Fabulous and Easy Potato, Chicken, and Fresh Pea Salad

A couple days ago, I picked up a copy of the April edition of Cooking Light at the grocery store. I used to read Cooking Light a lot when I was in high school but I stopped subscribing when I went to college and never really got back into it. As I flipped through the pages, I immediately felt at home and began to remember just why I liked it so much in the first place. I love their collections of fairly simple, healthy recipes that feature fresh produce. This month's magazine even has a section of recipes featuring goat cheese, which is one of my favorite things! I think I might have to renew my subscription!

One of the recipes that caught my eye was the "Potato, Chicken, and Fresh Pea Salad." I have been feeling like making a potato salad for for a week or so now, but the idea of all that mayonnaise had kept me from starting. This recipe seemed like a great solution. I made it for lunch today and it was everything I'd hoped for and more!

It features rotisserie chicken which was all ready and waiting for me at the grocery store and a tarragon, lemon, dijon mustard vinaigrette which is the perfect finishing touch. Woodley and his friend Steven (who were working from our house today) both loved it and even had seconds!

Potato, Chicken, and Fresh Pea Salad

From Cooking Light, April 2009, page 92

1 pound fingerling potatoes, cut crosswise into 1-inch pieces

2 cups fresh sugar snap peas

2 cups chopped skinless, boneless rotisserie chicken breast {I used leg meat in addition to the breast meat}

1/2 cup finely chopped red bell pepper

1/2 cup finely chopped red onion {I used about half this since we don't really care for red onion}

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

1 teaspoon minced fresh tarragon 

1 teaspoon salt 

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 garlic clove, minced 

{I was happy to find fingerling potatoes at the grocery store. In the past, I haven't been able to find them, but I think little red skinned onions would work just as well.}

{The potatoes had a fun coloring on the inside. I thought they kind of looked like little people running around in the potatoes.}

1. Place the potatoes in a large saucepan; cover with cold water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes or until almost tender. Add peas; cook 2 minutes or until peas are crisp-tender. Drain; place vegetables in a large bowl. 

{I completely forgot to add the peas before draining the potatoes. Oops! When I realized my mistake, I filled up another pan with hot water and quickly heated it to a boil and cooked the peas separately. It worked just fine. Since I wanted to have a cold salad for lunch (it was really hot in the kitchen because I was baking bread), I ran the potatoes and peas under cold water to chill them before adding them to the other vegetables.}

Add the chicken, bell pepper, and onion. 

{Yum! Rotisserie chicken! If I had had left over chicken from making stock I would have used that, but this was a very easy way to go and was only about $3 more expensive than buying an uncooked chicken}

2. Combine oil and remaining ingredients, stirring with a whisk. 

Drizzle over salad; toss gently to combine. Yield: 4 servings (serving size: about 1 1/2 cups)

{Yum! The combination of sugar snap peas, potatoes, and chicken is a great one. It is filling enough to be a main course but is light enough for a hot spring/summer day and only takes about an hour or so to put together. The dressing is divine! I will definitely be making this one again! Probably all spring and summer, every spring summer from now on!} 

~ElizabethRose

A Shade Garden

Above, our new shade garden! We still need to finish planting some of the plants, but it looks so much happier than it did before! 

For several months now we have had a bare patch of garden space right in front of our house. Our landlords had talked of putting in oleander, but we decided we wanted to do something a little more elaborate. We talked about what it should be off and on all winter but finally, yesterday, we actually took action. 

At first, my plan was to plant a variety of rose bushes. However, after thinking about it a bit I realized that the front side of our house gets almost no sun - just a little in the morning and nothing after that. So it seemed like roses wouldn't be a very good option.

At the nursery last week we started investigating plants that do well in the shade. We finally decided upon camellias because they do particularly well in this climate and will flower longer than rhododendrons or azaleas. Interestingly, it turns out that the land we live on used to be a commercial camellia farm. I hope that bodes well for our new camellias. :) 

We got 3 camellia plants, 2 bags of high acid camellia/azalea potting soil, a box of camellia/azalea organic fertilizer, and some other shade loving plants to fill in the space between the camellias. 

