Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Stuff

What's new.... not much. It's great to be a full time mom and full time software engineer cuz youre life is busy with not much. Your day starts at 7am and its a race until 9pm. Then you goof around until 11pm then you remember the last things you have to do before going to bed and you are asleep at midnight!

Besides that Nevertap gently reminded me of my own todo list... or I may say of the items on my todo list that have been there for so long that the ink has faded. Maybe I'm hoping that will get done by themselves.
Do I really think that the citizenship paperwork for my husband are going to get submitted on their own, ditto for mine? Do I really think that the french government is going to email me to ask me if the kids are french! I mean holly crap my son is almost 5! We still have all the paintings to hang back on our wall.... Nevertap I think it is a lost battle we won't be able to finish our todo list because it is always growing.

Tomorrow we are going to Montana. Everybody is wishing me a good vacation. We are expecting hell but maybe we will get lucky ;) I am really hoping to be able to put Miles on skis and Maia on a sled.
On the exercize front I did run a nice 5 miles and went swimming. I pushed a little so now my arms are sore. I am also refocusing on my training. I'm hoping to be able to join a biking group every other friday. I will just start with them since it is a bunch of guys who are going soooo fast!
Sorry Bunny I didn't post my meal of the week and to be honest I don't even remember what the heck I cooked I just know it was good ahahaha... Getting old.
I'm noticing that my post are really not exciting and that all the cool stuff I have to say require some of my brain to work.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Not happy

Where is my nightly light reading....... I miss Nevertap wit!
Tomorrow I'm hosting our first chow cow cooking club meeting and we very quickly went from an elaborate contemporary american to a morrocan feast!
So here is the menu to be followed with recipes and pictures on Bunny's blog.

" A moroccan feast"
Coktail
A basil vodka martini, sweetened with agave nectar.
Apetizers:
Moroccan cigars (beef)
Black olives with harissa

Salad/Side dishes:
warm chickpea salad
warm carrots with spices
cucumber salad with black olives

Main dish
Chicken couscous soup

Dessert
Gazelle horns

Parducci Pinot Noir.

Tonight I'm making soup for dinner... I am in soup mood lately. At lunch I went to the Wired which is a french cafe. I wanted to be good so I had the soup and a salad. Of course my friend had a quiche she couldn't finished and to top it all off we split an almond croissant. Too much food.... Tomorrow I will go run again and hopefully the 4.25 miles run will feel much better than the last two.
This concludes a very very uninteresting post.... but do you expect from a emotional woman ;)
This is the end of a v

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Oops weekly menu

Sorry Bunny I completely forgot to post my weekly menu of last week. I will write down what I cooked but will probably fill things up later.

Monday Chicken wonton from Trader Joes.

Tuesday Chicken with bacon, pearl couscous and peas and salad inspired by a Jamie Oliver recipe.
1 whole chicken
1 onion
200g peas
100g pearl couscous or isralian couscous (can be found at Tradder joes)
4 strips of bacon (center/middle cut the meatier)
Olive oil
Some lettuce.
1 cup of chicken broth

In a pot cook the pearl couscou according to direction. Add the peas, and the chicken broth. There should be a little water left. Make a beurre manie with butter and flour, add it to the pearl couscous and wait until the sauce thicken a little.
In another pan, saute the bacon, then add the onion, and chicken. Add a little water and cook until done.
Add the lettuce to the pearl couscous mixture at the end since it cooks really fast. Then add the couscous to the chicken. Serve.
Great with a sauvignon blanc.

Wednesday Ahi tuna and brocolini and somen noodles
Marinate the ahi tuna in soy sauce, lemon juice and sesame oil
Boil the somen noodle and brocolini
Grill the ahi tuna in a pan with olive oil
Deglace with soy sauce, a little bit of oyster sauce (pbly 1-2tbsp)
In a bowl put the noodle the brocoli and the ahi tuna, add the sauce and shake some sesame seeds on it.
Note the sauce was a little too salty for me.

Bryan made the best chocolate cookies ever!!!

Thursday Cream of mushroom from the Williams Sonoma recipe
10 oz white button mushroom
10 oz cremini mushroom
1 onion chopped
1 garlic
fresh thyme
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 cups chicken broth
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1tbsp champagne vinegar

Heat 1tbsp of the oil and add the mushroom
Add the butter let it cook until the water from the mushroom is all evaporated (6-8minutes).
Add the second tbsp of oil the onion and garlic to the mushroom sautee until onion are golden another 6-8 minutes. Add the thyme
Add two cups of chicken broth and the champagne vinegar
Add the cream and let simmer for another 10-20 minutes.
Blend the soup to cream
Cook some bacon bits, add to the top. Serve with toast and blue cheese.

Saturday Lasagnas
- 1 onion chopped
- 2 cloves of garlic chopped
- 95% lean ground beef
- 1/2 cup of red wine
- starter sauce from TJ or tomato puree/sauce from hunt.

