Wild Tree

Well, our weekend was pretty laid back as we didn't do much. The highlight of the weekend is that my Wild Tree order came in. My mother is now selling Wild Tree, so I thought I would be supportive and place an order. Wild Tree is similar to Tastefully Simple, but one difference is that it offers the highest quality herbs, spices and culinary blends that are free of preservatives, additives, fillers and promote a healthier lifestyle.


So, my order arrived on Saturday and I started looking for simple recipes online for dinner tonight. I decided on the Fantastic Smashed Potatoes and the Chicken Breast with Garlic and Herb Goat Cheese. If you love goat cheese like I do, then this is the recipe for you.

Here is what I learned from making the potatoes and chicken:
1. When it says to make sure the oil in the pan is hot to brown the chicken on both sides for three minutes, they mean what they say. My oil was hot, just not hot enough to get the nice browning on the chicken I believe I needed.
2. Andy said to add salt and pepper on the chicken the next time I make it.
3. If you are not a big fan of goat cheese this might not be for you.
4. When making the potatoes I did not measure anything. I just put in as much butter, sour cream and ranch dressing as I wanted. Andy and I both like our potatoes creamy and filled with fatty goodness.
5. The Chicken recipe asks you to make a pocket in the breast to insert the cheese, but our chicken was too thin so I just spread the cheese mixture on and then folded the chicken over.




Chicken Breast with Garlic and Herb Goat Cheese

SERVINGS: 4

INGREDIENTS:

1/4 cup goat cheese 3 tablespoons Wildtree Garlic and Herb Blend 1 1/2 pounds boneless chicken breast 2 tablespoons Wildtree Roasted Garlic Grapeseed Oil

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Mix goat cheese and garlic and herb blend. Cut the chicken breast horizontally to form a pocket. Stuff about 4 teaspoons into each pocket. Heat oil in a large oven-ready skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken to pan and cook for 3 minutes on each side. Cover and bake in oven for 15 minutes or until chicken is done. Let stand 5 minutes and serve.

Calories 310; Fat 14 g; Saturated Fat 4 g; Carb 6 g; Protein 39 g; Fiber 2 g; Chol 100 mg; Sodium 150 mg

Fantastic Smashed Potatoes

SERVINGS: 4

INGREDIENTS:

6 yukon gold potatoes 1 quart chicken stock 3 tablespoons butter 1/4 cup of sour cream 4 tablespoons of ranch dressing 2 tablespoons Wildtree Onion and Chive Blend 1 teaspoons Wildtree Garlic Grapeseed Oil Wash and quarter the yukon gold potatoes. Boil in chicken stock for 15 minutes. Drain and return to same pot. Smash using a smashing tool and add butter, sour cream, ranch dressing, Onion and Chive Blend, Garlic Grapeseed Oil. Mix together. Calories 450; Fat 23 g; Saturated Fat 9 g; Carb 54 g; Fiber 5 g; Protein 14 g; Chol 45 mg; Sodium 590 mg Here is a photo of the final masterpiece. Yes, I served with red wine instead of white like I should, but I prefer red wine over white. Also, I know asparagus or green beans would have complimented the meal, but I just didn't want to push myself. I mean I was making two brand new courses and didn't need the extra stress. So, while enjoying our dinner in front of the TV like we do every night we had an audience, like we do every night.

The Longest Day

Warning: Very long blog post ahead. I hope I don't bore you!


Yesterday we went with our friends, and all their friends, to the Iowa vs. Arizona game in Tucson. Our friend coordinated the bus load of 45 people (most of them Iowa fans) along with the tailgate party. This ended up being a very long day since Andy and I began the day at 6am and ended the day at 3:30am on Sunday morning. Here is what made it the longest day.

6am - 8:30am: The alarm goes off and we have 30 minutes to get ready before we have to leave the house. In this time I had to do my hair, makeup and somehow wake-up. Andy was in charge of getting the dogs ready to spend the day and night at Born to Run. Surprisingly we left on time at 6:30am to drive 45 minutes to the dog place. After dropping the dogs off we made a pit stop at the Campbell's to fill Andy's car with some of the tailgate items that won't fit in their car. Following our last minute pit stop we went to two different Fry's (which is a grocery store) to purchase one of those folding "camping" chairs for us to take for the tailgate. To continue the morning craziness we stopped at Dunkin' Donuts to pick up breakfast for Andy, myself and our friend Kelly. We were heading to Kelly's house since it is close to the bus pick-up place at noon and we did not want to drive 45 minutes backup north to hang out for two hours and then drive back down. Instead we picked up breakfast to head to Kelly's house. He was expecting us by 8am, but with the extra pit stops it was more like 8:30am.

8:30am - 11:30am: We arrived at Kelly's with a dozen donuts and our Gatorade to hydrate ourselves for the upcoming sweat-fest in Tucson. The guys were watching football immediately so after my breakfast I decided to go get my toes done and to leave the boys to their football watching. Here is the picture of my toes with a cute design.


