Saturday Morning Project: Gathered Clutch

I typically look like I'm headed to my first day of school when I go to work every morning. I have a little blue backpack that I put my lunch, a good book and sometimes my homework (aka my computer). The reason for the backpack is to avoid having too much baggage going into work with a laptop bag/purse/lunch bag etc- I get too scatterbrained sometimes during the day to keep track of it all.

So, in an effort to cut out the necessity for a purse- I pack all of my purse essentials into my backpack every morning. Likewise, every evening, I have to make sure to transfer it all back to my purse. That's a lot of stuff that could get lost in transit!

This morning, with some help from my Mom, I created my solution to keep me organized. My Gathered Clutch is small enough to fit in my backpack and purse but big enough to hold all of my random stuff! So I just need to grab this little bag and go! This is the 2nd sewing project I've done since home-ec back in 7th grade and I must say I'm very happy with the result. :)

SherPlante Garden 2011

This is the 2nd year I've tried my hand at growing some veggies in our garden. I'm learning many lessons and fine-tuning which of these foods I would consider growing in years to come.

Clockwise starting from the upper left:

• Carrots- They do taste better straight from the garden (or maybe I'm a little biased). I think that next year I'll have to actually thin out the crop so that I get some bigger ones. This year is more a crop of baby carrots :)


• Kale- I think this is one of the nicer looking plants in my little plot. One row of this stuff has been contributing all summer to lunchtime salads at the Sherplante's. It's really good for you too I found!


• Marigolds- We don't eat these, they're mostly for show.


• Peppers- We have a few late bloomers on our plants. I'm not sure I would do these guys again because we paid for 4 pepper plants and will probably get about 4 peppers out of the plants. (I figure then that each pepper would end up being about $2 more than the ones you can buy at the store). Blech!


• Tomatoes- Once we found the one sunny spot in our yard we have a mini forest of tomato plants. As you can see by the picture we are looking forward to lots of tomatoes in our future.


• Not Pictured- Beets (they suffered similar to the carrots because I didn't thin them out)
  Raspberries (They're all done at our house for the year- which is sad...)

Next year? Definitely Kale, Carrots, Tomatos and perhaps we can try some cucumbers or cabbage....hmmmm oh the options!

Feel free to send suggestions!

Adventures in Paleo Cooking

So Casey and I have a few books especially geared towards our "crazy hippy diet" (aka Paleo diet). Tonight we tried a really easy recipe from one that was literally just smoked kielbasa sausage and cabbage baked in the oven at 350 for 40 min. I must say that despite my natural Sherwood aversion to green vegetable like foods I thought this was very tasty!

Now normally we wouldn't make anything like this but since we've been getting a head of cabbage each week in our CSA we need to find creative ways to eat it. (Anybody with good sauerkraut recipe should sent it our way!) I actually think this week was the first time I actually cut into a head of cabbage. I decided it is a very pretty vegetable along with tasting good. Check out the alternating star-like pattern with every row!

My CSA Cabbage :

My CSA Cabbage chopped up and mixed with Sausage:
Finally- in closing, how do you suppose Henry learned to do this? He was really sneaky earlier tonight while we had the freezer door open deciding what to make tomorrow night for dinner.

Surf and Turf

Megan and I had a delicious meal last night. Megan cooked up the surf, and I cooked up the turf.



The surf was a delicious Italian stew called cioppino. We made a delicious Italian broth with some chicken stock we made from a chicken we ate last week (store bought chicken stock doesn't compare to the homemade stuff, and there's no salt in it!). We then added scallops, mussels, and shrimp to the stew. Wow, we don't eat a lot of seafood at our house, but this recipe may change that.



The turf was easy - a little garlic powder and steak seasoning, thrown on the grill for a minute or two to get a nice medium rare, and it's ready. Sam's club has huge ribeyes, so Megan and I just shared one of them. Usually I always eat more than Megan, but when it comes to steak, she keeps up with me! I did eat more cioppino though :)



Here's me waiting to eat:



It was a great meal. We worked up our appetites with nine holes of golf at the Inver Wood golf course in Inver Grove Heights. Megan was bombing her drives - I forgot my golf glove at home, and with it being so warm out yesterday afternoon was just trying not to throw my golf clubs through the air when I swung. I almost lost one into a pond, but caught it at the last minute. Good thing I caught it, otherwise I was going to have to send Megan into the pond to fish it out (she is the better swimmer).