We started by digging a hole as close to 3 times the diameter of the pot the camellias came is as we could get. The soil had lots of clay and rocks so we were really glad we had the potting soil to mix in as well as the fertilizer. We put some of the mixture in the hole before transplanting each camellia. 

Then we filled in the hole with more soil/potting soil/fertilizer mix and made a little wall of soil a little ways away from the base of the plant. We filled in the little "moat" with water and let it drain 3 times (following the directions we got at the nursery). 

We think they turned out pretty well! (It's now been over 24 hours and they still look happy.) 

It took us a couple of hours to get all 3 planted and we haven't yet planted the other shade-loving plants we got to go with them. Maybe we'll get to that later this week. 

Here's a picture of the other type of camellia we got. I'll look up the names later this week. We got 2 of the one below and put them on either side of the type whose picture appears above.

We also got 2 of these forget-me-not type flowers to go in-between the camellias as well as 6 small creeping plants with white flowers. We hope they will form a sort of ground cover around the front of the bed. 

Yay gardening! 

~ElizabethRose

A Kaleidoscope of Chorus Girls

A few nights ago, Woodley and I were planning to watch a movie together. However, somehow Busby Berkeley came up in conversation and we spent the rest of the evening watching clips on YouTube featuring his choreographies. 

If you haven't heard of Busby Berkeley before, don't feel too left out. I didn't find out about his creative genius until I started going to classic movies at The Stanford Theater with Woodley a few years ago. He is best known for choreographing elaborate dance numbers for movie musicals of the 1930's involving huge numbers of chorus girls, odd camera angles, and kaleidoscopic effects. His dancers move with amazing precision and timing and boy are there a lot of them! 

One of our favorites is called "By a Waterfall" from Footlight Parade, 1933. If you have some time (and enjoy synchronized swimmers, chorus girls, or kaliedscopes), check it out on YouTube (see below) the entire sequence is about 10 minutes and the really crazy stuff starts about 3 minutes into the clip.

 

 

Here's a brief biography of Busby Berkeley's life: Berkeley was born in 1895 in Los Angeles, CA to a theatrical family. He grew up performing on stage with his family but had to leave the theater when he joined the military during WWI. As a lieutenant in the artillery, in addition to firing ammunition, he learned to command a large number of people. Near the end of his military career, he was "ordered to stage camp shows for soldiers." (IMDB.com) When he returned to the states he began choreographing dance numbers for stage productions but eventually made his way back to Hollywood and began working on movies. Interestingly, he never had a dance lesson. 

As the title of this one comments, a good solution for the economic crises: "We're in the Money" from The Golddiggers of 1933, featuring Ginger Rogers:

Here's another interesting number featuring a bunch of chorus girls dressed as cats. This one is also from Footlight Parade.   

And just one more. :) "Pettin' in the Park" from Golddiggers of 1933. I wonder what exactly they meant by "pettin'" back in 1933. 

 

If you like those, check out other musical movies by Warner Brothers from the 1930's featuring Berkeley's choreography such as:  42nd Street, Dames, Gold Diggers of 1935, and The Gang's All Here. You can probably find them at your local movie rental store or on Netflix.com 

A Celebration with Ranunculus and Kitties

Just a few minutes ago we got an email from our real estate agent letting us know that our offer on the house was accepted! Yay! We are so thrilled and are looking forward to getting all of the contingency investigations finished up so we can complete the sale!

To celebrate, I thought I would post some more beautiful photos of ranunculus flowers. I took these photos this afternoon and they feature some flowers I got at the market today (they were on sale!) There are a lot of them because I just can't resist ranunculus and I can't pick my favorite photos of them!

Leila was very curious about the flowers. 

~ElizabethRose

This Crazy Week

Above, a couple of ranunculus buds from a bunch I picked up at the market today. They were on sale and, you know, I can never pass up reasonably priced ranunculus! 

For the past few weeks I have been so happy keeping to my plan of baking on Monday, cleaning on Tuesday, doing a special project around the house on Wednesday and working on other projects on Thursday and Friday (like gardening). However, this week it all fell apart. 

