The first time I made flan was about 9 years ago when we lived in Monterey. I didn't ask anyone if they would like some. I just made it, figuring everyone must like flan because I like flan. Then I discovered nobody who came to our party that night liked flan, so I ended up with a lot of extra to eat on my own.
Due to the level of effort involved and the fact that not many people besides me want to eat it, I haven't made it much since then. Much to my surprise though, the members of our church home group all claimed to like flan. So I decided to treat them to a batch of flan for our church dessert get-together Saturday evening.
The recipe I use came from Dali's restaurant in Somerville, Mass, and was published in the Boston Globe many years ago. The first time I made flan with this recipe, I found it made enough for like 16 cups (ramekins), so I cut the recipe in half.
Ingredients: (These are the ingredient portions I used for 8 cups)
1 1/2 cups sugar for ramekins
6 Eggs
7 oz* condensed milk (*half of a 14 oz can)
1/2 cup sugar for the custard
1 1/2 cups "light" cream
1/4 cup triple sec
1 orange peel
1 cup milk
Step 1. Grease your ramekins.
Step 2. Pour 1 1/2 cups of sugar into a pan over a medium-high heat for about 10 minutes. (The recipe called for 2 cups, but 1 1/2 cups seemed enough for me).
Step 3. Watch the sugar carefully for it to carmelize.
Step 4. Remove from heat and pour some into the bottom of each of the ramekins.
Step 5. Next, beat the eggs, sugar, condensed milk, and triple sec into a mixing bowl.
Step 6. Put the orange peel and milk in a blender. Be sure to share the orange with your wife.
Step 7. Put on your fleece, winter hat, and gloves.
Step 8. Make a mad dash to the grocery store.
(Don't worry, the car was stopped when I took the picture.)
Step 9. Buy a wire-mesh strainer.
(Since I've made this before, I assumed we still had the same wire mesh strainer I used last time we made it. LW thinks she got rid of it because we never used it.)
Step 10. WASH your new strainer before you use it. (Thank you, Sweetie.)
Aside: You may elect to skip steps 7-10 if you already have all the tools you need in the kitchen.
Step 11. Pour the orange peel milk mixture through the strainer into the egg mixture.
Step 12. Pour the mixture into the ramekins.
Like I said, the portions I used filled 8 ramekins pretty nicely.
Step 13. Place the ramekins in a roasting pan, and fill the roasting pan up with HOT water.
Step 14. Place the roasting pan in the oven and bake for 2 1/2 hours or until a knife poked in the center comes away clean.
Step 15. Clean up the kitchen so your wife doesn't kill you. (Especially if she doesn't like flan.)
When they come out of the oven, let them cool on a rack. Put some cellophane on top and refrigerate them until you're ready to serve them.
When ready to serve, take a knife and run it around the edge of the ramekin to separate the flan from the sides of the dish. Then turn the ramekin upside down on the plate you wish to serve it on. You might need to tap it a little to get it to break the suction and come out.
Voila.
So really, it's not all that difficult or complicated. It just takes a little time... and the right tools... and friends who like to eat flan so you aren't left to eat it all yourself.
I used to write a post on Monday nights called Monday Night Food and Fitness, but I fell out of the habit. It wasn't that LW wasn't making us awesome meals to eat, it's just that we got into sort of a rotation of eating mostly the same things over and over again because they were so good.
Tonight she tried something new though - chicken enchiladas, and they were AWESOME!!!! I wish I had more hands to give her more than two thumbs-up on this one. (How about two big toes?) The recipe was from our neighbor B across the street, and she got the recipe right off a can of Old El Paso green chilis. If you would like the recipe, here it is:
Creamy Chicken & Chile Enchiladas
1 lb uncooked chicken breast strips
1 package (8oz) cream cheese, cut into cubes
1 can (4.5oz) Old El Paso chopped green chiles
1 package (10.5oz) 6 inch flour tortillas
2 cans (10oz) green chili enchilada sauce***
¾ c shredded cheddar cheese
1.Heat oven to 400.Spray 9x13 glass baking dish with cooking spray.
