Missy Bristles likes long walks on the beach,
Kisses on her cheek and tickles on her feet.
Archive | May, 2008
Meet Missy Bristles
Camera RAW and Vegetables
I came across the RAW format for the first time while working at Creative Marketing as a graphic designer, but didn’t really know what it was other than a HUGE image file. Chris just emailed an article from Wired magazine explaining what it is and why we should use it. Pretty helpful! After reading the article Chris so thoughtfully emailed to me, I decided I’d give it a try. I am very happy with the results; a juicier image. I think I’m going to make the switch. I guess I need to go to Fry’s and get another SD card. . .
. . .
Recently I’ve been thinking to myself, I do not get enough vegetables in my diet. That thought came mostly after my sister had me record my diet for a 24 hour period for an assignment in her nutrition class. Since then, I’ve been somewhat perplexed as to how to solve this problem. I don’t really like steamed vegetables, because they’re so mushy, relatively flavorless without loads of butter and salt, and the nutrients are pretty much stripped in steaming. Salads are wonderful, but salad makings seem to go bad so quickly in my fridge. Also, raw vegetables are often bitter, and a lot to chew. The solution to the problem came when my mother-in-law shared with me one of her issues of Cook’s Illustrated: roast them! How utterly genius! We had some fabulous roasted green beans while she was here, and after she left I was thinking I’m going to have to buy more green beans it was so good. THEN, in a cooking class that I went to last week, Sheryl shared with us that pretty much any vegetable can be roasted, even romaine hearts!! For those of you who have already discovered this, kudos. For those of you who have not, here’s the secret to fabulous, just right, tasty vegetables:
- Cut up vegetables of choice into bite sized portions and place in a large bowl
- Sprinkle just a little bit of olive oil, you could probably spray it with a light cooking spray if you want to spare some calories
- Add some garlic, fresh or powdered
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Mix together
- Spread on cookie sheet and place it in the oven at 400º for about 15 minutes, turning the vegetables over so you cook them evenly
- Serve!!
Broccoli is great when roasted; it becomes slightly sweeter and the flowerettes become slightly crispy. MMmm. . . I was so excited to discover a new way to eat vegetables. If anyone has any ideas on other ways to have veggies daily, I’m all ears!!
*I have to give a shout out to my friend Rachel and her husband, Knute for making the chicken and Quinoa salad. It was delicious.
A Labor of Love
Last week was record hot in Menlo Park. Chris and I have been here for nearly a year and haven’t experienced this kind of heat. It got up to 100 degrees in our apartment. For about 4 days it was between 95-100 degrees. I think everyone in Menlo Park was suffering from some form of heat exhaustion. I was particularly concerned for my sweet Penelope. I knew she was really hot because she was fussy and bright red. I just didn’t really know what to do.
Chris and I agreed that we needed to get some kind of air conditioning unit, and fast! So, Thursday night we went to Home Depot and found the cheapest, smallest unit. We weren’t quite sure what would fit in our window, so we thought the smaller the better. We went home and installed the unit to find out that it didn’t even dent the sweltering heat in our apartment. Home depot had already closed for the day, so we were stuck for at least the rest of the night. Chris, knowing that Friday was going to be another hot day, woke up at 5:30 am to un-install the unit, drive to Home Depot and exchange it for a more powerful unit right as they opened at 6:00 am. My dutiful husband promptly came home and installed it so that Penelope and I could have a pleasant day inside. Do I have a sweet husband, or what?!?
The 10,000 BTU unit worked a lot better than the 5,000 BTU unit we purchased the night before, but by the time 5:00 pm rolled around our apartment was at 85 degrees with the unit on full blast. Our neighbors found a 12,000 BTU unit at Costco for less than what we paid at Home Depot, so when Saturday morning rolled around we made the switch again for the even more powerful AC unit. I’m pleased to say this one works fabulously. It has kept us nice and cool (now that the heat wave is over), and it’s more energy efficient, Yay for us for being green! I have to brag at how ghetto our installation is… Since we have side-sliding windows, and very small window sills, we had to improvise with the installation. We could have done something a little more graceful and appealing, but we never go out on our patio, and we never use that chair or that suitcase. Ta Fixe.
Another Book
3/4 bind with leather and wallpaper I found from the fabrix and more distribution. . .
Meringue Cookies Give Insight to What it Feels Like to Breast Feed
Is this an appropriate post?? I’m not really sure, but Chris and I (and his parents) thought it was pretty funny.
Chris’s mom was in town last week, along with her she brought a magazine she recently started subscribing to; Cook’s Illustrated. It’s pretty rad. Each article showcases a recipe or a way to cook things, like roasting salmon, and the writers talk about their various experiments and what was successful and what wasn’t. There were a few things that we tried from the magazines she brought. Among them was a recipe for meringue cookies. Linda was pretty anxious to try it out. I, on the other hand, was slightly skeptical because I’ve had little to no success with making anything meringue related.
I was pleasantly surprised! The cookies turned out so delicious. After cooking them, Linda and I had a little brain storming session on different ways we could make them. I thought it might be good if you made them smaller with little wells and after cooking them filled the wells with caramel and dipped them in chocolate. Pretty much anything is good with caramel and chocolate, so of course it would taste good.
Just after this little brainstorm, Chris bit off the ends of two cookies and stuck raspberries on top. He tried to see if Penelope would be fooled and try rooting around at the sight of them, but she’s no dummy.
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