Christmas Tree

I love Christmas and I especially love Christmas trees! I really enjoy having a fresh cut tree and the crisp clean evergreen scent that inevitably permeates the house. However, because of an unfortunate event two years ago involving me forgetting to water a fresh cut tree and Lucifur knocking down the already dead and dying tree three weeks before Christmas... they have subsequently been banned from the house. There were pine needles everywhere and a constant need for vacuuming took all the joy out of the Christmas Tree splendor. This year Christian vowed to have no live trees in the house and brought home a mangled and pathetic fake tree that he scrounged from the depths of Scrooges basement. Only about a quarter of the lights on this pre-lit tree worked and to further the ghetto-ness... in it's past Christmas lives someone thought it would be brilliant to spray fake snow all over it's stupid fake plastic boughs. I sat in the kitchen cursing this wretched piece of crap while untangling the broken lights and watching as it's fake snow dandruff flaked it's nastiness all over my clean kitchen floor.

Eventually... everything seemed to take shape and it actually looked like a surprisingly good representation of a fake Christmas tree. I added my homemade pasta angel ornaments and hung every Puppy Love ornament my mother helped me collect from 1987 onward. At the end I topped it with a Santa hat and did a little jig with my mug of hot cocoa in hand.

Behold... my Christmas Miracle...

Yes even my pasta angels were singing Hallelujah!

St. George Climbing

While I love the snow and am very excited to begin my Snowboarding season, Christian and I don't really love cold all that much...

Therefore this past weekend we escaped to the milder temps of St. George to do some bouldering at a place called Moes and climb routes at the Chuckawalla wall. The weather was great and we even got to see some of Aunty Stephy while we were there:)

Bouldering Pics...

Route Pics...

We will return to climb again!!

Mastering the Art of French Pastries... and Tacos

This past fall season Christian and I stayed in Heber near the Zermott Lodge over the weekend. While there we feasted on a Julie favorite... the Sunday brunch buffet! Mixed within the three types of delicious eggs Benedict and across the way from the juicy bacon strips was a beautiful shiny tray of French pastries. Naturally I was drawn to the pretty shiny object and proceeded to taste the most delicious, light and airy, yet unmistakably crunchy croissant. Since that initial meeting with a true French Croissant I haven't been able to take my mind off of the delectable creatures and I've vowed to recreate them in my own ghetto American kitchen. I've had several attempts and I feel I'm getting closer... but the search must and will continue until its perfect. I've decided this is an ongoing learning experience and I will continue to perfect my croissant technique until I have mastered the art of French pastries!

Here is my finished croissant as well as a raspberry turnover that uses the same dough...

Once you master the French pastry dough the whole kitchen opens into an endless world of possibilities...

Here is the close up to make you hungry...

After a full morning in the kitchen Christian and I preceded to made fish tacos. This is a recreation of a dish we had after visiting Oscars' in Zion National Park in the summer.

We grilled Tilapia in some butter with S&P and then added some Havarti cheese over the warmed fish to let it melt a touch. Then we topped with some shredded cabbage and mango salsa. I want to try a variation adding avocado and jicama but we'll save that for next time.

Enjoying the fruits of the kitchen...

Bon Appetit!