If you’ve checked out the Fremont Sunday market, chances are you’ve eaten on the steep steps of the Red Door. Saturday marked the first time I’d actually been inside the restaurant itself, and we weren’t disappointed. I was in the mood for some greasy comfort food so I ordered the BBQ burger slathered with sauce, onions and cheddar cheese. Add an African Amber and some fries and I was a happy camper.
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Locked out
a. HOME: A spare key resides inside. Of course, this only works if your house keys are separate from your car keys, or if you’ve mastered the art of breaking into your own residence. Which I totally had, but then we moved.
b. Costco: Simply make your phone call, turn back around and help yourself to some more free samples. I actually have locked myself out of my car at Costco and I used the opportunity to treat myself to a slice of pizza. This might be less ideal if you have a shopping cart full of food with you, or you’re lugging around a large flat-screen on a push cart.
c. The mall: Treat this like Costco. I heard there’s a sale at ALDO and I need some gray pumps! Plus you can order a Cinnabon while you wait for the locksmith to arrive.
Last night was NOT one of these times. I was stuck at work for an additional hour (and who wants to be stuck there?), trying to figure out what my insurance would cover and waiting for the locksmith. Just to rub things in, a friend of mine from Colorado was in Seattle for an extremely short window of time (a matter of hours) and we had made plans to meet briefly at our apartment as soon as I could get back from work. My opportunity to see my dear friend slipped away as I counted the minutes until the locksmith arrived.
Lessons learned:
a. While you’re mastering the art of breaking into your own residence, challenge yourself by figuring out how to also break into your car. Or maybe just hide a key on its exterior.
b. Keep copies of your insurance information somewhere other than your GLOVE COMPARTMENT. Not helpful. I was lucky to be near a computer with an Internet connection. Maybe I should use this to make my case for a smartphone.
c. It’s just a lockout. It happens. I was fortunate to be in a safe place and not stranded in a scary parking garage or something.
Garbage here, recycling here
I have my own personal Jiminy Cricket. He pops up when I’m bustling around the kitchen, cleaning this and that. He sits on my shoulder and as I reach for the garbage to toss in a can, he says “Are you going to recycle that?” My Jiminy Cricket wears Tevas and enjoys kayaking in his spare time. He’s my Northwest conscience.
Never again will I be free to trash whatever I want. Junk mail? Better slip that into recycling. Egg shells? They need to decompose with their friends in food waste. The paper towel you used to blot the grease off the bacon? Paper + food = food waste. When you open our cabinet under the sink, you’ll see three bins for three separate purposes. The smallest bin, lined with a biodegradable bag of course, is for the food waste – a smaller bin encourages frequent emptying so the mold doesn’t hold a raucous party under the sink.
Jiminy doesn’t seem to maintain an awareness of his surroundings. My office doesn’t have an option for food waste but Jiminy’s there all the same, nagging me about my apple cores. At least I’m not as bad as this lady: her Northwest conscience is much bigger than mine!
How 3-D works
Anyone who has seen James Cameron's "Avatar" has had 3-D on the brain lately (at least I know I have). The New York Times published an article today that contained a concise explanation of how the new 3D works, so I thought I'd share it. I'm sure personal 3-D televisions are a ways out for most of us who are right out of college, but who knows? Maybe we'll get buddy buddy with Bill Gates and he'll have us over.
"New 3-D televisions, like the 3-D screens in theaters, work by dividing picture images into two sets, one for each eye. A viewer must wear special glasses, so each eye captures a different image, creating the illusion of depth. Filming entails two connected cameras, one for the left-eye image and the other for the right.
Pulled from "Television Begins a Push Into the 3rd Dimension"
Sayonara to the holidays
All good things must come to an end, so we said goodbye to our noble fir yesterday. He was a good tree, even if he shed all over the floor.
Our cute glass Christmas tree
Look closely and you can see me
From the bottom up
Homemade teriyaki sauce
Before my elementary/middle/high school moved to its new building in west Greeley, it used to be down the street from a restaurant called Teriyaki Bowl. I'm sure the place broke all kinds of health codes but it was sure delicious.
I came to Seattle in 2003 and was introduced to a teriyaki joint in Belltown called Mom's Teriyaki, a hole-in-the-wall sorta place that you only find by accident. I've tried to find other teriyaki places with sauce that equals Mom's but haven't been successful. Then my friend Melanie's brother came to town and taught us how to make our own teriyaki sauce! Since I learned, I haven't been able to use storebought sauce. Sometimes it's just more fun to make it yourself.
