In an effort to clear the Inbox on my desktop along with a desire to prove that we do in fact leave the house, here are a few pictures of us hanging out in public places.

At Papago Brewing Company:


With our recently departed-to-grad school in Colorado friend Alex:

Back to Papago, where we mingle with other patrons, brawnily belt out drinking songs, get into the occasional dust-up, and of course do the crossword puzzle.


This was at Rosie McGaffrey's Irish Pub, where the sign above the door said "Best Fish n' Chips in Phoenix". I had to know, so I got them. It's not true.

Beautiful photo, I'm aware.

Classroom pictures to come. I never remember to take any.

I couldn't think of any unifying theme for this one, just a bunch of photos clogging up the old hard drive space. (Not really, as they're very small.)

Meet Ismail Iman. He's one of the students I work with in the self-contained autism class.

This is the potato and baby bello mushroom flatbread my mom and I made when the parents visited:

Here's Miss B.'s class with me and another student of mine, Alfred.

This is a silly photo, for the record.

Here's a meal. Not sure what it is.

Rochefort 8. I had the 10 a couple months ago, didn't think to photograph it. Messing around with the settings on the new camera.


Here's what a new Hummer looks like parked in our apartment complex's spaces.

Me at a bags tournament, known as "cornhole" 'round these parts. Thanks to Leslie for the hat and the consignment shop for the sweater.

Macayo's Mexican cantina. Playing around with the color settings again.

This one isolates the yellows.

Let's see that again in red.

And the Macro setting.

A pitcher of margaritas is too much for us.

But nonetheless, down it must go.

Miss Bee and I are the newest volunteers, walking and feeding dogs, and helping out when the public comes in to look at dogs and cats.

A six year old German shepherd mix. Miss Bee found a friend. For posterity, our first dog that we took for a walk.
Playing ball in the kennel.


Sniffs.

A little Pit bull mix puppy while I clean out his kennel.


His brother, whose not as reticent as you might think from this picture. They were both adopted.


A Basset hound/pit bull mix. He's low-slung and friendly, but you can see the pit in the coat, face, and strength.

This pictures shows his left paw turned out like a regular basset. This is one strange-looking dog.


I call this "Stray Cat".

Guess what. It rains here too.

Yeah. We're going to Vegas. Tuesday night til Saturday.

What happens in Vegas....probably will get blogged this weekend. Hopefully we get some good photos. Maybe you'll hear from me, maybe not. Either way, enjoy Thanksgiving. We'll be eating dal with curried lentils and pita bread with hummus. And baklava, all the way from...Costco.

Hello. It's been a bit slow of late here. We had a visitor last weekend (three actually) and spent a lot of time going out to eat, etc. (Three day weekends are great). All this week and next Monday I'm working with autistic kids in the ED classroom at Balsz (Miss Bee's school). All this is to say that our cooking has been a little paltry of late. Last night was our first home-cooked dinner in a while, consisting of store-bought Swiss cheese and chive potatoes au gratin with sauteed spinach with garlic and pine nuts.

Look for tomato "soup" with pasta soon.

A few pictures now. Here's one from last Friday; we went to a flamenco guitar concert with Miss Bee's old mentor teacher Mary and her husband Richard at the Desert Botanical Gardens in Papago Park, which is only about five min. from our place though we'd never been. The only picture I took worth seeing is this one of some sort of small desert tree, outlined so nicely with the lighting. The concert was lovely, and I think we're getting tickets to the gardens themselves soon so hopefully more pictures of this cool place coming up.

Thanks to Mary and Richard for the tickets.

Next is a picture of Miss Bee's friend Aliya who visited from Vegas with her friend Josh. On their last day we took them to our local Chinese place, Hai Ching Ling, in the Chinese Cultural Center (affectionately known as the Embassy). Here's the golden Buddha statue there.





And Aliya looking lovely in her "mini-moo":

Any visitors will surely be taken out here to enjoy amazing Eggplant with Garlic Sauce and vegetable chow mein. We can't get enough; in fact, the waitress actually pre-empted our order by asking what we wanted with our eggplant.




Also, I have to share one of these pictures I took of little Alfred. He's a five year old non-verbal; when he came the first day this year he didn't make any sounds other than crying. He's starting to say alphabet syllables now, which is what I was working on with him here. Yes, that's my knee he's resting his head on...

And finally, here's Alfred waiting to go out to recess; he's waiting for me because I am tall enough to help him walk backwards up the slide. Shortens the wait time, you know...

