Iron Chef Smoked Gouda

Today I competed (against myself!) in iron chef Smoked Gouda. As usual I was given an hour to make several dishes all featuring smoked gouda. I made the following:

• Gouda and pear salad. This salad had a good mix of flavors but I think it needed to be mixed better as the pieces of gouda and pear were too large.
• Stacked gouda sandwiches. These sandwiches were the best of all the dishes I created. On a slice of a roma tomato I put a slice of bacon then a piece of chicken cooked in butter and spices with a thick slice of gouda on top. Finally I garnished it with fresh rosemary. While these sandwiches sound a little odd, the flavors blended very well and they were delicious!
• Chicken goudathon. This is a twist on chicken parmesan. I made some breaded chicken and tortellini then made a white wine garlic sauce with gouda and freshly grated parmesan cheese. This was yummy but a little heavy. I think it would have worked better with bowtie pasta or something lighter.
• Honey caramel gouda thins. This was my gouda dessert. I took a thin piece of pie crust and shaved thin slices of gouda on top. Then I sprinkled some unsweetened cocoa powder on them and baked them in the oven for awhile. Next I drizzled honey and caramel sauce over them and sprinkled them with more shaved gouda. Erik really liked these but I thought they were just okay.

Interestingly enough Erik and I both rated the dishes evenly with an average of 14.875. Overall it was an excellent Iron Chef competition!

I'd like to do an Iron Chef with Erik sometime. I have a secret ingredient for him in mind just waiting for when he wants to do it!

Erik's birthday is coming up and anyone who knows him knows he loves Railroad Tycoon. So I'm getting him the video game version of Railroad Tycoon and I hope he likes it.

70 points on Quiddler today!

Happy Birthday Jenna!

Jenna's fourth birthday was yesterday and we had a great celebration! She got her hair done at a "beauty salon" which she talked about constantly. She loved getting her hair done and thought she looked so beautiful - and she did! Here's a picture of her at the beauty salon :). We even went out to eat at a fancy restaurant - Le Bob de Evans. This birthday we learned something too. We bought her some education toys and crafts thinking they would be better than barbies or my little ponies. Um. No. That's not what she wants - she liked them and had fun with them. But we ended up getting her a my little pony :).

I bought a wilton castle cake set and tried to make a cake with it. You can see what it's supposed to look like and what I actually did. Jenna did not fail to mention numerous times that the cake I made did not look like the box. She did help me make it though and it was a lot of fun to do together.

I only got 68 on Quiddler today because apparently "farmy" isn't a word. Don't you think as you're driving through Ohio that sometimes it looks "farmy".

Which reminds me of an AWESOME joke. This is one you have to say out loud.

"What's in between Dayton, OH and Marion, OH?"

"Engagement, OH".

HAHAHAHA. We were telling jokes while playing EQ2 and this one came up - definitely a keeper!

In other exciting news, the pipes in our basement froze and burst over the weekend. The plumber was here along with people called the flood squad to clean up the basement. There is still a lot of work to do since there's a big hole in the ceiling of the basement, but Erik can do this himself so he's not worried about it. He can fix anything!!

We are starting a new Bible study called the Truth Project. It is run through Focus on the Family and I hope it will be a good study.

One little monkey, sitting on the dishwasher....

Sarah has turned into a monkey. We are wondering if she is part monkey, part cute toddler. We've found her climbing the shelves of the pantry, climbing the shelves of our bathroom closet, climbing on the table in the playroom, etc. She is everywhere. And she likes bananas. It's looking more and more like she's a monkey. Bananas + climbing = monkey. This is really all the evidence I need.

David and Becca are now board certified pediatricians. Congratulations!! Of course, I need to throw in this picture of him holding Sarah upside down very unsafe like :).
We have continued to sit by the fire at night and drink hot chocolate. Usually I make the hot chocolate with my very special mixture of 1 1/2 cups milk, 1/4 cup cocoa powder and 1/4 cup sugar. Tonight Erik made it using 1 1/2 cups milk 1/2 cup cocoa powder and 1/4 cup sugar. It was pretty dark - still yummy though. We often try to be "peaceful" while sitting by the fire. I've included a picture of Erik laying "peacefully" by the fire while the girls climb all over him. This is a regular occurrence. (by the way, I love the word "occurrence")

So I'm sure you're thinking - stop it with the salty caramel already!! I decided to make salty caramel chocolate bread. Prior times that I've used the packaged caramels in baked goods they hardened too much. So this time, I cut the caramels into small pieces, coated them in flour, and made a basic chocolate bread and added sea salt. The bread had a good taste but I used milk as the liquid which made it too crumbly (I thought milk would go well with the chocolate). Next time I'll use oil. We'll see how it goes :).

I got 61 on Quiddler today. Doo was not a word. Sounds like a word to me!

Wildflowers, Kitty Cats, and Drums

Happy New Year! 2009 is only 3 years away from the world ending according to the Mayan Calendar (this is something we watched on the history channel so it must be true) in 2012. We spent New Years at Erik's parents house in Morgantown. Erik's dad has a huge train set (see picture) with three trains and a whole village accompanying it. It's quite a setup that both girls loved!

For Christmas, Jenna got a "Create your Own Storybook" present from Dave and Becca. Jenna had a blast! We spent an entire day working on this story "The Princess and the Wildflowers" and Jenna made up the whole story herself. She thoroughly enjoyed it! My favorite page had the following text (she told me and I wrote it down) "The castle was covered with wild things like wildflowers, kitty cats, and drums". Ummm....yea.


In other news:

1. I got 77 on Quiddler today but it wouldn't let me use the word "grok". That is so obviously a word! Apparently I don't grok the English language.
2. I had to change my Lasik date to Friday Feb. 13. Sounds ominous to have surgery scheduled for Friday the 13th.
3. Erik has become quite the chef lately and made coconut potatoes for dinner one night. Not a combination I would have thought of but it was quite good!
4. Tuesday night was one of the worst first day of classes I've had yet. Of course I found out I was teaching Tuesday on Monday and thus was not prepared, but so much went wrong last night (my syllabus was wrong, the students could not log in to our class on the online system, software was not working, etc, etc, etc!) - I hope the rest of this semester goes well.
5. I read the second Twilight book (New Moon) in 1 day. It has 563 pages. So I've decided to stop reading fiction for awhile lest I neglect my family. Let's see how long that while lasts....