Wednesday, July 27, 2011

The Flood

Basement apartments are great for a lot of reasons: they are cheap, cool in the summertime, and so on. But sometimes, a basement is NOT where you want to be, especially today. It has been raining a lot this summer, especially for Utah, which is usually a desert. Today, we rode our bikes home through a pretty intense summer rain storm. But we've done that before. Right after we finished eating dinner, however, we opened the door of our apartment to a flooding hallway. The space between the two basement apartments was quickly filling with water, dirty water for that matter. Matt opened the door that leads outside to the stairs and found the stairwell filled with four + inches of water. Both of the drains were clogged (of course). Matt grabbed a bucket and started bailing out the stairwell. I was definitely worried. At this point, it didn't seem like the storm was letting up at all. It was even hailing for a little while. We called our landlord, but there wasn't much he could do right away. We pulled out all our towels and lined the floor by the door. By that time, the water had seeped through the closet that leads to the water heater and started to flood our kitchen floor as well. At this point, we had used all our towels, but our kind upstairs neighbors, Haley and Mike, brought down all their clean towels for us to lay out on the floor in our kitchen. Matt and our neighbor across the hall tried to unclog the drains and help the water clear out of the hallway and stairwell, which eventually cleared. Mike told us that there were people in Ogden and other areas of Utah that had from 4-6 feet of water in their basements from the same storm. Wow--we are so blessed! I have no idea what we would do if our home was flooded by that much water. We're lucky that our carpet is just wet around the door and the kitchen. It could have been much, much worse. We are so glad that our possessions were spared damage. All we need to do is put a fan on our carpet and mop our kitchen floor. What a relief! It was definitely an adventure, but one I'd rather not repeat.

Matt bailing us out. The hallway right outside our apartment is at the same level as this flooded stairwell.

 Matt is throwing the water out onto the driveway.

Our wet carpet. The water spread more after the picture was taken. 

Our flooded kitchen floor.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Our First Harvest (and Zucchini Bread, of course!)

Each of our zucchini plants has at least one zucchini growing. We have four zucchini plants and some are definitely doing better than others. We have two plants that have produced giant zucchini--10-12 inches long! Today we harvested one of our big zucchinis to make zucchini bread. Yummmm! We are saving the next one for when Jessica's grandmother comes to stay at the end of this week. So, as an incentive for anyone coming to stay, we will bake you zucchini bread/cake/or anything else you may want. We also have tomatoes that are starting to turn red, so we can do salsa too. We are definitely excited to see how creative we can get once the zucchini plants really go crazy. Fortunately, other wonderful people have filled the internet with delicious recipes. We'll probably have a few more recipes to post as the summer goes on. Here are some pictures of our successful wrangling of a giant zucchini:

 It was 10 inches long!

Unfortunately, Matt has his eyes closed in this one. In his defense, it seems to be a family trait.

Here is the delicious recipe we made this afternoon. It is a favorite recipe from Matt's family.

3 eggs
1 c. sugar
1 c. brown sugar
1 c. oil
3 c. grated zucchini
2 tsp. vanilla
3 c. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
3 tsp. cinnamon
1 c. coconut
½ c. nuts (We left these out. Nuts are expensive!)

Mix in order given. Bake in 2 large loaf pans. Bake at 350 for 1 hour. We greased the pans, just to make life easier.

This recipe is really easy and super moist. Definitely recommended!

 Pouring batter into the bread pans.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Indulgence: The 5-Minute Nutella Mug Cake


I found this recipe a while ago somewhere online and thought "where have you been all my life?". I've only made it once before because too much of this heavenly dessert would certainly be bad for my health. Enjoy, sparingly :) 
Nutella Mug Cake
Ingredients
4 tablespoons self rising flour (I used normal flour and it turned out great)
3 tablespoons white granulated sugar
1 egg
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
3 tablespoons Nutella
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil
Method
Combine all ingredients in a large coffee mug. Whisk well with a fork until smooth. Microwave on high for 1 1/2 – 3 minutes. (Mine took 1 1/2 minutes with a little yummy gooeyness on the bottom.) 
Note: Depending on the wattage of your microwave, you may have to increase cooking time. Also, the measurements aren't too delicate. I already took out one tablespoon of sugar from the original recipe and it still tasted delicious. 
Makes 1 very large serving. Or 2 normal servings. If you're anything like us, you share everything anyway :)



