Recipe of the Week

Fresh Ginger StirFry

Beef stir fry meat, already cut up into pieces (from Sunflower market)
Teriyaki Ginger Sauce (also from Sunflower market)

Marinade meat in ginger sauce for about an hour prior to cooking, takes about 1/3 cup of marinade. Chop 2 cloves of garlic.

Heat wok with 2 tbls. peanut oil. Add meat and garlic to oil. Cook meat until no longer pink on HIGH heat.

Vegetables:

1 medium sweet onion, chopped
1/2 red onion, chopped into bigger pieces
3 stalks of celery, cut in half, then cut into angled pieces
1 big carrot, cut into bite size pieces
1 green bell pepper, cut into bigger pieces
1 red bell pepper, cut into bigger pieces
2 cups of fresh green beans, trimmed and cut in half
1-2 crowns of broccoli, cut into bite sized pieces
Fresh ginger, peeled, minced, about 2-3 tbls.

Add these vegetables to the wok on high, cook for about 5 minutes, constantly stirring around. Keep on high heat until cooked sufficiently, but still crunchy and firm.

Add 1 cup sugar snap peas at the end, because you want them extra firm, not soggy at all, just heated through. After stirfry has finished cooking, top with a handful of roasted peanuts and serve over hot, brown rice.

Delicious! Tastes even better the next day for lunch after the flavors have soaked into the vegetables all night. It takes quite a bit of time to prepare all the vegetables for this stir fry, so if you have time on a Sunday afternoon, you can chop all the veggies and store them in an airtight container overnight. Then when you are ready for stirfry it will only take 15 minutes to put this healthy and delish meal together.

Medical Mystery in Tempe, AZ

So if you've heard from me in the past couple weeks I've been either a) out of it, b) screaming in pain, or c) being my normal self, or d) a combination of all three. I have had a little bout of seasonal allergies as spring has sprung in AZ. I got some kind of viral infection with the cough from hell, but instead of getting better I just kept getting weirder and more unexplainable symptoms. So after my first "pain attack" on Monday night, while I was making dinner, Dan took me to the Urgent Care, where they could only do a few things for me because we were self-pay. We basically had a 400 dollar visit to get a pain pill to stop my stabbing pain. The doc surmised that I bruised my rib from coughing all the week prior.

Then I took it easy, rested, just like he told me to, but last night another attack came on. I was at sushi with Melanie, and the pain stabbed me again... this time much worse. It is like someone is taking a knife and stabbing you in the chest repeatedly so you can't breathe. So Dan being the "enginerd" (engineer+nerd if I need to point that out) that he is, consulted his best friend WebMD. After an hour he was convinced I had pancreatitis, my splean had ruptured, and that my gall bladder needed to be removed.

So with that helpful bear griz diagnosis we went to my doctor in the morning and explained all the weirdness, to which he replied "you have pleurisy." Dan yelled out, what about her splean? What about the appendix? Don't we have to dig them out of her?!!! Well no, sir, she has an infection and we need to get it under control. Simple as that. We just walked out of the office the happiest people alive. This has been a bizarre couple of weeks. Pleurisy basically means the lining of my lungs has become inflamed, and instead of gentle friction of the pleuri against the lung like silk, it has become sandpaper, and an infection has resulted. I asked him, isn't that what pioneers died of? Yeaaaah. OH - and Nate Dawg - Lebron James just had pleurisy so bascially we're pleurisy buddies. Pretty awesome.

So now we're at home, nerding it up, resting, relaxing, and I'm going to get better soon!!! Yay! And pictures of the progress on the condo will be coming soon, just need to download them.

Dan you're the best caretaker and you saved me from getting more sick and miserable! I love you!

Song of the Week

Alexi Murdoch

All My Days
Time Without Consequence, 2006
_________________________________


Well I have been searching all of my days
All of my days
Many a road, you know
I’ve been walking on
All of my days
And I’ve been trying to find
What’s been in my mind
As the days keep turning into night

Well I have been quietly standing in the shade
All of my days
Watch the sky breaking on the promise that we made
All of this rain
And I’ve been trying to find
What’s been in my mind
As the days keep turning into night

Well many a night I found myself
With no friends standing near
All of my days
I cried aloud
I shook my hands
“What am I doing here?”
All of these days

For I look around me
And my eyes confound me
And it’s just too bright
As the days keep turning into night

Now I see clearly
It’s you I’m looking for
All of my days
Soon I’ll smile
I know I’ll feel this loneliness no more
All of my days

For I look around me
And it seems you found me
And it’s coming into sight
As the days keep turning into night
As the days keep turning into night

And even breathing feels all right
Yes, even breathing feels all right
Now even breathing feels all right
‘Cause even breathing
Feels all right.

The Facelift Has Begun

No, we aren't getting facelifts but our condo is! This week marked the beginning of project plastic surgery on the condo. We are officially DIY'ers!!!! We are painting, replacing hardwares, and basically sprucing it up one room at a time. We have one week to get all the baseboards and doors painted, hardwares and electrical outlets replaced, because we're having someone come paint the living room - we decided to not buy a 200 dollar ladder that we couldn't store afterwards, and I would probably fall off of and die, only to do a so/so job ourselves. So we gave ourselves the motivation of not having to do that big room and entryway with valuted celings, and just do the more manageable rooms ourselves, as well as the small details. He is coming to paint next Sunday so we've got quite a bit of time this week to work on all the small projects one at a time.

