3rd Grade Girls Basketball
7 years ago
Friday, July 31, 2009
Couch Time
I was going through some old puppy pictures because it has been a while since we took any good ones, and I came across these from a few months ago. I was reading a book on the sofa and Fang came over to curl up with me. It was quite comfy and cozy for both of us...
Monday, July 20, 2009
Smoked Salmon Crepes with Cream Cheese and Celery Leaf Salad
We hosted a small dinner party at our house last Saturday night for Jeff's former boss and one of his coworkers - a little last hurrah before they had to go back to work in new roles after our furlough ended. As we are apt to do, we decided to experiment on our poor unsuspecting guests with a new recipe. It was a hit. These were really tasty, not too scary, and even the suspicious said they were pleasantly surprised by how good they were. We even got some people to try the edible flowers! We used our fun dinnerware set for the evening, and we thought the plates came out looking quite colorful and pretty. The only thing we might change next time would be to add a few artfully placed drops of thickened dressing around the sides, not because the food needed it, but because it might give the plates just a bit more pizazz.
We had one other new experimental dish for the night - a Savarin aux Fruits (fresh raspberries and strawberries). We failed to get any photos taken of it before we cut into it, but it was also really yummy. We might make it again someday and post that recipe as well.
Here's how to make the Smoked Salmon Crepe dish...the recipe came from "Amuse Bouche" by Rick Tramonto:
The Crepes
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3 tsp sugar
pinch of salt
1 1/4 cups milk
3 large eggs
melted butter
1. Whisk together the flour, sugar, and salt in a medium sized bowl. Make a well in the center of the mixture and pour in the milk. Whisk the milk into the flour mixture until the batter is smooth and well blended. Whisk in the eggs until blended.
The Filling, The Stack, and The Salad
2 oz cream cheese, softened
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 lb thinly sliced smoked salmon
5 Crepes (see recipe above)
1/2 cup celery leaves
1 tbsp olive oil
Grated zest of 1 lemon
1 tsp finely snipped chives
6 cucumber flowers, for garnishing (we used all different types of edible flowers)
1. Put the cream cheese in a small bowl with 2 teaspoons of the lemon juice. Mix well and season to taste with salt and pepper.
2. Using a 3-inch round cookie cutter (we made ours bigger - closer to 5 inches), stamp out 4 rounds of smoked salmon and 5 rounds of crepes (again, we went a little taller on ours, 5 salmon and 6 crepes).
3. Place 1 crepe on a work surface and top with a salmon round. Spread about 1 tablespoon of the cream cheese over the salmon. Continue the layering, so that you end with a plain crepe on top of the stack. (Our smoked salmon wasn't what we'd call "thinly sliced", so rather than making rounds, we just covered the surface of the crepe with thinly pulled apart salmon. Not quite as pretty, but it worked. We also made two batches of the filling for our larger diameter crepes and our taller stack.)
4. Put the celery leaves in a small bowl and toss with the olive oil, lemon zest, chives, and remaining 1 teaspoon lemon juice. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
5. To serve, divide the celery salad among 6 small plates. Cut the stack of salmon crepes into 6 wedges. Arrange a wedge and a cucumber flower on each plate.
We had one other new experimental dish for the night - a Savarin aux Fruits (fresh raspberries and strawberries). We failed to get any photos taken of it before we cut into it, but it was also really yummy. We might make it again someday and post that recipe as well.
Here's how to make the Smoked Salmon Crepe dish...the recipe came from "Amuse Bouche" by Rick Tramonto:
The Crepes
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3 tsp sugar
pinch of salt
1 1/4 cups milk
3 large eggs
melted butter
1. Whisk together the flour, sugar, and salt in a medium sized bowl. Make a well in the center of the mixture and pour in the milk. Whisk the milk into the flour mixture until the batter is smooth and well blended. Whisk in the eggs until blended.
2. Strain the batter through a sieve into another medium-sized bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours to give the batter time to rest.
