I just had a great weekend visiting Seattle. Allison and I flew up Thursday night to visit our friend Lisa. I’d never been there before, but I’d wanted to visit for awhile. We all thought a nice girls weekend was in order.
Our flight in was delayed about an hour, so we got there later than we expected, but it was still early enough that we had time for dinner. Lisa asked us if we were up for Vietnamese food and since Allison and I aren’t crazy we of course said we were. She took us to this tiny little place called Green Leaf in the international district. We chowed down on three different appetizers — spring rolls, tofu pancakes, and grilled eggplant with lemon grass — and then we all ordered Lisa’s favorite dish for our entrees, grilled beef with lot leaf over vermicelli noodles. I’m not sure what lot leaf is, but it’s pretty tasty.
After dinner, we were all pretty tired, so we went back to Lisa’s cool apartment and chatted until bed time. I wish I’d taken some pictures of Lisa’s place because it’s really cool.
Saturday morning, we got up around 8:30 and went to get coffee and walk around the campus. Lisa lives in the University district about three blocks from the University of Washington campus and she is surrounded by lots of cafes, shops and restaurants. There’s good people watching and a lot to see in the area.
Here Lisa and Allison stop for a photo on the street.
Pink guy in a shop window:
Forbidden, but lovely, caffeine:
After our walk, we went back to Lisa’s, took showers and got dressed and then set off to the Capitol Hill neighborhood for shopping and lunch at the Coastal Kitchen. The Coastal Kitchen has a rotating culinary theme and this month’s theme was Peru. Here are the Titicaca pancakes Lisa and Al shared. They were chock full of sweet potatoes and almonds and came with a caramel sauce. Ridiculously good.
Allison and I:
Lisa and Al. We were right by a big window, so the light was great for photos.
After we ate and goofed around in some of the shops we went back to Lisa’s neighborhood to shoe shop. I got these cute shoes:
Next, we got in the car and headed for the Snoqualmie Falls and Salish Lodge. Lisa’s GPS told her to go some crazy way so we took a detour through bad traffic, but we got there just in time to check out the falls in the last evening light. The falls were really lovely, as you can see here:
The Lodge is situated right at the top of the falls and is also very pretty.
We were at the Lodge to have dinner with Lisa’s boss and co-workers. The people in her office have been working very hard on some big projects, so her boss treated them all to spa treatments and a very fancy dinner at the lodge as a thank you. Unfortunately, Lisa had to forgo her spa treatment because of our visit, but I did appreciate the sacrifice. Dinner was great. There was lots of wine, lots of creative food and lots of stimulating conversation. When our desserts came, I couldn’t resist taking photos of them because they were so nicely presented.
Zach gave me a wonderful gift for Christmas this year — a Mr. Bento lunch box. I have long been interested in bento boxes and I often find time slipping away as I look at pictures of people’s bentos on Flickr. I especially love looking at the bento boxes people make for their kids because they’re so darn cute.
“So what exactly is a bento?” you ask. A bento box is a single portion take-out or home packed lunch common in Japanese cuisine. They are traditionally packed in lacquer boxes, but the range of containers available for bento is enormous. Often women will spend a great deal of time in the mornings packing attractive or cute bentos for their husband and children.
The Mr. Bento Zach gave me is less traditional but very popular in Japan. It consists of an stainless steel thermos container with four smaller containers that fit inside. One is intended for soup, one for rice, one for meat and one for vegetables, but I shake it up a lot and put anything in any container.
The best part is the spork that’s included. You can see it in the picture above.
I’ve been really enjoying packing my Mr. Bento to take to work. I don’t take a lunch every day because of variations in my work schedule, but I usually bring a lunch two or three days per week. Part of my Christmas present from Zach was a link to the Mr. Bento group on Flickr. I’ve been participating since I packed my first bento and because I take a picture of every lunch to post, I find myself trying to make them prettier and more colorful. That also feeds into Goal #2 for this year which is to eat more whole foods. I haven’t been doing a perfect job, but when you’re trying to make your lunch colorful and attractive, junk food doesn’t really work too well. I find myself slipping a few little tomatoes in here, some blueberries there to add a little extra color. Here are some of the lunches I’ve packed so far. Clicking on the photos will take you over to Flicker where I’ve added notes identifying each item in my lunch.
This is the first lunch I packed and probably one of the best ones so far. We had great leftovers from the night before.
I made the green beans in this photo in the morning when I was putting the rest of the lunch together. I burned the hell out of my finger on the steam from the bowl when I took them out of the microwave.
This bento has our new favorite recipe in it: Kung Pao Shrimp.
