Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to you all! We had a nice New Year's Eve. Our friends Duane & Stephanie came over and we did drinks, fondue and a movie - fun! This is a picture of me and Stephanie with our green martini's. What makes them green you ask? Well, those are avocado martini's. Yep, kinda weird huh?! I know you are thinking yuck and we weren't too sure either but wait, they were really good! Stephanie had heard someone talking about avocado martini's and told me and it was intriguing so I had to try it. They were surprisingly delicious! They tasted creamy from the avocado and didn't really have an avocado flavor. The ingredients are avocado's, lime juice, simple syrup and vanilla vodka. The rim of the glass is dipped in a mixture of sugar and salt. Again, surprisingly delicious! So, they are on the sweet side which sounds weird for avocado's but there are some countries where they eat avocado's sweetened with sugar and make avocado mousse, shakes etc. It was so good we each had a second drink! Try it sometime!!!

Avocado Martini:

2 ounces vanilla vodka

1 1/2 to 2 ounces avocado puree (puree 4 avocado's with 3 to 4 ounces of lime juice and a pinch or two of sugar and salt)

1 ounce simple syrup

1 ounce lime juice

Shake in a martini shaker filled with ice cubes. Rim martini glass with a mixture of sugar and salt (I used about equal parts, maybe slightly heavier on the sugar). Enjoy!

Javelina!!!

I'm so excited, I just saw Javelina, finally!! Javelina are these wild desert pigs that I've heard all about but had never seen. I always have my eye out when we are driving at night looking through the desert to see if I could spot one. Tonight, we got home around 8:00 and I was changing and Glenn went out to get the mail. He yelled for me to come quick and when I did, there were 5 Javelina right outside! 3 were in front of the house right across the street and two were next to our driveway between our house and the neighbor. We watched them for a couple minutes but once they realized we were there, they wandered off down the street. We've heard that Javelina are very smelly. We didn't smell anything but that's probably a good thing! They were across the driveway from us so pretty close. It's really cold outside so maybe in warmer weather you smell them more? Don't know but I was very excited to see them.

A Great Weekend

Several years ago Glenn and I took a trip to Napa and while we were there, we visited Lamborn Family Vineyards which is the home of my favorite Zinfandel. Glenn had arranged for an appointment at Lamborn since he knew how much I loved their wine. We spent the afternoon with Mike & Terry Lamborn on the deck of their vineyard home overlooking the beautiful Pope Valley. What a gorgeous view! While we were there, I was surprised with a large format bottle that Glenn had ordered some time prior to our visit. It could not be shipped so the Lamborn's had held onto it until we could make the visit and pick it up. I have had the bottle in our cellar since then and very carefully transported it with us when we moved across the country this past summer. I always thought I would open the bottle when a certain group of us (4 couples) were all in the same place. This past weekend, our wonderful friends came to visit and 3 of the 4 couples were here so I decided it was time to open the bottle! Who knows when all of us may be in the same place at the same time! I searched for two weeks for the perfect meal to have with my big bottle and came up with an awesome meal if I do say so myself - it was SO delicious! We had braised short ribs with coffee ancho chile sauce (boneless beef ribs so tender, no knife needed!), served over soft polenta with leeks & parmesan and curly mustard greens sauteed in olive oil and garlic. Yum, yum, yum. And the wine was outstanding! It was a 1998 and I was a little worried that it may have been past its prime but it was the wonderful Zin that I remember from back then with that yummy peppery finish. It was a great evening, good friends, good food, good wine.

Momma

My Mom called me the other day to let me know they weren't floating away in all the terrible flooding going on in the Pacific Northwest. That was good to hear but Mom was sick, she has strep throat. Poor Momma. After I talked to her that day, she boiled some water to fix herself some top ramen. She went back to bed to eat her soup. Mmmmm, warm soup on a sore throat. She put her bowl up to take a sip of broth and the bowl spilled all over her chest. Owwww!!! She called me today after going to the doctor and she has 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree burns. Poor Momma! Send good thoughts her way!!!

Visitors

We have lived here for almost 4 months now. My Mom has been here twice. We visited with Glenn's cousin up in Prescott. Glenn's Uncle came to our place to visit for the day. Our friends Ben & Rececca are coming to visit in a couple weeks. My sister and her boyfriend have tickets to come visit in March. Bob and Beanne will visit in April. My sister in law said they hope to visit in the spring. Tonight we are meeting a friend from PA who happens to be in AZ visiting. We really miss all our friends in PA and hope to stay in touch with everyone and see them again but being able to see our family so often is the reason we wanted to make this move and I gotta say, it's really nice. We have had more visitors in the few months we've been here than we ever had before so what we hoped for has so far, been great! I love being closer to everyone so that we are able to have so many visitors and when things settle down, we can travel to our families places as well. We love having visitors so if any of you want to come visit, we have great guest accomodations!

Thanksgiving Review

I hope everyone had a great Turkey Day. We had Thanksgiving dinner outside which was just awesome! We thought about the chilly temps we usually have on Thanksgiving and it made us enjoy our mid 70's weather even more!!!
Everything was SO good! I am usually a traditionalist when it comes to Thanksgiving but this year I decided to try something different for the pumpkin pie. I made the Barefoot Contessa's Pumpkin Banana Mousse Tart instead. OMG, it was SO good!! When we had dessert, we decided that this is the new pumpkin dessert going forward. There will be no more pumpkin pie, now it will be pumpkin banana mousse tart on Thanksgiving and Christmas. I don't usually do many Barefoot Contessa Recipes because they almost always contain butter and/or heavy cream. The tart has both but what the heck, it's Thanksgiving!

Gobble Gobble

I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy your family and friends and all the yummy food! We will be spending the holiday with our friends Duane & Stephanie. We thought we would have a couple more people but that fell through so it will just be the four of us which is just fine. We will have a great day! I made Cranberry Orange Walnut Sauce and I am going to make a Pumpkin Banana Mousse Tart. I also bought a bag of potatoes, Brussels Sprouts (for those of you that say Ewww, if you've never tried tried them roasted, you must do so. They are SO good), and we will take a couple bottles of wine. We are hoping to have dinner outside as the weather is supposed to be mid 70's. Nice! Enjoy.