This weekend we've cleaned the spaces, washed all the walls with TSP, moved all the furniture into the bedrooms, and taken off the doors and hinges. Tomorrow I sand and paint the primer before going to work! Wish me luck! Oh, and hope you love our nerdy pictures - safety first with Intel work glasses!!! Dan got them out when we had to break a mirror off of the back of one of the doors. Hopefully we're not doomed with 7 years of bad luck. P.S. safety glasses are not really fun to wear over existing glasses!


Total Madness.

Song of the Week

Adele
"Daydreamer"
19, 2008
______________________________

I just went to this show on Wednesday with a few good girlfriends I've made in Phoenix. Adele was so cute, and it was really neat to see her just a month after she won a grammy for Best New Artist of 2008. We had a blast all night... and best of all we only had to go half a mile to the venue and Dan drove us there and picked us up =) I thought about him when Adele played this song and it reminded me of all the times I've daydreamed about the person I want to be with, and how he is finally in my life. Cheesy I know but I love this song and I love him too =)

Daydreamer, sitting on the seat
Soaking up the sun he is a real lover,
Making up the past
And feeling up his girl
Like he's never felt her figure before.

A jaw dropper
Looks good when he when he walks,
Is the subject of their talk
He would be hard to chase,
But good to catch
And he could change the world
With his hands behind his back,
Oh.

You can find him sitting on your doorstep
Waiting for a surprise.
It will feel like he's been there for hours
And you can tell that he'll be there for life.

Daydreamer, with eyes that make you melt
He lends his coat for shelter,
Plus he's there for you
When he shouldn't be
But he stays all the same,
Waits for you, then sees you through.

There's no way I could describe him
What I'll say is, just what I'm hoping for

But I will find him sitting on my doorstep
Waiting for a surprise
It will feel like he's been there for hours
And I can tell that he'll be there for life

And I can tell that he'll be there for life.

Good morning and good night from Tempe, AZ

Home Brew!

Just another tough weekend in Arizona! This was our last weekend of freedom, because after this week we are getting down to business and painting the whole condo, painting the doors, replacing the hardwares, and replacing the outdated light fixtures. So we got all of the fun out of our systems by spending Saturday at the Tempe Brew Fest, which was at the Tempe Beach Park right around the corner from our condo. It was Matt Wilson's birthday so we had a nice little group there to celebrate. We had a great time! We tried beers from all over the west coast - I liked the Denver beers the best, of course :) I was happy to say that I had just been to a couple of the breweries this past month on our trip to CO, thanks to Uncle Bernie! We came back to the condo and had friends over for pizza and it was a really fun night.

Then today we started our spring beer making! Dan made a homebrew last February right around the time we met. I was not a beer drinker at that time but Dan has made a beer drinker out of me! It is an acquired taste, but now I know which ones are my favorites. We decided on a honey blonde ale - and we were able to use the honey from Nate Bliss' brother Rob - harvested right from Delta UT! I am very excited that we had our own homemade honey in the brew. Now it is going to hang out in our bathtub for the next couple weeks while we let it ferment. So if you want to come take a bath, you're out of luck. Sorry =)

It's been a great weekend, glorious weather, cold brewskies, and good times with friends! Now back to work! I'll be posting pics in a few weeks of the transformed condo, it is going to look great! (Well that's because we're having someone professionally paint the living room and entrance because of the vaulted ceilings) I will be doing the baseboards and spare bedroom, dining room, and kitchen. I'm very excited to be a painting girl over spring break! Hopefully I don't mess it up, but our motto is "it can't look any worse than it does now, so why not give it a shot?" =)

Hope everyone is enjoying their sunday!

Blog Slacker

So I have been given the title over and over again by friends and family in the past few months - "blog slacker." I know, I know. I think my problem with the blogging scene is that I feel obligated to produce pieces of art every time, which is (a) not possible, (b) not fitting into my schedule (c) making me not want to write EVER. So I think I'm just going to shoot for a little paragraph here and there and that way I won't be overwhelmed with the task of blogging and get excited about it again.So, having said that, I had a wonderful birthday! Thanks to everyone who called or sent letters, they were very sweet. I did a little south mountain hiking, hung out with Dan's brother Jeremiah and his girlfriend Jessica who were in town from Oneonta, New York, and then a great dinner at my favorite restaurant Pita Jungle with Dan's brother, gf, Grandma, Uncle Paul & gf Tracey, as well as my AZ cousins KP and Candice and Ashley too! Dan got me a great cookie dough ice cream cake that pretty much rocked my world, then we went and listened to our favorite local artist Walt Richardson at the Irish bar down the street. So all in all, the perfect day. Dan's family really made the day special for me, I have loved seeing so much of them these past couple of months. I think just about everyone in his family has come out west since New Years and we have really enjoyed their company. Only 6 months till Canada!