3. Heat an 8-inch nonstick skillet or crepe pan over medium heat. Lightly brush the pan with melted butter.
4. Ladle about 1/4 cup of the batter into the skillet and tilt the pan in all directions to evenly coat the bottom. Cook the crepes for about 30 seconds or until the bottom is lightly brown. Loosen the edges with a spatula and flip the crepe over. Cook the underside for 10 to 15 seconds or until it is set, dry, and browned in spots. Slide the crepe onto a flat plate and cover with a piece of wax paper.
5. Repeat with the remaining batter, brushing the pan with more butter as needed, and stacking the crepes between wax paper. The crepes may be made up to 3 days ahead. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Bring to room temperature before using.
The Filling, The Stack, and The Salad
2 oz cream cheese, softened
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 lb thinly sliced smoked salmon
5 Crepes (see recipe above)
1/2 cup celery leaves
1 tbsp olive oil
Grated zest of 1 lemon
1 tsp finely snipped chives
6 cucumber flowers, for garnishing (we used all different types of edible flowers)
1. Put the cream cheese in a small bowl with 2 teaspoons of the lemon juice. Mix well and season to taste with salt and pepper.
2. Using a 3-inch round cookie cutter (we made ours bigger - closer to 5 inches), stamp out 4 rounds of smoked salmon and 5 rounds of crepes (again, we went a little taller on ours, 5 salmon and 6 crepes).
3. Place 1 crepe on a work surface and top with a salmon round. Spread about 1 tablespoon of the cream cheese over the salmon. Continue the layering, so that you end with a plain crepe on top of the stack. (Our smoked salmon wasn't what we'd call "thinly sliced", so rather than making rounds, we just covered the surface of the crepe with thinly pulled apart salmon. Not quite as pretty, but it worked. We also made two batches of the filling for our larger diameter crepes and our taller stack.)
4. Put the celery leaves in a small bowl and toss with the olive oil, lemon zest, chives, and remaining 1 teaspoon lemon juice. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
5. To serve, divide the celery salad among 6 small plates. Cut the stack of salmon crepes into 6 wedges. Arrange a wedge and a cucumber flower on each plate.
Friday, July 10, 2009
The photos from Europe are online!
We just finished uploading all of our vacation photos to our Picasa account. We had some trouble narrowing them down this time - we ended up with nearly 1000 that we liked and wanted to keep! They're in two albums on Picasa. The first one has mostly pictures from the Austria and Germany portion of our trip. The second one has the photos from the Switzerland portion of our trip. If you have any questions about any portion of the trip that we don't answer in the captions, feel free to ask away. There was so much to absorb that I'm sure we didn't do it justice in our photo descriptions. We hope you enjoy looking at them!
Monday, July 6, 2009
Days 15, 16 and 17
This is the last post about our vacation. We're back home now, trying to catch up on everything that went neglected for the past three weeks. We had a great trip, and would highly recommend Austria and Switzerland to anyone who has a desire to visit them. They're both beautiful countries full of fun and interesting things to do.
Day 15 was spent touring a museum in Brienz called the Ballenberg Open Air Museum. They've taken a bunch of traditional buildings from all over Switzerland, some dating back into the 1300s, and moved them into this big park outside the town. You can walk through all the old buildings, see demonstrations of all kinds of skills and crafts from the olden days, and check out farm animals from the area. It was pretty neat. They had a wide range of architectural styles from all over the country. We saw live demonstrations of tatting, meat smoking, shingle making, wood carving, charcoal making, and an actual saw mill powered by a water wheel in action. We walked through many old buildings, some quite large, and realized just how lucky we are to have the modern conveniences we have today.
After the museum, we went over to Interlaken to walk up and down the main street, then we hit the grocery store once again for dinner supplies. We spent the evening back at the apartment in Lauterbrunnen making hamburgers for dinner and doing laundry.
Day 16 was spent in the Lauterbrunnen area. We started with a trip up the valley to the Trummelbach Falls. This is a super cool waterfall that has carved its way into the rock and is almost entirely inside the mountain. There is an underground elevator that takes you up about halfway to the top, and then you wander through a series of tunnels, up and down inside the mountain, to catch glimpses of the waterfall. The sound is incredible, and the amount of water falling and twisting its way through the mountain is just amazing to see.
