When Bee and Curly were slicing strawberries for the 4th of July pancake breakfast (for 200 people) they were in charge of, Bee noticed a unique strawberry among the five flats they had in the kitchen. He dubbed it the Strawberry Buddha.
Curly came across this picture while she was pulling pics off the camera, and wanted to share it with you. Cute, huh?
Curly got an email from her mom today with pictures of her orchid that has finally bloomed. She is so excited about it! That email prompted Curly to finally write this post – something she has been meaning to do for weeks. Thanks, Mom!
About a month after Curly and Bee started dating, Bee gave her a beautiful orchid for Valentine’s Day. It was in full bloom with splendid white flowers that were four inches across. Apparently Bee’s mom also thought it was a magnificent plant, and suggested to Bee that she could keep this one and they could find another one for Curly! She has grown orchids for quite some time. But Curly ended up with the orchid (as well as some delicious Dilettante chocolate truffles and a scrumptious Italian dinner). It was a good Valentine’s Day.
That was two and a half yea
rs ago, and after those flowers faded and fell off, it was just a lovely green plant for a long time. Eventually it started growing air roots, but didn’t blossom again. One day Bee’s mom asked Curly if she was feeding her orchid, when it was mentioned that it hadn’t bloomed since she had gotten it. Nope, she wasn’t. So she started giving it orchid food and it started growing a stem for blossoms! Yay! And once it started it grew rather quickly. The buds opened up several weeks ago, and we ended up with six beautiful flowers.
Here are some pictures of the orchid. It sits next to a moderately sized dieffenbachia, with large green leaves which you can see in the pictures. We would have moved the orchid to take some photos, but the air roots have grown around the cast iron plant stand, so it was safer to leave it where it is. You can see the air roots at the bottom of the photo below on the right.
Moral of the story: Feed your orchid. It’s probably hungry.
It just so happens that Bee’s brother and his wife and youngest child are here on vacation from Ohio (the other four children are with their other grandparents in Chicago having a marvelous time!). We’ve been enjoying spending time with Bee’s family, since they so rarely are able to all be together. Last night we went out to dinner at Ivar’s Salmon House (http://ivars.com/index.php?page=locations_salmonhouse) for a leisurely two-hour dinner of fine seafood. Curly would highly recommend the halibut, but Bee discovered that seafood is the house specialty. We had eaten a lot of fish lately, so he wanted to try something different, but he ended up finishing Curly’s halibut while she ate some of his chicken. It was a lovely dinner with good company and enjoyed by all eight people in attendance. We would like to send out a big “Thank you!” to Bee’s parents for treating us to such a nice evening.
Apparently every year Seattle has this large festival called Seafair, and one of the events is Fleet Week (http://www.seafair.com/events/fleetweek/), during which we pay tribute to the men and women of the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard. Several American and Canadian (yes, Canadian) ships dock in Elliot Bay and
invite the public on for free tours. This was the first year that Curly was aware of this tradition, so she informed Bee that she would like to tour one of the ships, and invited Bee’s family to come along too. It turned out that just Bee’s brother, his wife and their adorable four-month old daughter were able to come, so we set off to Pier 66 early this morning to beat the crowds. We toured the USS KIDD (DDG 100), which is a large Navy Guided Missile Destroyer. Very large. Very impressive.
The tours were led by Navy officers who work onboard the ship, so we got some neat insights about the operation of the USS KIDD and some fun sea stories along the way.
Touring a US Navy vessel isn’t something you get to do everyday, so we were all glad we had the chance. Here are some of the pictures we took.
Curly and Bee standing beside the USS KIDD (DDG 100).
Q and Lou with their daughter.
The mast of the ship, with one of our tour guides.
The big gun.
These doors open up so things can be shot out of them.
There was a red circle around the firing area. Apparently when the personnel hear certain alarms they know to get the heck out of the way, or they’ll get singed!
“Don’t Tread on Me” flag that flies at the front of the USS KIDD.
