Anniversary!

Oh my gosh! Eric and I have officially been married for five years now! Time definitely flies when you're having fun! 

The first picture of Eric & I together back in 2006

Silly photo booth pic from 2006

Our lovely wedding day

Honeymooning 2007

Thanksgiving 2007

 

Monterey Bay Aquarium 2008

Spring 2009; When we moved to Belgium

Vacationing in Bavaria in 2010

Top of Mt. Jenner in Bavaria in 2010

Venice, Italy in 2011

Eric's graduation ceremony in 2012

Eric is so...so incredibly loving and oh so supportive in any of my dream fueled ideas, regardless of how stupid some of them sound . He's my best friend (right after my Dad, of course) and always gives me level headed input after listening to me vent. Even after five years of marriage, he still knows how to surprise me with flowers to let me know I'm appreciated. I absolutely love how he's never, not once, tried to squash my independence. He can be extremely tired from work, and he'd be willing to help me in the kitchen while I'm making dinner. He was my comfort when I lost my Mother to cancer ...that alone I'll never forget. Has always been supportive of any sort of travel I've suggested..he just nods and lets me do my thing without question. The list goes on and all. All of this basically boils down to: I know everyone says this about their spouse... I have the best husband. I got extremely lucky to find such a loving, supportive and very considerate man who I get to spend the rest of my life with. 

I honestly couldn't imagine my life without this guy.

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Strawberry Goodness!

Yes yes, another food post! 

Lots of stuff has been going on over here, and none of it is very positive and I don't really feel like posting about it. SO, I'll opt for posting about food! 

Eric has the week off, so we've been plugging around and doing lil things here and there...today, we managed to hit up the Turk Turk market over in Zolder since it's been a while for the both of us. I used to haunt it a lot, but I get easily distracted or end up having plans whenever it's scheduled. SO, we finally invaded them and snagged some beautiful produce! In fact, I was able to get three good sized cartons of strawberries for 12 euros (a small carton usually runs 5.50 euro in the local grocery stores) and the strawberries were gorgeous AND huge! YESSSSS!! Plus, we got a hefty half of watermelon, some apples, oranges, preserved lemons (so I can bust out with some Turkish food in my Tagine) and some Turkish feta sammiches. 

Due to the blueberry honey butter coming out so fabulous, I figured I'd give it a shot and see how it'd come out with strawberries. Truth be told, it's UH-mazing! 

Ingredients:
2 cups of pureed strawberries
3 tablespoons honey
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice, or to taste
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened

Wash the strawberries, then cut the green tops off. Once you're all done with them, toss them into the blender & puree them. 

Once they're pureed, you need to strain the liquid so you get most of the seeds out. It takes some time and patience to sift through the puree & force it through the strainer, but it'll be worth it. 

Here's what the strainer should look like. By straining it, you won't have a gritty texture in the butter spread. 

This is how the puree should look once you're done straining it. Nice and smooth! Kinda smells like fruit roll ups to me, lol

In a small sauce pan, warm up the strawberry puree till it's bubbly (stir once in a while), then add in the honey as well as lemon juice. Let it simmer for about twenty minutes, then take it off the burner and allow it to cool. If you want it a little sweeter, by all means, add more honey as you go along while it's simmering. The butter will mellow out the flavor once it's added in. 

When the mixture has cooled completely, pour it back into the blender in addition to the butter. Puree once again, then pour it into whatever container your little heart desires!

Tah-dah! 

Easy peezy! Enjoy!

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Blueberry Honey Butter

'Tis the season to enjoy some amazing blueberries! Luckily for me, there's an awesome blueberry farm that's not too far from my house, so I went and picked up two containers of 'em so I can make some goodies with them. 

I LOVE fruity stuff, so I've been wanting to attempt making strawberry honey butter, but strawberries over here are rather expensive. Plus, I suppose I got spoiled with the fantastic strawberries I grew up with back in California, so the ones here really pale in comparison. The next best thing to attempt was blueberry honey butter since blueberries are pretty amazing for your skin in addition to tasting fantastic! 

Here's what you'll need:

3 1/2 cups of blueberries

1/2 cup honey

2 Tbsp lemon juice

3/4 cup room temp unsalted butter

Once you wash the blueberries, toss them in a blender and puree till completely liquidized. 

Pour the blueberry puree into a sauce pot with the 1/2 cup of honey..

...bring to a boil, then simmer on a low heat for 20 minutes. You'll have to stir it once in a while to insure it's not burning. It'll thicken up like a thick syrup as you stir:

Once its cooked for 20 minutes, take the mixture off the burner, toss in the lemon juice, stir thoroughly and allow it to cool to room temp. Since I didn't have any lemons on hand, I opted to use "Real Lemon" lemon juice. 

After the mixture has completely cooled, toss it back in the blender in addition to the butter puree it to your little hearts content. 

Ta-dah! All done! Stick it in the fridge and it'll thicken up like a jam. It should keep for a few weeks, but at the rate I'm going, I'll probably be finished with it by Sunday, lol. 