2.In 10 inch skillet, cook chicken over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until no longer pink in the middle.Stir in cream cheese and chilis; reduce heat to medium.Cook and stir until blended and cream cheese is melted.
3.Spoon chicken mixture into tortillas; roll up and place seam side down in pan.Pour enchilada sauce over the top, sprinkle cheese.
4.Bake 15-20 minutes until hot and cheese is melted.
*** All the enchilada sauce they had at the commissary had MSG in it, but LW found some Ortega salsa verde that was MSG-free, and she used that instead. It worked out like a champ.
As I had stated before, the main reason I was writing the Monday Night Food posts was to (a) give a shout-out of thanks and praise to LW for the awesome food she cooks, and (b) to keep track of the recipes that I really like. That way, the next time LW is preparing her grocery list and asks, "What do you want for dinner this week?" I can click on over to my blog and remind myself which things she's made that I REALLY liked.
Up until now though, it's been scattered through a bunch of my previous posts. So mostly to make it easier for myself in quickly providing input to LW's grocery list, I'm going to write a summary here listing my favorites and linking back to the previous posts for the recipies.
Falling out of the habit of writing my Monday Night Food and Fitness post also wasn't due to stopping PT. I just didn't have anything new to write about. Up until last week, we continued our routine of Command PT on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. On Mondays and Fridays, we did warmup calesthenics and stretching in Bloch Arena and then split up to do our own cardio-type workouts. I usually did a 3 mile run out to the waterfront and back along South Ave. Wednesdays, we had "The PT Nazi" personal trainer lead us through some interval training at Quick Field.
We're getting close to the end of the Mighty MSP's decom, and we're closing out sections of the barge like berthing and showers, so it's harder on the guys to have to go to Command PT and then shower at Bloch Arena or back at their barracks room and then have to trek their way into work in the shipyard. At the same time, most of the work on the boat is done and there's nothing keeping most of the crew on board past 1400, so it's easier for guys to just go to the gym and then go home to shower.
So we've declared an end to the Mighty MSP's Command PT Program. I will say it was a huge success though. On our final Command Physical Fitness Assessment (PFA), we increased the number of Excellent and Outstanding scores by 100% (from 21 to 42), and we reduced the number of PFA failures by 100% (from 10 to 0). Our crew lost a total of more than 300 pounds (I forget the exact number, but I'll look it up at work and correct this entry later). My hat's off to our previous COB, current COB, and our Command Fitness Leader for leading an excellent physical training program and really getting the crew to "embrace the culture of fitness."
Now, I'm riding my bike to and from work, so that is helping with the loss of the organized Command PT, but I'm still doing PT in the morning before I go to work on M-W-F.
Also, my left shoulder has hurt and had a limited range of motion ever since we tried doing that "combat fitness" routine with the PT Nazi on May 28th. Those wheelbarrows and crab walks and pushup-side steps really messed up my left shoulder. The Doc at the Makalapa Clinic said it's tendonitis in a tendon that's very hard to "get at" and that it won't be an easy process to recover. So now I'm going to physical therapy on Tuesday and Thursday mornings and doing specific exercises geared toward working that left shoulder.
Anyway, my main point being that I haven't been writing my Monday Night Food and Fitness posts because we fell into a routine on both fronts and I didn't have much new to write about.
Friday for Family Movie Night, we broke our habit of getting our pizza from Boston's North End Pizza across the street and drove over to Pearl Ridge Mall to get pizza from CPK instead. We had a Santa Fe Chicken pizza that was really good.
Our movie selection for the evening was The Princess Bride. We had been talking about watching it for a couple of days, and I was pretty excited. Before we watched the movie, I kept saying things to ES like, "My name is Inego Montoya. You keeled my fadder. Prepare to die." and "Incontheivable!" ES thought I was crazy, looked at me like I had three heads and said, "What?!?!" The boys really enjoyed the movie, and now ES has been going around saying, "You keeled my fadder. Prepare to die." and "Incontheivable!"