Although the ship itself is rather large, it was not necessarily built to accommodate very tall people. This is Q going through one of the doors. In hindsight, we wish we had gotten a picture of Curly going through a door to show the contrast. Sigh. Q is very tall!
Throughout the ship there are handy maps telling you where you are.
USS KIDD mess hall sign.
Our tour guide telling us about the mess hall. Apparently the food leaves much to be desired.
This is a poster that was hanging up near the mess hall. Unfortunately, Curly didn’t have time to turn off the flash. We were moving pretty fast onto the next spot.
This is the back of the ship, where we started and ended our tour.
There were U.S. Coast Guard boats patrolling the water around the USS KIDD. They looked pretty dinky compared to the large destroyer vessel they were there to protect. Q asked about them, mentioning one might think it was a silly thing to have such small rubber boats guarding an enormous ship. Our guide said they’re really there as a first warning for any other boats that might get too close, letting them know they need to back off.
The security gate that everyone has to pass through to get onto the ship, and walk by as they are leaving.
Since Curly and Bee have been somewhat neglectful of their blog-posting duties since the end of June, we’ll give you a quick summary of the past month. Unfortunately, their aren’t many pictures to accompany this post, since Curly doesn’t have a fancy phone that allows her to transfer photos and she either forgot her camera or batteries when photo ops presented themselves. Grr.
We’ll start with the food, since that seems to be a common theme in our blog. Curly and Bee had been given a gift certificate, from the family she works for, to a cozy little restaurant called Pair (http://www.pairseattle.com/
). This was the second such gift, so we were very excited to sample more food from their unique menu. The dishes are intentionally small, so you order four or five things between the two of you and share it all. We have found that the frites are better than any french fries you will ever have, and the fontina mac and cheese is to die for (as has been mentioned before, Curly has an appreciation for really good macaroni and cheese). We also tried the Natural Beef Briskets this time, which looked like miniature hamburgers. Very good if you like horseradish, which Bee does and Curly does not. Curly has a cute picture of Bee on her phone of him eating one of his tiny little “burgers” and would love to share it with all of you, but is at a loss at to how to get it off her phone. Anyway, Pair is a lovely restaurant, and we would definitely recommend it.
On July 3rd, Bee and Curly were in charge of putting on a church pancake breakfast for 200 people – an overwhelming task! We had never done anything on this scale before, and Curly was stressed out. We had two other people on our committee, but Curly figured it would be easier if she and Bee planned and shopped for all the food (leave nothing to chance…). We decided to keep it simple by serving pancakes, syrup, fresh strawberries and blueberries, whipped cream, and sausages. The fresh fruit was the one thing Curly was prepared to stand her ground on, even though it would be the biggest expense, next to the sausages. Mmm… fresh strawberries and whipped cream on pancakes! She figured the fruit would also give those individuals who are careful about sugar a nice alternative. The best strawberries in the Seattle area are from Spooner Berry Farms, which is a family owned berry farm in Olympia. They pick them daily and sell them ripe and ready to eat at their berry stands, one of which is just down the street on 35th Avenue NE, next to the Wedgewood post office. We love the fact that we get to support a local farm when we buy their berries, and they literally are the best berries you will find in Seattle (http://www.spoonerberryfarms.com/).
OK, back to the pancake breakfast. Curly happened to have the Friday before off, so she purchased 5 flats of strawberries, then went to Costco and Cash & Carry to do the rest of the shopping, went to the church to set up as much as she could on her own, went to her doctor’s appointment, had dinner with Bee, then they both went back to the church to finish setting up tables and chairs, stopped off at Bee’s parents’ to borrow their electric skillet, then back home to cut up strawberries (our other two committee member were missing in action). We were at the church at 7:00 the next morning to start cooking. Amazingly, everything went so smoothly. We had cooked plenty of pancakes ahead of time (there were four of us in the kitchen), so the line moved quickly and we just kept cooking pancakes and bringing food out until everyone had as much as they could eat. The fresh fruit was an enormous hit, and people were raving about how good the strawberries were. Our church does this 4th of July pancake breakfast every year, with mixed results. We were told over and over that this breakfast was the best one ever! Yay!
