Green Influence

Since I've been living in Albuquerque, I've been introduced to the infamous green hatch chile. 

The majority of the time, I avoid eating anything with these boogers because sometimes..they can get VERY spicy. If you know me, you know that I can't handle extremely hot stuff because of my stomach issues. Once in a while, I'll attempt a small piece of it and usually end up paying the price. Well, when I picked up my Bountiful Baskets order last weekend, there was a boat load of green hatch chiles I had to address. Luckily, Kevin (our house mate) is a New Mexican and took the time to show me how to prep them considering I don't know what the hell to do with them, lol. Since we don't have a BBQ, I ended up roasting them in the oven by using the broiler. At first, he scoffed at the notion since using the oven "wouldn't work" since he swears you HAVE to use a grill...once he saw how well the broiler worked, he kinda shut his mouth. Here's how the chile's are supposed to look:

Once they were charred, you peel the skin off, take out the seeds and then freeze the chiles if you're wanting to stock up on them. I ended up freezing mine since I figured it'd be a bit till I used them. Well, I ended up packing them in my suit case 48 hours later and brought them to California due to an ER with my Dad. They joined me on the trip because when I asked him if he wanted anything from ABQ, he responded that he wanted some green chile's. Done and done. 

So, now that he's out of the hospital and back to his Dad-ly ways, I decided to make a green chile & chicken casserole for him. Although, I gave him the heads up since it was basically an experiment recipe due to the fact I've never cooked with hatch chiles. 

(Sorry for the poor quality picture. I didn't bring my Rebel with me since I rushed to California)

I'm a bit of a stickler when it comes to using chicken. I know I could buy a roasted chicken all ready cooked and everything, but I prefer to bake my own chicken. Well, you'll need to bake a whole chicken in the oven for the allotted time it takes to achieve a cooked product (I don't season it or anything). Then once it's cooled down enough, I strip all the meat and put it in a large mixing bowl, add a can of green chile sauce to it (I use Herdez), mix it in really well and then let it sit overnight so it soaks into the chicken. 

Preheat the oven to 375* 

Chile soaked chicken

Corn tortilla's

Cooked hatch chile's (rough chopped)

Shredded cheese (a large bag is a safe bet depending on how cheesy you want the casserole)

Take your casserole dish and put a small amount of green chile sauce from the chicken to coat the bottom; this will help the corn tortillas from sticking to the surface. Now, you're going to layer everything like you would with lasagna. Corn tortilla's first, followed by chicken, chopped green chiles, cheese...rinse & repeat till you run out of room in your casserole dish. Pop it into the oven for 45 minutes then once it's cooked that entire time, set the oven to broil and allow the top to get crispy for about five minutes. When you pull it out of the oven, let it sit for a good five to ten minutes so it "sets", otherwise you'll have a super hot sloppy mess on your hands. 

This is a SUPER super easy recipe. The only daunting parts are when you prep the chile's (longest part) and taking the time to roast your own chicken. 

Bon appetite! 

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Not Dead!

Man oh man! It's been a bit of a whirl wind since we got back to the States, but now that I finally had a chance to relax, I can bust out a lovely blog for you folks. Don't you feel special?

Ok, so we managed to finish up cleaning the house in Belgium and did our final walk through. 

Luckily, we got our 1,900 euro deposit back (thank gawd!) and proceeded to migrate over to our temporary apartment till it was time to catch our flight out of Amsterdam. The final few days were bitter sweet..not going to lie. We absolutely love Belgium, the travel opportunities and everything else that's awesome about Europe, but, we're ready to move on with our lives and get settled into our new home. 

If you're a frequent reader of my blog, or actually know me, you know that we have a small horde of dogs. By small, I mean five...and it's definitely interesting when it comes to transporting them, that's for sure. I had to do a "system check" on all the crates to make sure they were all up to snuff when it came to airline requirements. Luckily, all of my prepping paid off because the check-in crew for KLM were stoked that I had everything re-enforced, paperwork in hand, and anything & everything else you can think of that's required to ship a pet internationally. 

Of course, the dogs needed to get their beauty sleep before the big journey, so they made it a point to pretty much push us out of our own bed...

On our last day, Eric and I went on one last Belgian date day and went over to my favorite cafe to grab some awesome tomato soup with a side of cappachino. It was a little depressing, to be honest. I went there so often that the staff knew me, it's always mellow so you can sit & people watch...and their coffee was ALWAYS awesome. Hopefully we'll find a place like that in New Mexico..so that seems to be something to add to our "treasure hunt" in terms of things to find. 