 Love love love! 

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Pasta with Stuffed Chicken Leftovers

As you read in my last post, I made some pretty bitchin' stuffed chicken boobies for dinner one night. Since the guys loved it, I made more of it the following night which resulted in some left overs...I made WAY too many stuffed boobies. So, I saved them for the next night since I could figure something out to make with them. 

PASTA!

This is so ridiculously simple, it's painless. Trust me. 

You'll need (I used WAY more than this because I have two ravenous guys to feed, but this amount will work perfectly for two people):

1 box of fettuccine noodles

1 bottle of Alfredo sauce (I tend to stick with Classico)

1/2 stick of  Challenge salted butter

1/2 cup chicken stock

2 stuffed chicken boobies

Cook the noodles like you would usually do when you're making pasta. While the noodles are cooking, toss the butter in a sauce pot, melt it and then add the Alfredo sauce. I usually take the chicken stock, pour it into the Alfredo jar & shake it around so I get ALL my sauce, lol. Pour that into the pot and mix it all up. Take the COOKED chicken boobies and chop them up. Trust me, it looks like a big ol' mess, but it'll be derricious. Once the chicken is chopped up to however small you want the pieces, toss it all into the pot and cook till your pasta is ready. 

It's that simple. Seriously! 

I put some Parmesan on top with a dash of black pepper...UH-mazing! When dinner was finished, I started to ask the guys, "Is this a recipe you want me to...."...before I had a chance to complete my question, they both shouted "OH MY GOD, YES! THIS IS AWESOME!!"....then they proceeded to get seconds and attempted thirds. 

Viva la re-vamping left overs!

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Stuffed Chicken a la Erika

Ok, how about a happy post? What makes most people happy? Thaaaat's right....food. 

I was racking my brain the other day in terms of what to make for dinner because I was getting really tired of left over enchiladas. We had been surviving off of 'em for the last several days.. I was very over them! So, I started poking around the freezer and decided to use up the chicken we had in there. I didn't want "just" chicken with some rice, so I opted to "stuff" some chicken breasts with something. After thinking a little more, I decided I'd try stuffing them with my artichoke & spinach dip. 

Remember, preheat the oven to 350*!

Here's my spinach & artichoke recipe. What's listed is for a regular sized amount, I ended up doubling it so I had enough to stuff all the chicken boobies and a little extra in case I wanted extra dip to bake on it's own:

12 oz. Cream Cheese (make sure it's soft so it's easier to blend with the other ingredients)

1/3 cup sour cream

1/4 cup mayo 

1 cup of spinach (either fresh, cooked, or frozen, thawed). Make sure it's very drained of extra water!

2 cans or jars of non-marinated artichoke hearts, roughly chopped

2 teaspoons of garlic salt

1/2 a packet of McCormicks Chili seasoning (yes, seriously)

1 cup of shredded pepper jack cheese

Mix all the ingredients together and then set it aside. If you're wanting it as an actual dip, just stick it in the oven at 325* for twenty minutes and you're good as gold. 

Make sure you wash your chicken, then dry 'em on a paper towel so they're not sopping wet. Then you'll need to take the breast, make a shallow cut from top to bottom, then inside the cut, fillet it a little more so you'll have room to stuff it with the dip. Here's a picture of what I'm talking about. For those of you who are perverts, like my husband, I'm sure it'll give you a giggle..whatever..just trying to help out those who are more "visual". 

Once you've done all the cutting, stuff all the pieces with the dip & use toothpicks to keep the sides together. Then take a small amount of olive oil (I use garlic infused olive oil), drizzle lightly over the chicken and then sprinkle breading crumbs over all of it. 

Cover it with aluminum foil and bake for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, take the foil off and allow it to bake another 30 minutes. By doing this, you'll allow the chicken to stay juicy and also brown the bread crumbs. 

Tah-dah!

I ended up serving the stuffed chicken with some broccoli au gratin rice...the guys totally demolished everything! Major victory for me! 

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We All Come Back Together

Early Thursday morning... Cali passed away. 

We actually had an appointment to take her in on Friday evening to relieve her of her pain, but she ended up leaving on her own terms, in our home & surrounded by all her loved ones. 

Once we were able to get our bearings straight, we managed to make contact with one of the Vet offices in town to see where we could have Cali cremated. After talking to the gal, she referred us to a place called "Dirk & Dogs", which is located out in a town called Lummen. Luckily, the place had a website we were able to check out in terms of what types of services they offered. I think the crazy thing is that it's a kennel in addition to a place that can do cremations..kinda like your one stop shop in a sense, right? Anyway, we made our way over there and staff was incredibly nice, understanding and very sweet when it came to making our arrangements for Cali. We opted to have her cremated by herself verses having her cremated with other animals in addition to picking out a nice little urn for her. It was extremely hard to leave her, but we felt she was in great hands...plus, we'd be able to pick her up on Saturday. 

