Cheesy Doggie Biscuits

 

1 1/2C              Whole Wheat Flour 1 1/4C              Grated Cheddar 1/4C                 Grated Carrots 1/4C                 Olive Oil 4-6T                 Warm Water Preheat Oven to 350°. Combine ingredients in bowl, adding water 1T at a time until dough begins to form a ball. Roll out on a floured surface & cut the dough into shapes using cookie cutter. Place on cookie sheet & bake for 10 to 15 minutes, until lightly browned.

Baby Potato Salad with Vinagrette

3-4      Garlic Cloves, minced 2T       Olive Oil 2T       Balsamic Vinegar 1         Lemon, juiced            Salt & Pepper to taste Combine ingredients in small container and shake.

8-10     Baby Red Potatoes, quartered 2          Medium Zucchini, cut into 1/2 inch coins & halved 1          Cob of Corn, remove corn from cob 1          White Onion, chopped 1          Avocado, cubed 1          Medium Tomato, seeded & diced             Balsamic Vinegar             Red Pepper Flakes, Salt & Pepper to taste Lightly coat potatoes in oil & salt. Roast in 350° oven for 20 minutes. Stir & add oiled & salted zucchini. Continue baking for another 20 minutes. In skillet, cook onion & corn over medium heat in small amount of oil. Add salt, pepper & sprinkle of Red Pepper Flakes. When soft, add a splash of Balsamic Vinegar. Combine ingredients in bowl and drizzle with dressing.

Christian the Lion

Healthy Chile Rellenos (sort of)

mmm, Chile Rellenos. A Poblano or Anaheim Pepper stuffed with cheese, battered and deep fried. Doesn't get more delicious. I REALLY like them, but they're too unhealthy to eat ever very often. So, I decided to try something healthier and it turned out pretty good, so I thought I'd share the recipe.

Tofu Chile Rellenos

1         Poblano Pepper 9 oz     Firm Tofu 1 T      Strong Cheese, fine grated (I had Pecorino Romano in the fridge, so that's what I used) 2         Cloves Garlic, chopped 1 t       Italian Seasoning 1 t       Fresh Chives, chopped 1 t       Fresh Rosemary, minced 1 t       Worcestershire Sauce 2 T      Milk            Salt & Pepper to taste            Bread Crumbs Half Poblano Pepper with stem still in. Remove seeds and innards. Put tofu, cheese, garlic, Italian seasoning, chives, rosemary, worcestershire, milk, salt & pepper in food processor. Blend until smooth. Spoon into pepper halves and sprinkle top with bread crumbs. Bake at 350° for about 30 minutes.

Serve with spicy roasted potatoes and an avacado and tomato salad.

The Fly

Taken on May 5.

It's 11:30pm

and Olive just wants to sleep.

Olive @ 7 months

Well, since most of Olives 7 month old pictures related more to other albums, there would only be 1 picture in the album, so we'll just post it here instead. :)

Book Recommendation: Made to Stick

Last May a few of our friends gave us some audiobooks to listen to (and help us survive) on our drive to California. Since then, Tim and I have listened to 16 audiobooks together and I've listened to 2 on my own.

Most recently, I started listening to Made to Stick: Why some ideas survive and others die, which I borrowed from our local library. I'm only on chapter 4 so I can't say for sure that the whole book is interesting, but based on what I've heard so far I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who has to communicate ideas to people. It would be a great bennefit to teachers, business people and pastors. The principles are easy to understand and they do an excellent job of illustrating their points with lots of examples.

For instance, people think they have better intuition than they actually do, but how do you effectively demonstrate to them that their intuition is flawed? The book lists an example where people are asked to predict which option kills more people each year: suicide or homicide, floods or tuberculosis, asthma or tornadoes. Many people predict that homicide, floods and tornadoes kill more people each year than suicide (50% more), tuberculosis (9x more) and asthma (80x more) because of something called an availability bias, which causes us to judge the likeliness of an event based on it's availability in our memory. Had the researchers simply said,

"Suicide, tuberculosis and asthma kill more people each year than homicide, floods or tornadoes. However, in a study by the university of ___, many people predicted that the opposite was true. This is due to something called the availability bias."

Many people would hear that and think the people who guessed wrong were dumb and that they would have guessed correctly.

By demonstrating the principle of availability bias, rather than just telling people about it, you make them more likely to understand and apply that information to themselves.

Mt. Si & Train Museum

At the end of May we went hiking near North Bend on Mt. Si with our friends Justin & Melissa. It was an overcast but warm day and we had a great time. We hiked about 4 miles total. It was a pretty busy day, Mt. Si always seems to have quite a few people on it, but it's still a pleasant hike.

After the hike we stopped at a train museum in Snoqualmie. They have a lot of old, rusty engines which are, unfortunately, behind a fence, making it difficult to photograph them, but we got a few good shots.

Here are some of our favourite pictures from the day:












































To see the rest of the pictures, click on the image below.

Mt. Si & Train Museum