Bagna Cauda What?

At about 5am last night (this morning) after a long night of dancing, drinking, making friends, and eating tacos, I declared to my roommate Heather that I was going to cook her dinner the next day. I don't know why I declared this... but cook her dinner, I did!
After downloading the epicurious app onto my iPhone I hit the grocery store and started cooking up a storm. Heather came home from work to a perfectly timed meal of arugula and avocado salad, grilled catfish, fresh artichokes, french bread, bagna cauda, and sangria.

What is Bagna Cauda, you ask?
It's a delicious garlic and oil dipping sauce for both the artichokes and the bread. Ingredients: 3 heads of garlic, anchovies, butter, olive oil.
Heather calls it "fucking heaven."

Saturday Night Grilling

This saturday we pulled put the grill for the first time this season, and instead of slapping on a hunk of red meat, we decided to put a different spin on it.

We started off with just a little asparagus and some onions, slathered in artisan olive oil, with oregano, pepper, and salt sprinkled delicately over them. slap them on the grill and they make a beautiful picture-

Of course, we needed some bread, so we, again, slathered olive oil, oregano, salt and pepper onto some naan bread and threw that on the grill as well.

OM NOM NOM! de-lic-i-ous.

What's a barry dinner without salad? so here's some sliced up tomatoes, which'll make do for salad at the moment. beautiful. stunning, really.

The general theme for tonight was seafood. we got some fresh cajun shrimp from whole foods, skewered it, and put it on the grill. very pretty; here you go.

and- the piece de resistance- red snapper fish, gutted, cleaned, and stuffed with lemons and onions, the most delicious fish i've e er tasted. get ready for your computer to get blown away, because i've got some beautiful pictures for you.












And so, i finish my post after almost two hours.
and hey, how 'bout some food on here? we havent had any postings in ages!

as a last note, i'd like to give an honarable mention to Lila Jean Starkbarry, the newest member of our family. go Lila!
-grace out

Let the games begin

Our guys tore off the upstairs siding today and will be back tomorrow to remove the old porch ceiling. Any thoughts we had about saving it disappeared as soon as the first pieces of aluminum were removed.

We learned the porch has some rain damage to both the ceiling and a column base. And our roof has some shingles rubbed away by a tree branch. "You guys got a leak?" All this time we thought the water came straight in through the window seal.

Evidence of the Gormaly teenagers was also discovered on a window frame.

Wonder what we'll learn about our house tomorrow.

Grilling in the Drizzle

Just got in this nice meal as it started to rain. Swordfish marinated in a slurry of cilantro, green onions and parsley and then grilled and served with store-bought pineapple salsa, some roasted-on-the-grill poblanos stuffed with mashed potatoes, corn, and a little cheddar, bruschetta, and some nice super-sweet grilled peaches. And I'm takin' the day off tomorrow!

And boy is editing these posts hard! The pictures move with a life of their own.

Our porch needs painting

And we don’t have time to paint it ourselves. I know, let’s get Mikey to do it!

Wait, he painted it in 1981.

Let’s get Janet and Olga to do!

Oh yeah, they painted the porch in 1995 to earn money for gymnastics camp.

I guess it’s time we stop taking advantage of family and hire the pros.

Perhaps while the porch is being painted, they could take down the sliding around the upstairs’ bay and put up shingles. Wonder what that would look like? Let’s take a peek.

Beautiful, let's have the siding removed on the front of the house from the porch up. Our man tells us we can put some great colors around the attic windows. Speaking of windows, replacing the front windows has been on our to-do-list for years. While the pros are here, let have them do it!

So now we are getting the porch painted, replacing the front siding with painted shingles and clapboard and getting seven new windows. Good thing we are structuring the job to avoid scope creep.

Well there is the new beadboard on the front porch ceiling, remodeling our bedroom and creating a large walk-in closet, but those are tales for another day.

Here's our dinner last night. First we had some ripe plum tomatoes roasted for two hours in olive oil with Oregano, a little sugar and a little salt.

Here it is on top of French bread with some aged goat cheese:

Some corn soup with crispy prosciutto:

And with corn, you need more corn, and a few other grilled goodies:

Almost a Ninja

Today I tested for my Deputy Black Belt 2, which is only one belt under (bum bum bum) the BLACK BELT! The testing was great fun, although private, because we don't want all the other color belts to know our secrets. We covered kicking combinations, forms, and one step sparring. Pretty much everything. Then we got to watch assistant instructors get beaten up by Matt Stojak, who is in Hapkido, which is, to me, the art of beating people to a bloody pulp. He demonstrated some of his throws and self-defense techniques, all of which were quite impressive. Black Belts were also testing for their 1st or second star. Each star signifies a belt that they know perfectly; when you get 8 stars, you become a 2Nd Degree Black Belt. Very impressive. The Black Belts,(all of who were in the ages nine to ten range) demonstrated their Korio: the Black Belt form(a combination of kicks, punches, blocks, etc) falling down combo's (so you don't die when you fall) and explained their belts requirements. yes, very impressive. I got my Deputy Black Belt 2 (it's black with a white stripe through it) and an Assistant Instructor Badge. getting an Assistant Instructor badge is for, you guessed it, assistant instructor. I help teach 3 to 5 year old's, essentially holding targets and such, with my best friend Elena, who is now a High Red Belt.
Other people who got honorable mentions were my good friends Ellie and Vanessa, who have held back a few times (by their own choice!) to test with my group Tme they have been waiting to get Dep. Black 2 belts is (drum roll please) 8 months. Ipplaud them. so, all in all, i have gotten m deputy black belt 2, and in one month exactly (31 days) my black belt!

So, all in all, i am ALMOST a ninja.