I think given how well ES took to this movie and memorizing one-liner sound-bites from the movie, I may have to break out Monty Python and the Holy Grail next. Man, if I get ES quoting Monty Python, LW will go absolutely NUTS. :-)
Lazy Saturday
Saturday for me was one of those lazy days you need once in a while to just sit around and do nothing. In the morning, we happened upon Mr. Bean's Holiday on TV and got sucked into it. The boys and I really enjoyed it. None of us had watched any of Mr. Bean's stuff before. There wasn't a lot of dialog - just a lot of slapstick, physical type of comedy.
Then we watched the new episode of Battle 360 on the DVR. In case you haven't seen Battle 360 yet, here's a segment on YouTube:
LW was actually much more productive with her day, to include sneaking a car load of stuff off to Good Will (she has to do it in stealth mode so the boys won't throw a fit over the toys she takes).
Both our neighbors' husbands across the street were out of town and didn't feel like cooking, so we invited them to join us for dinner on the lanai. LW made up some awesome mini-cheesesteak sandwiches for dinner, some sort of frozen margarita concoction to drink, plus some downright sinful pots-de-creme from this PW recipe.
Mmmmm... Pots de creme (We forgot the whipped cream though)
Sunday
My favorite song on the radio right now is Song of Hope by Robbie Seay Band (click the song title to give it a listen). I'm sad though, because it has been elevated it to that ultimately popular status where they play it like once an hour and I know I'm going to be sick of hearing it by the end of the day. As much as I love KLOVE, I wish they wouldn't do that (play good songs so repetitively that they run them into the ground and make you sick of them).
When we went to church, they started off with one of those songs that in all reality is a pretty good song, but the radio stations have overplayed it so much that it's just like scraping finger nails across a chalk board to me (Heaven by Salvador). Luckily, they made up for it though and played one of my favorite and NOT overplayed songs after the sermon - I Can Only Imagine by MercyMe.
El Mariachi Mexican restaurant
For lunch, we made our third attempt to find the Mexican restaurant in Kaneohe that one of my JO's recommended (oops, sorry, I mean DO's - we're not supposed to call them JO's anymore). The first two times, we tried to find it just by using the address in the GPS receiver and had no luck. Today we actually called the place and asked for directions. The lady on the phone explained to us that they were tucked back behind the Aloha Gas Station on Kam Highway, across the street from the bank. If you happen to go looking for this place, that's an important point to remember because there are two Aloha Gas Stations right across the street from each other, so you need to go behind the one ACROSS the street from the bank.
El Mariachi Mexican restaurant is a very nondescript little hole in the wall. The fact that all the tables were full in a place so hard to find is a pretty good sign their food is good though, eh?
Atmosphere: Once you get inside, you'll find about 8 tables crammed into a small place with some Mexican music playing softly in the background. Most hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurants share the same decor - paintings of Mexican countryside scenery, a Mexican flag, etc. This place had some of those typical wall-hangings you would expect, but added a coat of textured red paint and some faux-brick wainscoting for a nicer appearance. Plus, it was cleaner than your average hole-in-the-wall type of place.
Food: Although they didn't have my favorite mole poblano on the menu, they did have a good variety of other Mexican dishes that I love like carnitas, chili verde, and carne asada. LW had the carne asada burrito - I tried a bite and it was excellent. I had the carnitas and it was also superb. The meat was tender, flaking apart, and flavorful. The guacamole was the smooth consistency of the processed stuff you get at other Tex-Mex chain restaurants (i.e. not made from fresh avocados), but it was alright. The drinks are served from a fountain (as opposed to selling you cans of soda). While it wasn't the BEST Mexican food I've had on the island, it was certainly a very tasty meal that I enjoyed very much.
Service: When we got there, all the tables were full, but we only had to wait like 5 minutes for someone to finish and leave for them to clear off the table for us to sit. Have you ever played that addicting game Diner Dash on the internet? I felt like I was in a real live version of that game. There was one waitress serving all 8 tables, but I thought she did an excellent job. Given how small the place is, she was never far away from any of us and easy to get her attention. She was working her butt off, but she did a great job.