Homemade teriyaki sauce:
I came to Seattle in 2003 and was introduced to a teriyaki joint in Belltown called Mom's Teriyaki, a hole-in-the-wall sorta place that you only find by accident. I've tried to find other teriyaki places with sauce that equals Mom's but haven't been successful. Then my friend Melanie's brother came to town and taught us how to make our own teriyaki sauce! Since I learned, I haven't been able to use storebought sauce. Sometimes it's just more fun to make it yourself.
Homemade teriyaki sauce:
- Whisk together equal parts of honey, sake, and soy sauce in a small saucepan or skillet. I usually use half a cup or a whole cup of each ingredient, depending on how many we're feeding.
- Grate about a teaspoon of fresh ginger into the mixture and bring to a low boil.
- Simmer for about 15 minutes, skimming off any foam that comes to the top.
- Remove the sauce for the burner and let it thicken for a few minutes.
- Serve as an accompaniment to rice or as a marinade for your choice of meat. Our favorite is salmon!
New Year's Eve, Seymour style
We rang in the new year in style and hosted a cocktail party at our place for our friends. I learned that my bartending skills definitely need work - Josh received an extremely lime-y Cosmopolitan! I think I had the Orange Sunrises down by the end of the night though, so if you're feeling a hankering for some brandy then I'm your girl.
We had around 25 people come through the door last night, so thank you to everyone who brought food and drinks and made it an excellent party. We are so blessed to have such amazing and fun-loving friends.
Highlights from the night:
1. Impromptu post-midnight dance party DJ'd by Bobo - thanks for taking our requests! I tried to get pictures of everyone's individual dances surrounded by the circle, but my camera has been acting up lately and refused to focus. I just hope our downstairs neighbors weren't home at the time... at one point, I think seven of us were jumping to the music. Hey, I did my part - we invited them!
2. We played Bag of Nouns, a game where everyone writes down three or four people/places/things on slips of paper. The slips are put into a bag and the group of people is divided into two teams. The first round is like Catchphrase: you can describe the noun to your team but you can't say the word itself. The second round is charades: only actions may be used to get your group to guess the noun. In the third round, you can only use one word to describe your noun. The third round is the hardest, but by then you've heard all the nouns in the bag so it isn't too difficult to only use one word.
You have to get creative during the charades round, especially when the noun is a person. Mark pulled "Britney Spears" and acted like he was singing, and then chopping off all his hair.
What we could have done without:
1. I'm sure there was a more appropriate way to act out "Sex in the City" during Bag of Nouns. I hope I never have to see that ever again.
2. The smoke from the fireworks combined with the low-hanging fog to shroud the fireworks show at the Space Needle. We could still see everything, just through a smoky curtain. The smoke did create kind of a cool effect, though.
We had around 25 people come through the door last night, so thank you to everyone who brought food and drinks and made it an excellent party. We are so blessed to have such amazing and fun-loving friends.
Highlights from the night:
1. Impromptu post-midnight dance party DJ'd by Bobo - thanks for taking our requests! I tried to get pictures of everyone's individual dances surrounded by the circle, but my camera has been acting up lately and refused to focus. I just hope our downstairs neighbors weren't home at the time... at one point, I think seven of us were jumping to the music. Hey, I did my part - we invited them!
2. We played Bag of Nouns, a game where everyone writes down three or four people/places/things on slips of paper. The slips are put into a bag and the group of people is divided into two teams. The first round is like Catchphrase: you can describe the noun to your team but you can't say the word itself. The second round is charades: only actions may be used to get your group to guess the noun. In the third round, you can only use one word to describe your noun. The third round is the hardest, but by then you've heard all the nouns in the bag so it isn't too difficult to only use one word.
You have to get creative during the charades round, especially when the noun is a person. Mark pulled "Britney Spears" and acted like he was singing, and then chopping off all his hair.
What we could have done without:
1. I'm sure there was a more appropriate way to act out "Sex in the City" during Bag of Nouns. I hope I never have to see that ever again.
2. The smoke from the fireworks combined with the low-hanging fog to shroud the fireworks show at the Space Needle. We could still see everything, just through a smoky curtain. The smoke did create kind of a cool effect, though.
Some of the ladies at the party
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