Spring Travels

Sick of Minnesota? Come along with Megan and I to Arizona and Nevada to visit the Grand Canyon and the Hoover Dam!

Congrats Megan!

On Saturday, Megan participated in the American Berkeibeiner in Hayward, WI. I know most of you know what this is, but for those who don't, it's the biggest cross country ski race in the country (haven't fact checked that, but it has to be). Over 8,000 skiers participed. We had a good time. Unfortunately, the battery to our camera was dead, so we weren't able to take any pictures of the eventful weekend (husband should have realized that the charger was in the bag the whole time, but that's another story). Luckily, we got a new computer about a month ago, and it came with two important functions; (1) a touch screen monitor and (2) paint program. I have drawn a few pictures with my left pointer finger in order to help transport the readers into our weekend. Enjoy!

We drove up Friday night and stayed in a town just outside of Turtle Lake, WI. As I'm sure all of you know, there is a casino in Turtle Lake, and we decided that we would check it out (both of us hadn't been to one in years, and also wanted to eat there as we didn't trust our other options in the area). Megan played Blackjack for the first time at the casino and was a natural - she walked away with $1.50 more than she started with. I happened to be a little more lucky, and won enough for us to pay for our dinner. We plan on going back to a casino when we feel the urge (approximately 10 years).

We got up early on Saturday as we were an hour away from the race. It was a relaxing drive through the woods of Wisconsin, and we got to see the sun rise. Once we got close to the race, the cars really started to back up (see illustration above). Getting 8,000 racers and their supporters to one location in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin is a large undertaking. We were directed to a plowed out field approximatley 5 miles from the actual start of the race where we were bussed the remainder of the way.

It was a brisk morning - our car showed negative five degrees when we dropped it off at the lot. We waited in a warming tent for a while near the start. Megan was mostly just wearing layers, as she knew she would get too hot later if she had heavy winter clothing on. As you can see from the picture of her at the starting line, she was a little cold! There were multiple races that day, and Megan participated in the Korteloppet, which is a 25k race. She estimated 2.5 - 3 hours to complete. Since she was skiing off into the wilderness, I was banished back to the chalet to hang out and patiently await her return.

Megan's trusty husband headed down to the race finish a little over two hours later, and started scoping out the skiers coming to the finish. I nice light snow had developed since Megan had left, which made for a pretty scene. He decided to move closer to the finish to see if he could get a better view from up there, and there was Megan on the sidelines!! She had zipped through the course in two hours and eleven minutes - a disappointed but proud husband greeted his triumphant wife with congratulations.

Make sure you congratulate Megan when you see her!

Guide to busy dogs: Part II - Snow Sweater

Wow - there must be a lot of people out there with busy dogs - we were inundated with congratulatory thanks at putting together such useful instructions, with great interest in the video. Some of you were surprised at the size of the stick used in USF. This is unavoidable. The stick must be bigger than the dog to really wear him down. Remember, dear Reader, that your dog never tires. When you arrive home from a long day of work and look forward to putting your feet up for the day, your dog comes to greet you and laughs as he sees you reforming your butt mark in your sofa. He laughs because he knows he has you for a few hours before he actually gets tired as well, and your attempt at a little R&R is laughable.

However, with a little help, you can learn to wear you dog out in no time. Now that winter has welcomed itself into our lives, let's move onto some tactics that utilize snow. Here's what you need to do:

1. Fresh snowfall - while old snow would work okay, fresh snow is probably better. It also gives you the chance to shovel out your driveway while wearing out the dog at the same time.

2. Shovel - the bigger the better - if your dog is going to wear a snow sweater, you need to make sure he is fully covered in snow

3. When you get your shovel full is full of snow, give it a HUGE toss in the air. Try to make sure the snow stays close together so that it is falling back to earth in one big pile. Your dog will love that.

Again, here's a video to help you get the technique down. Notice how quickly the dog returns for more - you're going to have to be quick to wear him down!




Now, dear Reader, did you happen to see a common theme between the two videos? Yes, that's right: beard. It really helps with the throwing techniques (for those of you who know Lynden, he had a huge beard when he was a hammer thrower).

So, how do you know when you've given your dog a snow sweater and that he's probably starting to wear down? Well, he should look like this:










Notice how the snow covers his entire head except for his eye sockets. The spookier your dog looks, the better. Also notice how the snow weighs down his whiskers - this is an important clue to whether or not you've created a heavy enough snow sweater. Good luck!