We cleaned up and went home and took a three hour nap.
On July 19th we were given tickets to the Mariners baseball game by a family that we know. They were awesome seats! Three rows back from the 3rd base line, right over the visiting team’s dugout. The weather was perfect, the seats were great, and the Mariners lost. Oh well. We kept ourselves entertained by watching the people around us. There was a man sitting directly in front of us who looked very familiar to Curly. Probably in his late 20s to early 30s. Did he look like a famous actor, perhaps? Bee thought he looked like Kevin Bacon, and Curly voted for Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker). Curly was going to take a picture of him so we could put it on our blog and have all of you vote, but alas, the batteries in her camera were dead! So sad. In the end, though, she realized that he looked a lot like this guy she used to see around at church a few years ago. Not quite as exciting.
On a whim, Curly decided to stop off at the Spooner Berry Farm stand for a flat of raspberries to make freezer jam a couple weeks ago. Again, the best berries in Seattle!
Over the last two weekends we’ve tackled a project in our yard, and were quite happy to finish it on Saturday. Our yard has a small garden with a hydrangea, fern, and the hostas that Curly and Bee planted back in May. There was also some scraggly looking ivy that we didn’t like. We also have an arc-shaped rose garden that was overwhelmed with ivy, choking out the roses. It appeared that originally there was no ivy, and the garden was just covered with bark, so we decided to pull out all the ivy. We knew that the ivy would be a pain in the neck to remove, but it was worse than we were expecting.
Bee was exhausted after he spent about two hours hacking away at it.
But he was victorious in the end.
Our hydrangea had also reached epic proportions, so Bee trimmed that back quite a bit. It looks sad now, but it should bounce back in the spring.
Curly decided to make peperonata today. It’s this wonderfully colorful Italian dish with lots of fresh vegetables that one of her brothers learned to make while he was living in Italy as a missionary over ten years ago. He probably only fixed it for the family one time, but it made quite an impression on Curly, because last December when she was assigned a vegetable dish for Christmas dinner with Bee’s family she thought of this one. Having never made it herself, she called up her brother for the recipe and made it for the first time on Christmas Eve for dinner that night. Talk about having faith in one’s cooking abilities! This may have been the first time Curly had cooked a dish for her in-laws, aside from the occasional batch of cookies, and obviously she wanted it to be quite tasty. Thankfully everyone enjoyed the peperonata that night. Well, almost everyone. Bee conveniently neglected to try it. He has agreed to give it a shot tonight, however. We’ll see what he thinks.
Curly’s favorite thing about peperonata is the vibrant colors. Eggplant, bell peppers, zucchini, basil, oregano, potatoes, tomatoes… it really is quite pretty. It starts out looking like this.
Then you basically cook it until it’s mush. And it ends up like this.
Curly freely admits that her brother’s peperonata is undoubtedly better than her own, since he actually learned to cook it in Italy from little old Italian ladies. But we can’t all be so lucky. Sigh.
On a side note, when Curly was younger she would get upset with her mother for putting green things in food. Green things being dried herbs. It wasn’t until her brother came home from Italy and requested fresh herbs to cook with that Curly realized (at age 18) that there is a huge difference between dried herbs and herbs fresh from the garden. She fell in love with cooking with fresh basil and rosemary and oregano and thyme, and even uses fresh sage now, much to her mother’s surprise. As a small child, she and her siblings would play outside in the acres of sagebrush on her family’s property, making forts and whatnot. Inevitably, sagebrush would get on her hands, and her hands would somehow find their way into her mouth. Let’s just say sagebrush is not a tasty treat. Consequently, Curly associated sage with sagebrush and therefore did not like the taste of it. She expressly forbade her mother from cooking with it.
Now Curly has her own herb garden, which includes sage.
We celebrated our first wedding anniversary on Sunday (May 30th)! Yay! This is how Bee acknowledged the occasion.