It started with Monday. Since we were still working on the gardening boxes, I decided to push baking back to Tuesday or Wednesday and to instead focus on the garden boxes on Monday. They took up most of my day but I did finish up with most of the covers. 

Then came Tuesday, I had arranged to spend the morning and early afternoon with my friend Patty and her little Sammy visiting some breastfeeding support groups (for my doula training). Partway through the last group I got a call from Woodley and learned that someone had put down an offer on the house we have been looking at for the past few months. We spent the evening talking with the real estate agent and thinking about the house. 

Wednesday, we emailed the real estate agent with the details for the offer we wanted to make and Patty and I again headed out to another new mom's group. After that she had arranged a huge surprise for me. As a thank you present for being her doula for Sammy's birth, Patty had set up a voice lesson for me with an excellent teacher in Palo Alto! I was very very surprised but it was a fabulous experience. I haven't taken voice lessons for about 5 years now but it was so nice to get back into it! Woodley even came up and attended the lesson with me! After that, Woodley and I spent some time in Palo Alto before meeting up with his parents for dinner and a John Wayne movie at The Stanford Theater. Then we went back to his parents house hoping to use their fax machine to send in our offer on the house. Unfortunately there were problems with the first version so we had to wait to get an updated copy from the real estate agent. We got home around midnight. 

By Thursday I was beginning to realize that nothing related to the house or my usual housewife duties was going to get done this week. We woke up early Thursday, around 7am and got on the phone trying to find an attorney to look over our offer on the house. Around 10am we found one and emailed her the up to date version of the offer. Around 11:30 we headed over to Woodley's parent's house to print out the updated copy with the attorney's comments, sign it all, and fax it back to the real estate agent. Finishing with that around 1:30pm, we went out to lunch to celebrate. We had plans to get dinner and go see Broadway by the Bay's performance of Crazy for You with our friend Laura and we knew we would have to leave for that shortly so we spent the afternoon back at Woodley's parent's house until we needed to leave for the show. The dinner and show were both excellent and we greatly enjoyed them both! Again, we got home around midnight. 

That brings us to today. I had a meeting for Child Advocates about my volunteer work this morning which again took me away from the house. I was beginning to become quite distressed by the fact that there was almost no food in our house, there were almost no clean clothes because I hadn't done laundry in so long, and the house was getting dirtier and dirtier every minute. I decided to start working on it as soon as I got home today. Fortunately, by now many things have been taken care of. I've been working on the laundry all afternoon and the kitchen is cleaned up. I stopped by the store on the way home so we once again have our main staples: granola and yogurt for breakfast, bread and turkey slices for lunch sandwiches and something I can put together for dinner. 

Sigh. Perhaps next week will go better. But then, I suppose it isn't every week we put in an offer on a house! 

Here are my piles of laundry. Speaking of which, I should go change the load now! 

And here is an update on my cross-stitch project. It is coming along and I hope to have more time to work on it this weekend! Do you see the little girl's dress, legs, shoes and socks? 

Here's to a weekly schedule! I hope someday I may be able to find one that will work for me consistently. However, I kind of doubt I'll ever be able to stay on much of a schedule. :)

~ElizabethRose

Herbs Update

My herbs continue to grow in their starter bed. Actually, the above picture features the cherry tomatoes which are growing very well. All of the little bundles germinated and I'm trying to decide when to thin them out and when to re-plant them in a bigger pot. 

Since it seemed like it would take several months for the seedlings to be big enough to be of much use in the kitchen, and since we were inspired at the garden store last weekend, we picked up a couple of ceramic containers and some herb plants that are a bit bigger. 

Now I have two little pots of herbs sitting outside on our patio!

The first one features two types of thyme and two types of oregano. 

Thyme

Oregano Number One 

Oregano Number Two

The second features marjoram, savory, and sage. 

Sage

Marjoram

Savory

So far I haven't been able to find any tarragon plants or seeds. I guess I'll just have to keep looking. I absolutely love tarragon though and would love to have a little plant of my own to use. 

I just hope I can remember to water them all! 

