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Vacation!

So I have been fairly delinquent with posting lately.  Aside from the recipe for the Lettuce wraps and eggrolls that I just posted (which I actually wrote last week, but for some reason never actually put up?), it has been busy and relaxed all at the same time, and it has left me with very little push to blog.  We just got back from a mini-vacation to Packwood (just south of Mt. Rainier National Park), and I thought I’d share some pictures!  We had a great time just relaxing with Santana, goofing off and enjoying the gorgeous weather and scenery.  You’ll notice that just like when we’re at home, laughing at Santana is one of our favorite things and we spend a good amount of time just taking pictures of her being hilarious. 

As we packed up, we managed to take more stuff than we would have needed for three weeks away.  It filled up our entire trunk!  Santana helped, of course and then got impatient in the car, waiting for us to join her….

It was a long long drive, and Santana was exhausted when we got there.  In fact, she slurped down an entire bowl of water in about 60 seconds….and then threw it all up on the floor.  Great start to the weekend!  Here are some pictures of Santana (and Matt!) checking out the giant king-size bed in our room.

  

We got ready to go swimming and I took advantage of this time to snap a picture of Matt’s short hair….I cut it  myself!  We decided $25 spent on a hair trimming kit for guys would quickly make us glad he wasn’t spending 10-15 dollars every time he wants his hair cut.

   

Dinner on our first night (well….and our second) was a complete splurge.  We were on vacation!  Just up the street in the tiny town of Packwood there was one pizza place.   Since we’ve been out here together, there are only 2 or 3 pizza places we’ve ever visited more than once.  We usually try a new place every time!  Nothing beats NY pizza, but we’ve found a couple that come close.  This one had OK crust and sauce, but the cheese was SO stringy and delicious!  We also go breadsticks, which was a great choice since they were AMAZING!  Despite our best vacation efforts, we didn’t finish all of this food in one sitting.

We agreed to NO TV for the trip, even though there was one in the room.  We also didn’t bring our laptops despite free Wi-Fi at the lodge.  This meant lots of reading, talking and cards!  Matt reminded me how to play Rummy 500 and Santana watched while we played!

   

For breakfast the next day I made red potato mini hash browns with onion and random seasonings.  Plus a red scallion and tomato scramble.  We split a banana and I had a Sobe Lifewater (I am addicted to these) and Matt made some black black black coffee.  Yum!! (Sunday I turned similar ingredients into a breakfast sloppy joe of sorts, with some ground beef we had planned to use for burgers and some cheese we had brought along.  It was…interesting.)

We planned a hike to Sand Lake for Saturday morning. It was supposed to be ridiculously hot and we thought it would be a nice swim at the end of the hike.  Little did we know, we picked the trail where all of the mosquitoes in Washington live.  I think I’ve found up to 40 bug bites on my arms and legs since coming home.  We made it about halfway through the hike (covered in bug spray) and then decided we’d rather just relax.  We got Santana some water at the trailhead and then headed back to the lodge, stopping at a scenic viewpoint on the way.  Since dogs are not allowed in Rainier National Park, we stayed just south of there.  But you can see the mountain peeking out all over the place.  Gorgeous!

 

We were all a bit squinty facing the sun, but I remembered my sunglasses!

We also got a couple with all three of us, but Santana couldn’t keep her eyes off the mountain!  

After our dusty, muddy, buggy hike, Santana got a mini-bath and wasn’t very happy about it.

 

She did, however, find my sunglasses on the bed at some point, and we decided they would be cute on her.  It’s clear that we had too much time on our hands!

 

The pup was beat, and so were we.  We crashed pretty early on Saturday night, slept in on Sunday and drove home with a couple mini stops along the way.  Sunday was a really lazy day of running a couple errands before the workweek started back up and we were in bed early early early. 

Hopefully I’ll be back to regular posting over the next couple weeks…and then we have some really fun summer visitors here for most of August, so I’ll probably be missing for a while again!  I hope everyone is having a great summer!  We miss vacation!!

