Memorial Day Barbeque -- a day early!!

Ok, so we were hoping for some sunshine today and so we planned to do our Memorial Day barbeque today instead of Monday. Well, this being the Pacific Northwest and all, we had to settle with a bit of rain to go with our ribs! I received this recipe from myrecipes.com in my email inbox earlier this week and so we decided to give 'em a go. ALL of us -- Kent, Tiana, Gordon, Ivona, Mark, Meredith and I give them a double thumbs up! Emily and Jonathan not so much, but they might have if they'd tried them! And Coda says, Paws Down they are truly the best! So we recommend, "Shay's Fall-off-the-Bone-Baby-Back-Ribs" with roasted corn on the cob and a dessert of "Double Chocolate Cream Pie"!! Sorry I didn't get any photos of any of it, but trust me -- you want to try these!

SHAY'S FALL-OFF-THE-BONE-BABY BACK RIBS
1 large onion, sliced
3 1/2 pounds (1,5kg) (about 2 slabs) baby back ribs
1 (12-ounce/350ml) bottle beer (porter) 
Sea salt, to taste
Freshly ground pepper, to taste
2 cups Chipotle Maple Barbeque Sauce or your favorite bottled sauce (see original recipe for link to sauce recipe!)

1. Preheat oven to 275°F/135°C. Spread onion slices evenly on a rimmed baking sheet, and place ribs, bone side down, on top. Pour beer over ribs, sprinkle with sea salt and pepper, and cover tightly with foil. Bake 2-1/2 hours or until tender.
2. Brush both sides of ribs with Chipotle Maple Barbecue Sauce. *Grill over medium heat, meat side down, 10 to 15 minutes or until slightly charred and crispy, basting several times with sauce. Flip ribs over, and baste cooked side liberally. Close grill lid, and cook 10 to 15 minutes more, basting often. Remove from heat; let rest 10 minutes. Cut individual ribs apart, and serve warm.
Note: You can bake the ribs (step 1) up to a day ahead, but you'll need to leave them on the grill a few minutes longer to make sure they're heated through.*Kent suggests spraying grill with non-stick spray!

DOUBLE CHOCOLATE CREAM PIE
Crust:
1 cup all-purpose flour, divided
3 tablespoons ice water
2 tablespoons sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup vegetable shortening
Cooking spray

Filling:
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 cups 1% low-fat milk
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 1/2 ounces semisweet chocolate, grated
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups frozen fat-free whipped topping, thawed

Preheat oven to 425°.
To prepare the crust, lightly spoon the flour into dry measuring cups, and level with a knife. Combine 1/4 cup flour and water, stirring with a whisk until well-blended.
Combine 3/4 cup flour, 2 tablespoons sugar, and 1/8 teaspoon salt in a bowl; cut in shortening with a pastry blender or 2 knives until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add slurry; mix with a fork until flour mixture is moist.
Press the mixture gently into a 4-inch circle on heavy-duty plastic wrap; cover with additional plastic wrap. Roll dough, still covered, into a 12-inch circle. Freeze 10 minutes.
Remove 1 sheet of plastic wrap; fit dough into a 9-inch pie plate coated with cooking spray. Remove top sheet of plastic wrap. Fold edges under; flute. Line dough with a piece of foil; arrange pie weights or dried beans on foil. Bake at 425° for 20 minutes or until edge is lightly browned. Remove pie weights and foil. Reduce temperature to 350°. Bake an additional 5 minutes; cool on a wire rack.
To prepare filling, combine 3/4 cup sugar, cocoa, cornstarch, 1/8 teaspoon salt, and milk in a medium saucepan; stir well with a whisk. Cook, stirring constantly, for 1 minute until mixture comes to a full boil. Gradually add 1/3 cup hot milk mixture to beaten egg; stir well. Return egg mixture to pan. Cook 2 minutes or until mixture thickens, stirring constantly. Remove from heat; add grated chocolate, stirring until the chocolate melts and mixture is smooth. Stir in vanilla. Spoon mixture into pastry crust. Cover surface of filling with plastic wrap. Chill until set (about 2 hours). Remove plastic wrap; spread whipped topping evenly over filling.

CALORIES 301 (28% from fat); FAT 9.3g (sat 5.5g,mono 2.7g,poly 0.5g); IRON 1.5mg; CHOLESTEROL 46mg; CALCIUM 89mg; CARBOHYDRATE 48.5g; SODIUM 180mg; PROTEIN 5.6g; FIBER 0.5g

And to surely mess up the nutrition facts, I cheated and used a pre-made Oreo cookie crust!! Oh YUM!!! Now Emily and Jonathan gave this two thumbs up!!

