Thanksgiving

I always think I'm going to be awesome at keeping the blog updated. And it never really happens. Dommage.

We had a great Thanksgiving! We went with the entire Millett crowd to Hawaii, it was beautiful. We spent the whole week on O'ahu close to the North Shore and right next door to BYU-Hawaii, the La'ie Hi Temple and the Polynesian Cultural Center. Kris, Taylor's Mom, found a great beach house that was able to sleep all 10 of us! Lucky for us married folks we all got our own bedroom and the 4 boys shared the bunk room.
Hrm...It uploaded all the photos in reverse. So, I guess you'll have to see the trip from end to beginning.

All the boys, can't get a serious photo. 

Our last night we headed to Waikiki, I was thrilled to lay on the beach and get as much sun as possible (the north side was a little cloudy). To our very not great surprise the boys were bored in about 5 minutes. Sweet Taylor stayed with me for a good hour, but when he got the text they were playing football, I had to kiss my serene moment goodbye and go watch him join the game. It was so fun to have them all together, they are one funny crowd. 

Setting up the plays, this is serious. 

Haha, Taylor being Taylor... Making fun of the tourists, when little did he realize he was standing right in the middle of a narrow dock completely oblivious to someone trying to get around him :) 

This was the story of our Vacation, Boggie Boards. 

The USS Arizona. It's hard to see, but a group had come and dropped a bunch of flowers into the water. Also, I had no idea, the ship is still leaking oil, about 2 gallons a day. It's expected to leak for another 50 years. You can see small button sized drops float up from the ship and disperse when they hit the water surface.

Snorkeling at Hanauma bay. 

We went for a hike, about 5 mins up the walk Taylor decided he was done. So we turned around and let the rest go on without us. I had already gotten about 20 bug bites, so I was fine to not go any further.

View from the Hike

November-March (?) is when Hawaii has all the big surf competitions on the North Shore. Just down the beach from us they were setting up a huge seating area for the competition that took place the week after Thanksgiving. The waves were HUGE! You can't really tell in this photo, but the waves were apparently about 10-15 ft, and these were "small". It was awesome to watch the surfers, every time I thought for sure they were gonners, but they always seemed to pop back up and hit another one. 

Both Matt, in the grey, Lindsay's husband, and Brad served in Brazil. And they are obsessed with Acai. Apparently they eat it all the time there. Well, they found a stand that serves it right by the beach, sweetened condensed milk and everything. This is them enjoying their spoils. 

Ben wanted to be buried and turned into a merman. Thanks to Lindsay creative genius we got ourselves an excellent merman costume. 

The Lu'au at the Polynesian Cultural Center. We went to the dance performance/show after called Ha, the breath of life. It was incredible! And of course the fire eater/twirlers and the large Tongans who sat right on the fire were the highlights. 

One morning we were able to do a session at the Temple. It is beautiful inside! 

The Dole Pineapple Plantation. Brad, was shocked to learn pineapple grows in the ground. It's true, there is no such thing as a pineapple tree :) The fresh pineapple ice cream is to die for!

Turtle Bay, we headed there our first day. Yea sunshine!

This is just outside the house, you can't see the beach in this photo, but it's right there, I promise. Also inspired from Brazil Matt and Brad love fresh coconut. Here Matt is scaling the tree like a native Samoan to grab the fresh fruit. Delicious :) I had never had fresh coconut before. The nut is full of water, then you scrape out the white meat and ring it to get the milk, then dry the meat for the dry coconut we are accustomed to eating. Yum 

Sunshine and BYU

This last weekend we headed down to Portland, well really we were in Vancouver then headed to Corvallis for the BYU vs OSU game. We had all the best plans to hang out in Portland, neither of us have been before, but as the cards came down all we did was drive through on our way to the game. Oh well, there is always another weekend.
The game was awesome. Taylor has had quite the positive effect on my view of sports. I cheer, I get into it, I debate about whether or not the Refs' call was legit. Yeah, I didn't even get bored and want to leave before the 3rd quarter ended! This could be due to the fact that the sun did manage to break through the clouds and the weather was gorgeous.

The weather has stayed beautiful and the last two days I've taken advantage of it and walked down to the beach and around Green Lake. I didn't have a camera or my phone, so these photos are from a friend's phone. 

Beautiful Seattle... 

The Perfect Sourdough

Grandpa Ben gave me some of his sourdough start while we were in Utah over the 4th of July. Technically this is a photo of my first loaf, which was ok. However the second one had a mishap when shaping/rising so it wasn't very pretty and didn't deserve a photo. But, have no fear, even though I worried the whole time it baked, it tasted amazing. The crust was dark and crunchy, the inside squishy, moist and perfectly sour.
The coolest thing about sourdough start is that you can replace the yeast in any bread with sourdough start, replacing the yeast won't make the bread taste like sourdough it will just take over as the leavener. The only ingredients in this bread were sourdough start, flour, water, salt. It does take about 2 days to fully proof, you can add a little yeast to speed things up, but the time is totally worth it. YUM!
Update: I made another loaf!! and though the second one was still the best as far as taste goes, this one was the best looking. I took this on my phone, so the crust is much darker brown than this.