The day had finally arrived for us to leave...it was pretty sad, although, we didn't really have much time to dwell on it en-route to the airport. Once we rolled our six pieces of luggage and five carriers full of dogs, we were immediately directed over to a special ticketing area that takes care of...uhhh...individuals like ourselves, lol. After an hour of checking in, getting the dogs all situated and grabbing a quick lunch, it was time to board the plane and head off to beautiful California! The flight actually went pretty fast, at least to me...it didn't feel like an eleven hour flight, lol. I suppose taking naps and watching all the various "The Real Housewives of blah blah blah" killed time for me. I'm just relieved that we were able to get a straight shot flight from Amsterdam to San Francisco without having to deal with a ton of layovers. Oh, and KLM, if you happen to see this..I love you and your airline ROCKS!

We got to unwind for a few days before Eric had to head out and take care of business in terms of the home we're in the midst of buying. Yes, I stayed here in California while he and John jetted off to brave New Mexico. As of today, we're officially the owners of a home! I'm so excited! Eric went through all the paperwork earlier this week and signed off on everything, including my part of the paperwork with a handy dandy POA...he was displeased with the amount of writing he was required to do in order to officially get the  house. Oh well..he got the keys today and that's all that matters! lol

All the while, we're enjoying our time at Casa de Vandegrift. Izzy and the other furballs have taken quite a liking to my suite and it's awesome bed. You'd think they had been roughing it their whole life or something by the way they burrow into the bed ...

I've been plugging around, meeting up with friends and hanging out with family since my time here is limited. I have about a month left till I need to head on out to New Mexico...well, I'm guessing a month, but it all depends on when my vehicle shows up. Once Big Blue arrives, it's time for me to mosey on out of here so I can start decorating my new house :) I'm sure Eric will be relieved once I'm outta here so I'll stop haunting the Le Creuset place in addition to the various antique places around here...lol. 

I ended up getting a killer deal on a cast iron skillet, oval skillet, 2.5 qt container and a pie bird (all from Le Creuset) for 30% off in addition to another 40%...can you blame me for jumping on that sort of deal??

Anyway, hopefully I'll be able to start posting some more blogs as I run around California and throughout the trip to New Mexico for you guys. It's interesting trying to work on my iPad, then my Eee PC since my old faithful laptop isn't functioning at the moment...le sigh. 

Toodles!

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Moving Mayhem

Aye Aye Aye! I'm sorry for the lack of posts, but I swear, I've been a very busy little bee. Between being in Scotland for two weeks (got stuck there longer due to bad weather) and the movers packing up our house, I've been trying to catch my breath.

So, here we go! 

Last week, the movers arrived bright and early to get the whole show rolling. Truth be told, I barely prepped at all. Call it laziness, call it procrastination...frankly, I just didn't care. Yes, really. With all the things that are going on, I just don't care. I realize it sounds bad, but, I think all of us hit that "wall" at some point where you throw your hands up in the air and just deal with whatever happens. I *was* responsible and put our important documents to the side so those didn't get packed, hid suitcases with prepacked clothes in addition to hiding the dogs carriers.

Bright eyed and busy tailed, the moving company descended upon our house with their prepping van and moving truck. Oh my gosh..my street is kind of narrow, so it was interesting to see other large lorries roll down the street and squeeze past our temporary road blocks. The guys were having a little team meeting when it came to figuring out how to attack our stuff..then started the mayhem.

The four man team rolled through our house like it was nothing! All the boxes throughout the house started giving me flashbacks to when we were moving from Vandenberg to here...it's crazy how fast time flies! 

The living room

Kitchen

My office

Macie & Izzy inspecting the movers packing job..

Of course, harassing the poor movers all day long really tuckered out the ankle biters:

Over the course of three days, they got everything packed up, shifted around, and then loaded up into the massive moving lorrie. There were some items I was extremely curious about them getting out of the house since we had a heavy chair in addition to a large table on the 2nd floor...and they intended on removing them through the window. Yeah..that boggled my brain a little bit. Turns out, they have this hydrolic lift that they set up in order to bring down multiple boxes in addition to furniture. This...this I've never seen before, so of course I recorded the guys in action: 

The crew was very nice and made sure to take extra care when it came to wrapping and packing up my pottery, antiques and travel trinkets. I think it's because Eric and I did some schmoozing by stocking our mini fridge with all sorts of drinks, making coffee & tea for them in the morning in addition to buying them lunch every day. Hey, some people think it's silly to do that because it's their job to move our stuff, but it doesn't hurt to be nice to the guys who are handling YOUR valuables. 

While they were packing and making more boxes, Eric and I became a little obsessed with their tape dispensers  Yes, really. If you pack and ship stuff as frequently as we do, then you know how much those dispensers with the handles are a major pain in the ass. These guys had something that was SO incredibly simple, I'm shocked that I haven't seen 'em in the States before. 