Here is the link to the original post: http://blogs.babble.com/family-kitchen/2011/03/15/nutella-mug-cake/

There are several other mug cakes on the site if you aren't a Nutella fan. But if you aren't a Nutella fan, you should reconsider.

Also, here is an update on our garden: the tomato plants have recently exploded with lots of little tomatoes, but none of them are ripe yet. The zucchini, however, are doing just fine. We have three that are almost there! Look at that beauty!


Monday, July 18, 2011

Up a Trail Without a Flashlight

Our Sunday evening turned out to be unusually busy. I (this is Matt tapping the blogging keyboard today) went with the Scouts to sign off our physical wellness forms before leaving for scout camp, we called our families, ate dinner (Potstickers from the freezer ... mmmmmm), then the both of us enjoyed a slice of carrot cake with a young fellow named Marcos who turned 1 this past week. To cap off the evening, I was able to convince Jessica to go adventuring with me, and the two of us, with bikes, helmets, water and a camera, powered up the side of Y mountain to catch the sunset.

The adventure started with a fortuitous meeting, still in Provo, with an old friend from Cinnamon Tree. After a hearty greeting and farewell, we pedaled eastward until the road started to climb. Anyone who's ever biked up a mountain, or even a minor gravel heap, probably understands the sensation of every downward pedal stroke getting harder and harder. We followed the neighborhoods up the hill until we could see over most of the houses below us. To our chagrin, the road we were on did not lead to the Y.


Undaunted, and knowing that people in this neighborhood were surely as lazy as we were, and would not want to regularly go back down the hill in order to get up to the Y, we scanned the roadside brush for any signs of a trail. Our well-trained eyes soon spotted a small trail leading away, into the bushes and supposedly up the mountain to our destination. We followed it. Jessica was very excited at this point to

have me as a guide. The trail appeared abandoned. We followed it for five or ten minutes, dodging branches and stepping over grass clumps. Portions of the trail were paved, nearly overrun with plant life, and portions were merely a thin carving in the dirt. We wound our way through this unknown path. It got steeper, and steeper, and the sun was setting fast.


Then, we met The Hill. It was like no hill we had yet encountered. It towered above us, its rocky crags challenging our will to climb, mocking our desire to view the sun's parting rays (as an informative side note, bikes seem to become heavier - maybe 30-40 lbs - when climbing such a hill).

We made it to the top sweaty, but very much alive. From then on, we breathed heavily, enjoyed the final descent of the sun into the horizon and the twinkling lights of Provo coming to life beneath us. The desert flowers were blooming along and way the sun colored the mountainside a bright pink-ish orange before sinking out of sight. Most definitely worth it.

















As is usually the case, the photos do not do it justice.

Once dark, we realized that we were nowhere near a road, nor did we have any sort of light source. Jessica was not very impressed that all we had was my sense of adventure, saying that if she had her way, she would prefer a flashlight.


We continued uphill, and after another hill or two like the monster mentioned before, we arrived at the road that leads to the parking lot for Y hikers. We made our way slowly down the mountain, and biked home, making it just in time to brush our teeth and collapse into bed.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Potstickers are delish (but we all know that!)

One of my favorite memories as a kid was watching my mom make 500 (it was a lot) potstickers, or as we called them, gyozas. They are delicious. Matt and I decided we wanted to make some for dinner this week. We looked at a few recipes and tweaked them to come up with one that works great for our little family.