Lego Sculptures at the Mall
After lunch, LW went to get a pedicure with the neighbor ladies from across the street. I had wanted to take the boys for a hike, but it was drizzling rain off and on with some heavy black clouds looming overhead. I didn't want to get a mile out and have the heavens open up, dumping buckets on us and turning the trail to mud (not like that's ever happened to us before).
The boys check-out the hanging-man. That gray tower he's hanging from is all made out of legos, too.
ES and J check out the Parthenon.
Man! How do I sign up for THAT job?!?! I wish someone would pay ME to sit around and make sculptures out of legos all day. I couldn't do what he does with the curves of human forms, but I could totally do the parthenon and the other balanced shapes. Maybe when the Navy is done with me we can retire to Legoland!
This afternoon, I tried to be at least a little bit productive. When we moved the furniture around last week (when we thought we were staying in Hawaii for shore duty), I took down all the pictures hanging on my "me wall" because we wanted to put the entertainment center along that wall. Now that we're NOT staying in Hawaii and we have company coming at the end of this week, LW made up a new honey-do list for me, and the first item was to rehang the pictures. Normally, I wouldn't mind so much, but the aluminum frames in these houses make hanging pictures a pain in the arse. At least I got that item crossed off the honey-do list.
I started to write about wine-tasting tonight, but I'm going to save that for another post. This one has gone on long enough. If you've actually made it this far and read all of my rambling above, then please leave a comment - I'd love to know WHY??? :-)
"A significant number of Hawai'i's drivers should not be on the road, according to a recent online test. That's because nearly 22 percent of Hawai'i's drivers would not pass the written test required for getting a license if they took the test today, the annual survey indicated."
No! Say it isn't so! I'm SHOCKED. Sorry, just a little bit of sarcasm there. Frankly, I'm surprised it was ONLY 22 percent.
2. Lego Art. We might have to go to the mall this weekend...
"New York artist Nathan Sawaya, with one of his latest LEGO projects at Pearlridge Center yesterday. Sawaya's creations are on view daily at the mall through July 20. You can also build your own LEGO creations from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday."
Crash Hot Potatoes
For dinner tonight, LW made some of these Crash Hot Potatoes, and they were REALLY good.
Thinking Positive
Although we're disappointed about not going back to the mainland for shore duty, we're trying to look on the bright side and focus on the positive aspects. So continuing my previous list of benefits of staying in hawaii, here are a couple more we came up with:
- I complained before about buying that silly dinner dress white jacket for the sub ball and that I'd only wear it once because we never wear them on the mainland. Well... Now I get to wear it a few more times! :-)
- We're going to have a lifetime supply of cleaning agents, candles, and liquor when all the other officers from our boat move and give us their stuff they aren't allowed to pack up in their household good shipments.
Oh, as promised, I did go back and add the group photo from our command picnic to my last post.
This week, in addition to some of our new staples - tortilla soup and chicken meatballs, LW also made one of my old favorites this week that she hadn't made in a while. It was from this Cooking Light recipe she found when we lived back in Monterey. If you don't like spicy food, don't be alarmed by the word "spicy" in the recipe title. It really isn't spicy (at least by my standards). It's a chicken rubbed with some spices and cinnamon and served with a relish made of diced onions, red peppers, basil, and balsamic vinegar. According to the Cooking Light nutrition info, it's 4 points per serving on WW (one chicken breast and 1/2 cup of relish).
One of my new favorite snacks is the Organic Beef Jerky that LW found at Costco. I love beef jerky, but most of the regular stuff has MSG in it. The organic stuff is really good!
Fitness
Tis the season once again when we see large groups of people mustering in PT gear near the big yellow line painted on the pavement to mark the PRT start point. We kicked off our first PRT this morning at 0630, and we're running it every day this week. I did mine this morning to get it out of the way. I did okay.
I need to pause here and say congrats to my good friend Loping Squid on his AWESOME PRT run time. (a) I've NEVER run the PRT that fast. (b) On my last PRT before I left shore duty, I set a personal record (PR) and ran it faster than I had as a midshipman, and I remember how AWESOME that felt. So I can relate to Loping Squid's feeling of accomplishment.
