Fun Times

Funny that most of my posts talk about food. Guess you can see where my priorities are.

Last weekend I went to greek fest put on by the Greek Orthodox Church in SLC. It was interesting and the food was great! I want to go to litergy now (thats what eastern orthodox calls their mass) but they don't offer it at a time that is real convient. I couldn't get any decent pictures of the dancers. It was really hot under the pavillian even though it was a beautiful day.

The week before that we went to Sushi. Jillian came along too but didn't want her picture taken. Sushi has really grown on me. I like it a lot.

Cathy and I've been trying to go camping for a couple of weekends in a row. We were going to go this weekend and she got her little tent camper all ready. Then there was lots of thunder and dark clouds so we decided not to. That was a bummer but Mama made a deep dish zuchinni pie (recipe from the Greek Festival) that was super tasty and we ate good food and laughed about silly things, and watched the end of a documentary on killer whales. Very educational. Then we went to bed.

Oh, but before that I went to cabella's. I got a fly rod! YAY. I got a pretty good deal, and it came with everything I needed (and some things I don't). Its a 9' 5 weight, and came with a case, a pack, basic flies for this area, hemostats, line straightener, nippers, strike indicators, leaders, goop noose, mixed shot, zipper clippers, float goup, and of course rod and reel. I practiced with it and it was fun. I tied a small flower to it so I could practice catching hummingbirds (j/k) after I lost one of my strike indicators in the flowers. Maybe after winter comes I'll find it. Cathy came over and showed me some things. She is amazing. She decided to see if she could get it in the trash can, and yep she did. Cathy showed me some stuff, but she started to use her coach voice and I got nervous. I don't respond well to coach voice apparently I get performance ptsd or something :) Actually it was really fun and I can't wait to go try out my gear for real.

Saturday evening Cathy and I went to the state fair. That's fun. I left my phone at home so I stole some pictures from some random blogs. I got my turkey leg so it was a very succesfull fair trip. We saw lots of exhibits, lots of smelly goats, even smellier lambs, and they were finishing up the hog sale. Lots of beef calfs, and one gigantic ox. I've seen oxen before but that guy had to be almost half again as big. He was a Red Holstien/Brown Swiss Cross which meant he had gorgeous big eyes. He reportedly weighs over 3000 pounds and is over 6' tall. Here is a picture I stole off of someone else's blog. We also saw tons of rabbits, and pigeons. Who knew that there were pigeon shows. There were some interesting breeds, but I like the regular poultry better, but guess it was pigeon day instead.

Neither of these pictures do big red justice.

For those of you who remember nanguo. She had a couple of kittens who are pretty much fully grown now. She hisses at them to stay away which isn't a very nice thing to do to her own kids. They are more shy then she is but starting to come out more. I keep hearing scuffling noises on my back porch while writing this and its cause the two kittens are wrestling. Even wild kittens are fun to watch. I need to find a place that is willing to spay/neuter ferral cats. I like these guys but they need to stop reproducing. AND STOP KNOCKING OVER MY POTS!

For Dinner tonight I made Pasta alla Norman again, but did it my way instead of following the exact recipe in Cook's magazine (I did that last week). I used my own sweet onion, sweet pepper, tomatoes, eggplant, zuchinni, garlic, basil, tomatillos, sun dried tomatoes, etc. It is very tasty! Less cheesy this time cause I made more sauce and stuck more veggies in it. I really liked the tomatillos in it cause they add sweetness. I got it out to take a picture and ate a bunch more. Had some cornbread with it. I love how fine my new grain mill gets the whole wheat flour, I can use 100% whole wheat!

Yesterday while at Costco they had a demonstration of the blendtec blender. I have serious kitchen gadget impulivity. But they are there for a whole week so I can think it through. I've been wanting a food processer, but now I'm thinking their blender could work. However its pretty pricey. Its the same guy who invented my way awesome mill, and he was observing the presentation and struck up a conversation with Mama. I figured out pretty quick who he was, but Mama was suprised when I asked him if this was his product. He was a funny guy. He does those "will it blend" thingys and told us his youtube sites got more then 2 million hits and he'd been on various shows. Go check it out, he is funny.

This humoungous tomato (bigger then my head and shown next to a typically sized tomato) is a brandy wine. Super super tasty and I got a bunch of them. They seem to come in waves and I don't know that I'll get another bunch before the first frost. Definately growing these again!

This is a really cool NY times piece on my friend Nicey (I wrote it that way so you know how to say it). She was in my ward when I lived on Cherry and she got baptised just 3 years ago. NY times does little "day in the life of" stories and they picked Nicey as a missionary in NY. Check it out!
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/1-in-8-million/index.html#/naisi_zhao