In case you can’t read it, it says, “I think something important happened today…”
Those who know us may realize that the first year of marriage wasn’t quite what we had been expecting. Due to the pitiful economic times, Bee was without steady employment throughout our entire engagement and all but the last few weeks of our first year of marriage. We are happy to report that Bee is now gainfully employed as an engineer, as it should be! It was a stressful year, but we have to say that we are incredibly happy and have learned a lot from the last 12 months. Would we want to do it again? Probably not.
Due to our tight budget we very rarely eat out, as we did quite frequently while we were dating. It should be mentioned that Curly loves to cook and Bee is very fond of the food that she makes, but sometimes a person just doesn’t feel like cooking. When that’s the case, the Ivar’s Salmon House Fish Bar comes in very handy (you must get the salmon and chips). It’s one of our favorites. Along with Red Mill Burgers and University Teriyaki and Zeke’s Pizza and Pagliacci Pizza. Oh, and don’t forget Serious Pie. Mmm… they are Seattle classics. (We’ll put links to the sites at the end of the post. Just in case you’re looking for some good food.) We should mention that Bee’s parents will occasionally treat us to take-out, which has been a fun way to spend time with them (we pick it up and take it over to their house). So we are not completely deprived.
We’ve gotten quite used to eating normal food here at our cute little house, and find now that fast food (or restaurant food in general) doesn’t always leave one feeling one’s best. Home cooked food is just better. That being said, we ended up celebrating our anniversary by eating out three times in 24 hours. It was not planned, it just kind of happened. Curly didn’t feel like cooking dinner on Friday, so we decided to splurge a little and go to Red Mill for our favorite burgers. Then the next morning we decided to go out for brunch to officially celebrate our anniversary at the neighborhood cafe we ate at the day after we got married. It’s this great little joint called The Dish Cafe (on Leary Way in Seattle – sorry, no website). The food there is amazing. Bee is in love with their sausage gravy. It’s a unique place, in that you write your name and the number in your party on a clipboard that hangs outside the door, and then you just wait outside until they come out and call your name. There’s usually quite a crowd outside, drinking the complimentary coffee, waiting for tables. It’s fun.
Later in the day, Bee’s mom asked if we wanted to pick up some fancy take-out and have dinner with them to celebrate our anniversary. Absolutely, we did! We decided on Thai food from Marlai, because it’s so good. It’s the best Thai food we’ve found in Seattle. Everything on the menu is good, but we especially like the fried rice, chicken sate with peanut sauce, orange beef, and halibut. And to top it off, the people who work there (own the place, perhaps?) are so sweet and the service is incredible. Dinner was delicious that night!
Needless to say, Curly and Bee have been eating home-cooked food for the past two days. While we enjoyed every one of those three meals on Friday and Saturday, we’re just not used to eating out that often. That being said, we’re probably not going to turn down an offer for really good food that Curly doesn’t have to cook.
http://ivars.net/index.php?page=locations_seafood-bars
http://www.redmillburgers.com/
http://tomdouglas.com/index.php/restaurants/serious-pie
A couple of weeks ago Curly bought three hosta plants to put in the front garden where she had pulled up a lot of unsightly, scraggly looking ivy. It’s a very shady spot, so the hostas should do quite
well there in between an enormous hydrangea and a large fern. We’d had a very busy Saturday, but she wanted to get them in the ground, so Bee offered to plant them while Curly made an apple crisp to take to the dinner we were having with Bee’s family (we were on dessert duty). She got started in the kitchen, and suddenly Bee came in and asked if she wanted to see them. He had them in the ground in ten minutes! Curly was quite impressed, as she thought it would have taken her at least half an hour to dig all three holes and plop them in. Hooray for Bee! Here’s a picture of our lovely hostas.
On Wednesday, Curly acquired an elephant ear plant (at least that’s what she was told it is) from a neighbor of the family she works for. Curly is a nanny, and she and the kids were playing in a neighbor’s yard on Monday when she noticed the very large plant growing in the corner. It must be said that their yard is beautifully landscaped and the couple does it all themselves. Someday Curly and Bee would love to have a big, beautiful yard like that one. Anyway, back on track! This lovely woman offered to have her husband dig some up for Curly to take home. Wednesday morning, it was sitting in their garden very near where Curly parks her car for work. Isn’t that the sweetest thing?