Happy Memorial Day. And THANK YOU! to all of the soldiers - past and present - who have given their lives, willingly, for freedoms - ours and in the pursuit of for others. Thank you.

Today's baking

So, it is a dreary day and I can't think of anything much better than baking! Since I LOVED the bagels I made the other day and since I also can't leave a good recipe alone, I decided to alter the recipe to include whole wheat goodness!

Today's revamped recipe is:

Whole Wheat Sunflower Bagels
3 c. whole wheat flour
1 c. white bread flour
2 tsp. yeast
1 Tbs. oil
1½ tsp. salt
2 Tbs. roasted, unsalted sunflower seeds
1¼ - 1½ c. warm water

(Mix all together to make a stiff dough. Knead about 10 minutes. Divide dough into 8 or 16 balls. Let rest 10-20 minutes. Preheat oven to 425º. Make dough balls into bagels, either by poking a hole in the middle of the ball or rolling each ball into a snake and then create a circle, being sure to pinch the ends together well! Let bagels sit another 20 minutes. Meanwhile, bring 1 gallon of water to boil. Add bagels to boiling water, enough so they aren't crowded. Boil 1 minute or so and then turn the bagel over, boiling another minute. Allow bagel to dry about 1 minute and then place on lightly greased baking sheet. Bake bagels for 10 minutes and turn over, baking another 10 minutes.)
I again made 16 bagels so that they don't kill me so bad calorie wise!! After they came out of their water bath but before they were too dry, I also sprinkled them with some dry oats! Gotta look professional you know!
I'm also trying my hand at English muffins. They are about to hit the griddle! We'll see how THEY turn out! And then I better think about dinner! Pictures to come!

And about those English muffins!! THEY ARE A HIT!! Kent really likes them and Tiana ate a full one, too! They don't have the big holes in them like store bought muffins, but they are very tasty. Actually, if you've ever had Australian Toaster Biscuits, they are more like that. Anyway, that recipe is courtesy of Allrecipes.

English Muffins
1 c. milk
2 Tbs. white sugar
1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
1 c. warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
1/4 c. melted shortening
6 c. all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt

Warm the milk in a small saucepan until it bubbles, then remove from heat. Mix in the sugar, stirring until dissolved. Let cool until lukewarm. In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes.
In a large bowl, combine the milk, yeast mixture, shortening and 3 cups flour. Beat until smooth. Add salt and rest of flour, or enough to make a soft dough. Knead. Place in greased bowl, cover, and let rise.
Punch down. (Do not knead or work the dough any more than necessary at this point!) Roll out to about 1/2 inch thick. Cut rounds with biscuit cutter, drinking glass, or empty tuna can. Sprinkle waxed paper with cornmeal (make sure you use a lot!!) and set the rounds on this to rise. Dust tops of muffins with cornmeal also. Cover and let rise 1/2 hour.
Heat greased griddle. Cook muffins on griddle about 10 minutes on each side on medium heat (350º). Keep baked muffins in a warm oven until all have been cooked. Allow to cool and place in plastic bags for storage. (I followed the advice of others on Allrecipes and baked my muffins for another 5 minutes in a 350º oven, just to be sure they were thoroughly baked through!)

Looking forward to Monday Morning!

So, this thought crossed my mind today -- "I wonder how hard it would be to make bagels." Well, tomorrow morning I don't have to be to work until 10am so, since this site says it is super easy and should only take about 1 hour, I'm going to go for it! I'll post photos tomorrow!

**UPDATE**!! YUM!!!!



They were fairly easy to make and super chewy and yummy! I will definitely make these again and even work a bit on jazzing them up! The recipe called for the dough to be made into 8 bagels, but I made it into 16. Final calorie count according to Nutrition Data: 135 calories, 1 g fat, 4 g protein! Not too bad! And actually, somehow my bagels came out 5g smaller than ND calculated them to be! Bagels and coffee at my house anyone?!

Happy Anniversary!

