Happy Birthday Anna and Emily!
Two beautiful young ladies.
Friends.
Happy 18th Birthday!
Happy 21st Birthday!
This has to be the largest sundae we have ever had on our table.
Happy Birthday, Beautiful girls! Many blessings!
Happy Cinco De Mayo!! No Margaritas!? Just straight tequila! LOL! We had some leftover scungilli salad so in celebration of Cinco De Mayo we added some avocados, jalapeno pepper and a little lime. Marinated shrimp and sauteed in olive oil with fresh garlic. Another wonderful dinner.
There are so many things that you could do with this dish. Before serving we added some fresh pico de gallo. We didn’t even miss the chips. We hope you all had a fun fiesta!
Scungilli is one of our favorites. We typically cook the scungilli with fresh garlic, butter and at least a pound of fresh mushrooms. Putting all ingredients into pot and reducing liquid from scungilli. This dish is wonderful over a thin pasta. We also like a little Alfredo sauce, cherry tomatoes and crushed red peppers. Of course a nice garlic bread is always good. Well… this day of all the carbs has come to an end in our kitchen. With Steve being on the Weight Watcher’s diet we’ve had to come up with some new ideas for our favorites. It has actually been a lot of fun and the meals are awesome. I’m also so happy to say Steve has lost 15 pounds! So we took that scungilli drained all the liquid added celery, onion, black olives, fresh squeezed lemon juice, garlic cloves, olive oil, cilantro and a little salt and pepper.
Wow! This is one beautiful salad filled with fresh, bright flavors. We both enjoyed this dish so much. For the most part it was free. Very low points and totally satisfying. We will definitly make this again.
This is such a wonderful time of year with everything coming to life.
Spectacular Flowering Crab tree…
…so beautiful!
A rainbow of tulips. Have you ever smelled a tulip? Some have an incredible sweet fragrance.
A glorious bouquet of daffodils, one of our first colorful signs of spring!
Sweet scent of lilacs fills the air. How I look forward to this each year!
Creeping Phlox
A burst of beauty.
I love the way this ground cover is making it’s way up the trunk of this tree.
Sunshine on our walk this morning.
Stephen enjoying the beautiful morning. As you can see we are still in winter jackets. We are just so thankful for the sunshine. The cool temps makes a bowl of chili… oh so good.
Vegetarian chili with avocado and cheese. Now all we need is a fire!
Happy Spring!
Hannah arrived on the evening of April 2nd. Our first stop was… but of course, Ee-Sane for dinner!
Curried Squash…
Volano Tofu…
Basil Noodles (the best we have had!)…
Vegetable Stir Fry…
and Fresh Spring Rolls with lots of excellent peanut sauce!
As usual, everything was amazing!
We also did the tour at Sprecher Brewery. It is always a good time!
Hannah is officially legal. She traded in her soda cup for a glass of beer. (love the extended pinkie! Soooo posh!)
I think she likes it!
Sisters
Cheers!
Emily and Hannah enjoying the moment.
My beautiful family.
This is some of the best beer and soda you could hope to find.
Thanks Sprecher! Our time was enjoyed by all!
Our next adventure was at the Public Market. This is another one of our favorite places. They offer an incredible selection of cheese, wine, seafood and more. There are several different food venders, and something for everyone.
We also have some pretty special friends that work there. Chris worked with Hannah and me at Penzey’s. He now is employed at Thief Wine. I promise he will serve you the perfect glass of wine.
So happy Jim and Carol were able to join us.
Little love birds!
Coffee and a sweet with the Coffaro girls. Always a pleasure.
Steve said how beautiful it was to have a morning with all his girls. Very special.
My two beauties!
Early morning walk to Beach Road.
Beautiful!
Staying home with some (very heavy) NY style pizza… delivered!
You better be really hungry when this one arrives. So good!
Pizza and some games makes for a perfect night.
Delia waiting for something to fall so she can eat.
Milo catching up on his rest.
Good times at Comet Cafe.
Great food…
French toast with fruit…
Comet cafe makes some great french toast.
Emily = pie… This peach raspberry pie was incredible!
As you can see, we had a very nice time together. Thanks for visiting Hannah!
Hope you come again soon! XO
As I was putting all of these vegetables and fruit through the juicer,
enjoying all of the beautiful colors, flavors and memories,
fresh squeezed orange juice always takes me to Mexico.
