whatever piles are around are things that probably just need to go to storage. i’ll blow the dust off my camera and take pictures soon. we’ve definitely maxed out our closet capacity. i’ll probably be making a list at christmas of things we don’t want since we don’t have space! : /

hope you are all doing well!

god, thank you for getting us home and that all our flights were relatively on time. but please, bring me my luggage.

the dogs were beyond excited to see us, and they are SOOO clingy, and of course, wil and i haven’t felt well enough to give them the attention they are requesting. they seem to need to relearn some of the rules of the house though, being without parents…gracie tried to eat straight out of my bowl of rice on the coffee table (plain, mind you, because we can’t imagine eating anything more flavorful at this point).

anyways, while wil plays settlers of catan that he discovered as a download on his xbox, i threw all the pictures online. i’m not a fan of putting stuff up before i throroughly go through them and edit any artsy ones, but i’ll just play around with those later, i suppose. so here’s the set!

link to the set to browse at your leisure… or link to a slideshow to see all start to finish.

(sizzow=sister=dena)