Chez Nous

Emily's BBQ Pork

There's not much that makes a BBQ Pork sandwich better than sharing it with a darling little blond boy that reminds me so much of my own big one.

Emily gave me this recipe and it was a lifesaver with ten people to feed for dinner last week. I served it on whole wheat buns with cole slaw and baked beans.

The pork is studded with garlic cloves before cooking it on a layer of onion slices in the crock pot all day and the homemade sauce is added about an hour before serving it.

Your house will smell so yummy!

Unlike this kid who gets in trouble for certain loud noises erupting from his mouth at the table! :)

Bon Appetit!

Download EmilyBBQPork

My niece = my photography assistant

I love the photos in this post not only because they are warm and summery, but mostly because all of them were taken by my niece when she was visiting for Aly's graduation. (Except for this first one ... her mom took that one!)

{Full Disclosure: I always have my camera set to shoot images in RAW format so every image must be edited in some way. I did as minimal an amount of editing on these as my photographer self would allow!}

Ashleigh is 13, has a beautiful eye for interesting things, and wanted me to teach her some things about photography.

Truth is, I didn't teach her much (I still owe you, Ashleigh!). I let her take my camera, change settings, experiment with light ... 

...and movement ...

These are only a fraction of the images I later found when I downloaded the SD card.

She didn't know the technicalities of allowing the sun to hit the camera's mirror in order to create a hazy, backlit image, but this goes to show that an artistic eye can often supercede knowledge.

Goldie is always a great subject and I love how Ashleigh got down on the ground to get this shot. I can bet that Uncle Ken will love this one of her!

And this next one is one of MY favorites!

Most of the evenings they were here were spent by the chiminea with a roaring fire going ...

... roasting marshmallows ...

... and as the sun set, the strings of lights were turned on, and our hearts were warm with family love. Ashleigh, you did a beautiful job of capturing the feeling of our evenings in the back yard.

And that, my friends, is what I think makes a successful photographer ... someone who can capture feelings as well as they capture images.

Le Weekend—17 June 2013

Happy Monday!

Friday evening, Ken and I had an "at home" date night ... grilled steak salad, fire in the chimenea, music wafting through the open windows ... I love those nights!

We had dinner at Emily's and Kyle's on Saturday with the intent of going to a jazz club after, but dinner ran late and Aly ended up not feeling well so we just enjoyed the coziness that is their apartment.

Then it was their turn to come to us ... on Father's Day, we made a big pot of spaghetti, roasted corn on the cob, watched the Red Sox game, and followed Ben's game in NY on the internet. That was pretty much a perfect Father's Day for Ken.

Strawberries are in, which means my neighbor is sharing her bounty. I made a small batch of jam from her small strawberries and am looking foward to going to pick some from a farm soon. More jam must be made and my freezer needs to be stocked with all sorts of summer fruits!

Here is the jam recipe I use. It came from the grandmother of a friend of mine. { Download Annie Maes Strawberry Preserves}

Hope your weekend was wonderful, too! Here's to the beginning of summer!!

I've Missed You!

There's never been a time when I've been away from my blog for nearly two weeks and I missed being here so much.

The two weeks were full of family time, however. Both of our parents were here as were a sister-in-law, niece, and nephew. Ben moved his stuff back home to store while he is away in New York for the summer so we reorganized to accommodate that. We worked on Aly's graduation activities, cooked, ate my mom's and mom-in-law's food, and every single minute was filled to the brim. We loved it all, but now we're getting back into the routine of our days.

{Photo taken by my 13-year-old niece who is probably unaware that she captured a heart -besides my own- while snapping away with my camera.}

I have plenty of stories to share with you and will be organizing myself over the weekend so that some of those stories can be told.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Le Weekend—03 June 2013

I can hardly talk about the past weekend because I'm so excited about the coming week. Seriously, folks ... EXCITED! My parents are coming, Ken's parents are coming, one of my sisters-in-law is coming with my niece and nephew ... I love having my family in my home. And at the end of it all, our baby girl is graduating high school!

