Dave and Jess's fun

Spring, yet not

2010-03-21T13:26:00.005-04:00

It hit 70 with little wind so it was very warm to our thick blood from the winter
season. Even Sam is enjoying the fresh air coming inside and all of the bugs flying around!

We walked around outside for a little and found some very nice small flowers starting to come up.

Even the lupines are starting to come out. We hoped that these would flurish but it seems that only one batch our of a few is actually showing. Here's hopeing that more will come up :)

Scoops n cheese (and salsa)

2009-11-26T00:18:00.004-05:00

We decided to do a little experiment with salsa and good mozzarella. You can always think of scoops and salsa but what about the cheese?? This crazy but very good mix would work well at parties!

How to make this great snack:
Start with a bag of Tostitos scoops,mild salsa (not shown), a fresh mozzarella ball and ideally a 4 cheese blend (as you can see we used Sargento).

Put a small dab of salsa in the scoop, cut up the mozz. and place a cube in the scoop (large enough but not too big) and then add the shreded cheese on top to get the picture below:

Now broil on low for about 8 minutes or until the cheese is melted. We have a small oven so this worked well and quickly for us. Times probably will be different in larger ovens. Dont let it stay in there too long! you dont want to boil the salsa or burn the chips -- you'll get soggy chips or very black chips, yuck!

Enjoy!

2009-11-25T17:03:00.009-05:00

Past weekend we went to a Christmas tree showing designed to be a charity. We purchased a few tickets (as a donation) and then are presented with the option to win a few of the trees you place the ticket into. There were probably a few dozen or so trees set up in a large room, some of the neat ones are below

The trees have quite a bit of variety, some is theme based which includes the Red Sox and some are idea based that has cooking books/tools in the tree. It was fun going around and seeing all the different designs people donated.
Some have stuffed animals in it

Some are not trees at all! A cactus 'tree' setup

This tree reminds you of the beach with all the shells and pearls lining the branches
A greener decorated tree that has candy cains all over the place.
Glass ornament tree, The snowman was funny
Some are decorated with hearts
Another stuffed animal tree
Some with roses (not the real kind)

Afterwards we went on a walk around the area since it was a nice day!

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-30T23:59:00.002-04:00

MeeeeoooooOOOWWWWWW!!!

Fritzy mad she can't have candy!

Walk in the woods

2009-08-01T23:40:00.002-04:00

Earlier this month we were walking around in the woods and found this little guy sitting on a stick. We were in a park near by that could overlook our hometown. Couldn't see much except a few towers and lots of trees. It just rained the day before so the mosquitoes were in full effect that day and after being bitten multiple times we high-tailed it back to the car :)

Spring time continued

2009-05-25T23:09:00.007-04:00

Spring continues into the season and the weather has been very nice for the past few days. We decided to browse though our yard with the camera to look at what's continuing to grow. The blooms are getting full and most are already at their peak. The bleeding hearts are past and is a large green bush now.

In front we have some Columbine flowers which look very nice. They are surrounded by massive bushes but stand out just as well.

Our Lupine flowers we got from a festival up north last year are coming along very quite well! We did get 3 of them but only 2 took from the harsh winter weather.
The Lupines in an early stage...
And then a few days later :)

The pansies are doing very well as well and growing like crazy!
Our Armeria flowers are looking very nice in front of the bushes. They are nice and tall so they stand out from the surrounding flowers.

And our cats.. well while growing they are curious as to what I'm doing outside and why they aren't there as well!
(picture looks funny but it's going through a double pane window)

Spring time!

2009-04-30T10:33:00.006-04:00

So it's that time of the year again when the flowers are blooming and the bees a buzzing. I took the opportunity to take some photos of our plants before the petals are blown off, scorched or rained on and torn off. I'm glad that I did take pictures considering we had 3 record breakers in temperature within 4 days.
It was starting to get a bit dark but that also is one of the more ideal times since direct sun could make the plants look harsh.
Our tree out front tends to loose the nice blooms very quickly but when it does bloom it looks great!
These things we have all over the place but are very welcomed :)
The bleeding hearts are rather small at this point. Later in the season it tends to get so large the stems start to bend and break. At this point we wrap wire and add support to keep it in the air and looking beautiful for a very long time.

