Good Eats - Asian Noodle Salad

I would like to totally recommend this salad.

The first time I made this salad a couple of years ago I followed the recipe exactly as Ree had written and it was marvelous! My whole family enjoyed it and the only complaint/critique was in regards to the bits of ginger, so the next time I made this salad (which was fairly soon after), I used my garlic press to make the ginger blend in much more. Success!! It has been a great go-to salad for warmer weather and I love to have this for leftover lunch at work.

See?

This makes my heart sing!

My favorite thing about this salad besides the crunch factor is the sauce which is sublime! Olive oil and sesame oil with soy sauce and lime with ginger and garlic and brown sugar and CILANTRO! Oh my!

And I'm not a huge fan of linguine (unless it comes slathered in garlicky clam sauce or alfredo!) so I substituted with angel hair pasta yesterday.  It made the salad a little lighter but I think the salad would be just fine without pasta.  Or maybe instead of pasta, subbing in spaghetti squash "noodles" or zucchini spirals?

Yum...will have to try that this summer for sure!

I hosted Mother's Day lunch for my mom and sisters (and the guys and the kiddos)  yesterday and I made 2 huge bowls of this stuff - one with jalapenos and one without - and chicken lettuce wraps.

The Asian half of me was very happy yesterday!

New Order

I feel so extraordinary

Something's got a hold on me

I get this feeling I'm in motion

A sudden sense of destiny *

* from "True Faith" by New Order

We spent a good chunk of the day today working outside and in the sun room. We've been without window treatments in the sun room since we took down the 70's blinds almost 3 years ago. This makes the room unbearable in extreme temperatures. Yesterday I found some blackout drapes at Target (42"x84" panels) for $13/panel so I got enough (4) for the north and south windows and was able to use tension rods ($12 each x 2) to hang the drapes. It has made a tremendous difference already.

These khaki shades will do for now.

I got more hardware today for the long west sliding doorway but I was only able to procure 2 more panels because my Target is out of the khaki 42x84 panels. We got the curtain rods hung tonight and will try to procure 4 more panels to call it a day with window/door treatments in that room.

I also moved my seedlings out to the garden today. I hope and pray something survives. I am excited at the prospect of growing my own kabocha squash as it was so difficult to find. And if we can grow some of that wonderful watermelon that we enjoyed last summer...that would be too cool as well. I have more tomatoes growing in planters and I tossed a couple of snap peas into the pot that the Passion Flower used to live in...so we'll see!

Fingers Crossed

Something else we moved from the sun room to the great outdoors were the 3 little hens. They are about 6 weeks old  now and Ozzie is definitely letting them know where they are in the order of the coop.

Pick on someone your own size, Ozzie!!

The poor baby chicks have been forced to roost on top of the henhouse...



Soon they will be big enough to sleep inside with the rest of the chickens. The girls can be mean, especially Einstein, the hen who was previously at the bottom of the pecking order (she's the one who matches Ozzie). She's probably happy to have someone to pick (peck) on these days. It's hard to watch when for no apparent reason Ozzie will charge across the coop and peck down into the middle of the threesome to disperse the babies.

Oh well, I hope you are having a better weekend than they are!!

Ocho de Mayo

Oh we had a nice Cinco de Mayo, but I didn't get around to blogging about it until today...

The best thing that happened that day is that Ketiesha came over with some goodies!

Chicken with Mole Sauce - my favorite dish of the day!

So pretty! And tasty! Best flan I've ever had!

I didn't photograph my contributions because they weren't pretty, but they were devoured - quesadillas, refried beans and chips & salsa. And Scott's mom brought over a Mexican inspired crustless quiche which was also very yummy.  The leftovers hit the spot Sunday morning and Monday for lunch (Thanks, ladies!).

Emi and I did a bit of garage saling Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. Emi got a dress, a fajita pan and a pancake pan for $2 total and I got 2 turquoise dresses, some overalls (I'm headed back to the 90's and I don't care who knows!), a cute Banana Republic black skirt, a blue floral blouse, a star tee (I will probably give to Aubri because it may be a bit too tight), a charcoal gray polo shirt (Harold Powell) for Scott and a precious little lamp for just under $10 total for me.