The weekend was super-full-to-the-brim with film shoots for Aly, prepping for her Graduation Party, cooking, enjoying the company of people that we rarely get to see although we live five minutes from them. Me fears changes need to be made in me life!

I am so blessed that our Em came early on Saturday to help me prep for Aly's party. She may have moved out months (years?) ago, but she and I still know how to do our Kitchen Dance. Doing "EVENTS" with her just makes sense because we read each other's minds. All I have to do is utter a few unintelligible syllables and she knows what I mean. Furthermore, on Sunday, she scourged my fridge, freezer, and pantry of anything putrid. I am once again enjoying straight, clean rows of canisters, snacks, teas, coffees, and canned goods.

The party was so much fun. Ken strung lights on the back of the house and on the fence, we hung lanterns from the branches in the trees, and we fired up the chiminea. It was so cozy!

Our B-boy moved all his stuff back to the homestead this weekend. His tenure at Tacoma Community College has reached its limit... he ended with high stats on the team, a high GPA, and an Associate's Degree. He refuses to acknowledge this milestone, however, (except where graduation gifts are considered! Ha.) because he is reaching for a Bachelor's at minimum and as many more years as possible on the

So.Many.Exciting.Things going on for us right now. Stay tuned for more!

{I plan to be around the blog this week, but with seven houseguests arriving at various times throughout the week, I'm allowing myself some wiggle room!}

Here's to a new week crammed packed full of wonderfulness!!

Pasta Salad ... a la Italienne

Do Italians actually make pasta salad? I have an idea that it would be foreign to them, but it is certainly welcome on our summer picnic tables here in the US. We make pasta salads with mayonnaise-based and vinaigrette-based dressings. We fill them with a variety of ingredients, many times with the intent of clearing our fridges of veggies nearing their prime.

For this one, I chose a curly pasta. I think the more easily that a pasta shape is forked and put into the mouth, the more palatable it is. White onion, roasted red pepper, capers, marinated artichokes, small-diced salame, parmesan cheese, fresh basil, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper...I think you might have the makings of a pasta salad worthy of being called an Italian Pasta Salad.

Bon Appétit!

Download Italian Pasta Salad

Lessons from Mommy Robin

It's quiet in my home this morning after the busy weekend of traveling to Longview three days in a row and Memorial Day. Ken and Aly have left for work and school and I'm left to fill the hours of this day with the myriad of tasks at hand. I've lit a candle called "Angel" as I prepare to work on our Angel's senior board and my mug of coffee is keeping me company.

A movement on the lawn outside the slider door caught my attention and as I turned and saw the red robin bobbing about with a worm in her mouth, tears unexpectedly sprung to my eyes as flashes of memories came flooding over me ... memories of sitting at the table that fit perfectly in the bay windows of two of our homes, the kids eating breakfast or lunch, and being distracted by robins looking for worms. We would talk about how Mommy Robin was feeding her babies just like we were all eating together, too, and we speculated as to what tree their nest was in.

This morning, however, there's no "littles" sitting at the table with me. This morning, I can't draw quiet attention to the bird and have a whispered conversation. This morning, I relish the quiet time alone, but the sweet memories point me to the fact that time has definitely marched on.

I am reluctantly adjusting to the fact that although I will always be Mommy Robin, I will not always carry out my role in the same way. And to be honest with you, this adjustment is dang hard!

As I spent a little time grieving for those precious fragments of wonder I saw in my children's eyes as they discovered things for the first time, it hit me like a ton of bricks that I'm still enjoying that! They may all be legal adults now, but they are still discovering things, still having new experiences, still have questions, still want communication with me, and I'm still Mommy Robin ... just in a different way.

I'll learn to live with that. Really, I will. I'm ... sure I will. There's no doubt ... that I will.

Will I?

Le Weekend—27 May 2013

And just like that, another milestone has come and gone. Our Ben has completed his first two years of college, earned an Associate's Degree, gone to the NWAACC Championship Tournament with his team, and ended his second decade on earth.