New cat house

2009-03-28T17:37:00.006-04:00

So we went out to PetSmart today and picked up a good 'toy' for the cats. We got them a nice and tall cat house type thing. We were contemplating it earlier but after seeing it today with $20 off that sold us :) They pretty much got right on it as I carried it in. If you plan on getting a 'whisker city' house that's this tall be warned, use a SUV or van! It really didnt fit in our car but with the passanger seat down it did.
They *really* like the hanging feathers but unfortunately that did not last long at all, we replaced it with a small mouse we have and seems to do the job. The twine is just like our other scratch post (and hopefuly they go after this instead of the couch). It would be nice if it went all the way up but the carpet allows them enough grip to climb.
Sam -- way up high and happy! It's a bit dramatic (the picture) because the top is about 5 feet tall. After playing around it for an hour Sam is sleeping at the top.
Nom nom nom! And the reason why the feathers didnt work out!

Our cats - sleeping away

2009-03-14T23:49:00.004-04:00

Here are our cats.. awwwww CUTE! :) This was a rare shot when I actually have a camera around and my 50mm lens. They tend to get tired around this time and then ramp up in an hour or so.

Baking pretzels and bread

2009-03-14T23:33:00.005-04:00

So today we decided to bake some pretzels and some bread. We have done the pretzels before but seem to have slightly botched it most of the time (burned badly, paper almost caught fire...) So this time we ignored some of the instructions and used pam on a cookie sheet. Our change in the book for baking is 3 minutes, loosen each one and put in for another 3 minutes. Otherwise the 4/4 will burn the bottom! >:|

No we didn't use lime as 'professionals' do but coated them in a nice butter glaze. As always these are very good!

The bread is a maple honey bread. We are letting it cool down for a bit before taking a plentiful bite out of it. While this was in the oven we could defiantly smell the maple sugar (which we decided to do a 50/50 of maple sugar and dark brown sugar).

-Dave and Jess

Router project

2009-03-11T23:56:00.008-04:00

So apparently I can have multiple blogs for my self, I moved this to: davidgrundmann.blogspot.com

Baking cookies!

2009-03-11T23:49:00.004-04:00

Yesterday Jess and I decided to make chocolate chip cookies. After our first baking projects we were a bit wiped out from the massive project earlier. This also came from the flour book stated in the previous blog and of course they are very good :)
We had to adjust our times in the oven, apparently it either heats very well or heats too much on the bottom, though there's no coils at the bottom. Either way we have 38 cookies to enjoy over the next few days!

Baking Project #1 and #2

2009-03-08T23:47:00.000-04:00

Well, really not our first baking project but the first we captured. This is our first blog and it's on food, yummmm.

We started off yesterday on 'brewing' dough, that's how the Italian bread works. Mixed the ingredients and let it sit for 12-16 hours. Lucky we started it at 11pm yesterday.
This is what it looked like after 12 hours and turning + more flour and more waiting....
After braiding.. looks like something out of a Sci-Fi movie :) Once we placed it like this the dough started to grow and expand a lot. Yet again it needs to sit for an hour and a half before finally hitting the oven.

Our other baking project is a raspberry and cream cheese filled pastry.
Another one of those things that is from a Sci-Fi movie. We got 2 of these on a baking sheet. We put these in the oven first and it sure smells like a bakery now! Even our cats are waiting in anticipation for them to finish :)

----BAKING PERIOD----

After letting the smell get to us and drive us crazy, the raspberry and cream cheese is done as well as the Italian bread, too bad it's 1am, too late to fully enjoy!

Make your own! These are ours and no one can have them :) But if you want to make them look at the 'The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion' book, pages 243 and 215.

- Dave and Jess