My neighbors are the best

They treat us to homemade goodies all the time. They even buy treats for the girls. We love them.

5 & 6. Drip Beef & Salsa

I'll try this little number again. After having this post waiting in the wings, it somehow it was blank when I finally posted it. I'm going to say this was operator error when I tried to post it from my iPhone (way to go Cass, you're ruining everything). So here it goes.

On Monday (wow, over a week ago now) I cooked up two new recipes. Both courtesy of The Pioneer Woman. The Drip Beef was husband's choice, and the Salsa was mine. I'm a salsa fanatic (mostly a Mexican food fanatic) and any time I find a new recipe for salsa I'm all over it. Both recipes were absolutely delicious. TO DIE FOR. I want to make them both again this weekend, we loved them so much.

I took no pictures of the Drip Beef, and I'm really sad I didn't. It was late in the night by the time we put together sandwiches and I just didn't feel like it. Once I took the first bite, I had some serious regret over that decision. The meat was tender, and fell apart straight out of the oven. It had just enough spice but wasn't too hot. Dang, it was some good stuff. It made amazing french dip style sandwhiches. We also used the left overs to make burritos and tostadas. This is a multi purpose meat here, folks. And the recipe couldn't be easier. Throw it all in a dutch oven, throw it in the oven to cook for 5 hours and your meal is done.

Next up was the salsa. This salsa was great and lives up to it's name. The area we live in here in Washington has a lot of migrant workers from Mexico. We have an abundance of excellent Mexican restaurants and some have really great salsa. Salsa I haven't been able to recreate until now. And I had no idea how easy it could really be.

Start with a can of whole (or diced) tomatoes, 2 cans of Rotel, onion, jalepeno, garlic, cilantro, lime, salt, pepper sugar & cumin. You'll also need a food processor to combine your ingredients.

Dice up your onion, jalepeno, garlic & cliantro and get your lime cut in half.

Throw the tomatoes and Rotel in to your food processor.

Add in your diced onion, garlic & jalepeno.

Then add in the cilantro, lime juice, pepper, salt, sugar & cumin.

After all the ingredients are combined, pulse 8-10 times depending on your desired consistency.

Stick it in the fridge for an hour to chill, and your ready to serve!

This salsa was great. And the longer it sat in the fridge the better it tasted. It gave me a very authenic flavor, more so than some of the other salsas I've made in the past. By the third day it was amazing, and tasted so good on our tostadas. I was pleased with it.

My little food processor was a birthday gift from my husband last year. It's just a small 4 cup prep processor and I really like it. Why do I love it? Because it's cute, small and easy to store given I don't use it a ton. The downside to it being so small? I had to break my salsa up in to four batches to get it throug the processor. And by the time I was done with the second batch, I realized there was no way two people needed all that salsa, so I put the left overs in the fridge and used them for burritos the next day. Genious. I'm definitely looking forward to making both recipes again.

And there were these too.

My sweet husband made my day with flowers yesterday. I walked in the door at 7:00am from work and he was there waiting for me. A little ray of sunshine for our house during our rainy weather.

Our simple Valentine's Day out

We don't ever do anything spectacular on Valentine's Day, but this year I'd say we had a pretty good time.

We made dinner plans with my parents and met half way. We took them to one of our favorite restaurants, The Rockfish Grill, and had a bite to eat. I have to say, we used to frequent the place weekly. However we haven't been in a while. Their menu was revamped and they must have a new cook. After talking up the place the way we did, we were really disappointed in our meal. But at least we got to spend time with my parents, which I truly enjoyed.

Afterwards we walked across the street to the Anacortes Cinema and caught a movie. I'm not a huge movie person, but figured the rest of the crowd wouldn't mind. We watched Valentine's Day, and it wasn't bad. It had it's sweet and funny moments, and sometimes just plain lame. But I think my movie experience was less than exciting when I got the "look" from my husband when he found out what we were actually seeing. I promised I'd make it up to him and go to a movie he'd like to see this weekend. Wolfman, here we come.

Despite the subpar dinner and maybe feeling a little bad I "tricked" my husband in to seeing a girly movie, it was a great night out. I was happy to spend a date night out with the love of my life, and my two wonderful parents who are the true definition of love in every sense. Hope everyone else enjoyed their day!

Happy Valentines Day!

Happy Valentines Day to all you hopeless romantics out there! Whether you love or hate today, I hope its wonderful for you.

This year is my third Valentines Day with my husband. Though we never do much (it's no big deal to me really), I MUST get him a card. I felt a little witty this year (or I just got lucky finding his card), and I hope he (and you) gets a good laugh out of it.



Kinda cute, right? And funny, right? And maybe just a little naughty. Yeah, he'll love it. And maybe I'll even be a sweetheart and make something tasty for dinner.

Meet our little girls

These are the ladies that run our life.

Makenzie Summer [yor-kee] - best known by
Kenzie, Pups Maguirk, Guirkins or Guirkies.

Zoe Belle [chi-wah-wah] - best known by 

Zozo, Slowy, Slowiferous & Lick-a-potomus.

They enjoy long walks on the beach, romping in plush

grass, digging in the mulch pit, getting in to the

garbage and hogging the bed. But we love them anyway.

two is better than one

I melted when I heard this. Then I fell in love with my husband a little more, and listened to it again.