Football, Suistainability, and babies!

This was to be my weekend of nothing. I don't think we have had a single weekend at home since before the wedding, and I was ready to have absolutely no plans! Which is not to say that I did nothing, because I seem to be incapable of sitting still these days!

Friday night, my friend Danielle came over to watch the presidential debates and eat some of our leftover lasagna. It was nice to have someone else there who has the same political outlook as Kevin and I have! We had a good time watching them and looking forward to November 4th!

Saturday, Kevin and I went on a field trip for his hydrology class to Ravenna Park. We had never been there before, and it is a really wonderful park with great trails through the woods. We learned all about how paths affect waterflow, and I got to meet some of his classmates for the first time! I can't wait to go back and do some more exploring!

Then Saturday evening, we headed over to the UW for my first ever Huskies football game! My boss's dad had some extra tickets, so Jeff and his girlfriend Kate joined us for a gloriously beautiful evening, if a bit disappointing on the football field! They lost, and Jake Locker broke his thumb! They are now 0-4...yikes! But I still had a great time, and the weather and company and views couldn't have been better!



This morning, while Kevin got some studying in, I headed down to Ballard for Sustainable Ballard. I got to see some great booths about gardening, transportation, energy, recycling, and had a great time wandering around! I also made a couple of pledges while I was there. One was that I will have at least one food item for Thanksgiving that is locally grown, which shouldn't be terribly difficult since we already eat a lot of locally produced food, but I urge any of you who haven't considered this to give it a whirl! There are many delicious foods that are grown in our area which would love to grace your table for Thansgiving! Let me know if you'll try it, and I will help encourage you!

I also pledged to use less car-based travel. Again, this isn't too hard for me since I don't actually drive, but I think I can cut back even so, by not taking the bus when I can walk, or Kevin and I trying to walk or bike when we might hop into the car. I got some free bus tickets for making my pledge, plus a goofy "undriver license" which is ironic. :)
There was also a great area in the library where you could use old fabric scraps to sew a bag to cut back on grocery bags. Again, we already use reusable bags, but I had a blast making one anyway! I was going to donate mine, but it turned out way to cute!
This evening my parents were heading over to see my brother's family, so Kevin and I tagged along! I couldn't pass up an opportunity to see my nephews! Jackson is getting so big and strong! He's kind of sitting up, but he is too interested in reaching for things so he falls over a lot! He also has been trying out some solid foods! How exciting! Kevin and I will be giving him some of our homemade applesauce next time we see him. Yum! It was really nice to see everyone, we had a nice dinner and visit!

Let them eat bread!

Kevin and I have been working on our eating habits for about the last year. We had developed some pretty bad eating habits, and last summer I kind of hit a wall. So we have been buying almost exclusively organic produce, try not to get things that are processed, and making more wholesome meals. I stopped buying breakfasts and lunches during the work week, and bring my meals instead. A big motivator for me was of course the wedding. It's much easier to eat healthy when you know you're going to be standing in front of a whole lot of people in a white dress! Since last August, I've lost around 50 pounds, and I feel pretty great about that! I still have some work to do though, and am trying to find new motivation to keep my body healthy.

One of the ways that I'm finding to be really helpful is taking pride in making our own food whenever possible. As you all know, I've become a diehard fan of Eating Well, since it has such easy, healthy recipes. I also am loving growing some of our own food. This year, we made and froze several batches of pesto from basil we grew. We've also harvested tomatoes, awesome strawberries, lots of romaine and mixed lettuce, snap peas, tons of raspberries which we've frozen to enjoy through the winter, and made ten quarts of applesauce, plus 4 gallons of cider. I love making meals out of our backyard!

For our wedding, Adam and Erin got us a bread machine, and I have been dying to break it in since we got back from Hawaii. We finally had a normal grocery store trip this week, and got all the ingredients to make French bread and 7 grain bread. I made lasagna and the french bread last night, and boy were we in foodie heaven! It was delightful! I've never made bread before, and the bread machine makes it ridiculously easy! Just pour in the ingredients, turn the machine on, and presto, a few hours later you have fresh baked bread! Woo hoo! We used all organic ingredients, and I am so happy to be making it and knowing exactly what is going into it. No corn syrup, no extra sugars, all natural and delicious!

Kevin made the 7 grain bread this afternoon, and I am so excited to make a sandwich for lunch tomorrow to take to work! I love showing off things that we make! So thank you Adam and Erin, we will be enjoying homemade bread a lot!!!

Yummy!