After I got back to my office this morning after the PRT, I was looking up my PRT score and got to wondering. Why is there a non-linear relationship between run time and score on the PRT? In order to improve your grade from a "Satisfactory" to a "Good," you only have to knock 15 seconds off your run time (14:23 to 14:08). Likewise, at the other end of the table, in order to improve your grade from "Excellent" to "Outstanding," you only have to knock 30 seconds off your run time (10:38 to 10:08). It's a lot harder in the middle of the table though. In order to improve your score from "Good" to "Excellent," you have to knock a FULL MINUTE off your run time (12:23 to 11:23).
So if I was either a borderline failure or a jack-rabbit leading the pack, then there would be incentive to try harder because 15 to 30 seconds will bump you up a grade. As a guy who typically scores in the "Good" category on the run, what incentive do I have to try and improve my run time? I got a "Good - Medium" this morning (just under 13:23). I'd have to knock a full minute off my time to get an extra 5 points and the distinction of a "Good - High", and another full minute off my time to get an "Excellent - Low."
You would think when the Navy went back and revised the PRT scoring table and divided the Satisfactory, Good, Excellent, and Outstanding grades into Low, Medium, and High sub-divisions, that they would have made the increments a little more achievable to provide incentive to improve.
Okay, I'm getting off my PRT soap box now.
More Fitness-Related Shopping
I have previously written about my quest for Under Armour running shorts. As much as I love the Escape II shorts I picked up, I decided to try something else out. For one thing, I still have a few nice pairs of cotton PT shorts that I would like to continue to use. More importantly, the Navy is about to release the all-new, officially sanctioned Navy PT Gear (see Bubblehead's post on that topic). We received a message that encourages people in leadership positions to get their official Navy PT Gear right away and set the example. Being one of those guys in a "leadership position," I suspect I'll be getting my official Navy PT Gear sooner rather than later and won't get to wear my nice Escape II UA shorts to Command PT anymore.
All that being said, I decided to try some UA HeatGear boxer jock shorts as something I can wear under my older cotton gym shorts or under the new Navy PT gear shorts. I really like them a lot and plan to buy a few more pairs. They provide the same anti-chafing comfort and support that I liked about the Escape II shorts.
When I go hiking, I want the extra pockets on my cargo shorts for my GPS receiver and cell phone (common, who can go hiking without a cell phone? :-) ), but they were never the most comfortable. However (comma) the UA boxer jock shorts work great with my cargo-shorts when I go hiking.
I don't understand UA's L, XL, XXL sizing system though. For both the Escape II shorts and the boxer jock shorts, I've had to try them on to figure out what size I really needed, and I took a different size for each type. My point: TRY THEM ON BEFORE YOU LEAVE THE STORE OR BUY MORE THAN ONE PAIR ONLINE.
Layered Mexican Chicken casserole. LW did her usual excellent job of making dinner for us this week. My favorite meal of the week was this new one she tried from a WW recipe. LW said she used low-fat sour cream instead of fat-free, but she used less of it than the recipe called for. This meal put me in the flashback machine. One of my favorite meals that my mom made when I was growing up was a recipe of my Grandma's called "Tortillas and Sour Cream." This WW recipe tasted just like it, but it had chicken and black beans added to it. I took some in to work with me the next day, and it tasted great as leftovers, too. Two thumbs up! (Photo is from the WW website).
FITNESS
It wasn't a very good week for me fitness-wise. I had a nasty head-cold and felt like death-warmed-over most of the week. Each morning I would spend about 30 minutes to an hour coughing up all the gunk that had accumulated in my chest and sinuses over the night, so I didn't go to Command PT. Luckily, I maintained my weight. I suspect dehydration may have been a factor in that though.
This morning, I was still coughing a little bit, but doing much better than last week, and I really wanted to start running again. We didn't have our usual Monday Command PT because it's a holiday, so I decided to go for a run out on the bike path. I forced myself to jog at least the first 1.5 miles to get ready for the upcoming PRT, but I was coughing a lot and had to stop and walk the remainder of my usual 4-mile route after that. I coughed all the rest of the way home. Maybe it was too much too soon after being sick, but I really felt like I needed to get SOME form of exercise.
