5 things

my husband has so many varied interests it just blows me away. instead of focusing on me, here’s a meme of five things about my husband…

  1. he is studying middle eastern history and cultures and he speaks several languages including spanish, farsi, arabic, and he is currently learning tajik
  2. when he took the spanish language test in the army, he scored so high they turned around and made him take an english test to make sure he knew how to speak english.
  3. he plays bagpipes
  4. he trains in brazilian jiu jitsu
  5. the one place on earth he wants to visit more than anywhere else is Iran

Sometimes i feel so plain next to him – i like photography and reading and cooking… but life with him is such a wild ride. he’s so much fun and i never know what he’s going to come up with next.

Proud wife, with a chocolate problem

Proud wife, with a chocolate problem

My husband received a letter from UW today stating that he’s been accepted as a transfer student into the Near Eastern Studies program (I should specify that I mean the University of Washington rather than the University of Wisconsin / Waterloo / Wurzburg / Wyoming / Wales / Warwick / Westminster / Wollongong) I’m so proud of him I could just pop. I think we should celebrate with chocolate.

Hmmmm…, we have a chocolate problem (specifically a lack thereof)
I told him this…

Me: I need chocolate
Him: (something completely unrelated to chocolate so I wasn’t listening)
Me: that’s nice, but what are we going to do about our chocolate problem?
Him: What do you mean we? I don’t have a chocolate problem
Me: What’s mine is yours and I have a chocolate problem
Him: (laughs and returns to playing Grand Theft Auto – Why did I ever buy him that game?)bird-2

How is it possible that we have no chocolate in the house?

Zip

Zilch

None

*pout*

I’m off to go find chocolate.

 

36 years together

I got to talk to Dad today – he’s back in the hospital again, but seems to be in good spirits. He joked about seeing if his wife would let him off the hook for going out to dinner tonight – which is when it dawned on me that today is their 36th wedding anniversary.

36 years – I think she’ll let him get away with it this time…


This picture says – ‘what have I gotten myself into?’

happy birthday to me

Today started out like too many birthdays where I put too much emphasis on making today special. Talk about setting yourself up. I was cranky this morning anyways. I don’t know why. Must be hormonal.

Anyways. I really needed that first cup of coffee. We went through the drive-through to get a latte on our way to go take care of some chores (check mail, oil change, etc.). She burned it. The coffee tasted horrible, it was scalded. Of course I didn’t know this till about 8 miles down the road because that’s when i took my first sip. Oh well, Mr. H bought me another one when we got to the mall. And I spilled all twenty ounces of that one all over the brand new shoes I had just bought. Mr. H bought me a third cup of coffee a little later on – was he being sweet or was that self-preservation? doesn’t matter, that one did the trick.

The most amazing part of my birthday was the time I spent at the spa. Some people at work got me a gift certificate for Ummelina. I checked in at 4:30 and they took me back to a changing room to change into a robe and then they locked up my stuff. Then they took me to a room they call the tea spa. this room was full of comfy chairs and had bamboo shades over the windows through which you could see the fog and the leaves left on the trees in silhouette with the bright moon behind them. I sat down in one of the chairs and they brought me a cup of tea. Then they brought out a big bowl and a pitcher of warm water to soak my feet in. After soaking for a while, while sipping the tea and watching the fog roll, someone came out and washed my feet.

I rested a little while longer and then they took me back to the showers. These showers were worth the trip alone. It’s amazing what a difference water pressure makes. There were, I think,, ten nozzles most of them spraying horizontally. So I took an amazing shower and then went back to the tea room to sip some more tea and rest. There were one or two picture books laying around that I thought about looking at, but the thought didn’t last very long. It was so nice to just be still.

After a couple minutes the massage therapist came out and took me back to the room for the massage. The massage was amazing, the only drawback was that the therapist told me several times that 1/2 massage is just not long enough to really do any good. If its not long enough, they shouldn’t sell gift certificates for it. Anyhoo, that was really the only drawback. and after the massage I went back to the tea room to sit a few minutes longer and drink another cup of tea. They would have let me stay in the tea room all day if i wanted, but I couldn’t wait to see Mr. H so i got up and got dressed.

As it turns out, while I was at the spa, Mr. H went shopping. He bought me a shirt, a sweater and a hat. Oh, and by the way, yesterday he got me the most beautiful roses. there was a dozen of them and each one started out baby pink in the center and then faded to white on the outer petals. they’r starting to open and they are just stunning.

After the spa and presents we thought we’d go catch a movie and then dinner. The local theater had Harry Potter on five screens and the other three movies didn’t look interesting either. so we went to the keg for prime rib and then came home. Not bad for turning half of seventy.

Culinary Communion: Persian Cuisine

For our first anniversary, my gift to Aaron was to take him to a class on cooking Persian food last night. The class was offered by Culinary Communion, and took place in the home of Chef Gabriel Claycamp. There were 7 students and the chef so it was a very nice intimate group. The class was fun, and we both learned alot, not just about Persian food, but cooking in general.

What did we learn?
– Saffron is water soluble, not oil soluble. Thats why you really need to dissolve it in hot water before you add it to the dish. If you just toss it in with what ever you are sauteing, it will give it a beautiful color but it just wont give up the love. Also, if you think you don’t like saffron because it tastes metalic, try Persion saffron rather than Spanish, its a whole lot cheaper and the flavor is much less tinny.
– Eggplant is like a sponge and soaks up a lot of oil. If you brush the eggplant with eggwhite before adding it to the pan the eggplant will soak up a significantly smaller amount of oil.

– Juicing citrus – roll or knead the lime to break it down inside and then zap it in the microwave for 20 seconds to increase viscosity before slicing and juicing the fruit – you’ll get out a whole lot more juice with a whole lot less effort.

– When cooking basmati rice – the old saying about washing the rice 5 times is there for a reason. I was the one that washed the rice, and it was amazing by the time I got the the third or fouth washing the aroma was really starting to come out. The five washings really help to release the aroma and flavor of the rice.

On the menu we had:

  • pistachio soup
  • feta and walnut spread with lavash bread
  • stuffed peppers
  • Eggplant Koresh
  • Dill and Fava Polow
  • Lamb Kababs
  • Saffron Brownie (halveh)

The food was great, but maybe not to the level of Alborz or Caspian Sea. I loved the pistachio soup, the cheese/nut spread was good be we found we needed to add a whole extra lime and a lot of extra plack pepper and mint to hit the right note. Bell peppers are never my thing, so as a whole the dish meant nothing to me, but the filling was quite succulent before in went into the pepper (after of course it was completely infused with the pepper flavor which I just don’t like). I may have to think of something else to stuff – because the filling was really quite tasty. The dill and fava palow was good, and we even made it with the tadiq which was especially cool as most restaurants don’t even serve that. The lamb kebabs were amazing and I seriously recommend you try the recipe when I get it posted. The saffron brownies were a variation on halveh which is common throughout the middle east, I dodn’t think much of this particular recipe but I’ll post it anyways.