My New Food Blog

Hi Friends,

As most of you know I’ve always loved food. Last weekend I attended a food styling and photography workshop by a very talented food blogger here in Seattle. I started my blog, Tending the Table, the next day. I am really enjoying the process and am excited to continue learning and exploring different recipes and styles.

You can check out the blog here:

http://tendingthetable.wordpress.com/

To receive an email notification of new posts scroll to the bottom of the home page and enter your email where it says "posts by email" and click "follow".

I hope you like it and find something that inspires you.

Sasha

Happy Holidays: From Us

Aloha. Our lives have been busy and full of exciting changes over the last few months and we wanted to share it all with you in a holiday blog-card.

(Kiwis from the vines in front of our house!)

Anders just completed his first quarter of graduate school at the University of Washington. He is working hard and spending long hours in the studio learning how to cut up cardboard and toothpicks. I’m sure it’s much more complex than that and I know his projects are well thought out, visually interesting, and structurally practical, but it just looks like lines to me. You’ll have to ask him for a more accurate summary of his first quarter.

While Anders toils with pen, pencil, and exacto knife, I have been busy with sledge hammers, crow bars, screw guns, and paint brushes. I am slowly transforming our new house into a home. I’ve painted the downstairs and some of the upstairs and ripped out an entire deck and a forest of bamboo in order to lay sod. I’m learning some valuable skills with the help of you-tube and the dads. Even though simple tasks which should take ten minutes end up taking me all day we have made some progress and I’m excited for the next phase (landscaping, new bathroom sinks, and new kitchen counters).

(Custom made coat rack by Anders)

(Installing our new hot water heater)

(Painting)

(Demolition)

Scarlet has been patient with us, but is more energetic than ever without the pastures of VT and her playmate Pema. We have been visiting the dog park almost daily but I can’t wait to find somewhere to take her skiing (a nightly adventure she absolutely loved last winter).I’m pretty sure she misses the wide open spaces of VT and the long walks off leash where she was free to chase squirrels to her heart’s content. We miss it too, particularly our friends and how easy it is to get out and explore the mountains, rivers, and fields. The short, grey days haven’t given us much opportunity to explore outside Seattle, but we are looking forward to some weekend escapes in the Spring.

We did venture outside the city a few weeks ago for a romantic getaway to Lummi Island where Anders and I got engaged and spent a lovely weekend eating good food and walking on the beach. No wedding plans yet, but we’ll keep you all posted.

(The ring: Designed by Anders, made by Steve Dixon)

(Mt. Baker, driving back from Lummi)

For now we’re enjoying a week of vitamin D and fun in the waters of Maui before spending the rest of Anders’ precious vacation in Oregon and Wisconsin. We’ll spend Christmas in Corbett then head to Minocqua for the annual ski trip.

Lots of love to you all and have a happy holiday!

HOME

After six months of house hunting in a highly competitive market we’ve finally found a place to call home for the next four years.

 

 

Located just North of Ballard and West of Green Lake, we can’t wait to explore the nearby attractions, get settled and make this house our home. The house has three bedrooms and two full baths, a large kitchen and a back yard which we hope to transform into something more suited to gardening and playing with puppies.

There are some things we’d like to change, but the house is move in ready and we’ll have plenty of room for guests. So come visit us.

After November 11, you can reach us at: 6533 Dibble Ave NW, Seattle, WA 98117

 

WE’RE MOVING

It’s happening next weekend. We’re driving cross country bound for Seattle. Until we find a house you can reach us at:

PO BOX 246
CORBETT, OR
97019

Wish us luck!

We’ve decided

After visiting all three schools and touring several cities Anders has decided to attend the University of Washington to get a graduate degree in architecture. The program seemed like the best fit with its emphasis on design build and Seattle seems like fun too! Now the hunt for the perfect place to live and a well paid job begins. Let us know if you have any suggestions in either area. We’ll be sad to leave VT but know that we will return with renewed appreciation.

WESTWARD

Life here in Lincoln, Vermont has been steady since our last post. Winter has come and gone and come again. We are cozy in our loft above the barn. From our kitchen table we can watch the snow blow across the field and see the crooked birch tree sway. Things are peaceful here and life goes on.

Anders has been working hard building houses, learning to weld and finding some time to ski, practice yoga, sleep, eat, and watch many many episodes of “How I Met Your Mother”

Scarlet has been playing hard (accompanying us on night skis and hauling logs. well they’re more like large sticks, but i think someday we may be able to train her to gather our firewood) and learning lots (we’ve been socializing through a weekly obedience class. she’s making progress. and we’ve been doing a bit of search and rescue training which mostly involves sending our landlord’s small children to hide in the woods and then finding them)

And I have been studying Ayurveda and cooking foods that are decidedly not Ayurvedic and practicing yoga.

