Pad Thai and a visit from Mark

This last weekend I had a visit from a great friend--Mark! Mark and I have been friends for over eight years. It is pretty crazy to reminisce and reflect on all the memories and experiences we have together. We go through phases of seeing each other more and seeing each other less and thankfully these last two months we have been in the seeing each other more phase (twice in two months!). 

One of my favorite things about Mark is the quality of our conversation. We can talk about anything, and usually end up talking about fun, slightly philosophical and totally interesting conversations. Our latest theme has been on the technological revolution and how Facebook has completely changed and revolutionized our relationships with each other. We talk about how our generation is the last generation to make friendships with limited technology intervention and how our concept of relationships are forever changed. I'm not articulating it as well as we did mid discussion, however, perhaps that's because I worked a ten hour day?

Friday night we romped around Capitol Hill--this is Mark enjoying the Seattle style hot dog in the back of a cab!

Proving Mark actually did come to Seattle. I love Pike's Place Market!

Saturday night we played darts at a bar called The Zoo. 

Anyways, having Mark here in Seattle was wonderful! We did some touristy fun things and just enjoyed each other's company and conversation! I love having people visit me because I am much more inclined to try new things and get out and explore. 

One thing we did, which was really fun was visited this huge asian market called Uwajimaya. There we picked up the ingredients to make Pad Thai (a personal favorite). Uwajimaya also had recipe cards, so it made the whole process super simple. And, let me tell you our Pad Thai turned out pretty good. Mark called it restaurant quality!

Ingredients:

8 oz dried flat rice noodles

3 tbsp oil

1 clove garlic, minced

1 egg

1/4 cup water

1/4 cup fish sauce

2 tbs sugar

Soy sauce for flavor

1/2 crushed red pepper flakes

1-2 Green Onion, cut one inch

1 cup bean sprouts

1/4 cup ground roasted peanuts

Lime wedges

Add bottled pad thai sauce for more flavor

To Prepare: 

Soak rice noodles in warm water until soft, drain. Heat a frying pan until hot and add oil. Add garlic and brown slightly. Add egg and scramble until done. Reduce temperature if necessary. Add rice noodles to egg mixture. Turn temperature up and stir fry noodles until translucent, adding some water if needed. When noodles start to stick, add fish sauce, sugar, pepper flakes, soy sauce and green onions. Continue to cook mixture until dry. Garnish with bean sprouts, peanuts and lime.

Try it out! 

This weekend, I have another treat! Teryll, my long time neighbor and dear friend (practically a sister) is staying with me Friday night! Teryll and I have been friends for over 14 years (wow, that makes me feel old :) ).

I hope your week is going well. Wednesday, here we come!

play dough.

hey there friends!

Do any of you work with kids? Have kids? Know kids that you spend time with? Well, if you answered yes to any of those questions, here is a really fun activity! MAKE PLAYDOUGH WITH THOSE KIDDOS!

Here is the recipe:

COOKED PLAYDOUGH

from COOKS.COM

---

1 c. flour
1/2 c. salt
2 tsp. cream of tartar
1 c. water
2 tbsp. oil
1 tsp. food coloring

Combine 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup salt and 2 teaspoons cream of tartar in a large saucepan. Gradually stir in 1 cup water mixed with 2 tablespoons oil and 1 teaspoon food coloring. Cook over medium to high heat, stirring constantly until a ball forms. Remove from heat, cool and knead until smooth on wax paper. Store in an airtight container. Children will enjoy playing with the playdough!

I've made it a couple of times for my preschool kiddos at New Futures. I usually kneed in the food coloring instead of mixing it with the other ingredients. Not sure what is best. You'll probably avoid colorful hands if you mix it as the recipe suggests! Definitely try it out, it is really simple, and lasts a long time!  :)

yummy yummy in my tummy!

Hello everyone! Sorry it has been a while since my last post, I've been trying to get good night sleeps, which means my blogging hours get cut short :) After a late night Thursday when I saw the Harry Potter 7 (part 1) I was pretty wiped Friday. With my AmeriCorps team, we served at Food Lifeline on Friday repackaging food. It was pretty wonderful to be part of something that enabled organizations and indivduals the opportunity to have good food for their clients and themselves. Over the three hours we were there we repackaged four thousand sixty pounds of potatoes! Needless to say, when we were done repackaging them, all of us were craving some sort of potato product :)

Being potato inspired, Friday night, a friend of mine from my AmeriCorps program, Lina, and I decided to make potato soup! It was yum yumm yummy!! It was so much fun to make, and I just had a great time with Lina as well :)

Lina found the recipe online and we combined ingredients from both of our kitchens to make this delicious soup. It was pretty simple to make, but maybe I should let Lina comment on this, since did most of the making :) I've had the soup for lunch Saturday and Sunday and it is just as good. I'll definitely have to make it again. Click here for the recipe!

So if you're in the mood for something warm on a cold winter's day, check out this recipe and enjoy! We sorta ad-libbed and added some tomatoes and little bit different portions of the vegetables. We also kept it vegetarian so we used a vegetable broth and no ham. One more substitution (maybe the most important)--the recipe called for russet potatoes but we used yukon gold and klondike rose ones instead!  It sure was good :)
Do you have a favorite soup recipe that you want to share with me? If you try this one, let me know what you think!!

--Kate