We went back to our apartment for a quick lunch, then took the cable car and train from Lauterbrunnen to Murren. We took a nice easy hike from Murren to Grutschalp and the cable car back down from there. We got back to Lauterbrunnen in the late afternoon, and we proceeded back to the apartment to drop off the car before dinner. We eventually wandered back into town because we had an appointment with a coworker of Michelle's who was scheduled to arrive in Lauterbrunnen that evening. We found him and his wife, passed on our advice on what they should see and do in the area the next day, took them back to the apartment so they could see what a Swiss apartment looked like, and then all drove back into town together. They had dinner at their hotel with their tour group, and we went to dinner at another hotel in town for grilled steak and lamb before calling it a night (they gave us bibs to wear at dinner, LOL).
Day 17 was spent doing mostly end of the trip sorts of things. We had to drive to Zurich, check into our hotel at the airport, then take our new car over to the shipping company so it could be sent back to the US. It was a bit sad to turn it in, knowing it would be a while before we got to see it again, but we managed. After that, we went back to the hotel, where Michelle got in a quick workout and Jeff got in some surfing before we got dressed to go to dinner at Petermann's Kunststuben, our one very fancy meal for the trip. We took the train from the airport to dinner, and settled in for a four hour dining extravaganza. Here are some pictures from dinner:
After dinner, it was back to the airport for the night. We flew back to St. Louis the next morning. We're so glad we had the opportunity to take this trip, and we hope there will be many more to come in the future!
Day 15 was spent touring a museum in Brienz called the Ballenberg Open Air Museum. They've taken a bunch of traditional buildings from all over Switzerland, some dating back into the 1300s, and moved them into this big park outside the town. You can walk through all the old buildings, see demonstrations of all kinds of skills and crafts from the olden days, and check out farm animals from the area. It was pretty neat. They had a wide range of architectural styles from all over the country. We saw live demonstrations of tatting, meat smoking, shingle making, wood carving, charcoal making, and an actual saw mill powered by a water wheel in action. We walked through many old buildings, some quite large, and realized just how lucky we are to have the modern conveniences we have today.
After the museum, we went over to Interlaken to walk up and down the main street, then we hit the grocery store once again for dinner supplies. We spent the evening back at the apartment in Lauterbrunnen making hamburgers for dinner and doing laundry.
Day 16 was spent in the Lauterbrunnen area. We started with a trip up the valley to the Trummelbach Falls. This is a super cool waterfall that has carved its way into the rock and is almost entirely inside the mountain. There is an underground elevator that takes you up about halfway to the top, and then you wander through a series of tunnels, up and down inside the mountain, to catch glimpses of the waterfall. The sound is incredible, and the amount of water falling and twisting its way through the mountain is just amazing to see.
We went back to our apartment for a quick lunch, then took the cable car and train from Lauterbrunnen to Murren. We took a nice easy hike from Murren to Grutschalp and the cable car back down from there. We got back to Lauterbrunnen in the late afternoon, and we proceeded back to the apartment to drop off the car before dinner. We eventually wandered back into town because we had an appointment with a coworker of Michelle's who was scheduled to arrive in Lauterbrunnen that evening. We found him and his wife, passed on our advice on what they should see and do in the area the next day, took them back to the apartment so they could see what a Swiss apartment looked like, and then all drove back into town together. They had dinner at their hotel with their tour group, and we went to dinner at another hotel in town for grilled steak and lamb before calling it a night (they gave us bibs to wear at dinner, LOL).
Day 17 was spent doing mostly end of the trip sorts of things. We had to drive to Zurich, check into our hotel at the airport, then take our new car over to the shipping company so it could be sent back to the US. It was a bit sad to turn it in, knowing it would be a while before we got to see it again, but we managed. After that, we went back to the hotel, where Michelle got in a quick workout and Jeff got in some surfing before we got dressed to go to dinner at Petermann's Kunststuben, our one very fancy meal for the trip. We took the train from the airport to dinner, and settled in for a four hour dining extravaganza. Here are some pictures from dinner:
After dinner, it was back to the airport for the night. We flew back to St. Louis the next morning. We're so glad we had the opportunity to take this trip, and we hope there will be many more to come in the future!
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