Not wanting to miss sharing the ending of this era with him, I carpooled with another family 16 hours total to and fro starting Friday and ending Sunday.

 On our trip down on Friday, we were in traffic jams with everyone and their brother leaving for the Memorial Day weekend. When we arrived at the field, it was raining and the field was tarped.

After a few minutes, it cleared, the sun came out, and I put my cap on to shield my eyes from the sun!

We lost that game, but won on Saturday in beautiful weather which meant we stayed alive for another day. Sunday's game brought rain delays and an injured ump and we ended up losing. It was quite a disappointment for those boys who worked so hard and learned how to succeed together on the field.

And thus comes to an end yet another baseball season. Thankfully, it's not Ben's last. In the days to come, I'll share what he's doing next and in the meantime, I'll tell you that we're so proud of him!

Memorial Day is a day we treasure in America. We honor those who've given their lives in the service of our country starting with the Revolutionary War and continuing until today. I am so grateful for those who serve and are willing to give their lives for our country. God bless America.

Here's to a new week full of the beginnings of preparations for Aly's graduation in a couple of weeks! Busy, busy, busy!

French Fridays with Dorie: Asparagus Soup

I love asparagus. I usually sauté it or roast it and I had never made a soup. I now stand corrected in my narrow-minded way of preparing it ... this soup is delicious. However, because Ken doesn't share my love, I decided to make half the recipe.

I don't usually peel the stalks either, but I obeyed the instructions in the recipe. I will say that it's kind of like peeling celery in that the peels get caught in the peeler and I spend almost as much time getting the peels off the peeler as I do actually peeling the asparagus! Once it's done, though, you have gorgeous, bright green stalks.

Trim the ends off and cook them AND the spears in salted boiling water for only about 4 minutes, then plunge them into cold water. I used my pasta pot and a large bowl of ice water.

Discard the ends, of course, but reserve the spears and put ice on them to further cool them.

While the asparagus cools, put the aromatics in a pot to cook slowly for aobut 15 minutes ... leeks, white onion, shallot, garlic ... Then add some of the water that the asparagus cooked in and finally add the asparagus.

Blend it all together with a food processor, blender, or immersion blender. You can strain it if you want to get fancy and you can serve it cold or hot. Dorie suggested topping with creme fraiche if serving it hot and heavy cream if serving it cold. I had a little sour cream so that's what I used ... like I said, it was delicious!

(If you're new around here or are wondering what French Fridays with Dorie is ... It's an effort to use one of Dorie's recipes from her cookbook Around My French Table each week. The recipes are decided on by popular vote on the website French Fridays with Dorie. Purchase your book HERE and play along! According to the rules of the group, I'm not allowed to post the actual recipe ... mes regrets.)

Shrimp + Pineapple Fried Rice

While the shrimp was still on sale at my grocery store, I picked up some more to pair with the pineapple that had finally ripened. 

Shrimp is such a great thing to have for dinner on a weeknight because if you've purchased it already peeled and deveined, it takes very little time to prepare. If you're using it in a stir-fry, you'll want to cook it first and remove it from the wok or skillet before cooking the vegetables so that it won't get overdone. I drizzled some fish sauce over it first for added flavor and sautéed it with some of the garlic. (Fish sauce is made by fermenting fish, usually anchovies, in water and salt. The resulting "sauce" is used in many Asian cuisines. It is salty so not much is needed for flavor.)

The vegetables will take more time to prepare than the shrimp ... dicing, chopping, slicing ...  

Once the shrimp is cooked, add a little more oil, then the shallots and garlic ...

... followed quickly by the carrots, then the red bell pepper, and finally the rice, pineapple, and cashews.

Stir it to mix it all together, then season it with curry powder, soy sauce, a little more fish sauce, and some red pepper flakes if you want a little kick. Taste for saltiness before adding any ... the soy sauce and fish sauce will probably be all you need. Sprinkle cilantro leaves on top and enjoy!

 Bon Appétit!

Download Shrimp-Pineapple Fried Rice