Loretta Lynn's Lincoln

I am at work right now, and I only have 30 more minutes till I can leave and I'm a tad bit bored. So I decided to put my MP3 player on shuffle and pick out ten songs that I really like. I started to make a list, so here they are:

1. Loretta Lynn's Lincoln by Josh Turner.

Oh he has such a wonderful voice, and I love his music. It's very backcountry-ish. And this song is so funny and catchy. Just try to stop yourself from singing along. I bet you can't!

2. Working Man by Rush

Before I met Tim, I had never heard of Rush before, and now I've seen them live.. twice! Their music is a lot of instrumental but it's still great. It's kinda like classic rock, with a little bit of a modern twist, I guess you could say. This is a good song to listen to while at work (which I am!).

3. Never Again by Nickelback

I'll admit, I am a Nickelback fan, but only of their older stuff. I'm not a fan of the radio (other than country and oldies) so I don't listen to any new songs really. But this is a good song for running because it really gets you pumped.

4. In Memory by Shinedown

I used to love this band in jr. high and high school and I just recently rediscovered them. I listened to the cd that features this song on repeat when I went with my parents to our property so it reminds me of being out there in the wilderness with the view of the Olympic mountains and it makes me really want to go visit and make a campfire.

5. Every Mile a Memory by Dierks Bentley

This is such a laid back song, I love it. It's my favorite cd to listen to while road trippin' to eastern Washington, especially Cle Elum (which is my favorite little town ever since I used to go there every summer with my grandparents since they had a cabin on the lake).

6. I Ain't in Checotah Anymore by Carrie Underwood

Wow does she have a voice or what? I love this song; it's one of my favorites by her. It's very true of how I feel living in Seattle away from my hometown. But hopefully I'll get to move closer soon!

7. I Keep Looking by Sara Evans

 
Sara was truly one of my first favorite country singers, and still is. I can remember when she came out with Born to Fly and I loved that song. I Keep Looking is about how everyone always thinks the grass is greener on the other side. It has the same sort of topic as Smile Empty Soul's The Other Side, but in a much mellower fashion!

8. Days of the Week by Stone Temple Pilots

I went through a grunge phase in jr high and was addicted to STP. Then I moved on to Velvet Revolver, which is a mixture of Guns n' Roses and STP, but they are still good.

9. Lay Your World on Me by Ozzy Osbourne

I know, Ozzy, seriously? Yes. Most definitely. I listened to him non-stop in high school. My floor routine in gymnastics was to Crazy Train. And the judges did not like that and so I always got marked down, but I didn't care. Everyone always loved my routine because it was different than the average one. But anyways, about the song. It's a really great love song, even for those who don't like his heavier songs. Trust me and just listen to it.

10.Rock and Roll by Led Zeppelin

Ahh the days of learning how to drive. I was 15 and my boyfriend at the time loved Led Zep so I started listening to them and fell under their spell, too. And now my brother's dog is named Zeppelin. And its a puggle.

So that's my list. Put your MP3 player or iPod on shuffle and tell me what ten songs play on yours. 

Have a great day!

Vicarious Travels to the Windy City

I have never been to Chicago, and I would really like to visit there sometime. Then again, I would love to visit every major city (and little town in between) in the United States, so I guess Chicago isn't anything special. Except for tonight for dinner.

 Thanks to Richard-Seaman.com

Tim is working later so I needed something quick and easy, but I didn't want to just grab a sandwich or salad from the grocery store. I therefore planned to make pizza. That's right. Make. So I have this cookbook called Grilled Pizzas and Piadinas by Craig Priebe and he has some of the weirdest combinations for a pizza that are so absolutely delicious.

 

The first pizza in the book is The Chicagoan. The pizza has three types of cheese (Parmesan, Mozzarella and Cheddar), strips of grilled steak, baked slices of potato, red onion, and sour cream. At first, I was a little hesitant but once I took a bite, it was all "Mmm... Yumm... Mmm..."

Tim's comment cracked me up: " The only thing that detracts from its ridiculous goodness is when I take a bite and go, 'Ew, onion.'" He gave it a 4.9/5 rating, something he never does, so if your family love meat and cheese and potatoes, this is a great variation to the typical dish.

Here's how to make it:

You will need a Boboli crust (or if you have time, you can make your own pizza crust, but it needs to be pre-baked), 1 baking potato, 8 oz. top sirloin or strip or skirt steak, olive oil, 3 tablespoons grated Parmesan, 1 cup shredded mozzarella, 1/2 cup shredded cheddar, 1 cup marinara sauce, some sliced red onion, sour cream and chives.

