Kevin's visit to San Diego

Mmmm, margaritas...

Moonscape

Couldn't sleep tonight, so I experimented with some photos of the moon from our window. I found it impossible to actually get both the moon and the reflection on the water to be exposed correctly in one shot... when you get the moon right, the water reflection is completely underexposed and invisible. When you get the reflection right, the moon is just a big blur of white. So I had to take two photos and superimpose them on top of each other in Photoshop.

Risotto with mushrooms recipe

Sorry it's a bit of an ugly picture, but it was DELICIOUS!! I highly recommend it.

Ingredients:

1/3 cup dried wild mushrooms, preferably porcini

1 1/2 cups fresh cultivated mushrooms

juice of 1/2 lemon

1/3 cup butter

2 tbsp finely chopped parsley

4 cups vegetable stock, preferably home made

2 tbsp olive oil

1 small onion, finely chopped

1 1/2 cups medium-grain risotto rice, such as arborio

1/2 cup dry white wine

salt and freshly ground pepper

3 tbsp freshly grated Parmesan or Romano cheese

(serves 3-4)

1. Place the dried mushrooms in a small bowl with about 1 1/2 cups warm water. Soak for at least 40 minutes. Rinse the mushrooms thoroughly. Filter soaking water through a strainer lined with paper towels, and reserve.

2. Wipe the fresh mushrooms with a damp cloth, and slice FINELY. Place in a bowl and toss with the lemon juice. In a large heavy frying pan or casserole melt one third of the butter. Stir in the fresh sliced mushrooms and cook over moderate heat until they give up their juices, and begin to brown. Stir in the parsley, cook for 30 seconds more, and remove to a side dish.

3. Place the vegetable stock in saucepan. Add the mushroom water, and simmer until needed.

4. Heat another third of the butter with the olive oil in the same pan the mushrooms were cooked in. Stir in the onion, and cook until it is soft and golden. Add the rice, stirring for 1-2 minutes to coat it with the oils. Add the soaked and sauteed mushrooms, and mix well.

5. Pour in the wine, and cook over moderate heat until it evaporates. Raise teh heat slightly, and cook until the wine evaporates. Add one small ladleful of the hot stock. Over moderate heat cook until the stock is absorbed or evaporates, stirring the rice with a wooden spoon to prevent it from sticking to the pan. Add a little more stock, and stir until the rice dries out again. Continue stirring and adding the liquid a little at a time. After about 20 minutes of cooking time, taste teh rice. Add salt and pepper.

6. Continue cooking, stirring and adding the liquid until the rice is al dente. The total cooking time of the risotto may be from 20 - 35 minutes. If you run out of stock, use hot water, but do not worry if the rice is done before you have used up all the stock.

7. Remove the risotto pan from the heat. Stir in the remaining butter and the Parmesan or Romano cheese. Grind in a little black pepper, and taste again for salt. Allow the risotto to rest for 3-4 minutes before serving.

Kelly's "Do it yourself" projects

As always, Kelly is in the middle of a few interesting projects. One thing he's doing is making a very large magnetic white board to hang up in our office. He got a very large piece of wood and is currently painting it with a magnetic paint, that apparently only one Home Depot in north county has in stock. After this is dry (which might be a while, since it rained on it last night :)), he is going to paint it with white board paint. Here it is, in progress (before the rain):

The other project currently going on in our house is a beer fermentation chamber. Kelly tried to explain it to me last night but I had no idea what he was talking about. Something about computer fans (in my opinion this is just an excuse to go to Fry's) directing cold air in ways that make it colder. Here is what it's looking like so far:


The beer keg will go in the large compartment, and ice will go in the two smaller compartments. Not quite sure about the fan yet... stay tuned.



And here's my favorite project... torturing Kelly with my photography experiments...

Hummingbird

Just a random photo I caught by accident while out with my camera on the 101 in Encinitas...

From Hummingbird in Encinitas

Limoncello Part Due (that's "2" in Italian according to Kelly)

Today we finished making our Limoncello! We now have to wait 10 - 40 days before we can drink it, and I am really hoping that in that time it will become a bit milder because it smelled REALLY strong today.










Here's the recipe we used:

(Disclaimer: we have not actually tasted it yet! We'll add an update to the recipe if it doesn't work out too well :) )

Ingredients:
1.5 liters of Everclear (grain alcohol)
16 lemons (zest or peel only)
10 cups filtered water
6 cups sugar

Instructions:
Part 1
Zest or peel the lemons, combine with Everclear, and let sit in airtight container for 10 weeks, shaking/stirring occasionally. (We did 10 weeks because we were lazy, but technically I think you can do as little as 4)

Part 2
Heat up water and dissolve the sugar until the mixture is clear. Let the sugar water cool. Mix with the lemon/everclear mixture. Bottle in air-tight bottles (we got them from the Container Store) and leave in freezer for 10-40 days.

Complete photo album:

Happy hour

Before dinner tonight, I decided to make something similar to an appetizer I had at the French Roast restaurant in New York a few days ago. It was a pretty simple little salad made out of diced avocado, tomato and smoked salmon slices, but the presentation was unique - it was presented as a cylinder... I figured it would be easy to make a cylinder - I thought I would just put the ingredients in a glass or mug, turn it over, and wa la. But no! I tried to do this and it kept falling apart. So annoying. Finally I cut the bottom off a Starbucks cup and Kelly suggested that we cut it in half, and this worked like a charm.






And we had a very nice sunset tonight... the pinks and purples were beautiful!

Thanksgiving with Kelly's family in Phoenix

After a crazy 10 hour drive through pouring rain, flash floods, thunder and lightening (who knew it rained so hard in the desert?), we finally got to Phoenix around 2am on Thanksgiving day. As tired as we were (especially me, from all that tough driving I did :)), we couldn't say no to the Irvins' home brewed Limoncello. After downing half a bottle with Glenn and Janet, we fell asleep in about .5 seconds.

The rest of the weekend brought sunny skies and beautiful fall Phoenix weather. We ate A LOT of delicious food, watched raisins bounce up and down in Champagne, laughed at the dogs, spent hours and hours watching Heroes (which I am now obsessed with), played pickup sticks, ate more delicious food, and saw a Dale Chihuly exhibit at the Desert Botanical Gardens.

Here are some photos from the weekend!

Slideshow:



Picasa Album:

Thanksgiving in Phoenix

Catching up on Photos - a few albums from the past couple of months:

Vail, Arizona (near Tuscon) - surprise trip to help Ryan and Sarah install a sprinkler system in their new home:





Making our first batch of Limoncello:


Our first month in our new apartment in Cardiff:



"Trash the Dress" Photo Shoot with Kristy


Sean & Amy Thompson - Family photo shoot