Looking Back

Today is New Year's Eve and naturally I find myself reflecting on 2012.  I'm thinking back on all the happy and sad times the year has brought, as well as considering how I've done on keeping to my resolutions that I publicly laid out for myself in January of this year.  I want to share how I rate my progress on my resolutions and give you my 2012 highlights.

1-Take more pictures- B+.  I took a lot more pictures this year, however I gave myself a B+ because when I went to do my Christmas cards I didn't have one picture of Kraut and I that stood out to me as the perfect picture of us to put on a card.  Also, there are still times that I take my camera along and miss out on great photo opportunities.  Overall, I think I did pretty well on this one though.

2-Learn how to use my camera better- A.  I took a 3 week course at the Memphis college of Art and I've also been doing a lot of reading.  There is still a lot that I don't know, but I think I'm well on my way to becoming the photographer that I want to be.

3-Blog more- B-.  In all honesty, I really should give myself a C on this one, but I'm giving myself a little bit of leniency here because I started out the first part of the year pretty well.  I had a very hard summer that kind of got me out of my groove, and I think that deserves consideration.  I am disappointed though in some of the things I never shared with you that I really wanted to.  Below, I give you the highlights of 2012, but I never blogged about most of them.  Some of the events I told you were coming up, but then never gave you the follow up and photos.  Hopefully I can improve on this resolution in 2013.

4-Send birthday cards- A.  Overall, I think I did pretty well on keeping up with birthdays this year.  There is some room for improvement on this one, but I hit most everyone on my list.

5-Send 2012 Christmas cards- A+.  I had my Christmas cards ordered and shipped to me prior to Thanksgiving and had most of them addressed before December 1.  I am really happy with how I did with this one.

5-Build arm strength to where I can do 30 pushups (not on my knees)- A-.  In November, I completed 27 real deal, non-girly pushups.  My goal was 30 so I divided out 27/30 which comes to 90% or an A- by a college grading scale.  I wish I'd gotten to 30, but 27 is still more than I could do this time last year, so I'd say I was successful in building arm strength.

6-Get up 15 minutes earlier on work days- A.  Surprisingly, I was pretty diligent about getting out of bed earlier this year.  I am feeling pretty good about this accomplishment given that me and my snooze button have had a pretty solid relationship prior to this year.

7-Read more- B.  Early in the year, I was reading a ton, but as the year went on and I got busier I kind of lost some momentum.  However, I think thats understandable given that during the winter months its colder and gets dark earlier, so there just isn't as much to do besides curl up in bed and read a good book.

Now that I've graded my progress, here are some of the highlights of 2012 for Kraut and I.  Like I said, there is a lot I never shared so hope you enjoy my 2012 pictorial:

-New Year's/Kraut's birthday in New York City with our friends Beth and Corey

-St Patty's Day in St. Louis

-Easter in Memphis with both mine and Kraut's families

-Memorial Day weekend in Ft. Lauderdale with our friend Hang

-Long weekend of camping, music, and people watching at Bonnaroo in June

-My 30th birthday!!!!

-My sister's wedding

-Sadly saying goodbye to my mother and best friend- I've shared lots of pictures of her, but I didn't ever show you the pictures I took of her beautiful funeral flowers.  She loved flowers and she would have appreciated all of these...

-Football!!!! ND and MSU started off with a 7-0 start, and ND continued on undefeated!!!!  We are headed to Miami for the National Championship in a week.  The games we went to this year were:

      *ND/Miami in Chicago for our anniversary weekend

      *MSU/TN in Starkville

      *ND/OK in Oklahoma

      *MSU/Texas A&M (I'd like to forget this game)

-Flying to Michigan and surprising my bff Erin for her birthday

-Spending time with family at Thanksgiving and Christmas

I hope you have all had a great 2012, and cheers to a Happy 2013!!!  I'd also like to give a birthday shout out to my wonderful husband!  He's a New Year's baby so while the rest of you count down for the ball to drop at midnight, we will be counting down to the end of his 20's!!!  Happy 30th honey!  I love you!!!!

~Crawfish

Merry Christmas Road Bike!

All the Christmas upgrades for my bike

Santa was very good to my road bike this year, so I thought I'd take you through the upgrades I finished today!

Back in 2009, my lovely wife signed us up for the MS150, a charity bike ride in support of Multiple Sclerosis research.  With very little experience, training for the 150 mile 2 day ride ignited a passion for cycling that remains strong three and a half years later.  After completing the first ride on our old mountain bikes (NEVER AGAIN!), we purchased road bikes for a local bike shop at the end of the season.

I ended up with an '09 Specialized Allez, a good aluminum frame starter bike with Shimano 105 components and a carbon front fork. It's served me well for 3 seasons, but as I looked at everyone else's carbon frames, I of course got the itch to upgrade. That said, I couldn't justify spending a bunch of $$$$ on a brand new bike, when my Allez was only 3 years old.  Instead, I decided to to upgrade my current ride with a new set of wheels, something that I could carry over to my dream bike whenever I ready to pony up.

Skinny Love

A while ago Kraut and I decided we wanted to eat more fish to be healthier.  Its something we always said we should do, but then we never followed through more than a couple times a month.  We needed a more definitive plan.  As a solution, we committed to at least one day a week, and so began "Seafood Sunday" in our house.  It has been very successful, and Kraut has become quite the expert at cooking fish.