The weather got yucky and rainy that day and stayed that way for a few days, but today was beautiful and sunny. Time to plant the elephant ear! One problem. The spot that we decided would be best was right next to some of that horrid running bamboo we’ve told you about before. Knowing that given enough time, the bamboo would choke out Curly’s new plant, she set out to obliterate 
it from that particular little spot. Bee warned her that when he had tried to hack away a bamboo root, it actually bent his gardening tool. Not to be deterred, Curly put on her gloves and set to work. Using an ancient looking pickaxe that had apparently been leaning up against the garage for quite some time, she slowly dug up root after root. Running bamboo is tenacious stuff, and it sends out roots that grow parallel to the ground, about two or three inches down. Every so many inches, it send out a vertical shoot that grows up out of the ground, and that becomes a bamboo stalk. It was no simple task to dig these things up. Each line just keeps growing longer and sends up more stalks, and gets thicker, and tougher, and harder to dig up the longer it’s been there. The picture will give you an idea of what Curly was up against. That was just a small sample of what was in that small spot.
Bee was busy with other things, but he looked out the window a few times and smiled as Curly wielded the large pickaxe (she’s quite petite, but don’t be fooled by her size). It took a couple of hours to clear a spo
t that is about three feet square, but Curly was victorious in the end and their very large yard waste bin is now full of bamboo roots. Bee came out and helped tip the plant out of the pot and into the hole, because at this point Curly was tired. Those roots came out very grudgingly, and there were a lot of them. But we have an elephant ear plant there now! Looking at it now, it doesn’t seem like much, considering all the hard labor that was required just to dig the darn hole. However, it will get much bigger and hopefully fill in a large portion of the spot by the end of the summer. As long as we can keep the blasted bamboo at bay.
So this story actually starts last summer. Perhaps you will find the humor in it, as Curly and Bee do.
On one side of our street, cars are parked parallel to the road. On the other side, cars are parked perpendicular to the road. Can you already see where this is going?
One beautiful July evening, Curly arrived home from work and parked in her normal spot in front of the house (parallel to the road). Bee happened to be in the yard, so we stayed outside for a while and talked. Eventually the conversation turned to a garbage can that had been on the street for a number of weeks, which was rather puzzling. We thought it probably belonged to our neighbor, but they had a smaller can that they put out and pulled back in each week while the large can stayed on the side of the street. We went through our gate, onto the sidewalk to take a closer look at the mystery garbage can and noticed a group of young people getting into a car that was parked across the street. As we were inspecting the can for a house number, the young man who was driving started to back out of the spot. He got halfway across the street, at which point Bee and Curly both knew he would back into Curly’s car, par
ked directly across the street. He was going kind of fast and didn’t slow down or start to turn. He simply backed right into Curly’s car. We heard a few choice words as he moved his car and got out to talk to us and swap insurance info. They had been in a hurry to get on the road for a trip and he just wasn’t paying attention. The incident left a very large dent in the front passenger door of Curly’s car, which didn’t make her happy. Now, it should be mentioned that Curly doesn’t have a super-sweet ride, but it’s a great little car and she didn’t relish the thought of driving around a dented vehicle. When all was said and done, we found out it would have cost more to repair the damage than the car was actually worth. We decided to keep the money we got from the young man’s insurance company rather than fix the car. We’re saving for a new car anyway.
A week or two later as Curly was getting into her car as she was leaving the grocery store, she noticed a new dent a little further back on the same side that was now severely dented. Grrr. She was not in a good mood that night.
Fast forward 10 months. Bee came home from work on Monday feeling a little glum, because someone had tried to pry open the gas tank door to siphon gas out of his car. They weren’t successful, but left a few marks and chipped the paint a little bit. Bee loves his car. It truly is a beautiful piece of machinery. Grrr.
We joked that night about how Bee’s car seems to be targeted for malicious acts (his car was keyed a few years ago), and Curly’s car is a magnet for random accidents. So weird, but true.