Labor Day Weekend

Three-day weekends keep me alive. Especially this one, it was perfect. Seattle hit 80 for 9 days straight a new record for September. All summer we broke coldest-temp records and finally September we have nine days of Eden. I haven't been convinced that Seattle is worth those 9 days of paradise, but I'll tell you what I wouldn't leave Seattle for anywhere or anyone in the world when it's sunny and 80.

It's a miracle I stepped out of the sun long enough to take these photos of our weekend at the cove. I wish cameras could capture the light sparking off the water and shimmering through the tree leaves, the perfect light breeze and my complete nirvana.

Off the patio

Since then, the weather has become distinctively fall-ish. I've put my sweats on and curled up on the couch with a hot mug of licorice tea. It's good too, but I'm feeling a lack of vitamin-d in my life.

The Sweet Days of Summer

Washington is a great place to live during berry season. We picked blueberries and blackberries. I also got a 20 pound box of fresh peaches for only $15. The peaches were much to good and didn't make it into any photos...

This bush wasn't quite ripe, but it had so many berries!!

Our reward :) All for only $1.50/lb

Blueberry Tapioca Pudding 

Taylor bought me a deep fryer for my birthday. Fries were the necessary inauguration dish

And sometimes you just crave cinnamon rolls

I experimented rolling herbs into my pasta. On the left is rosemary, mint leaves on top and parsley on the right. 

This is up at the Cabin in Strawberry. Lonnie is training to climb Mt. Aconcagua so we all practiced scaling the two story cabin

Our first ever King Kone, how we both made it through BYU without one, I will never know.

Home Sweet Provo

Taylor The Mutant Turtle...sometimes they really never grow up 

Mandalas

A few months ago, yes months, we went to the Asian Art Museum for the clearing of a sand mandala. Mandalas are sacred buddhist art works. Essentially they have symbols of four Gods placed on the compas and a symbol of the Buddha, often a lotus, in the center. This is surrounded by other detailed symbols and colors each having a very specific meaning. Like many religious art work, the way the mandala is created and destroyed is a sacred ritual. We weren't able to see the monks start or work on the mandala, but we did see the finished product and the ceremonial clearing.

 The sand here is probably close to a 1/2 -3/4 inches thick.

 The mandala is cleared by first drawing lines down the middle of the four cardinal points...

 Followed by the next four...

And then the entire thing is swept up, blessed one final time, and each person receives some of the blessed sand. The rest of the sand is again ceremoniously dumped into water (this time it was Lake union) so it can spread throughout and bless the entire world. We took a small bag home and christened Tina, our trusty '98 civic, a buddhist, hoping the sand would bring her many more years.
It was a very 'Seattle' experience. A large group of well educated, wealthy onlookers mixed with a few homeless. Amid comments like "Well, I hope they used organic dye for the sand because there is no way the government would let them put non-organic dye into Lake Union" I couldn't help but think about how lost the people in that room were and how desperately they craved to feel the devotion of those monks or on the other hand thought it was a fine intellectually culturally enlarging experience, but they would go on living as they always did--worrying about whether or not the dye for the sand was organic. How grateful I am to be able to see the good, the truth in the Buddhist religion and to see that there is so much more.

Summer has Finally Arrived

Well, it did it, Seattle let the sun shine! I feel it's a minor miracle, Taylor thinks I need to get used to it and I think we should move to Arizona.
Between the clouds we've survived some pretty busy weeks and are both looking forward to our week back "home" in Utah.
We had a great weekend for Hansen's high school graduation! Lindsay and Matt and Brad all flew in. It was fun to hang with the whole fam and spend some quality time at the cabin.

 Roasted Chicken, broke the whole thing down insides and all 

1st ever poached egg

 Beautiful Pike's Place Peonies

Raspberry Trifle, Yum!

Les Sauces Mère

Well it finally happened, we cooked! We made Hollandaise and Mayonaise. Though Mayonaise isn't classically a mother sauce, it has become one in American Kitchens. The two sauces are based on emulsions using egg yolks, which contain lecithin, to bind together water and oil. Part of the lecithin molecule dissolves in fat while the other part of it dissolves in water, thus we are able to mix two un-mixable ingredients and create a stable structure! Luckily none of our sauces broke, a miracle in the eyes of our Chef.

The beautiful Mayonaise. The hollandaise doesn't keep, but it was equally delicious. 

The lovely uniform, complete with hair net and cravat. And of course during production an apron. 

Apart from school, we spent a great weekend up at the Cove for Memorial Day. And we have been rowing three times a week which has been awesome! Especially last night when Taylor and I got put into separate boats and at the end of class we raced 25 strokes and my boat won by a landslide, twice. 

Here are some photos from late, a little blurry they were all taken on my phone. 

The back yard in Detroit is beautiful, I got there just in time to see the tulip tree in full bloom

 How can you resist this face?

 An old T-bird at the Ford Factory, apparently this is just like Grandpa Dee's old one. It just happens to be my dream car, but I'd get mine in black 

 I'd love to say that we hiked here, we didn't. We picked Lonnie up after he hiked up the mountain. 

 The view looks right across the Sound, it was beautiful