Cooking 101

Here's the recipe for the baked beans I always make:

55 to 70 ounces of pork and beans
1 medium onion, chopped
1 large green pepper, chopped

1 package Little Sizzlers sausage

1 cup ketchup

1 cup brown sugar

1 tsp worcestershire sauce

Cook the sausage, leaving the extra grease in the pan. Remove excess grease from sausage. Cut sausage into small pieces. I like to saute the onion and green pepper in the sausage grease to soften them up. Remove excess grease. Mix all ingredients together and heat until hot. (My mom microwaves them for 15 minutes and I usually throw them in a crock pot to make it seem like I actually worked on the beans all day. Now you all know my secret.) You don't have to actually bake them. Enjoy!

A question on expiration dates. I made dinner last night. The mayo I used expired on February 11, 2008. Niether of us got sick. Our mustard expired in June of 2007. (I finally noticed that last night too and threw it out.) A few weeks ago I threw away the peanut butter after noticing that it expired 2 years before, in 2006! Nasty!! Funny thing is, it tasted fine and never made me sick. If these things aren't really bad (we've been using them this whole time and haven't become sick) then why do they have such a short expiration time?

What a Wonderful World

I went running this morning and it was beautiful. I am always amazed at the beauty that is all around me. Quite often I say a little prayer and thank Heavenly Father for taking the time to make this gorgeous place for us to live. I love being in Nature becuase it reminds me how much God loves me and all of us. This morning while I was running, there was a young deer that hopped along with me. It was about five feet away from me and as I ran, he ran/hopped along with me for thirty feet or so. Then he stopped and stared at me. I stopped to watch him and look at his huge eyes and even bigger ears. I have never been that close to a deer before and it was so neat to see how they hop accross the grass. I love running on a brisk morning, with the sun on my back, The Cure playing on my I-pod, and the beautiful scenery all around me. While I hate waking up to do it, I love it after I start. I wish I could be outside all day long. I am so thankful to know that I am a daughter of God, that He loves me, and that I can return to live with Him and my family forever. Until I make it back there, I am thankful that I get to live in this pretty place!

Boating, Baby Shower, and Birthdays

This weekend was a blast. On Friday night we celebrated my mom's birthday. My brother wrote on her birthday card, "So how old are you anyway?" She turned the big 4-6! We (my parents, brothers, sister-in-law, and grandparents) went to the restaurant Goodwood. It's one of my favorites. The only bad part was that we had to wait for over an hour because we had such a large party. The manager was nice enough to give us 3 free appetizers because we waited so long. The food is amazing! I highly recommend the pulled pork, baked beans, and potato salad. Mitch recommends the brisket and sausage.
We gave my mom this metal flower thing that you stick in your yard for decoration. It sounds weird, but it's super cute. She loved it and it looks great in her yard. It was fun celebrating with my crazy, funny family.

The next day, my friend Erin and I threw a baby shower for our friend Jill. I must say, Jill is the cutest pregnant lady ever! Not to embarrass her or anything, but this is the first time in Jill's life that she's ever weighed over 100 pounds and she looks so cute! The shower was nice; it was fun to see people from the ward I grew up in. I made Jill a diaper cake that Erin and I gave her as our gift. It looks cute from the front, but the back was really lopsided. But hey, I tried my best!



After the shower Mitch and I went boating with my parents. Their new boat is super nice. They're going to get a ski boom, but they're not sure what kind to get. Any suggestions would be appreciated ... Mitch, my dad, and I all did a little water skiing. I haven't done that in over a year and I forgot how many muscles you use just skiing for a few minutes. I wasn't very good. I didn't stay up very long. I did have a couple okay runs, but nothing like I used to do. Mitch did great though! He got up on his first try and had a few good runs. We stayed on the lake until the sun went down. I LOVE boating and wish we could go more often.

Thanks for the new swimming suit cover up, Mom!

On Sunday we celebrated Kathy's, my mother-in-law's, birthday. We went in with Katie and Chase and got her a Kathy purse. She LOVED it! The purse is that Kathy Van Zeeland brand and "Kathy" is spelled the same way as my mom-in-law's name. She already has a couple of these purses, but wanted another one for fall. Aren't we women hilarious? I totally have a fall/winter purse and a spring/summer purse too. Anyways, I'm really glad she liked the purse and that Katie is an awesome E-bayer. Is that a word? I'm pretty sure I just made that up.


Well, school starts tomorrow. I have two internet classes and one night class. The night class is Document Design, the online classes are my internship class and my eminent author class (see previous blog). I'm pretty excited to be starting my last semester. Mitch is trying to find a hobby so he's not bored after work. Any suggestions?