The next morning, Curly and Bee woke up to a note on Curly’s car. Someone had accidentally backed into her car the night before (yes, the same night we had been laughing about how weird things happen to it). It was the driver’s side this time, and the young man was sweet enough to leave his name and phone number, asking us to call him. Compliments to his parents for raising an honest and responsible son. It would have been so easy for him to drive away without any acknowledgment of the incident. Good people are still out there.
We’re in the process of working with the insurance company. Maybe we’ll get some more money to add to our new car fund.
The moral of the story: It’s dangerous to park your car.
Edit: 4 days after this incident Curly noticed that yet ANOTHER dent had been added to her poor car. Bee thinks that someone must be putting a “Hit Me” sign on the car whenever they leave the house.
Bee and Curly like to try new recipes now and again, and as she was searching for a delicious way to prepare mahi-mahi (fish) one night, Curly came across this recipe on foodnetwork.com. It has become our favorite way to make mahi-mahi. She made it one night when we had a large portion of Curly’s family and Bee’s parents over for dinner when Curly’s parents were in town visiting us. It was a big success, and everyone raved about how good it was! The fish stays moist and flakey, and the crunchy breading is Bee’s favorite part. The sweet and sour sauce is really good on its own, and we’ve even served it with rice and potstickers. We just wanted to share the recipe with all of you! Let’s hope we don’t get in trouble for posting it on our blog!
One minor adjustment, however, is that the bread crumbs stick to the fish better if you dust each piece of fish with flour then dip it in slightly beaten egg before coating it with the crumbs.
Here’s the link to the website:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/sweet-and-sour-mahi-mahi-recipe/index.html
(Recipe courtesy of Cheryl Alters-Jamison & Bill Jamison, American Home Cooking,Broadway Books)
Sweet and Sour Mahi-Mahi
Sweet and Sour Sauce
Fish
Combine the sugar and cornstarch in a small saucepan. Whisk in 1/4 cup of water. Add the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil over medium heat. When the sauce thickens lightly, remove it from the heat. It can be used warm or at room temperature.
Drizzle the lime juice and soy sauce evenly over the fish pieces and let them sit for several minutes. Place the bread crumbs on a plate. Warm 1/4 inch of oil in a large heavy skillet. When a few bits of bread crumbs sizzle merrily and brown quickly in the oil, drain each piece of fish and coat it with (flour, dip it in slightly beaten egg, then) the bread crumbs. Saute the fish on all sides until the bread crumbs are golden brown and the fish flakes, about 5 minutes total. Serve the mahi-mahi immediately with the sauce drizzled over it or on the side for dunking. Serve with Hawaiian Chili Pepper Water for more pizzazz.
Yesterday we went 
to a Seattle Mariners baseball game with some friends of ours, and it just so happened that it was Ken Griffey Jr. bobblehead night (OK, it wasn’t a coincidence), which meant that the first 30,000 fans got a free bobblehead. Yes, we were lucky enough to acquire said bobblehead. Great! What do you do with something like that? We’re not sure yet. Anyway, we all got our bobbleheads and then went across the street to Jimmy’s on First (http://www.jimmysonfirst.com/) for dinner. They serve American fare, like hamburgers, steak, fries, sandwiches, etc. Bee had a very tasty hamburger and Curly went for the crab macaroni and cheese (she is a sucker for really good macaroni and cheese). Yes, you read that right. CRAB in macaroni and cheese. It was pretty much pure heaven. The sauce was made of four kinds of cheeses and it had fresh crab mixed into it. And as if that wasn’t enough, it was topped off with an entire crab leg split right down the middle. Mmm. Yum.
We polished off our food and went back across the street to Safeco Field for the baseball game. When we went into the restaurant the weather was beautiful, but when we came back out for the game it was raining. Grrr. That meant that the roof was closed on the field, but it turned out to be fine. The weather was pretty warm and we stayed dry thanks to the forward thinking of the architects and engineers who designed Safeco Field. Unlike the other Mariners games we have been to, they actually won this one. By a lot.