Sauter the onion and garlic in olive oil. Add the meat and cook it. Then add some thyme, rosemary and a bay leave. Add the tomato sauce, the wine and let it simmer for a while.

Make the bechamel (need to go look for recipe)
Cook the pasta a little and layer
pasta, meat sauce, bechamel, pasta meat sauce bechamel, pasta meat sauce and finish with some cheese ( I like fresh mozarella).

Is it the week end yet?

Oh Boy it's only tuesday night I wish we were friday night. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I got up at 6:20 yesterday in order to be at work at 7am and leave at 3:30 to be with the kids... Yeah they had the day off lucky little brats.
Maybe it has to do with the fact that I can't unwind quickly these days which causes me to stay up later than I should (closer to midnight than eleven).
Finally maybe it has something to do with the fact that I went for a painful 4.2 miles run at lunch. Dunno how fast, nor how long all I know is that it was hard. I didn't work out for four days, I completely blew off any type of workout this week end total I was oscillating between biatch from hell and black pit of despair! Note to self do not blew off your workout regimen.
I hope my next run won't be too hard cuz it is getting hard to motivate to feel like hell!
Besides that work is good, I have been making progress and I'm having fun investigating.
On thursday we have our first installation of a cooking club organized by Bunny and hosted this month in my humble home. We started very high with a theme of contemporary american cuisine and we have just readjusted to moroccan.

Monday, February 16, 2009

oops

So as I go from one blog to the next I noticed that no one posted anything lately... Then my eyes fell on my last post and I just realized that I didn't really write much lately either.
So what's new in yuppie hell! After going to a party at my old/ex boss's house which is of course our dream house friday I decided that it would be good for us to spend a little money on our current house to make it exactly like we want. I have been toying with that idea a while now but seeing that house made the decision much easier. Since we don't go overboard we are pretty safe.
Saturday we chose new engineer floors, the sunday the guy measured everything and on the 26th they will start to put things in! I am soooo excited. On the other hand we decided to prolonged the life of our carpet by cleaning it one or two more times...
I finished restoring my blue wall in the bathroom this week end and started repainting the door and vanity in clean white. That was Valentine's day evening after our guest left at 9:30pm.
I am not much of a Valentine's day person so I have nothing to report on that front.
However on thursday night we had that perfect evening, I cooked some cream of mushroom soup from a williams sonoma recipe yummy, the house was clean and freshly repainted, the kids were good even on a sugar high and Bryan sang Travis song..... Perfect!
Tonight was also perfect evening when we celebrated Bryan's review and raise at sushi ota.
On sunday we watched our little 9month old neighbor and I have to admit I wanted a 3rd kid... My big problem, daycare cost and juggling when the kids are sick and a demanding job! So I will get my fix watching the neighbor ;)
On that note I'm gonna help getting the kids out of their bath, then an episode of something while folding laundry and in bed.
On the exercize front my week end has been worthless. Tomorrow I need to run and get back to my training....

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Taking stuff of the todo list

Heheheh I can check stuff off the home todo list. Can I take the credit eventhough I paid someone to do it for me ;) So I've been wanting to finish the painting in the house. I thought about having a 3rd kid to finish things off during the maternity leave like I did last time. Instead I actually hired someone to do it! It was great I called on Monday for an estimate, the guy came on tuesday at lunch, and started painting on Wednesday at 7:40 ;) I had to scramble a little bit to find all the paint for each room. I also had pick two new colors from a swatch. One for the downstairs bathroom to replace this god awful pumpkin color and one for the kids bathroom to replace the god awful baby blue. Believe it or not the baby blue was even worse than the pumpkin!!!! Instead I picked a green for downstairs, almost went for a color called Brocoli Rabe but I was afraid it would be too dark so went for the shade lighter instead. My son wanted blue for his bathroom so I picked a Moody Blue.
Gotta love paint name! The tan downstairs is "Crips Kaki", the blue upstairs is "Amity".
Besides that I scoot from work early to pay the painter and maybe enjoy the 2 hours sans kids but instead of course, cleaned up the kitchen, picked up toys and since the painters nicely repainted my blue wall. What better thing to do than to repaint the wall 10 minutes after they left ;)
Still have to finish that....
So now the home todo list is much smaller, yay...
Of course I didn't go swim but tomorrow I will be running and I'll try to swim on friday morning ahahaha.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Obsessed