While we were waiting to pick her back up, I did some hunting online to find some sort of paw impression memory kinda thing-a-majigg I could do as a memorial thing for her aside from the shadow box I'm working on. Mainly, it's something I wanted to get for Eric since he really wants something he can have with him at work aside from a paper weight. After doing some searching, I came across Mug Revolution. It's a site where you can get a beautiful ceramic mug custom made. I shot off an email to the owner who was incredibly nice & very helpful, then went ahead and ordered a 16oz mug in which I can have Cali's paw print put on it, a glaze called "Earth tone" which borders on the colors she had in addition to a little heart on the thumb rest since she had a heart design on her chest. When Monday rolls around, I'll ship off my paw imprint  to them so they can get the ball rolling..hopefully it'll show up in time for Eric's birthday that's later next month. If not, I'm sure it's the thought that counts. 

Picture provided by Mug Revolution

Saturday came around and we went to Dirk &Dogs to retrieve our girl. The staff was very nice and made sure we were happy with the urn we picked out, then sealed it up so it would be safe during transport. As sad as the situation was, Eric was VERY happy to have his girl back.

I hope it doesn't seem morbid that we're happy to have our cremated dog back, but, we have a particular mind frame when it comes to our family:

We all came together. We all come back together. No matter what.

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Endless Love

This is a really hard blog post...

If you know anything about me, you know that I absolutely LOVE animals. To be more precise, I love dogs.  In fact, we have five.

When I met Eric, I knew he was someone I wanted to keep in my life because he had Cali, a goofy Boxer who had the attention span of a three year old. The way someone treats their dog is the way they treat other people, and that's SO true! If you didn't know any better and he was talking to you about her, you'd think she was his child rather than his dog. 

When we lived in California, I'd take her to the doggy salon so she could get pampered and dolled up:

The day we brought Izzy home, Cali took care of her as if she were her own puppy & loved her to pieces....

....and usually ended up stealing Izzys bed.

Then when we brought Cole home, she did the same thing with him. They are INSEPARABLE! Basically, when one gets up and goes to another part of the house, the other follows. As of late, he's been extremely attentive to her, checks on her by giving her kisses then snuggles up to keep her company.

When John was younger, he liked to wrap her up and play "Hide the Cali", then rough house with her. Yes, she's a VERY patient dog! lol

She always brings us "presents", whether it's a sock, towel, or torn up toy..she always wiggles and gives you a present right when you walk in the door followed by a nice kick to your knee cap.

Whenever we had a chance, we'd let her loose over at the beach and she'd run herself ragged!

As we all know, time ticks on and we all age. Sadly, dogs aren't excluded from that. Cali is now teetering on fourteen years old...and you can tell the age is wearing on her. Eric still swears that she's five and not a year older. Her cataracts are making it very hard for her to see stuff that's put right in front of her face, she has (MAYBE) 4 decent teeth she can use to eat with..arthritis flares up really bad on her hips...agh..it's heart breaking. All she does now is sleep, which I can't say I blame her. Getting up to go outside is a massive challenge for her..and when she is standing, she's wobbly and her footing is failing. 

Eric is madly...madly in love with her and it completely breaks my heart because I know "the time" is upon us..and he's going to be a hot mess. Well, all of us are, but he's going to take it the worst. At the most, we have a week left with her and we don't want to prolong her suffering despite not wanting to let her go...

Back in December, I noticed her health wasn't doing all that well, so I came up with an idea to do "Puppy Portraits". Sounds silly, right? Well, I ended up arranging a photographer to get some pictures / portraits and they came out better than I could have hoped for:

Now that we have the pictures, I wanted to make some sort of "shadow box" for her. Me being me, I clicked around online for a bit to see if I could find something along the lines of what I was wanting to do and ended up finding this:

It's pretty cool, but runs about $35 a pop. Since I'll be making one for each dog, that'd come to $175 in total! That's a bit steep, especially since I can do it myself. After doing a little bit of research, I found some recipes to make "Dough Ornaments" or  "Easy Crafting Clay" so I can do molds of all the fur balls paws. 

So, Eric and I started working on those today, did a trial run and ended up making a few impressions "just in case" some cracked while baking or they didn't come out right. In the process of working on Cali, we figured we might as well do the other dogs paws since I can make theirs into little ornaments. 

 Cali and Macie prints before

Cali and Macie prints after

As much as I picked on Cali & her smushy face, I really love that googly dog. She always cuddled up when she knew I wasn't feeling good, a fantastic watch dog & let me know when someone was coming, always did the happy wiggle dance when anyone walked in the door, extremely patient when John would hang all over her or try to ride her like a pony...a very,very loving dog. I'm going to miss her crazy little nub nub go nuts when I look at her, her snoring which rivals Erics, and yes, even her lethal farts. Cali is so special that not only has she had one family love her more than words can say, but had a family before us who loved her dearly. How many dogs have that sort of luck? She's beyond lovable and has made many, many friends throughout her journey with us. 

Value your pets and love them with all your heart. 
They deserve it.

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