Warning: Tangent Ahead. This post soon departs the "fitness" topic at hand...
It's actually been a while since I ran on the bike path. I've normally just been going to Command PT and running on the base or on the treadmill at the gym. Running on the bike path made me think of another "pro" to add to the list for moving back to the east coast. I miss the nice, clean paths and the fresh air in the parks in Virginia and lots of other places on the mainland. You would think in a place with as much natural beauty as Hawaii that the residents would be more respectful of the environment and not just totally trash the place. I suppose if they've never traveled anyplace else, then maybe they don't appreciate the beauty of their home state. It just makes me sad to see so much trash along the sides of the bike path and elsewhere around the island, and the stench that comes from the trash makes me nauseous. I wonder if that's why the boys don't like to go running with me here like they did in Virginia?
It also surprised me that they don't have a recycling program here. I think everyplace we've been stationed before this had SOME form of a recycling program where the city picks up recycling right alongside your trash can. Not here. If you want to recycle here, you've gotta do it on your own and take the stuff in to a recycling center like at the NEX. At least you get some cash-back that way, but they still won't accept nearly as many types of recyclable products as they would in our previous duty stations.
Okay, sorry, I'll get off my environmentalist soap box for now.
Tortilla Soup: LW made a really good tortilla soup from a Family Circle magazine recipe. According to the nutrition information in the recipe, it was only 5 points per serving on the WW scale. She also put in some avocado slices, low-fat cheese, and tortilla strips that added like 3 points. Next time she plans to use one less tablespoon of olive oil to reduce the soup to 4 points per serving.
Thinking about tortilla soup sent me on a flashback to Monterey. Turtle Bay Taqueria in Monterey made an awesome soup called Sopa de Lima that I used to get all the time. They had the broth for the soup already made up and ready to go. When you placed an order for the soup, they would grill a couple of chicken breasts, dice them up, put them in the bowl, and then add the broth over it. It was really good! If you live in Monterey and haven't been to Turtle Bay, you should try it!
Another one of my new favorites LW made this week was Baked Falafel Sandwiches from this WW recipe. Only 6 points per serving, and they were really good. I loaded mine up with fresh tomato slices, onion, and lettuce to add some volume to it without adding any significant calories. (The falafel recipe photo on the right is from the WW website).
Fitness
My muscles ached for a few days after our Wednesday morning session with the new PT She-Nazi. I'm kind of embarrassed to admit she's a bit older than me, and she kicked all of our butts. Her husband is a pretty senior officer (a couple of paygrades above me). She had already led a 6 a.m. class that she was just finishing up when we got there for our 7 a.m. session.
After stretching out, she started us off with "two laps on the bleacher steps." Now, with the old PT Nazi, he would have us all divide up so that there were two or three guys per set of steps. When he said "two laps" of the bleacher steps, we would go to our chosen set of steps and run up and down that set of steps twice. Nope. Nyet. No more. When the new PT She-Nazi says, "two laps," she means start at one set of bleacher steps, run up and down that set, run clockwise around the basketball court to the next set of steps, run up and down that set, run clockwise to the next set of steps, run up and down that set... I think there are like 16 aisles / sets of steps going up into the bleachers, so "two laps" is actually running 32 sets of steps.
Then she had us doing sets of 40 tricep-dips on the bottom bench of the bleachers, walking lunges across the basketball court and back, squats, football-style sidesteps, leg lifts, crunches, another set of "two laps" on the bleacher steps, more tricep-dips... It was a really good workout, but my shoulders, triceps, ankles, hamstrings, gluteals all ached.
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Rewind to my previous post about TV shopping. Today we got the thing in the mail from Circuit City explaining why I was denied credit there. Any guesses why??? My credit application at Circuit City was denied because I already have a credit account established at Circuit City. ...UNbelievable. Why don't they just TELL you that at the counter??? We haven't bought anything at Circuit City since we bought our washer and dryer in Monterey back in 1999, so I didn't remember opening an account way back then. We had a bad experience dealing with Circuit City then, so we have been hesitant to ever go back.