Isn't this cute?

We got outside with our neighbor's pole saw (Thanks, John) to trim up some of the jungle in our back yard too even though it was so hot and humid Sunday afternoon. I didn't factor in all of the bundling we'd have to do so it took a while to clean up the mess from the mulberry tree and what looked like a poison ivy tree (it isn't).

I also amended the soil in my garden bed with 6 bags of topsoil and now I need to move my mini-garden out there before the weekend.  The hardiest plants in my sunroom are my free plants - kabocha, watermelon, tomatoes and whatever else was in the compost pile. Kabocha was new for me this year and so is Quinoa. I hope I get a good yield this year!

So, did you do anything exciting for Cinco de Mayo? 

Breezy

Blue Skies

Never saw the sun shinin' so bright
Never saw things goin' so right
Noticing the days hurryin' by
When you're in love, my how they fly

Can I just say that I am soooo glad that soccer is over?  This week the only activity we had planned after work/school was Emi's choir concert the other night. And it was lovely. Emi got up and scatted while the choir was singing Blue Skies. My sweet little girlie...

13 years ago it was a different story for us...


On May 3, 1999 I was working on test procedures at the National Severe Storms Lab in the "tornado bait" trailer on North Campus. As I was wrapping things up for the day, a concerned co-worker asked if I had a safe shelter to go to that afternoon because the weather was ripe for tornadoes. He showed me the radar image and there was a big red circle around Oklahoma. He knew that we didn't have a shelter and we had joked about me having to dive into a ravine for safety. I reassured him that I'd be at my FIL's office in the city and that we would probably be safer there than at home. My FIL is an optometrist and his office was located at 119th and Western.

On the way to the city I heard the weather warnings on the radio and I was getting a little panicked. When I arrived we turned on the TV in Scott's mom's office to have a look at the radar and hear what Gary had to say. Gary was telling us that if you weren't under ground, that you might not make it...to get underground now!

My husband, his parents and I were huddled in a circle and praying because we didn't have time to do anything else. We thought this might be it for us and I fully expected to feel bricks from the building falling on our backs any second. The wind and noise got really loud outside and as the tornado passed (over/around) us, it sounded just like a freight train.  Somehow the building stayed intact and instead of being crushed to death, we found ourselves outside, incredulously watching the tornado churning with debris over the nearby neighborhood... where my sister and her family lived. I had such a feeling of horror seeing that...

After the storm, there was a eerie silence and darkness. I tried to called my sister immediately and there was no answer. We left my FIL's office to head towards their home, but first we wanted to see if we could get through to my sister's neighborhood. There were power lines across the streets on Western so we couldn't drive through.  We were outside at Scott's parents house trying to get in touch with my sister and listening to the helicopters flying overhead. I imagined that this was what it might be like in the middle of a war at night.

We got a hold of my sister finally and after we confirmed that everyone we knew in the area was safe, we took the back way home (I-44) to Norman and headed straight to the Red Cross. We felt so helpless but we wanted to help so we gave blood. And then we went home (way out in the country by the lake back then) and rested. We got up early the next morning to head up to my sister's neighborhood and I remember it was pouring rain so hard that it was difficult to see. The National Guard turned us away and my sister's neighborhood was cordoned off to outsiders.

My sister's church was in a huge metal ball across the street from its original location. I took off work the next day to help clean up debris on her church property and I remember the mud and the mess and the smell.  No one tells you about the smells after an F5 tornado (or any tornado) hits. Even though there were no human casualties in the vicinity of her church, there were plenty of animal casualties and the smell of death was thick in the air. I heard they found a dead horse in the West Moore High parking lot after the storm.

My mom called from Florida a few days after the tornado after she'd seen the images of the truck wrapped around the tree on TV (and after she'd already confirmed we were safe) just to make sure we were really ok...again.

I feel very fortunate to have made it through such a historical meterological event unscathed (and another smaller event partially scathed). Did I ever mention that I survived Hurricane Camille?

Here's hoping for nothing but blue skies for a while...