First of all today was a great day since we got an estimate for all the painting we have to do in the house. Finish the master bathroom, the master toilet, the kids bathroom, the downstair bathroom and all the little patches. I can paint and I have painted a lot but lately painting at 9pm, or when they nap during the week end doesn't sound appealing. Hmmm I wonder why????
The quote came back very reasonnable and he starts tomorrow at 7:45 and will be done in the evening. We just had to pick a color for the bathroom downstairs and the kids bathroom.
I will just have to do the office because we don't have the courage to move the furniture around tonight.
Other than that I did my treadmill workout today and decided to do speed training since I ran hills during the week end. I didn't really mean to push it to hard but of course that didn't last. After 10 minutes of warm up at 10 min/miles I ran 10 minutes at 9 min/miles followed by a 5 minutes cool off at 9:30 min/miles (I think) then 2 minutes at 8 min/miles cool off at 10:30 min/miles for 3 minutes, 3 minutes at 8:30 followed by ? until about 38 minutes between 9:30 and 10 min/miles. My legs are hurting and tomorrow is swimming and thursday 4-5 miles outside. Arghhhh gotta take easy a little my body is feeling the burn.
Work has been good a lot is going on and since the boss is completely overloaded I'm on my own a lot which is quite interesting.... I didn't really study this week and even left the darn book on my desk. Ah well tonight is going to be Bryan cooking night which is going to be nice, and then some wine, cleaning a little for the painter, folding laundry (yirkes) I am soooo backed up in front of one of our favorite TV show. Of course sipping wine all along ;)
Arghhh I wanted to break my monthly running record this month while swimming and biking but I completely forgot that February is a short month. So I predict I will be anywhere 52 miles this month which is nothing to scuff at since it is about 14-15 miles/week.

Monday, February 9, 2009

The end of the week end...

Sunday morning was a little better than saturday. Although since I drank too much on saturday night I woke up very tired, hung over with a fierce headache. A coffee helped a little. We had our ritual swimming lesson and since Maia has a new teacher she was a little hesitant at first. Picture quivering lips, hunched shoulder... pathetic little girl and you have an accurate picture of my daughter.
Luckily the sad pathetic look didn't last long and she had a lot of fun. Miles as usual had a blast.
We got back, went a little nature walk during which we gathered all the sticks we could. We had lunch together then kids in bed, dad relax in front of the computer, mom grocery shopping.
Got back from Trader joes with a bunch of yummy food which will have their own dedicated post.
Courageously I changed into my workout gear and headed out for a run. On my way out I asked Bryan if he had any suggestions on a run I should do. Of course he talked about a nice 5 miles run with a big hill in the middle. Since I wanted to go for 6 miles or up he suggested another route with 2 big hills in it. Not Torrey Pines hills but pretty hard. Courageously I started, of course my dear husband forgot the first hill which isn't a party. But I went for it and pushed through it and managed to have a great run and finish my 6 miles at a 9:40 min/miles pace. The only down side of this run is that I pushed so hard for so long at the end that my body just stopped when it should have gone for only 300 yards more.
I felt with these past 2 runs that I past the 10 min/miles plateau and I am also truly enjoying myself and competing with myself.
I am sure I will have shitty runs but at least I know that I can go for a truly enjoyable 6 mile run.
The neighbour invited us for mexican which kind of threw off my evening of cooking a little. But we had a great time which was well worth it.
I ended up starting my strawberry jam when we got back! I hope it will turn out ok.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Family weekly menu

Hey Jess, this post is just for you.... to satisfy your bottomless interest in food and everything around it. I promised you yesterday that I would post last week's menu. Unfortunately I haven't mastered the taking picture of my food yet so this will be a very very dry post.
I may even make it a weekly post.
Sunday: Tomato soup from the Williams Sonoma recipe from the top of my head:
Pancetta, bacon or prosciutto as much as you want the recipe calls for 3 pieces.
3lbs of tomatoes
1/4 cup arborio rice (short grain used for risotto)
1 onion chopped
3 cloves of garlic (may be less but I love garlic)
Chili flakes (usually don't put it)
1teaspoon of sugar (I think)

- Heat the olive oil, cook the pancetta/bacon/prosciutto
- when cooked remove it from the pan/pot and put it aside
- Sautee the garlic, onion in the same pan
- Add the tomatoes cut in pieces
- Let boil a little
- Add the rice
- If too dry add a little water.
- Add the sugar and the chili
- Let cook until rice is tender but I like to leave it about 15-20 minutes.
- Process it
- Add a little cream, some mozarella (love it), and sprinkle the pancetta/bacon/prosciutto on top...
Enjoy!

Monday we had porc chops with green beans and potatoes...
This was really simple, just cook the porc chops in a pan, make a sauce by putting a little water in the pan and dissolve the little bits and pieces, cook some potatoes and green beans, add a little olive oil and cream and the meat sauce.

Tuesday feast at sushi ota

Wednesday gnocchi with meat sauce:
Meat sauce,
1 Can of tomato puree or starter sauce from tradder joes or marinara
Lean ground beef
onion garlic
wine
a little cream

Sautee the garlic and onion in a little olive oil
Add the meat
Brown
Add the tomato sauce
Add some red wine
Add a dash of balsamic vinegar (optional)
Let simmer for a while the longer the better
Then add a dash of cream

You can then add cooked fusilli (small pasta) or gnocchi in the sauce, add some mozarella and stick into the oven to let it melt or just serve it with pasta.