Here in Vermont, the snow is beautiful and white. The crooked birch tree across the meadow is beautiful and white. And letters of acceptance are also beautiful and white.

Last week, on a single day, Anders received letters of acceptance for graduate programs in architecture commencing in the fall from the University of Washington, University of Oregon, and University of British Columbia. For some reason I had convinced myself that after we found out where he got in the future would become clearer. But, instead things just became more complicated. We’ll be visiting schools and cities and yoga studios and dog parks and grocery stores in early April and soon after we’ll have to decide where we are going to live for the next three years. The prospect of leaving Vermont and moving to a city is both exciting and intimidating. As usual we’ll take it one day at a time.

Newness

New Things:

Scarlet (Our baby. So much fun. So sweet and smart. Growing fast)

VW Golf TDI ( 4 door with sunroof and navigation. Manual. Gray. Very shiny and zippy)

Anders’ Job with Northern Timbers Construction

Commencement of the Ayurvedic Lifestyle Consultant Certification program

Sleepy Scarlet.

My first project at work

Scarlet

Hi friends,

Meet Scarlet, our new puppy! Scarlet is a ten week old American Staffordshire Terrier mix with beautiful brindle and white markings. She is sweet and cuddly, curious, fun, smart and incredibly well behaved for her age.

Here’s her story…

She was rescued when her mom and litter mates were brought into an animal hospital in Washington. The owner was in prison and Scarlet’s mom got into a fight with another dog, protecting her pups. The other dog’s owner stabbed her to break up the fight. After two weeks at the hospital, one of the vet techs rescued Scarlet and the mom and other pups were sent back to their owner. A few weeks later they were picked up by animal control after another fight. Our best guess is that Scarlet’s family was euthanized.

She is a great pup with great potential and we are quickly falling in love with our little Scarlet Runner Bean.

She’ll be coming back to VT with us next week.

home

we made it full circle. back in vt and so happy to be here. this really is home. joyous reunions, thunderstorms, gravel roads, scenic views, cows and…a new address!

you can now reach us at: po box 377 bristol, vt 05443

and since we don’t have cell service call us at our new number: 802-565-1456

thank you again for all of your support throughout our journey. we’ll be in touch.

Final Countdown

Well, we’re back in Oregon, and the eastward journey looms on the horizon. We made the best of the weather yesterday, happy for some unexpected sun here. The day began with the wrangling of a massive swarm of bees and ended with a giant bonfire tailgate party to celebrate the solstice.

Cynthia is experimenting with bees this year, and all has been going smoothly. However, this morning, we were confronted with an interesting phenomenon, the swarm, wherein new queen is born, extra queen leaves first hive with followers, some look for a new pad and everybody else forms a giant mass on a branch and waits to see what happens next. It’s pretty incredible to see and the sound it quite cool, but it is all a little disconcerting. While Cynthia’s bees are extremely docile, there is something instinctively disconcerting about walking up to a mass of bees and trying to put them in a bucket and shuttle them to a new hive. With some advice from a more experienced beekeeper, Cynthia and I ventured into the orchard, with custom 5-gallon bucket on a stick, bee masks and garden gloves and proceeded to shake the beejesus (sorry if this offends you either for its irreverence or its terrible pun) out of the limb they were hanging out on. Good strategy, seriously. It seems like it worked, it took two attempts, but we got maybe 60% of the swarm into a new hive and after a while it seems like the rest followed. Dennis set up the goPro to watch the action and though we couldn’t see if they beelined it (I know, I’m on a roll) for the hive, there is a pretty cool time lapse explosion as they leave the tree. Today, there are still bees flying in and out of the hive, a good sign, but the overall activity seems low, we’re debating taking a look inside at dusk to find out if we truly succeeded.

Cynthia and the Fancy Bucket

Preparations recommenced for the evening festivities. Sasha’s Tailgate menu included the following: BBQ chicken (raised right here, which had to be cut up into BBQ-able portions), blue cheese dip (a Lutz family recipe, and a real hit at the party I might add), potato salad, sausages (and here’s where it gets complicated…sausage #1 chicken with grilled red peppers, grilled zucchini, caramelized onions and herb aioli; sausage #2 pork with fig chutney, mustard, mustard greens and goat brie) then there was vanilla ice cream. And to drink, Sasha concocted simple syrups of rhubarb-rose and lemon-thyme to mix with soda water. So that pretty much consumed the remainder of the day. An interesting statistic: a batch of vanilla ice cream made in this manner uses 15 eggs but only a single vanilla bean and therefore comes out bright yellow with little black polka dots (think lemon poppy seed muffins).

That’s my first chicken, think it turned out alright

Gross face, great ice cream.

Music, giant bonfire, beer-floats and a couple pounds of blue cheese dip and pretzels put Anders in a great mood that he enjoyed for at least 30 seconds before falling sound asleep.

manly