The American Dream

About a week ago I heard an interview on NPR about the economic crises and how it has affected home owners, potential home buyers, and renters. The expert who was being interviewed who, I believe, may have been a professor at Harvard or Columbia (sadly I can't find the transcript or I would provide more accurate details), was of the opinion that, over the past few decades, the government has propagated the mistaken idea that the "American Dream" is to own a house and some land around it. I hadn't heard about the government promoting that idea but I did hear about it in school growing up. The expert seemed to think that there was no reason to own a house when renting is so convenient and hassle free. Instead of having a nation whose dream is to buy and own a bit of property, his opinion was that our national goal and dream should be to find a good job and work hard at it our entire lives. (I wish I could find the transcript and quote it directly!)

That interview definitely made me think a bit. I have never yet owned a house or any land and I have been renting ever since I got out of college but I certainly have held the dream of owing a little house with a nice piece of property. When I was little, my visions of adulthood definitely involved a house that my husband and I would own, never did I dream of renting a house or apartment for my entire life. 

Quite likely, my dreams and ideals were partly based on my childhood experiences. When my parents married, my mother moved into the house my father had bought a few years prior to their wedding. That little brown house was the one they took me home to from the hospital and the one my father was constantly trying to improve. My first Christmas my parents bought a live tree and after the holiday planted it outside in their yard. A couple of years later, with my brother on the way, my parents started looking for a bigger house, father from town, where they could raise their growing family. They found a beautiful white house on the top of a hill surrounded by Douglas fir forests. My father immediately fell in love with it but my mother thought it was awfully far from town. My father eventually convinced my mom that with a little bit of hard work and paint it could be perfect for our family and they made the move. It has now been over 24 years since they bought the house and my mother is still living there. 

As a child, I loved playing in the large grassy yard and dark forest adjacent to our property. In the summer my brother and I would run through sprinklers and help with the gardening and in the winter we would splash in mud puddles and jump in piles of leaves. 

The summer before my second grade year we moved down to Eugene, Oregon. My mother had been accepted at The University of Oregon to study for her Masters in Linguistics. We rented out our house to another family while we were away and we ourselves rented a small student housing apartment. The first few weeks in Eugene were very hot and I remember my mother giving us delicious sticky popsicles in flavors like banana, root-beer, and lime to help us endure the heat. Despite the fun of adventuring to a new place, I quickly grew very tired of the tiny apartment living and longed to return to our big house and yard up in Bellingham. We lived down in Eugene in the small apartment for 3 years and by the time we moved back I, in my 5th grade mind, was firmly convinced that renting and living in apartments was no fun at all and something to be avoided at all costs. 

However, now that I have grown up a bit and have experienced life in the Bay Area I am not nearly as opposed to renting as I once was. Woodley and I are thrilled to be renting our current house and I grow to love it more and more every day. For me to be happy though I know I need to live close to nature in a place where I can look the window and see trees and grass and flowers. Fortunately we were able to find a house to rent that fulfilled that goal. 

For awhile though Woodley has been feeling that we should have a house of our own. Since houses in the Bay Area are so expensive and since we have talked of spending the summers up in Bellingham, we started looking up there for a house. A little over a year ago we first saw a cute little blue house on Lake Whatcom. As the months went by we continued to see it online and noticed that it wasn't selling. Then, this past December, Woodley arranged for us to have a tour of the house when we were up in Bellingham for Christmas. We liked it best out of all the houses around Whatcom County that we looked at and went back up in March to have it inspected.

Earlier this week, we got a call from our real estate agent who wanted to let us know that another offer came in on the house. They wanted to give us a chance to make an offer also though since we had been looking at it for so long. So, the past few days have been a bit of a whirlwind! Our real estate agent put together the offer for us on Wednesday. Yesterday, after a few frantic hours of searching, we finally found an attorney to look over the documents for us. We signed it and submitted the offer via fax yesterday afternoon. At this moment, we are anxiously awaiting news about it which should come by 9pm tonight. It is very exciting but also very scary. 

It would be so lovely if it worked out for us to buy the house. It is so charming and is right on Lake Whatcom! It even has a little boat house right on the edge of the lake. :) I am dreaming of donning my apron this coming summer and spending my days canning hand picked strawberries and blueberries in it's little kitchen! Let's hope those dreams come true!