Carrot, beet and orange juice and a nice bowl of food for the compost.
I was thinking about Easter when our kids were younger, and using some of these beautiful vegetables to make our dye for coloring eggs. We used onion skins both brown and red, beets, greens, grape juice and blueberries. The colors are awesome. I hope you give it a go. It’s a lot of fun!
This looks like a fun link!
http://chemistry.about.com/od/holidayhowtos/a/eastereggdyes.htm
The perfect opportunity to teach your children about vegetables, gardening, how to plant, nurture, harvest and cook. And most of all to give them an understanding of where this food comes from that we find in a grocery store.
A large portabella mushroom is a vegetarian’s perfect replacement for a tenderloin. It slices like a filet and the juice from the mushroom is just delicious. These mushroom caps are amazing!
This one was made with kalamata olives, parmesan cheese and sliced fresh garlic placed between the gills of the mushroom. We then spread our homemade pesto over the top. Baked about 7-8 minutes at 400 degrees, removed from the oven to sprinkle with mozzarella cheese and then under the broiler for about 90 seconds.
We’ve made these several times. So many of the recipes we’ve read, often tell you to bake or grill mushrooms five minutes on each side. We don’t do that. We bake them gill side up the whole time with toppings, without turning at all. The juice from the mushroom is held in the cap to enjoy when you serve it. The best!
We served the mushrooms over a bed of mixed greens, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, feta cheese and yes, a few more kalamata olives, drizzled with ‘mushroom and sage EVOO’ and just a touch of blackberry balsamic vinegar. What a beautiful meal. We enjoyed it so much that last night (a week later) we made portabellas again.
We covered these in an awesome roasted green chili salsa that I made, along with roasted red peppers and mozzarella cheese.
Again, we served them over greens and veggies, and I can’t put in to words how incredibly delicious and satisfying this meal was! A must try!
You can really have some fun with this. It’s like dressing a pizza! Enjoy!
St. Patrick’s day has always been celebrated with a green beer and corned beef, cabbage, boiled potatoes with carrots. This year we did reubens. Steve made a small brisket for himself and Emily and I shared a tofurkey reuben.
So good!
Emily and I both agree the peppered tofurkey is awesome.
Steve had the real mcCoy! He was very pleased with his corned beef brisket boiled in Penzey’s corned beef seasoning.
This was his first week of Weight Watchers so he did choose to have an open faced sandwich eliminating one slice of bread. One week of healthy choices losing 3.5 pounds! Nice Job!!
The best layer on both of these sandwiches would have to be our home made sauerkraut. Delicious!
We went with canning instead of freezing.
We put all of the kraut into a very large pot and brought the temperature up to 180 degrees before filling jars. During this time we added a pinch of sugar and caraway seed. After the jars were filled we put them into a hot bath for 15 minutes.
I must say, this is some delicious kraut. So much so, that since the grocery stores have an abundance of cabbage during this celebration of the Irish, we picked up 12 pounds so that we can start another batch. We are also going to give kimchi a try. Exciting!!
I hope that you all had a wonderful St. Patty’s day.
May the luck of the Irish be with you!
This has been a wonderful holiday. Our family has gone through major transition the last five months. Hannah and Greg moved to san Diego, Emily left for Italy to study, Steve changed jobs and I quit my job. Wow! We’re all about getting it done! That was lot of change going on all at once! And that made this time together even more special . Christmas time – but more that – after such big changes, we were back together again. Truly a wonderful celebration! It was so much fun, but all good things must come to an end. We made the best of our last day, but there was a cloud of melancholy. We all knew that it was time… to say goodbye.
We walked the campus grounds and came upon this rhododendron shrub that was so beautiful.
Greg, what are you thinking so deeply about?
Campus gardens and child’s play.
Orange trees in their backyard.
We enjoyed a beautiful brunch.
So good!
Frozen yogurt at Tutti-Frutti with a few special toppings.
And now it’s time to say goodbye. This is the hard part but I think it was a little easier knowing that Emily was going to stay on and hang with Greg and Hannah for a while. I like that gradual change. So happy to have been blessed with this time together.
Airport sunset.
Setting.
Beautiful California sky.
Until we meet again. Thanks so much for a beautiful holiday filled with love, laughter, and wonderful memories. We have awesome kids! Love you all!