We like to get our fish from our local Fresh Market store because they always seem to have the freshest looking seafood; guess thats why its the "Fresh" Market.  Wow, I'm so observant!  Anywho, when I went in one Tuesday to get something unrelated, I discovered that our Fresh Market has half priced salmon as their Tuesday special.  Now we are eating fish twice a week, and Tuesday has been dubbed "Skinny Salmon" day.  I really love Kraut's cedar plank salmon, and I don't think I'll grow tired of it.  It really is the easiest recipe too!  He just soaks the cedar planks in water for an hour.  Then he gets his grill going, and while its heating up he bastes the salmon with some olive oil and then tops it with our favorite Penzy's spice.  Its called Northwoods Fire Seasoning. If you have a Penzy's near you, go buy some now!!!  We use it on everything!  Then he puts the salmon on the planks and the planks on the grill and cooks it for about 25 minutes.  It cooks indirectly on the heat and the fish doesn't dry out, it stays nice and juicy.  So Happy Skinny Salmon Day!  In honor of the occaision the Soundtrack of Life is playing Bon Iver "Skinny Love."  I really love this song, and while I was looking up a link to the original, I came across this version by an artist named Birdy.  I've never heard of her, but thought it was a very pretty rendition.  Hope you enjoy!

P.S.  If you were wondering what I was contributing while Kraut was doing all the heavy lifting in the kitchen.....I was doing some heavy lifting of my own.  Look at this tomato!  Its the biggest stinking tomato I've ever seen!  

So I sliced that sucker up and put it on a bed of arugula, spread some homemade pesto on it, and drizzled it with basalmic vinegar.  

I also cooked some broccolini.  All it needs is a little olive oil, garlic, and a splash of lemon juice!

~Crawfish

Wish You Were Here

Funny story! My bff, Erin, and I were going through some old letters at my parents a while back and we came across several letters that my mom wrote back in the day.  Some were to her father and her brothers while she was a college student visiting Rome, some were to my dad, and then there was a truly hilarious one to her cousin Lynn.  In it she went on all kinds of random tangents, and she even summed it up with 2 jokes for her cousin's enjoyment along with a P.S. reading something along the lines of stay away from the booze! Ha!  My favorite part of the letter was that in the middle she shared some rhymes that she and her step sister wrote to a friend in a late night delirium/giggle fest.  One of them read:

"Frogs are nice

They live in ditches

I think yall are 

A bunch of bitches!"

My mom was always sarcastic and she and I would come up with crazy poems or songs a lot growing up so her being silly wasn't as much of a shock as the content.  Erin and I were rolling on the floor laughing about this, and I looked at Erin and said this letter is proof that there is hope for us yet!!!  Over 40 years later, this letter inspired me to write poems to some of my friends!  Who knew?  Bare with me because they will be as ridiculous as hers! 

Erin is my bestie

Who makes dirty faces

I wish we didn't 

Live in different places

Hang is awesome

She likes to take shots

I miss her living in Memphis 

And I love her lots

Steve's a great hubby

Who always romances

He likes to show off

And do goofy dances

Kara is fun 

She likes to start fires

Out on the dance floor

Her moves will inspire

Beth can get rowdy

When she drinks Firefly

Every time we go out, 

Her spirits are high

When Becky and I were in high school

Many moons ago

Our favorite movie starred Heath Ledger

We'd watch him in slow mo!

Patti was a great roommate

Back in the day

She's an old soul like me

But we still like to par-tay!

JJ is our doggy

He's super hairy

Usually he's sweet

But his bark is real scary

Tom is my dad

Jackie thought he was fine

She loved when he cooked

While she watched and drank wine

Now because I miss all of these people and wish they were with me now, today's song of the day is Wish You Were Here- Pink Floyd!

~Crawfish

Dirty 30

My awesome friend Kara is joining me in the ranks of 30 year olds today!!!  Recently, she asked me to give her my recipe for pesto, so what better day to oblige than on her 30th birthday?!?!  I will be celebrating with her in person tomorrow, but for now this can be an early birthday shout out to my dear friend.

Kara says hi!!!

Kara says she loves you!!!

JJ got jealous cause he loves his Aunt Kara and wants all her attention!

Sorry, I'll try to control myself better. Traditionally pesto includes 5 main ingredients: basil, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, and parmesan.  Here's the thing I love about it though....if you don't have fresh basil you can always substitute with things like spinach, arugula, or cilantro.  This works out perfectly when you realize you aren't going to be able to eat that last bit of whatever leafy green you may have in your fridge before it goes bad.  If you don't have pine nuts, I've also substituted almonds or walnuts.  Here is my very basic pesto recipe, feel free to jazz it up however you choose!  Add lemon juice, or jalapeño for some kick, go crazy!

Pesto:

*2 cups basil- I grow my own in summer and in winter I sub spinach and/or arugula to save some $

*1/3 cup pine nuts

*4 cloves garlic- more if you like to keep the vampires away, less if you have a crush on Eric Northman from True Blood

*1/2-2/3 cup olive oil

*1/4 cup parmesan cheese (optional)

Puree all ingredients in a food processor.  I recommend you start with 1/2 cup olive oil and blend.  You can always add more if you think its too thick.  

Presto you have Pesto!  You can use it on pasta, on bread as an appetizer, on pizza, or mixed in mayo and then spread on a sandwich.  Make some soon! You won't be sorry!  As for today's song of the day, I have to make it Chamillionaire- Ridin' Dirty because a few years ago this was the ring tone I had set for Kara.  No real reason other than she is just that awesome!  I should also mention that Kara and I like to try on different outfits and make Kraut take pictures of our fashion show.  Its totally his new favorite past time (extreme sarcasm here).  Anyway, here are some of our many pics....

~Crawfish