Ground Turkey Lettuce Wraps & Egg Rolls

When our CSA gave us two heads of leafy green lettuce instead of the one we were expecting, I was wracking my head for something other than another salad.  Loosely based on the filling in this egg roll recipe and some suggestions from friends, I experimented with some lettuce wraps and ended up with a fun leftover treat!

Spicy Turkey Lettuce Wraps

I don’t remember exactly what went in here, but there was definitely the following:

• 1 pound ground turkey, browned and drained
• finely finely minced onions, carrots, red pepper, ginger
• a variety of spices, including red pepper, black pepper, and some other random add-ins
• 1 bunch sliced scallions
• 3/4 cup soy sauce
• 6-8 tb. rice vinegar
• 2-3 tb. sesame oil
• I may have added some veggie broth to give it some more liquid while it cooked and cooked and cooked down

Basically, everything just cooked together for a long long time. It smelled amazing and it turned out a bit too salty for Matt.  But wrapped together with some crispy mei fun noodles in big pieces of fresh lettuce, it was a wonderful and fun (and messy!) meal!

     

Since there was obviously no way we were going to eat an entire pound of ground turkey ourselves, the leftover meat went into a pyrex dish with the crispy noodles, which soaked up the yummy juices and the whole thing became a really wonderful filling for baked egg rolls!  With a package of egg roll wrappers, I made about 16 egg rolls that went into the freezer for later! 

While enjoying a lazy day on the couch and craving a snack one afternoon, Matt and I tried a couple to hold us over until dinner.  Yum!  With Matt’s honey soy sauce that he makes every time we make dumplings, they were spectacular.  We had them again the other night with some orange chicken from the freezer (not homemade at all!), and the flavors of the two dishes didn’t really work together, but the filling in the egg rolls is just the right texture and full of spice and pretty unique kick.  It could use some cabbage, but we just didn’t have any when I made them. 

I was extremely happy when I had all my egg rolls lined up on a baking sheet to freeze…I love love love using leftovers like this!

Spectacular Speedy Simple Burritos

So I had a bit of success with our rice maker last week.  We made a brown basmati rice that turned out a bit too mushy, but cooked through and not burnt–a definite improvement!  The problem: I made WAY too much rice for what we needed (peanuty fried rice).  Leftover cooked rice is difficult to use up…most recipes call for dry rice, and my fail-safe go-to method of using rice up is to make fried rice.  This is not the best choice if the rice you have leftover is from the production of a GIGANTIC pan of fried rice. 

We grabbed spinach tortillas and three canned goods.  This was such a satisfying, easy and yummy dinner.  So wonderful that we had it twice for dinner (and one other time with eggs for breakfast!).

Specatcular Speedy Simple Burritos

• 2 cups leftover cooked rice
• 1/2 yellow onion, chopped
• Cumin, salt, pepper, red pepper to taste
• 1 can black beans, mostly drained
• 1 can diced tomatoes with green chiles, half drained
• 1 can sweet corn, drained
• Spinach wraps
• shredded mexican cheese (we always have this on hand for some reason)

1. Sauté onion in a tiny bit of olive oil until soft.
2. Add rice and stir fry until heated through, adding seasoning to taste.
3. Heat beans, tomatoes and corn in a small saucepan until bubbly.
4. Add cheese, bean mixture and rice/onions to a tortilla.
5. Roll and eat!

After we ate this the first time, I added the rice and the bean mixes together in one tupperware container.  This made 6 different (very full) burritos, and there was at least 1 (maybe 2) more servings of the rice and beans left.  Matt loved it!  And looking at the pictures now makes me wish we had some more for tonight!

Green Dinner

Matt and I are getting excited with our summer plans!  The closest thing coming up for us is a weekend trip to Packwood, WA to spend the weekend with Santana in a little cabin-type lodgey thing, do some hiking, and visit Olympia on our way home.  SO excited for this.  I want to make some fun meals there on the stovetop in the place we’re staying, so my mind is racing with easy to transport ingredients that can be made into yummy meals.  Any suggestions??

To use some spinach and broccoli from our CSA box this week, we went super green for Wednesday’s dinner.  It was a pretty heavy dinner, but we both went pretty light on lunch this week, so I’m ok with that.