As I stated in my previous post, I got what I wanted for the price I wanted, so it's Circuit City that lost out on the sale. Still, it would have saved me a couple of trips zipping across town if they would have just said, "You already have a credit account with us. What would you like to buy today?"
I like the idea I saw on someone else's blog about doing a weekly blog entry for certain topics. Since I do my WW weigh-ins on Mondays, I figured Monday would be a good day to write about food.
So you say to yourself, "Self, why does Kevin write about and post recipe links for food that his wife made? It seems most people who post recipes on their blogs are posting the recipes of things THEY'VE personally cooked." Well, I'm glad you asked. I actually do it for two reasons. First, I do it as a shout-out to show my appreciation for my LW and the time and effort she puts into finding and planning nutritious yet good tasting stuff for us to eat. Second, I do it as sort of a catalog of things I can ask LW to make again in the future.
We have found that planning ahead is the key to being able to stay in for dinner instead of going out to eat every night. If LW hasn't planned what we're going to have in advance, then by the time 4:30 or 5 p.m. roll around and we start the "what do you want for dinner" discussion, then it's really too late to take chicken out of the freezer to thaw, or go to the store to pick up the ingredients, etc. So LW makes a concerted effort to sit down and plan out several meals for the week before she goes to the grocery store, and she frequently hits me with the, "What do you want for dinner this week?" question. Now, given the indecisiveness I feel and the lack of response she gets from me when she asks me what I want for dinner TONIGHT, you can probably imagine how much worse of a blank-stare response she gets from me when she asks what I want to eat for dinner this WEEK.
I do much better when I can choose from selections put in front of me. So if I keep track of what LW has made that I've liked, then next time she asks me what I want to eat this WEEK, then I can look at my list of favorites and pick out some suggestions for her instead of giving her the blank-stare response (or worse - the "Not now dear, I'm playing Lego Star Wars" response).
Now, when I say LW "plans" the meals for the week, I don't mean that she plans we're going to have THIS on Monday and THAT on Tuesday and THOSE on Wednesday. I actually think it's worked out really well the way she has been doing it. She has several meals "planned" for the week that she has purchased all the ingredients for at the commissary. Then, getting back to how it's easier for me to choose from selections put in front of me, on any given day of the week LW will say to me, "Would you rather have X, Y, or Z for dinner tonight?" where X, Y, and Z are meals that she has planned for the week and the ingredients readily available in the kitchen. The results have been that we eat out a lot less and save a good amount of money in the process.
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Restaurant Review: Zia's in Kaneohe
Sunday after church, we were starving, so we wanted to go someplace close. Up until now, we have not been very impressed by the selection of places to eat on the Windward side of the island, with the exception of Haleiwa Joe's in Kaneohe. Haleiwa Joe's Sunday Brunch is AWESOME, but it's also expen$ive, so we tend to go there when we have visitors or for special occasions. We didn't want to spend that much this morning, so we started driving down the street just looking for whatever popped up in front of us.
We found a place called Zia's on Kam Hwy in Kaneohe. If you take H-3 to Exit 11 and turn left onto Kam Highway, it's probably about two miles down on the left hand side, before you get to the traffic light intersection with Burger King and the Toyota dealership. You can't miss it because it's ORANGE and really stands-out. It's a fairly small place with about a dozen tables. It turns out this is their second restaurant, and there's another Zia's in Kailua.
The atmosphere was really cozy and nice. The service was very prompt, professional, and courteous (significantly above average service for Hawaii). They had really good salads and sandwiches, but it's really sort of an Italian place. I had a hard time deciding what to have, because so much of what was on the menu sounded delicious.
They had something I had never heard of before called a plantation iced tea. I found there is a recipe available online here, but the waiter at Zia's told me a couple of extra little sumthin-sumthin's they put in their recipe. I could tell you the ingredients if you want, but it might be more fun for you to try one and guess the ingredients and then ask your waiter. I thought it was pretty good.
LW commented to ES that Zia's might be her new favorite restaurant. I definitely look forward to going back.
