“Bob and Sue”

This week at work was a little bit stressful.  We had a project at work due on Friday, but we did get it done, and it was not too terribly stressful.  On the home front Alice had spots this week.  We are not totally sure what it is, but the rash has almost completely cleared up so we are not going to spend too much effort trying to figure it out.  We are keeping her home from church today just to be on the safe side.  Other then that the week has been mostly normal.

I was challenged to complete this meme by my sister, Erin. All these years, I thought I knew a little something about food and it turns out I’m a COMPLETE novice!

The Food Tasting Meme

Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions. Bold all the items you’ve eaten. Cross out any items that you would never consider eating (or eating again). (For this blog entry, I’ve created an educational link on all the foods I had to learn more about)

Venison
Nettle tea
Huevos rancheros
Steak tartare
Crocodile
Black pudding
Cheese fondue
Carp
Borscht
Baba ghanoush (the only way I’ve managed to enjoy eggplant so far)
Calamari (i.e. rubber bands with tentacles? no thanks)
Pho
Aloo gobi (I like Indian food as a general rule)
Hot dog from a street cart
Epoisses
Black truffle
Fruit wine made from something other than grapes (I’m a teetotaler) Steamed pork buns (breakfast in SF China town, AWESOME!)
Pistachio ice cream
Heirloom tomatoes
Fresh wild berries
Foie gras
Rice and beans (Hey! Great idea for dinner tonight!)
Brawn, or head cheese
Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
Dulce de leche
Oysters (Can’t stand the taste of the ocean)
Baklava
Bagna cauda
Wasabi peas
Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
Salted lassi
Sauerkraut
Root beer float
Cognac with a fat cigar
Clotted cream tea
Vodka jelly
Gumbo (ocean taste)
Oxtail
Curried goat
Whole insects
Phaal
Goat’s milk (does it count in cheese?)
Malt whisky from a bottle worth $120 or more (Again, teetotaler)
Fugu (Not on your LIFE!)
Chicken tikka masala (I hear Dr. J’s recipe is awesome)
Eel
Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut (the blueberry cake doughnut is better, though)
Sea urchin
Prickly pear (fresh and ripe, YUM! Catalina Island, 1997)
Umeboshi
Abalone
Paneer (looks yummy!)
McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
Spaetzle
Dirty gin martini
Beer above 8% ABV
Poutine
Carob chips
S’mores
Sweetbreads
Kaolin (this is a rock…why would I eat it?)
Currywurst
Durian
Frog’s Legs
Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
Haggis
Fried plantain
Chitterlings or andouillette
Gazpacho
Caviar and blini
Louche absinthe
Gjetost or brunost
Roadkill
Baijiu
Hostess Fruit Pie
Snail (yup, I’ve eaten snails. Garlic, butter, a little chew and DONE!)
Lapsang souchong (I’m not a tea drinker, either)
Bellini (teetotaler thing)
Tom yum (the version I had was made with chicken, not seafood)
Eggs Benedict (I CRAVE this food sometimes)
Pocky
Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant (an undergraduate research grant provided a generous per diem on one of my little undergrad conference trips and we went all out on the last night)
Kobe beef
Hare
Goulash
Flowers (daylilies, marigolds, nasturtium, rose hips, honeysuckle, and of course broccoli)
Horse (yes, I would be willing to try some horse)
Criollo chocolate
Spam
Soft shell crab
Rose harissa
Catfish
Mole poblano
Bagel and lox
Lobster Thermidor
Polenta
Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee (I don’t do the coffee thing, either)
Snake

Though we have no photos of us competing in the International Cheese Curling Championship THIS year, here is a photo of our efforts LAST year. Our teammates this year were our neighbors and friends from church, Joe and Ashley. Baby Spence was kind enough to hold/squeeze/lick our wheel of cheese until showtime. We saw quite a few people there from our ward, and one team actually curled a PERFECT score (3 bullseyes = 12 points). My good friend from Effingham and her family came in second by only one point.

After all the sporting excitement, we tried our first Lemon Shake-ups. It’s a lemonade drink prepared with fresh lemon, granulated sugar, and freezy cold ice water. The idea is mouth-watering, but I wasn’t impressed with this particular cupful. The sugar never quite dissolved and yet it was STILL too sweet. This is something I will definitely have to tinker with at home.

The cheese itself, however, is delicious. I’m a big fan of swiss cheese, and Alice appears to like it too, though she tends to like EVERYTHING. Bobby made some tasty grilled 4-cheese sandwiches for dinner tonight (baby swiss, mexican mozzerella, regular mozzerella, and cheddar). Alice will be old enough next year to compete with us. We’ll be sure to take pictures THEN!

This past week was for the most part a fairly normal week.  It did, however, start out on a very good note.  Several of my co-workers are amateur photographers and were taking pictures at the Yahoo! party.  When I got to work on Monday I found several hard copies of a great picture from the party.

The co-worker who took this picture also managed to get one with Susan in it

And also a picture of one of the turtles we saw.

Also this week marked the one-year mark for having switched over to Yahoo! from Motorola.  It has really been quite a crazy, but good, year.

On Saturday we went to the Cheese Festival in Arthur.  We went to go to the cheese curling competition.  Essentially you roll a cheese wheel at a target and a teammate tries to help direct it to the target with a broom.  We are not very good at it, but go because you keep the cheese wheel when you are done.  However, it is quite popular with people from our church.  We were one of three teams there from our ward, including the winning team.  Sorry We didn’t take any pictures this time.

