Zoey’s first job

Zoey now has a job! (She had to start earning her keep around here sometime…) She feeds Murphee dinner. This happens after she wakes up from her nap in the afternoon, and it is the greatest thing! First, she trots into the kitchen to pick up Murphee’s bowl. She takes it with two hands into the mudroom where we keep the dogfood. She gets help onto the stool and then starts to scoop out food into the bowl. When it is full (which can take a while), she takes it carefully with both hands down from the stool (with a little help) and walks over to where Murph eats, next to the fridge. She puts it down on the floor and says “eeeeeeee,” which means “Murphee, Dinner!” She gives Murph a pet and then watches her eat.

In house news, we took a look at that house that Evan linked to in the previous blog. It was a blast from the 70’s, complete with wood panelling, tile ceiling, and bright red formica kitchen counters. wow. It is nice and big, but it would just take too much to update it. So, we are continuing to look… It is supposed to slow down around the holidays and into January, but we will see what happens. We are already preapproved, so if we do find something we can act on it right away.

I have been checking out “foodie” blogs lately. There are so many out there! Here are just a few from the Pacific Northwest:

• http://glutenfreegirl.blogspot.com/
• http://www.accidentalhedonist.com/
• http://www.belly-timber.com/
• http://spaces.msn.com/members/culinaryfool/PersonalSpace.aspx
• http://www.stefmike.org/mt-blogs/daxiang/

It is very fun to read and see the pictures, so I decided to start taking pictures of food we make if I remember. I have been making treats for my students. I was trying to decide if I should still do it this year, because I have a lot more than last year and I end up making at least 5 different types of cookies or candies. I really enjoying making them and experiementing with new ones. Some didn’t turn out very well, like Espresso Delights—not very sweet or coffee-like, but, they looked pretty. The ones I did end up giving out are:

5-Minute Fudge
Lemon Bars
Lime Meltaways
Chocolate Chip with extra chips (the Nestle recipe on the bag, a good standard)
Rocky Road Clusters - a new tradition, marshmallows covered with chocolatey peanut butter. The kids love this one.
Pinwheel Snickerdoodles - a new one for this year. Labor intensive, but very tasty!

Zoey and I also tried to make sugar cookies with sparkles on it, also very labor intensive, and they turned out kinda sloppy, but tasty.
The other thing I made was latte fudge. Very strong coffee flavor (has espresso in it), but I think I stirred it too much or something… it turned out kinda hard, but, tasty. So, the kids didn’t get any of that. I don’t want to give them caffeine and sugar.

School is out for the rest of December. We have one more Little Gym on Wednesday, but other than that we are on vacation, except for a few days of teaching! We will be working mostly on starting to pack up our stuff.

Last night, we went to the Ave (University Avenue, the main drag for commerce next to the University of Washington, for those of you not familiar with Seattle. –Evan). I hadn’t been there in a while and we were out and about. We went to Twice Sold Tales and got some books for Zoey. We thought she would be into petting the kitties in there, but she was more interested in the books. Good girl! We also went to the University Bookstore. I just love that store! It has a little bit of everything! We found some very funny things like a Mozart Action Figure right next to Freud and Edgar Allan Poe action figures. Wacky.

Then we headed over to Tokyo Garden, a Japanese take out joint I used to frequent when I worked in the U. District. It was very yummy and Zoey entertained the employees by drinking almost a whole bowl of Miso soup. It was a very good night.