I posted pictures of our house that were outdated before. Now once again, I will post pictures of our place that are not what it currently looks like. But here's Apartment 1112, 2.0:

The futon has been flattened fairly permanently; we got two body pillows from Costco named Barrette and Estl-ie. We also cut up a really old book about Hong Kong (I doubt monthly rent is still $2 American!!) and hung the pictures on construction paper.


Here's one view from the futon, looking towards our bookshelf. Constructed out of three milk crates, a Costco box, and a desk that we never used, we now have access to all our previously-boxed books, movies, and CDs from here, along with mailing supplies, file folders, and "random paper aggregators". You can also see the lovely camel poster we "liberated" from school, and in the lower left, our new shoe holder that has brought me three levels of untold joy, or at least a feeling of tidiness.


And, the piece de resistance (I don't know how to do those little accent marks in HTML for those French sticklers out there): The Whiteboard. I mean, The Exercise Ball. Oh, well, both are cool. The ball came with a Thera-band, a book, and a DVD (unwatched), and is a welcome addition for workout and seating purposes. The Whiteboard is a reclamation project; it was in the laundry room of Leslie's friends, and here I was figuring out how to make one myself with showerboard and plywood. It has been updated to feature the day's date, our schedule for the week, a longer-term to-do list, books and movies we'd like to procure, and all the way on the right is that day's to-dos. With plenty of doodling space left over! Also in the photo is the pink storage box-cum-ottoman we got from the Abram family; we have also adopted a love seat from them which I'll get a picture of soonly.

And in honor of Halloween and Balsz school's Monster March, we made a cheap costume for Miss Bee last night: one Boy's Large Ultimate Tee ($4.99) was the only ingredients. I was a little woozy after inhaling all that Sharpie ink, but I think the Jack O' Lantern was worth it.


I hadn't noticed, but you can also see another addition to the decor: the large yellow paper in the background is our planned 'New York Times has great photographs' display section; so far we have a few ballet photos and some pictures from a DM Register article about a man with two dogs that look identical to Leslie's parents' dogs. More to come!

Spinach salad with lyonnaise dressing tonight, created by Leslie. For the dressing, mix Dijon mustard and balsamic vinegar, toss on some slices of red onion, and top with a runny-yolked egg. My egg-making was suspect; my egg didn't play along. Salt and pepper to taste.

Hmm, I swear there were onions in there..

From a recipe at 101 Cookbooks, a favorite site/blog run by Heidi Swanson. Click here to see the original.

Edamame: microwaved the soybeans until soft, and squeezed out the pods by hand, discarding the outer shell. Lighty salted. We added several handfuls of spinach as well.

Vinaigrette: about 5 tsps. of lemon juice (instead of two lemons + zest), 3 tsps. extra virgin olive oil, 2 tsps. of balsamic vinegar (instead of rice vinegar), and a couple heaping spoonfuls of brown sugar, meant to replace maple syrup and make up for lost sweetness in the vinegar department. Without knowing what Shiso was or where to get it, I made a chiffonade of some leaves of spinach, and added basil and cilantro. Shiso is an herb, most of the descriptions sounded like "minty with apple sweetness". So I did the best I could with the herbs, and Leslie made applesauce! Also some sea salt and ground pepper.

Applesauce: easy enough, though I had never done it. Basically stew apples (we used three honeycrisps) until soft, process until they reach the desired texture. Sweeten if so desired.

Here's my plate, you can see I put a little brown sugar on the applesauce; salad in the background with raspberries.

I love that little raspberry off to the left by himself!

Leslie's plate, with plain applesauce and raspberries off to the side. Thanks for the new purple silverware (from Leslie's parents) - they're great!

This one has a little better look at the edamame, but you can also tell that I had a little too much dressing to too few soybeans, and tried to compensate with spinach, but it was still too 'wet' overall. I enjoyed it but I think the dressing was too much for Leslie. Tonight maybe we'll just have them plain with a little seasoning.

I asked my mother to guest-blog sometime, and she turned me down. But then she sent me a recipe via email, which I will post verbatim and add my own comments in red.

Over med. heat saute a leek until soft, then add garlic and 2 med. tomatoes (we used tomato paste). Saute a minute. Add a handful at a time of spinach allowing each batch to wilt slightly before adding more. That's one 5 oz pkg of spinach (who knows how much we used. About four handfuls). Reduce heat to med. low.

