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

The Joy of Cooking

Last week I finally started culinary school at Le Cordon Bleu! Need I add any more excitement into that statement?

      I've wanted to do culinary school forever and looked into it when we first moved to Seattle, but didn't want to spend the money for another useless degree. Thanks to my loving and patient husband and of course Julie, in whose footsteps I followed, here I am just completing week number two of a 36 week program. 

      The first week was all about the knife skills, well and learning how to peel and block a potato. We learned julienne, paille, mignonettes, alumette, pont neuf, bouchon, émincer, tourné, fondantes, macédoine, brunoise, brunoisette, demi lune, paysanne, concasser, ciseler and I'm sure a few more. I do have to say, for all the times my Dad has given me a hard time about studying French, it has come in quite useful this past year!

      Thursday was the first day we finally cooked! We took all the vegetables we'd been cutting for the last week and learned the proper way to sweat onions, create a basic vegetable soup and of course the proper way of tasting. Always using two spoons or forks you TAAT: taste, analyze, adjust, taste again. Now, it wasn't the best soup I've ever had, I gladly opted out of taking any home with me, but it was fun nonetheless. 

      Today, was a highlight we made stock, or as the French say Les fonds et les fumets. We did a lovely fond brun de volaille (brown chicken stock) and a fumet de crustacés (crustacean fumet). Apparently the perfect stock is about getting the tissues in the bones to break down which creates a natural gelatin giving the stock it's body. It was delicious. Next week we begin the mother sauces starting with velouté and béchamel!

The Happiest Place on Earth

Over the past few weeks we have had quite the adventures. It all started with a warm and sunny Saturday. It's amazing how much the sun cheers you up. After a long dark winter our first day above 60 was nothing short of a miracle. We took the opportunity and traveled up to Mount Vernon for the Tulip Festival. It was beautiful, fields of tulips on every street.

 The daffodils were also stunning

We even took the joy home.

The festival was a perfect beginning for the real adventure, Disneyland. Call us crazy, two grown adults equally excited as a five-year old, but we couldn't wait. The first day I made Taylor ride all of the fantasyland rides. Now all, excludes Dumbo and the teacups, our age does put some limits on us.

Next we headed to Toontown, how can you go to Disney and not see Mickey or Minnie's house?

The rest of the day was spent on more adult rides (if you can really call them that). Indianan Jones, Space Mountain, Thunder Mountain etc. Of course these were properly mixed in with the Jungle Cruse, Muppets 3D and It's tough to be a bug also 3D.

The highlight was really just being in perfect 75 degree weather and spending our last day at the beach.

And of course having dinner with Allison and Ben.

But Where is the Pot of Gold?

The other day, as I was anxiously preparing for my grad school interview, I looked out the window and what did I see? A rainbow!! It was so bright I gave a little start when I saw it so close outside my window. It had been quite the rain-filled week and this really lightened things up.

If you look really close you can see a double rainbow in the clouds on the right.

It Snowed!

Usually not that excited about snow in late February, but when it only snows two to three times a year, it's pretty exciting, even if it's only a skiff. 

I took these out of our apartment window.