My two favorites.

In Oregon at least.






















My niece, Eva.
Also known as Evers and Goob.

And her dog Bowser.

Blogging in flight no less

I am currently on a flight to Oregon to visit my sister, brother in law and niece for an extended weekend away. And if Alaska Airlines didn't want 10 bucks from me in order to get completely online and post this, it'd be an even better success for in flight blogging, but for now, typing up and posting later will have to do.

I didn't intend for there to be such a gap in postings lately. Truthfully, I've been so busy the last couple of weeks between work and home projects, blogging kind of had to fall by the wayside.

Hamburger, hamburger!

I am sad to report the last meal from my week of planning is a hamburger, filled with onion and blue cheese. The hamburger itself was delicious, but I am sad that I didn't get to the other two meals I had planned for the week, a potato soup and a hash topped with a poached egg. I came down with a bug in the middle of the week and was even sick enough to go to the doctor to be sure whatever it was wasn't turning into strep throat. Even the doctor wasn't sure and gave me a prescription of antibiotics to hole on to if I wasn't feeling better in 24 hours. Bleh. Thankfully, I ended up feeling progressively better and didn't need the antibiotics.

The first night I felt sick  last week my Mom fed us and the next night my husband brought me home pho, and come Friday, we had burgers, which isn't a bad way at all to end the week.

The inspiration for having hamburgers came, again from the Farmer's Market. One of the stalls had several varieties of sprouts, including onion sprouts. I had the chance to taste them, and they had such a yummy, fresh oniony bite to them, I grabbed some to bring home.

Pears become a cake.

I brought this on myself really. I bought pears at Costco earlier in the week. The season of pears is here and they are a favorite of both myself and my husband. Then I went to the farmer's market...and bought more, locally grown pears.

So, with a bushel of pears in the house, I set out to find something to do with them.

Enter cake.

I don't think anyone who knows me is surprised that I love cake, I also love fruit with my cake, take for example pineapple upside down cake. Last week, I found a recipe for an apple upside down cake and knew a quick substitution of pears for the apples was in order.

A meal my husband can make.

This is another meal I pulled last week for my meal planning. This was Tuesday night's dinner, a night where my husband would have to be responsible for cooking if we were going to eat anytime before 9 pm. He's a great helper in the kitchen, but not often responsible for the whole meal.

An easy meal to start him off with was a quick stir fry, one with heat from chili paste and a nice bite from lemon grass.

The chopping part was easy for him, and the whole dish came together really quickly and easily. I really don't have too much to say about this one, since I had nothing really to do with it except choose the recipe and buy the ingredients. I came home from work and dinner was ready about 10 minutes later. This is something I hope becomes a trend, a delicious dinner made by my husband.

Dinner tonight:

Corned Beef with red potatoes, sweet potatoes and carrots. The corned beef has been in deep freeze since just after St. Patrick's' Day. I finally pulled it out last night to defrost and cook in the Crockpot today. I am limited to Crockpot cookery right now as we've temporarily moved out of our kitchen to paint our cabinets. So right now, the majority of my kitchen is in the dining room and/or pool room and/or back yard, depending on what it is and where I decided it needed to be. The doors and main framing are all primed and ready for their chosen color, which we will be applying over the weekend. I cannot wait to get it all done, it should make the whole room feel brighter and lighter and make me feel like cooking and baking a lot more.

That being said, I cannot wait to get my kitchen put back together, new paint color or not. This whole Crockpot cooking on the bar set up won't be manageable for too long.

Lots of pasta!

Over the weekend, armed with a few copies of recent cooking magazines, I did something I've never done before; I meal planned for the week. I was scheduled to work on Tuesday and Wednesday and I didn't want us to fall into the trap of "What do you want to do for dinner? I don't know what do you want to do?" We tend to have that happen more so on the days I work, I'm not home until 8 pm, and by that time, it's either we go out or scrounge in the fridge for something that sounds good.

I did not want to scrounge this week.