Whick 4 eggs, and 4 egg whites (due to poor reading comprehension, we had four eggs whisked and ready, but no whites. We probably should have used two eggs and two whites, but we ended up with four eggs and two whites. Oops.), add pepper and salt. Pour into skillet, cook 8 min, or until bottom is set. If your skillet is ovenproof you can put it in the oven to bake 10 to 15 min. if not transfer to casserole dish. Sprinkle with parmesan (or Gruyere. Worked great.). Serve.

Here's what ours looked like; not great, but we were lacking in egg whites. Tasted fine! The rest of the plate is Broccoli salad (see original post), some raspberries, and slices of Gruyere, along with a small glass of '07 Bigfoot Barleywine-Style Ale (which is way too 'big' for this meal, but whatever). The leeks were terrific, the egg fluffy; I love that broccoli salad (although the florets are always too large), and the raspberries are 3.99 for a double wide carton at Costco. Also, that Gruyere has been terrific, and gone nicely with a lot of meals.

Thanks to Mama-san for the recipe, and for implicity allowing me to share it with, um, everyone.

More Photos

Breakfast: dried fruit (Craisins, Mont Morency Cherries, Mangos), a plum (thanks Nicole), coffee and a cookie

Lunch: I had some leftovers from Monday's potato and leek flatbread; Leslie had leftover Thai from Tuesday's dinner at Malee's in Scottsdale (thanks Nicole).

Dinner: Leslie made two rounds of biscuits, one plain and one with grated Gruyere. Those were my favorites. I grated two potatoes, chopped part of a large onion, should have grated in some cheese, and added a beat egg; these became latkes, albeit latkes cooked in a wok instead of on a griddle or frying pan so they were a bit ugly.

Dessert: Vanilla ice cream with frozen sugar cookies, and chocolate-covered edamame.

Post-dessert ale: Deschutes Brewery in Bend, OR's Mirror Pond Pale Ale. Cascade hops are the primary aromatics, a good mix of floral and citric, while the yeast imparts a hint of esters. Solid if unspectacular.

Recipe from "Real Simple" magazine, I believe.

In a pinch, Leslie whipped up a Shepherd's pie-type crust with Bisquick and eggs, and we covered it with red potatoes, vertically sliced leeks, and artichoke hearts and mushrooms from the olive bar at Safeway. Then we grated a little less than a cup of Gruyere over everything.

Uncooked:
Bake for about 20 minutes at 450 degrees, and you get this.

I think maybe next time we should bake the cheese into the bread, as it caused the leak strings to stick together, making it difficult to get 1. bread, 2. potato-leek-cheese, and 3. mushroom or artichoke at the same time. And it might firm up the flaky "pie-crust" flat bread. But it was really delicious, and good left-over. Recommended for simplicity and flavor. Plus, leeks are fresh right now.

As are pomegranates and apples. Thanks to Mama Karen for providing us with an abundance of both. Look for some fresh applesauce, and hopefully some good pomegranate recipes, soon.

Sometimes I seem to recall blogging dinners, and then come across pictures in my "to blog" folder five days later. Or a week.

After spending a day in Leslie's oil-vinegar-chopped garlic marinade, a healthy portion of asparagus spears and red-and-yellow peppers joined mini Bello mushrooms and grape tomatoes in the broiler for twenty minutes. Served over rice.

For an appetizer, Leslie sliced two sweet tomatoes, drizzled with oil, and baked until crispy at the edges. Add salt and pepper: sweet tomato fries.

Way Out West Oktoberfest was last weekend in Tempe. Here's some free stuff we accumulated:Koozy, plastic mug, two Starbucks gift cards, a holographic Bud Light, erm, thingy, and a pin. Which blinks. We also got this photo taken at the Bud Light lounge (so weak, basically an RV with a room to take people's pictures and some TVs and foosball on the roof):

Don't you just love the Bud Light outline?!

The next day we strung up 50 feet of rope all over the apartment to make a clothesline. Check out the photos of Laundry Day.

Ok, that turned out to be the only good one. I'm in the other two, looking dumb.

Finally, this was a lovely recipe we got from our Minnesotan friend Beth, it was from allinarecipes.com I believe. After sauteeing garlic and onion, lots of spinach was wilted over top (we added mushrooms and pine nuts as well), and mixed with beaten eggs. This mixture was poured over rice into a pan and baked. The original called for butter over top everything, we opted for more spinach.