By the time they were all finished up and ready to roll out, they actually gave us two of the contraptions  because they really appreciated how much we took care of them in terms of food / drinks. Normally, I'd tell them not to worry about it..but we wanted those dispensers, LOL. So, yay! We'll be keeping one while the other goes to my Dad since I know he'll use the hell out of it.

The only casualty out of the whole packing event was our kitchen light. Truth be told, I hate that thing... it hangs down low enough to where you smack your head on it despite being vigilant of your surroundings. Apparently I wasn't the only one having issues with it since the movers cracked their domes on it several times each...

So, our stuff is on it's merry way to the States and we should hopefully be reunited with all of it sometime next month, or possibly April. Is it sad that I'm already dreaming of when I get my beloved bed back? Well, and my kitchen.....mmmmmm...large kitchen space......

A few days later, it was time to ship off my beloved Big Blue. The last time we did that, I was a little scarred by the whole experience since the shipping port in California was run by some massive assholes. This time around, the guy we worked with was extremely nice, had an awesome sense of humor got us all taken care of. He even let me go give her a hug, and tell her my good-byes. Go ahead and laugh at me, but she's my baby.

The plus size to shipping off my Xterra is that the interior has been completely detailed...I don't think shes looked that nice since I bought her! The downside is that I gotta buy gas the second we roll out of the pickup place because you can only turn your vehicle in when it's almost empty :( Nice fat gas bill in California...yayyyy. 

There you have it! A little run down of all whats been going on. Lots of stress, lots of cleaning, and lots of sleeping on uncomfortable surfaces. Only 11 more days till we're stateside bound! 

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New Adventure On The Horizon

Welp, we've been stationed in beautiful Belgium now for almost four years. 

That means, it's time for us to move else where. Personally, we were wanting Wyoming or even Utah..but..the Air Force had other ideas. 

They said, "You shall go to....New Mexico. Congrats!" 

Merp? New Mexico? Really? What'd we do to YOU?

Ya see, the part of New Mexico we'll be going to is kinda known, at least that area around the base, for being on the shady side. By shady, I mean violent and ghetto. I guess I should be used to that because of my home town in California, but after living over here for all this time, I've gotten rather accustomed to not worrying about crime and shitty people trying to take my stuff. 

Of course, when Eric told me about our soon to be new home, he saw a chunk of my soul die...just a little bit. After a week or so for the shock to wear off, I started doing some house hunting since we don't want to live in the base, and we don't really want to be around the military community anymore. Given, he's still got another four-ish years left in the Air Force, but after dealing with the cattiness of military wives here, I'm kinda over putting up with their shit, ya dig? I realize there are crazy civilian women, but they can't throw their husbands rank at me like it's supposed to do something to benefit them. 

Anyway, so I've been trying to find positive things to think of in terms of us moving not only back to the States (we really wanted to stay in Europe), but to New Mexico:

- We already have friends stationed there, so it'll be nice to have friendly faces in a new place

- Mail won't take anywhere from two weeks to a month and a half to reach us anymore. Yay! 

- I don't have to get yelled at in angry Flemish anymore. Just angry Spanish. 

- Waffle House, need I say more?

-Best Buy

-Game Stop

- Eric gets to hunt for new local haunts 

-Um...Mexican food? Yeah.

- My stepson can have friends that live in the same zip code rather than a different country! 

- If I want to fly home, it won't take 10+ hours of travel time! 

- We'll only be an hour ahead of everyone rather than nine! Yay! 

- Balloon Fiesta 

- Expand my horizons a little bit when it comes to photography 
- Possibly get a job? Perhaps? Maybe?
- BUY A HOME

The last one is rather important to me because I miss having my own personal space for my family. When Eric and I first got married, we lived in military housing and it was very small and very crowded. Then we moved to Europe and our Belgian home is a decent size, but has so many problems due to it's age..it's a constant struggle to keep it feeling like it's livable. We have no desire at all to live in military housing again, and we're not wanting to rent because most renters now a days have a tendency to gouge the tenants who have pets. If you've been an avid reader of mine, you know we have a handful of dogs, so you can imagine how much a landlord would wanna charge us. So, after doing the math and figuring things out, we're opting to buy a home that we'll want to stay with after Eric retires since there's a good chance we'll be staying in the area due to his career field. So, who knows. The hunt for "our home" has officially begun and I'm hoping to have it all resolved by the time we get there early next year. 

It'll take some time, but I'll eventually come around to the new scenery. It's all about re-acclimating to a whole new environment. 

*Annnnnd just for the sake of saying it, please keep in mind my sarcastic satire when reading this. I'm actually positive about moving to NM even though I'd definitely prefer to go somewhere else. "It is what it is and make the best of it"..which I'm doing, but everyone, including myself, has the right to voice their displeasure with something. I mean, look at the election turn out....people have voiced their feelings about that! Seeeeee!*

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