Last night we celebrated Bonnie and Larry's 50th Wedding Anniversary with a little dinner here at home. Their anniversary was actually in March, but they were with their kids in Alaska at the time followed by a European trip, followed by me being sick and time slots just filling up! Anyway, it was so special to celebrate them with Don and Sandi, Kelvin, Carie and Eliza, Alice and Myrt. We really missed Joe, Jasmine, Ezraylah and Iliana, but they were sick and felt it best to keep their germs to themselves. We had hoped to be able to have this dinner when their daughter Michelle was here, but I was sick and she was headed to Europe, so we thought it best NOT to send our bug with her! Anyway, we had a wonderful evening honoring a wonderful, faithful example of a godly couple! Happy Anniversary and many more, Bonnie and Larry!

Don't we dress up nice?

Some dear customers of mine are celebrating 50 years of marriage and their daughter asked for photos of us. These customers are deaf and so Tiana and I both have had opportunity to use our sign language (in-)abilities, thus the "I Love You" hands! But in general, I thought this was a great picture that should be shared!

Good Evening!

Well, it's been almost a week since we last chatted. And how have you been? We've been busy! After Kent's mom left on Sunday night we did some touch-up cleaning to prepare for my parents coming on Tuesday evening! They pulled in just about in time for dinner. I had Wednesday off so the two of them and I took the bus downtown and hopped on Light Rail and rode it all the way to the airport and back. I made sure to take notes this time so that we can know where we need to go back and explore some day. We had ridden it once long ago and seen some neighborhoods that could use a good explore, but there was no way to remember which one had what appeal. I had thought that would be something fun to do today, but we woke up late and decided to go buy a new gas grill instead, so that took Kent most of the afternoon to assemble so that we could use it for dinner! I bought a salmon fillet and a steak and we grilled those with a pepper/onion/potato medley. YUM! Right now we are waiting for someone to come and buy the old one from a craigslist ad we placed! I need them to get here so I can get ready for bed! Some of us have to work in the morning before Meeting! Mom and Dad left on Friday when I went to work because they wanted to be at a funeral today. Short visit, but sweet! While they were here, mom and I had to visit our favorite Scrapbooking store that is going out of business. They are getting down to just about nothing and it made us so sad! I did manage to find some more papers and I managed also to make a card, but only one! I need to have sent that one off, but it will have to wait until at least Monday. My cards are never on-time! So, I hope you've had a nice week and all the best as a new one starts!

Happy Mother's Day!

Me and my baby at the beach this afternoon! She's the little one who made it possible that I have a Mother's Day!

We had lunch after Meeting at Gordon and Ivona's.  Notice Gordon did the cooking and we'll pretend that Kent was reading him the directions on what to do next!  It's our secret that he was just checking out other recipes! ☺

Ivona (and Jonathan) needed to get the momentous occasion on "film"!  With Gordon and Kent doing the work, it left plenty of photography time for both of us!

And Nana had time to read to Emily, too!

  Thanks so much for inviting us ALL to stay for lunch today!  It is always so special to spend time with my dear "sister" (one of these days I'm going to drop the quotation marks!) and her beautiful family.  While we were there we also tried to get the kids to cooperate for a photo shoot.  Um...well...you can judge for yourself how successful we were!  Truly we caught their personality if nothing else! ☺
Mother's Day

On Thursday night, Kent and I went out on a date.  We went to the Edmonds beach since we were a bit early for our reservation and then off to Cafe de Paris.  YUM!!

Friday we got a bit of a late start, but we headed over the mountains to Leavenworth.  It's such a beautiful drive and a beautiful little town.  We had a smidge of rain, but mostly just clear skies.  We walked the length of the main street a couple of times, had a delicious German meal, drove part of the 1/2 marathon route, played a round of mini-golf and stopped for a Starbucks on the way out of town.  I was able to enjoy the drive home since I'd finished my book on the way over instead of watching the scenery!  The next day a part of the same road was closed due to a fatal accident!
Leavenworth

Saturday was a lay-low sort of day.  We'd walked poor mom-in-law to death on Friday, so we just ran errands here and there on Saturday until we had to take Tiana to a volunteer gig over on the Eastside.  She helped out with a formal dance for developmentally disabled adults.  All in preparation for her future career as a special education teacher.  She was kind of wishing to not go until after she got there and got into it a bit!  Sounds like she had a great time, did lots of "dancing" after serving dinner and had a grand ol' time!  Of course, I don't think she would have put it quite like that!!  I'm sure she'll look forward to the next time she can help the organization again!

So, you can see we had a full weekend!  I'm very grateful for the time off that I had this week, although I would have loved to have had today with my family completely, too.  Maybe one of these weekends we can enjoy the WHOLE thing together!
Have a great week and to all the moms -- HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!