Spinach Alfredo

• 8oz fettuccini
• 1 Tb butter
• 1 cup half and half
• Salt & Pepper to taste
• 1 bunch spinach, washed and roughly chopped
• Grated Parmesan

1. Cook pasta according to package directions (Fettuccini takes about 10-12 min)
2. While the pasta cooks, melt butter over medium-high heat and add half and half.  Let this cook for a few minutes until it starts to thicken a little.
3. Season with S&P and add Spinach to cook down for about 1 minute.
4. Blend! We used our stick blender, but you could use a regular blender, or you could leave it rough chopped.
5. Cook down for a few more minutes.
6. Add cheese! (I admit, I went WAY overboard with the cheese, so our sauce was crazy thick)

That’s it! Super easy!  It wasn’t the prettiest thing I’ve ever made, but it was really really easy and super tasty.  We had a french baguette that I sliced a couple pieces from.  Toasted them, rubbed with a clove of garlic, added a tiny bit of pepper and a sprinkle of parm (this was before I overdid it on the sauce). The thick thick thick spinach alfredo was too thick for dipping, but it made an AMAZING spread on the toasty baguette.  I had visions of tiny bites of toasted bread topped with my spinach alfredo spread for an appetizer…maybe with a bite of good fresh tomato sauce. Mmmm….

We served it with Broccoli Balsamico…a recipe that was basically steamed broccoli with a glaze made of balsamic vinegar, garlic, olive oil, grated ginger, brown sugar, salt and pepper.  We made the sauce and then didn’t have the right amount of broccoli, so it got a little soggy/overcooked…but it was still yummy and I may try a similar mix in the future (I usually just go with garlic and balsamic for my broccoli).  I have a huge problem getting broccoli to be as wonderfully cooked as some restaurants get it…especially when I want it lightly glazed with a sauce or something.  The florets always get banged apart or overcooked…or some other tragedy comes to pass.  It really makes me grumpy at the time, but I always eat it up….LOVE broccoli.

What to do with all this apple butter??

A quick morning treat that we had along with a ham, cheese, onion and red pepper scramble to give us the energy for a little hike with friends today!

Apple Cinnamon Sweet Rolls

• 1 tube crescent roll sheet (Pillsbury makes crescent roll dough that isn’t cut into triangles because they realized that people like me like to use crescent rolls for EVERYTHING!).  You could also use actual cinnamon roll dough if you were inclined to make such a thing
• 2 heaping tablespoons of apple butter
• 3 Tb AP flour
• 3 Tb brown sugar
• 2 Tb butter
• 1/2 Tb cinnamon
• 1 cup sifted powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 Tb orange juice or milk

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Unroll crescent roll dough and spread with apple butter (try to leave a little space at the top of the sheet where your roll will end.
3. Mix flour, brown sugar and cinnamon and cut in cold butter until crumbly.  Spread this on top of the apple butter.
4. Roll either lengthwise or widthwise, depending on how many/how big you want your rolls. 
5. Slice into even rolls and place in ungreased pan (I used a glass pie plate).
6. Bake for 15-20 minutes…keep an eye on them so they don’t burn.
7. While they’re baking, mix powdered sugar, vanilla and juice/milk.  Add more liquid if necessary.
8. Let the rolls cool just a bit before adding glaze.

Sweet and yummy! A great morning treat! The glaze sort of soaked into the rolls a bit while I made the eggs. 

We’re headed out for a mini-hike with our friend Nicki and Santana’s good friend Bonnie.  When I say “good friend”, I mean Bonnie and Santana have had 2 play dates at our apartment.  Once, Bonnie threw up.  Once, Santana peed on the floor.  Neither time did they try to play with each other.  GREAT friends.  I am interested to see them on neutral territory today.  Santana thinks she is too human for other dogs.  If she wasn’t so adorable and sweet, this would be a problem. 

Bonnie inherited Santana’s pink jacket, since it actually fits her.

 

Santana was skeptical…

Very very skeptical.

We’ll see how they do today and maybe get some adorable pictures of puppies possibly becoming friends???