Chinese Food

I made Chinese food this week. In our ward (tangent: I still love our ward! and am getting to know many in it and finally getting their names down. This is such a great ward-- YAY!) for Relief Society, we had a service auction. My service that was auctioned was a Chinese meal which was the hit of the night. It was the highest bidding auction and the Relief Society President won it, because she had the most points out of anyone. I thought no one was going to want it and it turned out that many sisters did. Several sisters spoke up and asked "can we auction the Chinese food now??"

So, I finally got around and made it. I started at 11 am and finished 3 minutes before 6:30pm. (Dinner was at 6:30-- I still ended up being 15 minutes late) Normally I'm 3 hours late for dinner when I cook Chinese, so I considered this to be a great feat!

I made everything from scratch and had Andrew as a sous chef helping me cut up meat and cleaning dishes and pans so that I could keep a continuous cooking schedule. We work great together, especially in this new kitchen where we can be doing two things at once and not bump into each other or get in the way.

SO it was 7 1/2 hours of straight cooking to get this meal done with a helper. My feet definitely hurt after this! (Tangent: I remember making Chinese food for Chinese New Year when I was pregnant. My feet swelled so badly while cooking that I ended up not being able to walk on my feet for several days afterward)

I made rice, gong bao ji ding (kong pao chicken), lemon chicken, jing jiang rou si (shredded beef with leek), broccoli cauliflower and carrot dish, fried green beans, and Chinese banana bread with home made strawberry sauce and cool whip as dessert.

Then I put them in my beautiful blue and white Chinese china dishes and it looked gorgeous. I should have taken a picture. The family said that we cooked enough for an army! (which I think is funny, because Andrew actually does cook for the army... anyway). They thought it was a lot, but at the end of dinner most of it was gone. It's amazing how much you cook and how fast it can go-- even with a small crowd!

It sure was good!!! The best part was that the only ingredients I didn't have on hand was 3 lemons, 2 leeks, fresh beans, broccoli and cauliflower. So the grocery list for such a huge meal was minimal.

Man, do I miss China!!! It's nice to get that food on hand with in the half hour vs my 7 1/2.

Sourdough Bread

Andrew and I love sourdough bread, especially as toast in the morning. The problem is it's expensive and the closest store that sells it is 45 min away. So... I'm adventuring into making a sourdough start. I started the start (that sounds funny) last night and it's already smelling sour. yummm.... I'm hoping I won't screw it up.

I've talked to many who said they tried to make sourdough and it has never worked out for them. I'm not a very good baker (I make up for it in my cooking skills) but I know that many in my family ARE bakers. Have any of you tried it? Or have any good suggestions?

I'll let you know in 3-5 days how it goes.

Highlight of my month

Abby was watching "ni hao kai lan" today while I was making Chinese food. ...

And while Andrew and I were in the kitchen we heard her count very clearly to 3 in Chinese!!!! Andrew and I heard her say it, looked at each other in shock and said, wow!!! she can count to three in Chinese but not in English.

we stood there for a minute in happiness, amusement, and pure shock!!!

i think it made my month!

yi er san!

what i have done lately

What I've been up to the last two weeks:

-talk in church
-in charge of the enrichment activity games
-genealogy (which in this ward is the biggest calling in the ward so we've been busy),
-getting ready for temple morning this saturday,
-made chinese food (started @ 11am & finished @ 6:27pm just in time for 6:30 dinner. it was 6 dishes and they all turned out some what well)
-making meals for ward member/neighbor who had a baby,
-science museum-- awesome!
-lawton's family (friends and neighbor's from Safford) stayed over,
-unpacking boxes--- still.
-making cute hair clips with friends in the ward
-exercising in the morning
-head cold

btw- grandma told me when glenn beck was-- now i must shower her with love... love love love love love love love love love love love love love love.

interesting...

if any one knows what time glenn beck is on and on what channel here in phoenix, i will shower you with love. Ever since he switched from cnn to fox, i can't find him. :(

i think i forgot to thank...

oh i forgot...

thanks janet, the lawrence family and any one else-- who put the little cowles reunion together. It was nice to see each other again.

Had a good time in UT

I was told while I was in UT that my posts were too long and that I should put them into smaller sections-- which i agree with but i think it takes too much time. So instead I'm going to make my post short.

I went to utah for 2 weeks. I enjoyed seeing old friends, family I haven't seen in ages and cool weather (although some times it was too cold for me).

I went to a 4 day Family History/ Genealogy conference. Once I got over the Mentholatum/mint smell, old lady perfume and shameless gas passing (I was one of the youngest there; most were over the age of 65) I learned a lot and have a lot of goals to accomplish now.

I was able to put it to practice for two days at the Family History Library in SLC-- thanks to Lee Ann for showing me the ropes and Terry for spending two days with Abby. Thanks!-- I REALLY appreciated it. I found 6 people to put into the church system and do ordinances for. yay.

And a very big thanks to David, Stratford's, Katie & Jeremy and Karen & Stephan for letting us into their homes and watching abby. And thanks to Emily and Jeff who offered to help.

But it's nice to be back home with my honey. :)

Cherry Jam?