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Peel and slice the potato at 1/4 inch thickness (I used a mandoline, but a knife will work). Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper and lay in a single layer on a baking sheet. Bake for 15 min or until golden and tender. Loosen with spatula while hot.

Grill or pan-sear the steak to your liking. (I left it a little rare so it would be medium rare when done). When finished cooking, cut into thin slices. Brush the pizza crust with olive oil, then dust with Parmesan. Sprinkle the other cheeses on top. Drop with spoonfuls of marinara sauce, then top with potato, red onion and steak. Bake at 450 F for about 8 minutes, then dollop some sour cream on top and add some chives.

The whole time it took to make was roughly 30 minutes. How easy and quick is that! Mmm.. I'm so tempted to go eat the last slice. But no, it's for lunch tomorrow. I'm so looking forward to that.

While on the topic of pizza, what are your favorite toppings?

Enjoy!

P. Sherman 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney

I'm watching Finding Nemo right now, avoiding homework, like usual. So in order to cheer me up from my work load, I am going to write about the food I've been cooking lately. On Sunday I made a Comforting Chicken Stew from Marie Claire Seasonal Kitchen.

 

If you have never read this cookbook, go to amazon.com or you local library and read this book. The pictures are so inspiring and everything looks delicious. And the book itself is divided into seasons, so you can cook seasonally, which I am a huge fan of. You might need to fudge the timing of the seasons if you live somewhere hotter or colder (since it was I believe published for people who live in NW Canada or US). But other than that its amazing. And the recipes are usually all very simple. Like the Comforting Chicken Stew.

Basically, you cut up some root vegetables into bite sized pieces and slice a celery stalk and a leek, then flour some chicken pieces. The vegetables are placed on the bottom of a pan with the chicken laid on top. A few cups of chicken stock are added, and then the whole thing is covered and baked in a moderate oven for an hour and twenty minutes or so. And that's the whole recipe. It's so simple, and yet so delicious. The vegetables were perfectly cooked and the chicken was juicy and flavorful. Adding some herbs would have added even more flavor but it was good as it was. And cheap too since the recipe calls for cheaper cuts that are still delicious. Trust me, if you make this recipe once, you will want to make it again, just because it is so easy. Prep time is literally 10 minutes or less, depending on how fast your oven heats and how fast you can chop veggies.

"Whoa. Kill the motor dude."

 

So for dinner tonight I decided I wanted to make something from my list of recipes to try. I settled on the white bean and tuna salad from Everyday Italian by Giada. I was a little apprehensive about tuna and beans together, but it turned out to be delicious. And it literally took 15 minutes to make. I served it on top of mixed greens and that really made it even tastier. We also ate herbed baguette slices with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. It was a very yummy dinner. If you are pressed for time, this recipe will definitely fill you up and be much healthier than a burger or pizza.

"You mean the swirling vortex of terror?"

Ok I'm gonna go pay attention to the movie. And maybe enjoy some more tuna and beans...

Dobry vecer!

Adventure on Snoqualmie Pass

I really miss being up at the pass a lot. It makes me sad. But today while I was looking for pictures for my previous post, I came across this picture:

 

Thanks to Seattletimes.com

It's a picture of a wreck on I-90 that happened a couple of years ago on Snoqualmie Pass. If I remember correctly, it happened at about 4 pm, right as me and my dad were exiting off of I-90 to go skiing. We soon found out from the lift operator that the route down the mountain was closed until they cleared the accident. We figured, oh no big deal, it's probably only like 2 or 3 cars so it will be only an hour tops.

Weren't we wrong. It turned out to be a massive pileup that took forever to clear. The first estimate after that said the pass was going to be closed for a few hours then we could go home. Oh and by the way, it had started to snow like a blizzard. So we just kept skiing, hoping that they would get it cleared sooner. We soon wore out and had already had dinner and hot chocolate and were bored. Soon, the few hours wait turned into a few more hours, and eventually became till morning. 

We figured, alright, we will just drive east and then go over another pass that will take a few hours but at least we could get home before midnight. Well, as soon as we got on the freeway, there was a policeman detouring all traffic going the other way off the freeway. We stopped to ask him how the conditions were over the other passes, and he said they were just about to close all of them because the weather was even worse. We asked him if we could just back down the on ramp and he said no, we had to go to the next exit and then turn around and come back. 

This normally would have been no problem. The next exit is at the other end of the lake, and the trip would have taken maybe 20 minutes. It took us about an hour to make the trip. We went about 5 mph the whole trip and had to stop every few minutes because the snow was turning to ice on contact with the windshield and the wipers so we could not see. It was not a fun trip.