I went over the edge on the bento thing early on and went to the Japanese dollar store by our house to pick up some bento supplies to make my lunches cuter. I got some silicon baking cups, the little animal picks you see poked into the pickles in the yellow cups, some cute animal cookie cutters I used on the cheese in the blue cup and some egg molds. I don’t have any pictures of the eggs or the egg molds, but I promise I’ll do a post about them in the near future because they are not to be missed.
This was my other favorite lunch I made for my bento. The big packet has the stuff for Thai curry noodle soup in it. I also packed frozen veggies and some cooked, shredded chicken to put in the soup. I’m really into pasta and noodles right now, so it really hit the spot.
This lunch had white bean, sausage and kale soup in it. It looks kind of gross in the picture, but it tastes fantastic.
Those noodles aren’t mac and cheese — they are Thai peanut noodles. Yum yum!
We are having a beautiful day here today. After weeks of rain storms, the sun is shining and it’s in the 50’s. I think this is the first time the pavement has been dry since we got back from Iowa. You can probably imagine how torturous ten solid days of rain are for a three-year-old. Wyatt doesn’t do very well on days when he doesn’t go out to play. So as soon as we figured out the weather was going to be nice today we stepped out the door. Wyatt got a new bottle of bubbles as a potty training prize and he’s been itching to play with them, so we broke those open.
He likes to catch the bubbles on the wand and then pop them with his finger.
After we played with the normal bubble wand for a while, I got inspired to try some fancier bubble techniques. I went to the kitchen and gathered some supplies: a pie plate, a couple of holey spatulas and a plastic sieve (normally used as a sand toy). We poured the bubble juice into the pie plate and then dunked each of the objects in the bubble juice and started blowing.
The snowflake spatula was cool because it made big bubbles that clung together and lots of little bubbles too.
The sieve was awesome because it made giant clumpy bubbles like this one:
This was a fun experiment for both of us. We’ll definitely try this again. Next time, I think I’ll get Wyatt in on it a little more and see if he can come up with ideas for objects to dip in the liquid.
It seems that everyone who has a blog is required to write a post about the new year, their goals and/or their resolutions, so here is mine. I find it interesting that this time of year nearly everyone, including me, is compelled to purge the old and try to start things off with a fresh and clean slate. Without even thinking, I’ve been on a mini-cleaning and organization spree. I actually cleaned and organized the stuff on our refrigerator door the other day. I reorganized under the sink too!
I don’t usually make resolutions, but I do like to set goals for the year. As I’ve been thinking about what I’d like for the coming year, one theme has come up repeatedly and that theme is balance. Last year I felt like I was swinging around on a big, crazy, out of control pendulum. Or maybe one of those magnet things you see at kid’s science museums, because pendulums aren’t really out of control, are they? First work was crazy, then I got mono, then Wyatt was challenging, then I had a relaxing vacation. Even my hobbies felt manic. I’d read 6 books in a month and then I wouldn’t read anything the next month. I’d crank out 12 scrapbook pages in a week and then all my stuff would collect dust for the next five. I know that peaks and valleys are part of life, but I felt like I could barely think of more than one thing at a time last year. This year, I’m going to try to keep things on a more even keel. Work will still need a lot of my attention, of course, but I’m not going to give too much of myself at the expense of my health. Wyatt and Zach will be a focus, but I’m going to try to spend more time with friends too.
So here are some of the other things I’d like to do this year, both big and small:
Concentrate on good health
Having mono has really kicked my butt. I’m still tired a great deal of the time and I’ve found that if I try to keep go, go, going too much I get sick again. I’m almost completely out of sick time at work which complicates things. The best case scenario when I’m feeling bad is to stay home and rest, but without sick time that’s a little tricky. I’m going to try to keep things a little bit balanced though and rest when I’m tired instead of killing myself with work, housework, errands, and fun.
Eat more whole foods
This definitely feeds into goal number one up there, but I think it’s important enough to list out on it’s own. I like this goal because it encourages a couple of other, smaller food goals I have. Cook at home most nights. Take my lunch to work. Try to eat higher quality food. And there’s a little bit of an environmental benefit to boot.
Make a quilt for Wyatt’s bed
Poor old Wyatt has been sleeping with a tiny little blanket on his bed for several months now. I’ve also never gotten over the guilt of not making him a quilt so this is the year I fix that.
Purge unnecessary objects from our house
We have too much junk in our house and I can hardly stand it. I’m so much happier when there’s a little room to breathe.
Spend more time with friends
It’s way to easy for me to focus only on family and work. I have such great friends and I miss them! I’ve already got something planned for this one too. Allison and I are going to fly up to visit Lisa in Seattle in a couple of weeks.
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