Here it is:
1 clove garlic
3 green onions (we added more and it was tasty)
1 egg yolk
1/2 tsp. salt
1 lb. ground pork
1 package wonton wrappers
2 Tb. vegetable oil


Directions:
Chop the garlic finely. Defrost the pork. Cut off the root ends of the green onions and slice the white part and up to one inch of the green. Add the garlic, green onions, egg yolk, salt, and ground pork to a bowl and mix it together. It seems gross, but mix it with your hands! It works better this way.


Get out the wonton wrappers. Dip a finger in water and wet the edges of the wrapper. Place a small spoonful of the pork mixture in the middle of the wrapper and fold it in half, pressing the edges of the wrapper together. You should be able to finish a whole package of wrappers with one batch. Prepare a deep sided pan and add 2 Tb. of vegetable boil. Place a few (8-10) into the heated oil. Fry potstickers on both sides. Then (this is the fun part) add 2 Tb. of water to the pan and quickly close the lid. The potstickers will sizzle for a while. Once the noise dies down, they should be done! Take off the lid carefully because the oil will spit a bit. If you have more than you want to eat, freeze the leftover, uncooked potstickers. Then you can pull them out for a quick meal later!

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Grad School and the GRE: Where are we gonna go?

  

This Friday, Matt and I are both taking the GRE (insert insanity here). Our mental health aside, we are both really excited to be done studying. Remember high school geometry? As a political science major, I definitely don't. Well, it's covered on the GRE. The plus for me is that there is a verbal section. Hallelujah. Sentence completion, editing, and reading comprehension? Sign me up!

Anyway, we have been preparing for a while now and the time has finally come to take the GRE and find out where we can apply. Both of us are currently planning on PhDs in our respective fields. Matt: Bioengineering. Jessica: Political Science. We are both assuming we can get into a few top 25 programs. Hopefully! Surprisingly, bioengineering and political science doctoral programs have good overlap. Let's look at the possibilities:


School
Rank for Bioengineering
Rank for Political Science
MIT
1
10
Stanford
2
3
UC--Berkeley
3
6
U of Illinois--Urbana
5
22
U of Texas at Austin
8
23
U of Michigan
9
4
Cornell
10
20
Texas A&M
13
24
UC—Los Angeles
14
11
UC—San Diego
15
8
Columbia
16
7
UW—Madison
17
16
Harvard
18
1
Northwestern
19
21


Look at all those options! Awesome! We have 14 schools in the top 25 of our fields that overlap. We are SO lucky. Matt doesn't like the idea of living in the midwest. He says the thing he hates the most about Utah is the eternal winter. Since I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin (notice it has one of the top schools!), I have fond memories of snow forts and snow days, so we'll have to see. Besides, four of the schools up there are in the midwest. Oh well. On the upside, four schools are in California! It would be totally cool to live in California. I would be sunbathing every single day. We'd also be close to extended family there, which would be really nice. Matt says we apply to every single overlap school and see what happens. Bring it on!

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Potatoes, tomatoes, and onions...oh my!

We have had a lot of fun planting our garden. We got started pretty late, so hopefully we'll get a decent harvest. We planted four zucchini plants, two tomatoes, four peppers, a row of onions and a row of potatoes. The zucchini plants are HUGE now and the tomato plants have a few green tomatoes growing on them. How awesome!


Our newest addition to the garden is a beautiful big potato box Matt made last night out of old pallets and rusty nails. It all came at the best price! Free! Now, our potatoes will have plenty of dirt without taking over the whole garden. We're making sure to water the garden twice a day, but we hope the quails and bugs leave most of our veggies alone! It will be really fun to pick the full-grown vegetables in a few months.


Smoothies...in a food processor

We have a lot of great appliances. We even have a quesadilla maker our upstairs neighbors gave us. But one thing we don't have is a blender. So when we got home and it was really, really hot out, I decided to try making smoothies in our food processor. Why not? It actually worked out awesomely.


We had some frozen strawberries from when they were really cheap at the grocery store. We bought three cartons and since there was no way we could eat them all before they went bad, we froze two of them. Frozen berries are THE BEST for smoothies. We also had some yogurt on hand, so I added some Key Lime yogurt to one batch. It was delicious! Since I also like my smoothies a little sour, I added some Tang to the other batch. They both turned out really good. So, now we know that we can get a good-sized smoothie out of a small food processor. Maybe we won't need to buy a blender...