Random Thoughts

Here's what's been on my mind today:
First, I went and picked up my books for my LAST SEMESTER EVER today. Yeah! I was really excited for one of the classes I'm taking. The title of the class is "Eminent Authors." Naturally, I expected the required book to be an anthology of literature from the most prominent authors. Maybe Joyce, Bronte, Dostoevsky,Tolstoy, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Austen, you get the picture. But when I went and got my books today, guess what book I needed for this class? ... The Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes by Doyle. I was SO mad! You mean to tell me that I sign up for a class called "Eminent Authors" and I'm only going to read one author? That's dumb! Not only that, but Doyle isn't exactly eminent. Word on the street is that this professor is obsessed with Sherlock Holmes. It totally bugs me when professors only teach what they're interested in. That's not right. We're supposed to read the works of eminent authors, plural. Anyways, that had my panties all in a bunch today. Hopefully the class will be good enough that I won't care later in the semester.
I just finished reading The Rise of Silas Lapham. It was funny in an ironic, sarcastic way. I really enjoyed it and recommend it. It's about a man, Silas Lapham, and his rise and fall in society. If you read between the lines, it's about the way society works and how comically and ironically we all strive to move up the ladder of society. Watch for the irony in the main character's life and the fact that in the end, he never learned anything at all. It was a good read.
That's all.

Olympics

Okay, so Mitch and I have both been so tired the last week and a half because we stay up WAY too late watching the olympics. Most nights we're home from work around 5:00. We hurry and eat dinner and make sure we're plopped down in front of the TV by 7:00 to watch the night's events. My personal favorite is womens gymnastics.

I LOVE Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin. Mitch thinks Shawn looks like a cute little chipmunk. I think she's adorable and she seems like she's having so much fun. I was so happy she won gold on balance beam last night.

Nastia is definitely more serious about her competitions. But that's why I love her. You see, many people think Nastia is snotty, which I can see why they'd think that, but it's really just her Russian characteristics that make her appear so. Her dad and mom are both Russian and her dad was an olympic gymnast as well ... Maybe her Russian parents are the reason why Nastia is as pretty as the Russian girls I met on my mission. Anyways, Russians put their entire heart and soul into whatever it is they love. I think that's why Nastia is so serious and seems so snobby about it all. She has put her heart and soul into the olympics and will not let anything stand in her way, which is why she won gold in the all around.

Besides the two athletes, I've also loved hearing from Bela Karolyi. If I remember right, he's married to the USA womens gymnastics coach. He knows a lot about gymnastics too and I think he has been a coach before. He and his wife are both Russian. Bela is hilarious. I love him because he is the epitome of the Russian men and women I spoke with everyday in Latvia and Lithuania. Bela is passionate, energetic, dramatic, excitable, loud, opinionated, proud, and good natured. He made me laugh everytime he pounded the table with his fist and got all riled up. I loved hearing his comments about each event and seeing his suit coats that never quite matched his tie. So totally Russian. I love it.

I'm so sad the gymnastics is over, but I want to give a shout out to Shawn, Nastia, and Bela. (Not that they'll ever read this.) Thanks for making the last week so much fun and for your amazing gymnastic skills! As far as the age of the Chinese gymnasts, I'm not going to even start ...

Mug Shots!

Before we left to Cambodia, we had to take some "mug shots" of ourselves. We were supposed to take the pictures with us to present at the airport in Phnom Penh. And of course, what happened? ... We forgot the pictures!! As soon as we landed and I got over the shock of seeing a Buddha statue, complete with incense, in the airport, we realized we had forgot to bring the mugshots. Oh no! We didn't know what to do. I thought, "Can't we just pay them $50 or something?" Well, guess how much it cost to get an extra picture? One U.S. dollar! One! I couldn't believe it! All our trouble to take the pictures, then we forget them, then all our worrying, and it only cost one dollar. The whole rest of our trip was like that: me in shock over how cheap everything is and yet how much a few dollars can do for a Cambodian (which is why we usually overpaid everyone).
Our main mode of transportation was a motto gong bay. It's a little cart on the back of a scooter that the driver pulls us in. The driver would take us anywhere in the city, the entire day, for about $15. Wow. Of course, there were times Mitch and I both thought we would die because the driver was INSANE! But overall it was a great way to see the sights.
The food there is rice, curry, rice, stir fry, rice, and rice. I must say, it was the best curry and stir fry I've ever had. I LOVED it! I think I ordered pineapple stir fry almost everywhere we went. And it's soooo cheap! We could both eat a large meal for about $7. Mitch loved getting all of his old favorites; he'd been talking about the food he would order for months before we left. He was sooo excited to eat things they don't have here. He ate some pretty crazy stuff. My favorite was this plate of food with french fries on the bottom, some sort of beef curry in the middle, and a fried egg on top. Hilarious!
Mitch loved speaking Cambodian with everyone. The people there didn't expect him to speak it, so they would start talking to us in English and Mitch would answer in Cambodian. And then, every time, the Cambodians would burst into laughter. It always surprised them them that he could speak Cambodian. It was so funny. They all said he spoke very well and were so surprised that he had only lived there for 2 years. Mitch said it came back pretty fast. He couldn't always understand every word, but he could always carry on a conversation. I think he did very well as he was able to converse with everyone about anything. He LOVED speaking the language again and always had a smile on his face.
I was able to pick up on a few words. I tried to tell everyone "thank you," "hello," "how are you," and "it tastes good" in Cambodian, but I think most of the time it came out with a Russian accent, so they usually giggled. I just laughed right along with them.
Here's some pictures. Our mug shots, a picture of some of Mitch's weird food, a picture of a motto gong bay, and a picture of Mitch with one of our drivers. (This guy was a member when Mitch served his mission there and he drove the missionaries around a lot on P-day. He remembered Mitch when we were there and offered to be our driver.) By the way, we couldn't smile in our mug shots, hence the serious faces.

Cambodia Pics