11:30am - 2:30pm: The bus pick-up location was at my work in Tempe and the bus was planning on leave at noon. The plan was to load the bus from 11:30am - noon, so we arrived right on time to load the items we brought (our cornhole set, a folding table, pop-up tent and a cooler) and the items we picked up at the Campbell's bright and early this morning. Sometime after noon we hit the road with the bus stocked with beer, liquor and mixers.

Andy and I on the bus.


Here is our friend Amber playing bartender. I must say, if teaching doesn't work out for her she has a future in bartending.


2:30pm - 7:30pm: We have arrived at the University of Arizona and everyone from the bus worked together to get it unloaded and our tailgate area all setup. We had a great setup with three pop-up tents, plenty of chairs, food, beer, liquor and cornhole. About an hour into the tailgate party some drunken idiot (Iowa fan) jumped on our Badger cornhole boards and broke it and this was because earlier the badgers beat ASU. Ok, who would damage someone's property just because their football team didn't win? What a jerk! Anyway, Andy and I didn't see this happen, but our friends did. All I know is Amber looked pretty pissed and was calling Andy over (ok, she more or less demanded him to come over). I saw this and figured something was wrong by the look on her face and she was pointing towards the cornhole setup. She briefly explained what happened. I was ready to let them have it, but we get over there and the guys-friends-girlfriend was mortified this happened and handed Andy money to pay for the board. If she didn't look so mortified and sorry I wouldn't have let it go, but I felt bad for her. She grabbed him and made him come back to apologize, but Andy told him to get lost. Amber did the same thing. I heard later from another friend on the bus that Amber yelled at them when it happened, so I was happy to hear that since I didn't get the job done. I am not upset about the money the boards cost, but that I had them custom made and it was difficult to get these boards. I am just hoping that I can contact that guy from three years ago and have him make me one board so that it matches our other board. Here is a pic of the damage.


For the tailgate at UofA there was a roaming Mariachi band that would stop at parties to get tips. I thought this was odd because it's not like it was the school marching band that was touring through the tailgate parties like they do in WI. I have a pic below of the Mariachi band. I would also like to point out that during this time it was about 105 degrees all afternoon and it was borderline miserable. I was sweating so bad that I could feel the giant sweat beads rolling down my back...super gross. My clothes ended up being 100% moist of sweat by the time we even headed to the game.


7:30pm - Midnight: This was game time and the sun has set so it's not a blazing 105 degrees anymore and there is a slight breeze. We walk to the stadium and since our seats are the second row from the back on the upper level we had to hike up the winding ramp. It was quite the workout and I was glad to finally reach the second level, but then I realized the workout wasn't over. We had to climb tiny stairs to row 40! By the time we reached our row we were out of breath and our legs were shaking. I have never sat in the upper deck before, but it was great! One might think these seats were bad, but with being so high up we had such a cool 95 degree breeze blowing by. I don't think the people down below could feel the "cool" breeze...I bet they were jealous. The stairs were such a workout that you did not want to go to the bathroom or get food because that meant hiking up the tiny stairs again. Here is a photo from our seats.


Midnight - 3:30am: So, we left the game early because Andy was not interested in either team and was more interested in having drinks back at the bus. We chilled back at the bus waiting for the rest of the people before we could take off. I think we finally left sometime between midnight and 12:30am. You would think this would be a long and boring ride, ok it was long, but definitely not boring. Since Iowa lost to Arizona the Iowa fans decided to drown their sorrows in booze and they provided the entertainment for everyone until they passed out. So, when paying for our tickets and the tailgate Amber never said it included entertainment for the ride home as it was so entertaining that she could have charged an entertainment fee on top of the game ticket and tailgate fee. So, we finally got home at 3:20am and were in bed at 3:30am just in time for three hours of sleep before we had to get up to drive down to Gilbert to pick up the dogs.

Yup, yesterday was a very long and sweaty day!

Wedding Update

So, I know I promised to keep people posted on our wedding plans and I know I haven't said anything in a while, but the great thing about destination weddings is that we don't have to do much for a while. If you are not interested in severe stress, anxiety and extreme drama then a destination wedding is for you. Andy and I chose the destination wedding to avoid as much stress and anxiety as possible. So far so good! I just want to show up and have a great time with family and friends and so far everything is going smoothly, and by smoothly I mean we haven't done much yet.

One thing we have done recently is finalized our wedding website...or as final as we can get nine months in advance. There are only two pages left to complete: the registry page and the wedding weekend schedule page. Both of those pages won't have anything for a while. Our website has been up since we sent out our Save the dates; however, there was a lot of missing information and now we are all good. One new thing is the guest book page. You can go to our website and leave us a message or type a memory you have of the both of us. Please keep it PG...errr...PG-13. We also asked all of our attendee's to be in our wedding so we were able to complete the Peeps page. This page has photos of our attendees with a brief description of how they came into our lives. If you notice three of the four girls are CPA's and the fourth girl is not a CPA, but her husband is. After noticing this I realized I have been working in the accounting industry way too long. I also noticed that three out of the four bridesmaid pictures have me holding a cup of booze. I swear I am not an alcoholic, it just looks like I am! HA HA! Andy's groomsmen are not CPA's and he has his brother as his best man and the other three are good friends that go way back to high school and elementary school.