Thursday, July 7, 2011

Parabéns Matt!

Happy birthday Matt! July 5th was Matt's 23rd birthday! We spent all day driving back to Provo after spending the holiday weekend with his grandparents in Nevada. The car we borrowed didn't have AC and we were super tired when we got home. Then, Matt had to go to campus and try to to pass off a computer programming assignment. When we were finally home and finished dinner, we studied for the GRE. Overall, not the best birthday in the world. But Matt loved his gifts and appreciated all the birthday wishes from friends and family. I bought him a few books that he has been talking about: Elantris, Triathlon 101, and How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization (I heard about it in a political science class, so I'm interested in this one too!) I asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday evening, and what was his answer? Go to bed. So we did! Hooray for an early night!


P.S. I also made Matt a cheesecake for his birthday. Just so everyone knows, that is his all-time favorite dessert. Sadly, I do not own a spring form pan, so it was a no-bake. Still good, but now I am just reminded of how much I want a spring form pan. My Mom, a bona fide cheesecake-baking genius, definitely spoiled me.

Summertime and the living's easy (Plus: Guava Chiffon Cake!)

Well, we are loving our summer vacation. We're still working (and in Matt's case, taking a class), but we are also being spoiled silly with all the trips we're taking to see family. We've seen lots of grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and of course, we saw our parents and siblings recently too. Just this last Sunday, Matt's sister Liesle flew in and visited for a few days before we dropped her off at the MTC (Missionary Training Center) this morning. We visited with family, went shopping at the mall (Matt waited outside and read), and visited the Salt Lake Temple. We had so much fun! She is going to be an awesome missionary!




Aside from family trips, we are also having lots of fun with our friends in the neighborhood. We had a great luau with our ward, complete with the most delicious guava chiffon cake you can imagine. I signed up to make it just so that I would have the recipe and I could make it again later. Because, you know, I only do these things selfishly :)




And since I won't tantalize you with the mention of such a decadent cake and not give you the recipe, I'll add it here. Just so you know, this recipe is more complicated and involved than the things we usually bake. But sometimes, you just need to go the extra mile. Especially for dessert :)


Ingredients:
•    1 package Yellow Cake Mix
•    1 1/3 C Guava juice (Kern’s Nectar)***
•    3 Eggs
•    1/3 C Vegetable oil

•    1 small package Strawberry Jello

•    1 8-ounce Package cream cheese, softened
•    1/3 C Sugar
•    1 tsp Vanilla
•    1 small package Cool Whip, thawed

•    2 C Guava juice
•    1/2 C Sugar
•    1/4 C Cornstarch

***Overall, you will need about three cans of Guava nectar (if you buy the soda can size at the store). You'll have a little bit left over.

Directions:
1. Combine cake mix, juice, eggs and oil.  Pour in 9x13 prepared (greased/floured) baking pan and bake according to instructions on the box.
2. In small saucepan, boil jello mixture (just jello powder and boiling water--don't add the cool water) according to instructions. Poke holes in cake and pour jello mixture over the top. Cool completely in fridge.
3. In a medium mixing bowl, beat cream cheese with hand mixer until fluffy. Add sugar and vanilla and beat in. Slowly fold in the Cool Whip and refrigerate until ready to use.
4. In a medium saucepan, bring the 2 cups guava juice and sugar to a boil. Make a paste out of the cornstarch with a small amount of water. Stir in the cornstarch mixture. Return to heat and bring back to a boil and boil for one minute. Cool slightly in refrigerator.

To assemble cooled cake:
Thickly ice the cake with all of the cream cheese mixture. Glaze the top of the cake with guava gel. Refrigerate until ready to serve.





This cake is THE BEST. It is most delicious chilled. Prepare to be amazed. This is definitely the recipe of the summer so far!