After getting back to the exit for the ski areas, I-90 was still closed, so we went back to the lodge to have more hot chocolate and rest. Finally, I think the freeway opened at about 11 pm, 7 hours after the accident. We were one of the first ones to get on the freeway and just as we were passing the scene of the accident, they were just finished hooking up the last semi. 

What a crazy night. But I got lots of skiing in. Here's the full article if you would like to read the particulars.

Country Girl

I am going to start two different countdowns. One is till March 15th when I can start running again (and get back into shape for ski season and for hiking) and the other is the day I graduate in June (which I believe is the 13th?).

I am so ready to graduate and move out of Seattle. I just don't like it in the city, even though I'm in the outskirts. I think it's funny that in high school, I could not wait to move to the city. Now, I can't wait to move out! My ideal place to live would be to have so much land you couldn't see your neighbors (or well, just a really big hill in between). I would like to live on the other side of the mountains in like Cle Elum or Roslyn, but Tim could never live in such a small town. He would go stir-crazy!

I really remembered all of this last night when I went on an adventure with Tim. For our anniversary he bought us tickets to see Josh Turner at the Snoqualmie Casino on the 19th. It was truly an amazing concert, the best I've been to. But let me start at the beginning.

We left school at about 2:30 after finishing our homework and lab reports and such. Traffic wasn't too bad, until we hit I-405. It was stopped once we got on the freeway. Tim hadn't eaten anything since 6 am and I was thirsty so we got off on the next exit and went to Whole Foods. I have only been in that store once and I didn't like it at first (I was 15 at the time.. I obviously didn't know much then!). But I now love it! It's like my favroite grocery store that I go to now but bigger! Tim liked it too because it had free samples. So I bought a large container of cranberry-peach juice (yum!) and a container of fresh cut fruit. They were delicious.

Off on the road we went! We finally got to I-90 and the further east we went, the more relaxed I felt. All the stresses from the week went away and I felt so good! We raced up to Snoqualmie Pass for dinner, and got there at like 4, which was waay too early for dinner. So we drove around, went and looked at all the ski areas, had hot chocolate at Alpental (which I miss dearly :( ) and then just played in the snow. Oh yeah, the picture at the top of my blog is a picture taken at the top of Alpental. That's one reason why I love to go up there: the scenery is gorgeous!

After playing around, we finally went to dinner at the local pancake house at Summit West. We both had breakfast for dinner. Tim had potato pancakes that were nothing like normal potato pancakes. They looked like regular pancakes, but take a bite and surprise! They were slightly sweet, but still had some green onions tucked in there too. Trust me, they were very good. And I had the swedes (which are like crepes but thicker) with lingonberry jam. I just had to have lingonberry jam. It is so good but the only place I can find it is at IKEA and I hardly ever go to IKEA.

 

Thanks to travelgatesweden.se

Anyways, after our delicious dinner, we headed back down the mountain to North Bend, where we stopped for gas and coffee. Well, coffee for Tim and tea for me! Then we tried to find the casino. It was truly in the middle of nowhere and you turn this corner and wham! it's right there with bright lights and lots of cars. It was very busy that night. And very smoky since you are allowed to smoke in there. Yuck!

I didn't really enjoy being in the casino part. But once we got into the ballroom, things got better. The concert was great. The music was not so loud it hurt my head like at other ones I've been at, but they did have strobe lights which hurt my eyes (I'm sensitive to bright lights and loud noise.. and I only recently developed it like 6 months to 1 year ago. It's very weird). But other than that, Josh played a lot of great songs, including a lot of my favorites (Firecracker, Everything is Fine, Long Black Train). He also played a lot of songs off his new album, which I don't know as well since I haven't really listened to it much. The cool thing was that his wife was playing the keyboard and backup vocals! They really make a cute couple!

 

Thanks to CMT.com

After the show, we left and drove home and went to bed. But I still really miss being out in the wilderness. Lately I've been looking at trails and hikes to go on around here and I'm so ready for spring. It's weird, outside right now it's 53 F out and it seriously feels like summer, but just a little cooler. I am so excited for spring and summer. I can actually start running again and working out outside. I'm interested to try my yoga routine in the grass..

Alright, well I should get back to work. I'm going to add more pictures and edit this when I get home since the computer I use at work doesn't have a lot of the stuff I need to add in pictures and websites and stuff. So that's all for now.

Dobry den!

Oh and I have decided I want to go on a hike here!

Update: Added pictures. They make it look so much better.