I had a bag of cherries sitting in the fridge that needed to be used. I looked up some recipes and decided to make cherry jam. Abby surprisingly helped me a lot more than I thought she would. It not only kept her busy, she enjoyed it, and it tired her out-- thank goodness! AND the jam turned out better than I thought it would as well. I will definitely be making more cherry jam in the future. I will also be putting Abby to work more too!


Here's some pictures of Abby helping.



I'm becoming more and more in the mood to bottle. Any one with left over veggies can pass them on to me. :) A family from church had too much zucchini, so last week I made a couple of pints of zucchini relish as well-- that turned out delicious too! I made several pints and gave some relish back to them.

Weekend travels

We made it up to the Orton family reunion this weekend. Andrew was able to take time off of work to go up for a few days (his boss didn't understand why he had to go up to see family. He thought Andrew should just send a check instead of going). We enjoyed seeing family that we haven't seen in a long time. We all went up to the Black hawk Campground up Payson Canyon, UT and camped out for a few days. Andrew and I realized how much we missed camping and I think we're going to be doing it more often.

Thanks to Emily and Jeff who put it together and made it work. We really appreciate it and we had fun!

Here's some pictures of the reunion and of our trip back to AZ.

At the reunion we saw the sites:


Ride back to AZ, near Page AZ:


If you want see a bigger size just click on the picture and it'll take you to my web album.

Update

This is how I've been feeling lately, the lyrics to "Living on A Prayer" by Bon Jovi, :
"We've got to hold on ready or not. You live for the fight when its all that you've got."

But with that being said, we're doing great! I thought I'd update that CPS never came, but I heard that CPS gets called often here in Maricopa. I also heard that CPS makes appointments to meet with the family several weeks after CPS has been notified of a suspicious problem. So... they still might come, but I'm not worried about it, and if they do, they'll make an appointment and not just show up (which differs to what the officer told me). And I also heard that the police department here in Maricopa have a LOT of issues with race and other things, so I'm not the only one frustrated with them! We ended up giving Abby a father's blessing to try and help prevent her from running away. I have felt between your prayers and the father's blessing that she is starting to understand and the issue is being resolved-- we hope, I'm still none the less paranoid about the door being locked! Abby is choosing to stay inside instead of being in the front yard with me now tho.

We're going to a family reunion this week up in Payson Canyong in Utah-- I'm excited to be camping and letting abby get dirty. I'm also really excited to see my friend, Clara, this friday who just came back from her mission in Taiwan this last month! yay! and I'm also glad I'll get to see a good high school friend, Tristan! It will be good... pictures to come.

My phone stopped working on me a week ago-- I got a blue screen of death and then it wouldn't power on. No one can figure out what happened or what's wrong so AT&T gave me a new phone since it was under warrenty. Thus-- I have lost all my numbers with the phone exchange-- having your home and cell numbers again would be great! Send them to me in an email or txt me 435-881-8252.

I'm starting to really enjoy our ward-- I know i've said it before, but it keeps getting better and better. I'm excited to get know them more. One lady sells ward members fresh turquoise eggs! I feel like the bishopric is trying very hard to make sure that we're a close friendly ward which is great!

Andrew and I also got callings for family history (i don't know the official name of the calling). The bishopric said, they don't know anything about FH. They also said that our stake does not have a family history building or computers, so we'll be going into member's homes and teaching them at their home on their computers. They're trying to do it so that they can print out the names and have it ready so that they can just go to the temple and do the work. They're really pushing for temple attendance and hoping that by doing family history it will make it more meaningful. Our wards been pushing temple attendance greatly in everything from lessons to activities, and they want Andrew and I hard at work trying to help with it. Bishop's hoping to get 1,000 names in per month? or something like that. The problem is, we don't know anything about Family History and neither do they. So any one out there that can help with the programs and has anything out there to suggest or tell me about, that would be great so that we can pursue our calling.

I've been biking, doing water aerobics and regular aerobics, roller blading , running around playing soccer with abby, swimming, circuits and pilates for the last few weeks. So far it's been feeling great but I haven't lost an inch or a lb. -- so depressing, but enjoyable at the same time.

Last weekend for the 4th Abby and I had the stomach flu so we did nothing but the Friday before the 4th we were able to go up into the mountains and enjoy the cool weather. We managed to hit 3 storms which made it so we couldn't hike (that's ok tho, I LOVE rain). We also got a flat tire from falling rocks off the mountains but it was none the less enjoyable and great to be in the green mountains vs the desert, with Andrew and Abby. I think anything could have gone wrong and I still would have liked the trip. Abby too, she loves being outside and seeing the big trees and picking the flowers-- she's such a flower/nature girl. I did give Andrew a hard time about running over a cute squirrel tho...

And last, Abby has become quite the muscian. She's been saying some words but not as many as she should be.... Her language skills are behind but her music is not. She has some how managed to make straws into whistles-- don't ask me how, i don't know, but now she walks around the house blowing a whistle. She also likes to pound on andrew's drum set and is getting good at keeping a beat. She picked it up from Andrew trying to teach her. Andrew the other day, caught her pounding on the baby grand, so he tried to teach her how to play scales. We both thought she wasn't paying attention and just wanted to pound on the keys. However, the following morning I woke up to Abby playing the scales on the piano! one finger at a time but none the less! And the best part is, i KNOW where she is at all times because she's always making noise/music! And lately if there's not a noise maker, she's singing. Thank goodness for a big house! The music gets muffled. :)