This is Kevin's mom's recipe for lasagna, which I had never attempted to make for fear that it wouldn't live up to hers. I think I did a good job though, and actually made a double batch of the sauce. We froze half of it to enjoy sometime in the near future! And we did have salad, but we had it before the rest of dinner was ready :)

The wheat loaf! Turkey sandwiches, here I come!

To the Yak!

Saturday morning, Kevin, my dad, and I headed over to the Yakima River near Ellensburg for a little bit of fly fishing! We did this a couple years ago with Tristan, and would like to make this an annual event! We had such a good time, though the fish were less than willing to get hooked.

We rented a Clackacraft to float down the river and fish from, stopping occasionally to wade in the river. Sadly, my camera batteries died immediately on the first day, so we didn't get any pictures. We floated along, getting a couple nibbles here and there, but nothing seemed to be taking. The weather was a little misty, light rain. We tried tons of different kinds of flies, and were pretty much winding things down for the day when Kevin got a bite! It was his first hook off a fly, and it was a doozy of a trout! He struggled with him for a good 5 minutes it seemed, pulling in a little line, letting the fish pull a little out. He got it really close to the boat, and Dad and I got a great look at him. He was absolutely enormous! At least 20 pounds. Sadly, after much struggle, the fish got loose. But it was extremely exciting none the less!

The rest of the afternoon was pretty uneventful, but the river was gorgeous. After we got off the river, we headed into Ellensburg for dinner. We had delicious barbeque at the Rodeo BBQ, totally stuffed ourselves, then headed back to camp and slept like logs.

We got up early this morning, headed in to town for a hearty breakfast, then hit the river. The sun was shining, and we had high hopes for the fish. The wind had other ideas in mind, though. It was blowing very hard pretty much all day long. which made casting pretty tough for us beginners. But we tried out luck. Alas, it was nothing but nibbles again. I got one hooked for a second, but my line somehow got underneath the oar, and in the process of getting it out from underneath, I "long distance released" him. Bummer! Oh well, we had a blast anyway!

Father and son-in-law!

Me and dad get ready to hit the river.

All I can say is wow!

Dad was super oarsman! He rowed all day both days, and tried his darndest to keep us in fishy waters!

Kevin gets some casting in.

Kevin reminisces about the one that got away!

What a great weekend! Can't wait to go out again! Kevin and I both want rods that we can also take when we are backpacking! We're hooked, even if the fish aren't!

Cider Pressing!

At the closing of each summer, we gather at the Shaffer household with the Henshaw family and sometimes some other friends to press cider from all the great apple trees on their properties. It is always one of my favorite end of summer activities, getting to spend a whole day with people that I love and make something that we will all enjoy in the weeks and months ahead knowing we each had a hand in making it happen! This year, we had a big crowd of 17 (including Corbin) and so many apples, it was hard to believe. I think the final count was 67 grocery bags plus a big cooler full! That's a lot of apples!

After we powered up on my favorite breakfast of chili cheese egg dish and pear coffee cake, we got to work at about 10:30. We wash the apples, cut away any worm holes and icky spots, roll them down the bridge into the chipper, then press the apple chips into a pan. The contents then get dumped into a large garbage can which gets filtered through a cheese cloth into gallon jugs. It took us about 5 hours to get through all the apples, and we ended up with about 45 gallons of cider! Not bad for a days work! And Kevin and I were able to bring some apples this year from our little tree, so it was nice to get to contribute more than man power this year!

The cider press and chipper

The washing and cutting station: Susan is giving a lesson to some of the newbies

Corbin manages his minions from his comfy perch!

Kevin and Sonja dig in!

Roll those apples!

Dana cranks the press to make yummy yummy cider!

Hard at work! Jill, Kevin, Erin, and Susan

Could these apples be any prettier? Some batches were less than pleasant though!

Thomas and Jessica take a quick photo break.

Paul gives cranking a whirl!

Kevin, Sean, Sonja, Dana, and Thomas

Jill and Jessica start a new station straight out of the cooler! We sped up a great deal then!

Cutting away! I'm much better than I have been in years past, and didn't slice myself at all!

All hands on deck!

Sonja gives the cider a good stir to prep for filtering

Susan and Kris have been pressing cider together for 28 years! They are pros!

My handsome husband!

Jill and I relieve Susan and Kris from filtering duty. That was the first time I'd done that job. I think I have now done every job with pressing cider!

Relaxing after a hard days work in the afternoon sun.

Gratuitous nephew shot :) Look at that grin!

Corbin called it a night pretty early! Cider pressing is hard work!!!

Most of the gang poses for a final cider pressing 2008 photo! It was an excellent time!