Thursday night was our easy night and Bryan made his pirogis from Trader Joes
Friday was Sophie out night so I didn't cook
Tonight I think I will try a new recipe from Jamie Oliver with chicken... Stay tuned

Tonight I will try a new chicken recipe from Jamie Oliver... Will post next week

Blah

Jess has asked me to post yesterday afternoon so she has something to read. I couldn't bring myself to write a few lines to distract her during work hours....
So here am I racking my brain for something witty and distracting to type.... Hummmm not much comes to mind ;) not very surprising I may add.

The highlight of my weeks were the following:
- Got back into my 5 days/week workout routine and back in the water.
- Had a very very satisfying run 4miles at an average of 9:18 min/mile and it trully felt good.
- Fixed a bug which sped up some display, I won't say that the cause of this problem was a brain dead if statement. (sorry for the lingo)
- Started studying for my programming exam
- Went to a girls shopping party (yeah me) with a coworker Kim. In short you have vendors selling jewelry, jeans and other item in a friends house. You chat, drink wine... Since I didn't know many people and I don't do too good in crowd that I don't like we escape after an hour, found a nice little restaurant had dinner and chatted. Much more my alley. I came home curled on the couch and watched Bones with my husband... that too is much more alley.

This morning though I have the blues.... dunno why probably aftermath of all my socializing. Yeah I'm weird that way when I reach out to get to know new people, I feel all ackward the next day. I feel like I've intruded on their life forced myself in their free time. Even when I had a great time, actually especially when I had a great time.

I also learned what Introvert, Extrovert and Ambivert actually means. I thought an introvert was somebody very very shy and inadequate when it's more like someone who likes small quiet venue, and activities.... Very much like me and a lot of other people I know.

Today I have to get my bikeride in. I hope the weather is going to cooperate.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

My life since Monday...

After I allowed myself one week to recover from my half marathon both physically and emotionally, I had to get back to my efficient (most of the time) self. This meant to be start crossing stuff from my todo list at work, at home, start working out again, and start studying. Yes you saw that I have to pass a computer exam. I am complaining bitterly but I believe that at the end I will have learned a lot and will be a better programmer.
Unfortunately instead of browsing my favorite sites during my little breaks from the family of JCrew, PotteryBarn, Runnersworld, I'm starting to read about serialization, collections, generics, new features of C# and the likes.
I have to say that I am learning a lot and yes my boss is right it will make me a better programmer but I'm sliding more and more into geekiness. Please save me when you start seeing me wearing polo shirt with logos on them.
I have received my new Cynthia Steffe pants from gilt and they are gorgeous. I just need to hem them!
Besides watching a lot of Bones lately, reconnecting with Burn Notice a great show I have managed to swallow in a week a great book. Of course it is from a french author, but it was sooo good that it just made it to the comfort book list. Yes I have a comfort book list which has the same purpose than comfort food, comfort drinks and comfort movies.
The other book from this author called in english "Hunting and Gathering" by Anna Gavalda has also been on that list and has been read about 5 times in 3 years and the movie watched 3 times in the last year or so.
I would really like to know how "Ensemble et c'est tout" which means "Together and that's it" became "Hunting and gathering", especially when there nothing on hunting!!! This author knows how to tell a story and how to make people from all kinds of background connect. BTW a movie has been made out that book and it is very true to the book and absolutely awsome in a very french way.
I love stories about people, about their choice, their struggles how they shine.
This really reminds me that I have to start my "bookclub/literature" blog.
Anyways for a little while my bedside reading will be the amazing secrets of the .Net framework 2.0, Application Development Foundation.... Don't be surprised to see me super dressed up during this time as I will be fighting really hard to keep my woman shell!!!!!

Monday, February 2, 2009

Obsessed

Obsessing obsessing on nothing and everything. My next work out, my weight, my home to do list etc....
Finally I did my first workout post half marathon. I went for a little bike ride yesterday to ease my way back into my workout routine. It was really pleasant a little short. I already mapped out a bunch of new rides that I have to just go for.
Tomorrow I start running again, oh boy, I don't know how that is going to feel. Bryan has been running so much lately that I want to keep up. I think we are totally motivating each other which is great!. Wednesday I will finally reconnect with the water and I hope I won't have to start all over again although I will probably have to.
On the art side, someone has asked me to do their wedding flowers after seeing Jess's. I have finally finished framing two painting we bought a while while back. They are ready to be reinforced and hung on our walls.... Things are moving slowy but surely. Maybe I will be able to read my book on the week end without feeling like I have something better to do ;)