Spring is Springing!

I'd say sprung, but technically not everything here is in bloom yet. A couple things are though so I snagged some pictures. 

Blossoms on the pear tree

Strawberries

Tulips

My thyme came back!!

Bath Time!

It was bathtime for Indy this past Sunday. He was actually starting to smell, so it was time to clean him up. He LOVES to swim, however, he hates baths. We said "Indy bath time!" and he actually started walking in the opposite direction. We finally coaxed him into the bathroom and one paw at a time he got in the tub. I did not take any actual bath pictures as it takes both Eric and I to keep him in the tub and scrub him. The pictures below are all from after his bath. He was not pleased and of course shook all over and got water and loose hair all over the bathroom and the living room. He does smell much better and is nice and soft and cuddly!

getting some love before resisting his bath

rubbing against the couch to dry off

Dad loves me! See?!

You gave me a bath and now you want pictures? I better get a belly rub from this!

St. Patrick's Day!

For St. Patty's Day we had some of our friends over for corned beef dinner and what I had hoped would be yummy irish cream cheesecake! The corned beef dinner with potatoes, cabbage, carrots and onions was really good! Eric boiled all of it in his deep fryer pot so we didn't have to destroy the kitchen. Not to mention we didn't have enough crock pot space for 10 pounds of corned beef. Oh, I how I long for the days when we'll have a full size oven and can roast stuff!

My Irish cream cheesecake was, well in all honesty, a disaster. When I read the recipe and my first thought was gee, there are a lot of eggs in this I should have run with that thought and halved the eggs. What I ended up with was curdled egg souffle, not cheesecake. The temperature of the oven was too hot and the cheesecake puffed up (see below) and then fell down once it cooled. Come time to eat it, it was like eating a funny tasting fritatta. Guess what recipe got a scathing review on the recipe site?!

All in all though, St. Patty's was a fun day!

My festive flowers

Eric's green homebrew coming from his newly installed tap handle in his home  rigged keg-er-rator

The horrible cheesecake baking/curdling

Boiling goodness!

Dinner!!

Denver Hockey

Two weekends ago Scott and Heather, Joe and Laura and Eric and I went to a DU (University of Denver) vs. Wisconsin hockey game. Laura and Joe both went to Wisconsin, and Scott and Heather went to DU, and Eric was a fan of DU when he was out here for in an internship in 2004, and I'm just a follower and wore the DU shirt Eric told me to. 

The game was a lot of fun since we hadn't been to a hockey game since we lived in Ohio and went down for Ohio State ones. DU beat Wisconsin and all in all it was a fun night out!

Eric in his puck hat. He got it in 2004, and  it's one of the few things he still has from his  bachelor days  ;)

Boone! DU's Pioneer Mascot

Sumo Hockey between periods

Laura, Me and Heather

Chocolate Frozen Yogurt

I pulled out one of my Christmas presents, my ice cream maker, the other day and made some yummy frozen yogurt!

I think I need to tweak the amount of chocolate in the recipe as the final product is rather rich. Not that rich is bad, but when I say rich I really mean abundantly wealthy :)

The process for making it is quite simple, and pictures of the process are below. Eric has been quite pleased with it and is fully behind me making more frozen yogurt whenever I feel like it. I'm trying to decide on my next flavor- any suggestions?!

The chocolate concoction boiling

The drained yogurt waiting to mix with the chocolate goodness.

the combined chocolate goodness cooling before it goes into the ice cream machine.

churning, churning, churning

He was hoping with all hope that I would drop something and let him lick it up.
Don't worry he's gotten to have some yogurt :)

I Cooked Dinner!

By now it should be abundantly clear that I don't cook unless it's out of complete necessity. Well, I'm attempting to change that by cooking one meal each week. 

Last week I tried an Indian dish- chicken tikka masala. It's basically chicken in a spiced cream sauce over yellow basmati rice with naan (Indian flat bread). Overall, Eric deemed it edible. However, for as many spices as I put in the sauce I thought it'd be more flavorful. It was somewhat bland. I told Eric it was like an Indian version of chicken paprikash over rice rather than spaetzel. 

Prep!

Chicken marinating in a yogurt and masala mix

 

The naan dough before it's grilled

Making the yellow rice

Final Product

Nonetheless it was edible and we had leftovers for a few days, and the flavor did improve over the next few days. So I think I'm off to a decent start. I'll keep you updated as I continue to try my hand in the kitchen!

Random Amazing Dinner

While our friends CJ, Holly and Seth were visiting and we were all staying in Breckenridge we went to the restaurant, Briar Rose. It's a Chop House in Breck and the food was amazing! The side dishes were done family style so we could all share. Two of the sides we ordered were Balsamic Glazed Asparagus (yes, mom I eat asparagus!) and Goat Cheese (my only way to deal with the lactose issue!) and herbed Risotto. Not the cheapest dinner ever, but definitely worth the money.

Well, we had everything at home tonight for Eric to duplicate our steak dinner with those exact sides! It was amazing! It was like eating at Briar Rose all over again. The steaks were Filets from Omaha Steaks and their meat is always fantastic. All Eric did was season it with salt and pepper.

I love that I get these kinds of dinner in the middle of the week!!

Doesn't it look yummy?!