Anyway, enjoy our wedding website! I probably won't have another wedding update for a while. I will be dress shopping in October when I go back to Wisconsin for a weekend, but other than that there are no wedding activities for a while.

New Look

So, I have actually been posting on my blog for over two years now. I figured that after more than two years of the same bright green background that it was time to switch it up a bit. Since there is nothing on TV tonight because the Real Housewives of New Jersey was over last Monday and there is nothing on for a couple weeks when all the new shows come back on; I decided I could spend a few (or thirty) quality minutes giving the blog a face lift. There was a lot of super cute backgrounds to choose from, but the designers didn't realize how hard it would be to read over them or they were kind of obnoxious when I actually dropped the background in, so hence the plain and very simple background...again. I don't LOVE it, but it will do for now...or another two years!

Weekend of Leisure

It was a laid back weekend for Andy and I. We didn't do much but lay around, clean and of course watch football. Maybe I didn't do much of the football watching, but I did watch the Badger football game on Saturday morning with Andy right after I got home from my massage. Andy spent the rest of the weekend watching all the college games on Saturday and NFL in the back yard on Sunday with Tom. In fact, that is where he is right now and has been since about ten this morning.

I like weekends like this especially this weekend. Andy and I have been so busy lately that we haven't had a weekend of nothing for quite some time. I also finished a book that I have been reading for a while. It's the second book in a series of three books by Stieg Larsson. It's called "The Girl Who Played With Fire." If you are looking for a book to read I highly recommend this series of books about a girl named Lisbeth Salander and her awkward and mysterious life story. I am not even sure if that is an accurate description of the books, but if you like a "Who done it" kind of a book then these are the books for you. The first book in the series is "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" and I can't wait to start the third book "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest." I have already downloaded the book onto my Kindle and now I can't wait to begin. I know my girlfriend Kim has been encouraging us girls to read the book "I AM" by Harold somebody, but it's a self help book and not really my thing. I did look it up on my Kindle and was so close to downloading it to give it a chance, but I just didn't. If you are into self help books I would suggest this one because it comes highly recommended by my good friend, Kim. I will probably give it a chance, but after I get through the third Stieg Larsson book.

Happy Reading!

Viva Las Vegas

I hope everyone had a great Labor Day weekend! We definitely did as we spent our weekend in Las Vegas for the badger football game against UNLV. Every three years the Badgers play in Vegas and of course we make a point to go with all our WI friends. We made it on 2007 and now 2010 and hopefully we will be there in 2013 as it's always a good time.

We arrived in Vegas on Thursday night about 5:30 and didn't leave until Monday morning about 10:30. This is typically a long time to be in Vegas as one can do a lot of damage to their body by spending this much time in Vegas, but we were meeting a bunch of other Badger fans there and this was how long they were spending there. Andy and I did not think it was particularly hot there since it was about 10 degrees cooler there all weekend than it was in Phoenix, so it was in the upper 90's or hovering around 100 degrees all weekend. For game day it was surprising a cool 96 degrees which was nice, especially for the Badger Bash. Pre-game they have a fenced in area where you buy tickets for all you can eat and drink starting 2.5 hours before the game. Of course we arrived right on time for the festivities. There was a sea of red Badger fans which is always nice to see. I must say this year it was much cooler than in 2007. I remember three years ago it was so hot that I could not stop sweating and I believe then I had 12 bottles of water before I had to take a bathroom break. Thank god it was not that hot this year.

Post game we all headed down to Fremont street for some fun, err, it was not fun though. Fremont street is not my scene, but I am glad I got to see it as I have heard a lot about it, but now that I have been there I plan to never go back. It was not fun and I don't care about $1 vodka tonics in a child's size cup! Charge me full price and give me a regular sized cup with the right amount of vodka in it and I am happy! :)

Sunday night we went to dinner at the Lux Cafe in the Venetian and we found ourselves eating dinner at the table right next to Larry Flint. I am proud to say that I am the one out of our group of 11 to figure it out. Some were very curious a to why I knew who he was, but come on, didn't everyone see the movie about his life that starred Woody Haroldson? I thought it was a good movie and that is how I recognized him and not because I am a fan of Hustler magazine. He was sitting there in his gold wheel chair with his butler (or assistant) close by to assist him with his every need. Besides Larry Flint we also saw Jared Dudley (Suns player) waiting for his bags at our carousel in Phoenix. I don't know who he is, but Andy recognized him. So, we saw two "celebrities" this weekend. Kind of fun!

Anyway, when it was time to head home on Monday I was ready to get back to some normalcy in Phoenix. We came home, unpacked and I cleaned a little before it was time to pick up the girls from Born to Run. When we picked them up they were so tired that they didn't even get hyper to see us. They lolly gagged to get into the car and passed out immediately when they got home. They slept the rest of Monday away and all of Tuesday. It's good to take them to Born to Run because then they are all tired out when we get home.