Martha Stewart and Cookbooks

I LOVE Martha Stewart. Every time I get her magazine or see a book of hers I get all excited. My some people's goal in life is to raise a family or have a successful career. My single goal in life...to collect and read all of Martha Stewart's publications. I aim high I know!

Okay enough of that. I also love cookbooks in general. Right now my favorite cookbook is How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. I love it for things like its made from scratch waffle and pancake recipes and stir fry with ten variations depending on what you have in the kitchen. It usually will give a recipes for something like braised pork chops and then give ten ingredient variations. You can cater the recipes to what you feel like eating and what ingredients you have in your pantry. It is awesome.

Some cookbooks that I would really love to have (besides the Martha ones!):

• The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread
• The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity

Yee Haa

We are migrating to the Gardiner rodeo this weekend. You might be thinking, "who would want to go to a rodeo?" Well I do! They are awesome, and anyway the Gardiner rodeo is like a summer right of passage. It isn't summer until the rodeo hits and the town fills up with hot cowboys for the weekend (sorry honey, it is true!)

We will actually be missing the rodeo on Friday night but don't you worry we will be in town in enough time for the dance! We will probably catch the Saturday night rodeo and then come home on Sunday sometime.

Now all I have to do is convince Brian to buy me a pair of smoking cowboy boots and a cowboy hat and I will be good to go!

(Okay so the hat is hideous but the boots are super cute!)

Our Anniversary

Last Friday was our anniversary and Brian really spoiled me. I felt so special and loved. He came home from work around one and walked in the door with pink roses and a gorgeous necklace. We stayed at Chico Resort and Hot Springs that night. It was a really wonderful night and we felt like we really spoiled ourselves! We checked in around 3:30 in the afternoon and then went out to the pool to soak and lay out in the sun. After that we went back to the room to nap and get ready for dinner.

As usual dinner in the restaurant at Chico was exceptional. We had amazing cold smoked trout and caper salsa on baguettes with champagne as an appetizer. For dinner I ordered the filet mignon and Brian had the prime rib. We finished off the meal with dessert which the waiter kindly gave to us for free because it was our anniversary. Our waiter was amazing and we spent like two hours at dinner. It was nice to relax and enjoy such a great meal.

After dinner we went out to the bar for a bit and played shuffle board. At about eleven we decided that it was time to go back to the room and try out the jacuzzi tub in our room!

The next day Brian had gotten me a massage so I went and did that while he went for a drive in paradise valley. After that we headed home and I was pretty much useless for the rest of the day. It was a perfect weekend.

Party Planning...again...

So we are going to the great state of Minnesota at the beginning of July to see Brian's family. We are both really excited to go and see them since it was a year and a half ago that we were back in that neck of the woods.

When we got married last year Brian's father's side of the family was unable to make it out for the wedding. Now in any normal family this would be maybe 10-20ish people. However, Brian's father had 8 siblings and they are all pretty much married with 2-5 kids, and some of their kids have kids... So, obviously their were a lot of people missing. As we were planning and sending out invites for the wedding it was mentioned a time or two that maybe we should do something in Minnesota so all of these people could celebrate with us (and get to know me better.) Three weeks ago Brian and I were sitting on the couch and he looked at me and was like, "we probably need to do something with my family while we are in Minnesota." I said, "do something?" "Yeah, like with my dad's side of the family." In my head I was thinking, oh no, not another big shin dig thingy mabobber, and shouldn't we (as in you) have started thinking about/brought this up a couple of months ago, not five weeks before we are supposed to be out there?

Now here is my question(s). How do you have a get together that is celebrating your marriage a year ago and not have a "reception?" What do you call that, especially when you are technically hosting it? Can you do a potluck side dish style thing with hot dogs and hamburgers as the main dish? (The fact that we will have to supply the main dish, serving ware, decorations and didn't save up ANY extra money to do it is a WHOLE nother issue that could have been solved if my wonderful husband would have brought this up a couple of months ago!) I am pretty sure that adding to my anxiety about this is the fact that I don't know his extended family very well and I don't know how they normally do things like this...

Brian's sister also suggested bringing lots of pictures and maybe a slide show and artifacts...um...who is going to do that in three very busy weeks? Let me guess... :)

P.S. Pardon my freak out! :)

Dinner Guests

We have our first EVER official non-family or spontaneous large group of friends dinner guests coming over on Friday night. It is a guy that works with Brian at the fire department and his wife. It should be fun. I told them that Friday or Saturday worked for us, they chose Friday.

My first thought was damn it now I actually have to clean the house (it really needs it anyway!) And then I thought I have to go grocery shopping, clean the house and cook all before 7:30 pm on Friday (this may not seem like that big of a deal but remember that I get off work at 8am on Friday and have to sleep for a couple of hours at some point.) I am sure it will be fine though! We are going to have BBQ chicken, cous-cous, and veggies with strawberry short cake for dessert. Nice and simple. I might make some sangria also...mmm!

On a different note Brian and I figured out that we pretty much have every weekend planned from now till the third weekend in July. It is so not cool! It will be August until we get a good camping trip in! Most of the planned stuff is fun though so it shouldn't be to bad!