Alice was “helping” me update our emergency supplies and she discovered my stash of hard candy (striped mints and Werther’s Original). They were all individually wrapped and she had never seen them before, so she didn’t even know they were edible. She and I played with them all day, filling buckets, scooping them with spoons, stuffing them in bags and pockets, etc. After her nap, I’m lying on my bed reading while Alice is on her hands and knees next to me piling hard candies onto my nightstand. She stops suddenly and gets very still. She’s facing away from me, so I can’t tell exactly what has captured her interest so completely. I pretend to keep reading, but I’ve got one eye on her. I see her head turn slowly towards me and realize she has one eye on me. Her slim, sideways smile can only be described as pure, devious, joy. I smile back, out of curiosity, and she smiles wider revealing a juicy little unwrapped mint sitting on her tongue. Then I see the faint line of pink drool that has dripped down her chin and onto her shirt.

My first thought, “That’s a lot of drool for such a short time with candy.”

My second thought, “Is this her first experience with candy?”

My third thought, “HOLY COW! That’s a serious choking hazard!”

Fortunately for all of us, her delighted smile is SO big that the candy falls out onto my bed and gets lost in the ripples of a loose bedspread. Especially fortunate for me, I see where it lands and throw it away before Alice begins her search. Easy come, easy go. She looks for a few seconds and then goes back to her piling game. A few seconds later, all the mints mysteriously disappear from her stacking pile (that’s my doing). It takes a few HOURS for her to connect the dots and ask me to open one of the Werthers. Smart girl. Just for that, I cut off a smidge and give it to her, using the opportunity to teach her the sign for “candy.” She can already say the word as well as she signs it, but it’s fun to see her do it anyway She likes to do it with both pointer fingers, one on each cheek.

CANDY: Twist the tip of your index finger on your cheek.

Alice and I were out and about this morning and had some time to kill before our next appointment. The babe was sick of her car seat already so I decided we could go for a walk in Wal-Mart. (Note to self: this sort of outing only appears possible with a child so freakishly careful and obedient as Alice appears to be SO FAR…do NOT get comfortable!). We wandered the garden center and she pointed out all the perfect “nay-noes” on the bags of plant fertilizer. The sliding doors magically opened in front of her she looked back at me once, smiling, before walking straight through. She wandered over to the pet section and found the dog toys. She wanted to hug them ALL until she realized they contained startlingly loud and obnoxious squeakers.

Then we came to the toy section and she was all business. She tested a few huge teddy bears for hugability, inspected a pile of bike helmets to be stocked, greeted customers and employees with a cheerful wave and smiley “hi”, and noticed a toy out of place. Not just any toy, but a stuffed DOG that came with its own BAG! This girl likes bags (stuff them full, empty them, sling them on her shoulder to go “bye bye”, stick them on her head, hang them on hooks, etc.) and she loves dogs (watching them, hearing them, petting them, finding them in books, barking like them, etc.). In fact, “bag” and “dog” are  spoken by Alice almost as often as “tomato” or “Where are you?” these days (but never as often as “Daddy”…few words are spoken with such frequency or such enthusiasm in this household as “Daddy”). She got pretty excited about this particular toy. I was nervous a scene might erupt when it came time to move on, but it didn’t. This girl surprises me every day. She cheerfully put the toy back on the shelf in preparation for her next adventure: paint supplies.

This week started out fairly normally.  But we had a very busy Saturday.  Yahoo! had a summer party.  They really went all out.  There was a bounce house, a magician, lunch, and boats.  Alice liked the little kids bounce house.

We also took a paddleboat out.

Alice really seemed to enjoy it.  We saw lots of turtles and fish.  She even saw a turtle sunning itself, and stared at it as we floated by.  When it slid into the water to avoid us she called out her own somewhat garbled version of “turtle where are you?”

It was a long day, but fun.

The largest word Alice has attempted so far: tomato. A girl after my own heart I took this little video after she had already eaten 6 large cherry tomatoes, half a bowl of plain pasta, 2 small peaches, a slice of roast beef, and a few swallows of milk. She wasn’t very hungry anymore, but she sure likes tomatoes:

Bobby’s parents were in town this week. I didn’t get to enjoy them as much as I would have liked since I inconveniently and unintentionally over-scheduled my life over the last couple weeks. They ended up doing a lot of babysitting for me (thus saving my sanity). Sorry, guys.

We did do some fun things together with everyone in town. I had some free passes to the Orpheum Children’s Science Museum (thanks Rachel and Kemily) so we spent a morning there. Alice enjoyed it quite a bit. Here are a few of her favorite activities:

Playing on the teeter-totter with Grandpa

Running up and down ramps:

Hugs and playing with family:

And of course WATER! WATER! WATER! I’m bummed I cut off the video so soon. She was only just getting started with her excited arm flapping and squealing.

To entertain herself in the car, Alice has recently taken to singing out random body parts and pointing at them. She was distracted this afternoon in the middle of her song by something on her foot. She promptly scolded her toes, brought her foot up to her face (smelling it? tasting it? kissing it?), and told it “no no no!” before throwing it back down and grinning smugly to herself. She has also been known to scold her baby doll, Lego blocks, and random food items.