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Another Run with Chicken in Aluminum Foil on the Barbecue Grill
I've been surprised by how many people have come to my blog after doing a Google search for some combination of "barbecue," "chicken," and "aluminum foil." Since I've had multiple hits from that flavor of Google search, I thought I'd share that we did another barbecue chicken in a foil packet. LW prepared these teriyaki chicken packets with a chicken breast, some pineapple, onions, and peppers along with some teriyaki sauce. All I had to do was throw them on the barbecue grill for 20 minutes. LW tells me she got the recipe here. It turned out really nice - the chicken was very tender, moist, and not charred black (the usual result of my cooking chicken on the barbecue grill without aluminum foil).
We had a farewell party for our Nav and Weps last night at the Eng's house. I absolutely love pecan pie, and last night, LW made this absolutely awesome chocolate bourbon pecan pie. I tried telling the other people at the party last night that it was horrible so there would be plenty of leftovers for me, but they didn't buy it. Unfortunately, my second salvo here lacks the power of a decent photo because I forgot to take a picture of it before hand. Well, at least I took a picture of what was left of it...
My LW made some AWESOME Smokey Sweet Potato Chicken Stoup (thinner than stew, thicker than soup) with chicken, sweet potatoes, carrots, and celery from a Rachel Ray recipe. She put the whole chipotle pepper in, too, and it had KICK! The quesedilla with red peppers on the side went great with it. You know the food's good when it makes your nose run!
From September 2007 to September 2008, this blog started out as a journal of my family's adventures around Hawaii. Then from 2008 to 2011, we lived in the Northern Virginia (NoVA) suburbs of Washington, DC. From the spring of 2011 to 2013, we called the Pacific Northwest "home." In June 2013, we moved back to the DC suburbs again. I like finding cool things for us to do that get us out of the house, so I will continue to blog about our adventures around the DC area, as well as periodic musings about whatever else strikes me as funny or odd. Note: These are my frank and honest opinions. Nobody is paying me to write anything in my blog.
Gouge Index (a.k.a. Links to Common Topics in My Blog)
My name is Kevin. I'm 40-something. I have a lovely wife (LW) and two great little boys, Eldest Son = ES and Younger Brother = YB (in older posts, I previously referred to him as Youngest Son or YS). I'm a submarine officer, and I've been in the Navy for 21+ years.
I started this blog to document our family adventures around Hawaii for family and friends. After that we moved to DC and then to Bremerton, WA. We have since moved back to the DC suburbs and I continue blogging about my random observations of life.
If you would like to contact me, you may email me at blunozblog at hotmail dot com.
Geocaching!
My wife refers to me as a "crack addict" when it comes to geocaching. Geocaching is like a scavenger hunt with a GPS receiver. People hide stuff in the woods and post the GPS coordinates on the geocaching website, and techno-gadget geeks like me go hiking in the woods looking for them. My wife calls it "Geek-meets-Nature."
It's the only magazine I have consistently kept a subscription to and read every month. Although I don't agree with the magazine's recurring theme of agnosticism / anti-religion, I skip those articles and soak up all the cool electronic gadgets and technology articles.
Outside Magazine is another new favorite of mine. One thing I really like about Outside Magazine is the photography. The pictures are absolutely amazing, but there's more to it than just the picture. Outside Magazine includes a short description of who the photographer was and how he/she got into position to capture the shot at just the right moment.
What I'm listening to...
KLOVE - contemporary Christian music
or First Wave - 80's alternative music on Sirius channel 22.
Where'd I get the name "blunoz" from?
On my first deployment as a junior officer on USS PROVIDENCE (SSN 719), I had the awesome experience of going north of the Arctic Circle. The Navy has many customs and traditions, and when you cross a significant invisible line in the ocean like the Arctic Circle or the Equator, you have to go through an initiation ceremony. When I returned from that first deployment, I got a new license plate on my car, but had to fit it into 6-letters, so I condensed blue nose into "blunoz."
(Don't worry, the car was stopped when I took the picture.)
(Since I've made this before, I assumed we still had the same wire mesh strainer I used last time we made it. LW thinks she got rid of it because we never used it.)
Like I said, the portions I used filled 8 ramekins pretty nicely.
Voila.
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