Excuses, Excuses…

Wow! This is my first post this year, and it’s already February. Anyhow, happy new year everybody!

I really do have an excuse for not blogging more often. Let see… I get up at 5:30am. I get out the door by 6:05 to catch the bus. The bus comes at 6:15. I listen to a lesson of Pimsleur French for half hour on the bus. The bus gets me to the ferry terminal around 6:50 and I catch the 7:05 ferry. I listen to the same lesson of Pimsleur French for another half hour on the ferry. The ferry gets into Seattle around 7:40. I get on the vanpool from the ferry, and I get to work at 8am. For the way back, I leave work at 4:35pm. I walk from NE 45th and 11th down to Brooklyn and Campus Pkwy. to catch the van. The van picks me up between 4:45 and 4:50pm and we get to the ferry at about 5:05 to 5:10, depends on the traffic. We get on the 5:30 ferry which gets us back to Bainbridge Island at about 6:05. We sometimes play Scrabble on the ferry, and other times, I listen to another French lesson. I get on the bus from the ferry terminal and I get to Indianola Clubhouse at about 6:50pm. I walk from the clubhouse and get home at about 7pm. I make dinner, feed the cats and the dog, eat dinner, and clean up the kitchen. I get to sit down in front of a television for about an hour, and it’s time for bed. On the weekends, I squeeze in grocery shopping, cleaning up the house, laundry, walk Jasmine down to play on the beach, and working on the donor database for PAWS of Bainbridge Island. (Oh! I guess I have to tell you first that I’m volunteering to do this for them. It’s a database that keeps track of all the adoptions, volunteering, and donations). Don’t you See? I don’t have much time to spare for my blog.

It’s Super Bowl Sunday, and I’m making Dark Beer Chili and cornbread. The cornbread didn’t turn out so well. It’s not sweet enough. I don’t think I put the right amount of sugar the recipe called for. When you double the recipe, you have to be careful about stuff like this. The chili, on the other hand, turned out really well. Deschutes’ Obsidian Stout I used in this recipe compliments the beef really well. The only think I did wrong this that I did not strictly follow the recipe, and I made a whole lot of it. I think I made about 3 gallons of chili!

We had Becker, Mike and Gina for breakfast this morning. I made blini with smoked salmon, caviar and egg salad. I combined the blini recipes from epicurious.com and from Food TV’s Barefoot Contessa.  My blini came out flatter than the pictures on epicurious.  I also used red onion instead of chives.  We got two types of cheap caviar from DiLaurenti in Pike Place Market. One was red Lumpfish and the other was black Whitefish.  The red was more pungent and brinier.  The black was mild, but has more crunch to it.  Anyhow, breakfast was great, and this is the first time I had caviar.