10,000 Day Surprise!

A week ago tomorrow, I turned 10,000 days. I imagine most people don't know how many days they've been alive, much less when they'll hit a milestone like 10,000 days, but John somehow thought of it a while back. 

Knowing that he could never throw a surprise for my actual birthday in February, John planned a surprise party for me. A couple of months in advance, he contacted family and friends across the US, booked a chartered boat for a 2 hour cruise in the middle of a work day, and set out to surprise me by having everyone together for my 10,000th day of life. 

Friends who could get off of work or come in town did; we even had one friend come all of the way up from Louisiana, which is an especially big deal since he hadn't been to Wisconsin or flown in 10 years. 

The day ended up being the perfect day for a boat ride, and it was a great time!

The whole idea was really sweet, of course. And given that John is historically horrible when it comes to sticking with surprises, he did incredibly well. 

If you want to throw a surprise party for someone, see if you can figure out a fun day number to celebrate. Maybe it's number 8,888, 12,345, or 30,000. Whatever it is, I'm sure it will be a lot of fun!

To figure out the date, you can go to this website. Type in the birthday of the person, how many days you want to calculate, and then click "Calculate New Date!"

Roasted Veggie Goat Cheese Pesto Sandwich

One of John's and my favorite easy, delicious, and vegetarian meals is a roasted veggie sandwich with pesto and goat cheese. We were inspired by a similar sandwich that we had at Pastoral in Chicago a few blocks from where I lived when we were dating. It doesn't look like they have that sandwich anymore, but they do have some great sounding sandwiches on there that you should try if you happen to be in the area.

You could easily avoid warming up your house by grilling everything instead of using your oven. These sandwiches make a great "Meatless Monday" option for those of you who do that, and these are great for a weeknight meal. 

Start by preheating your oven to 475. Cut up portobello mushrooms, a red bell pepper, and a red onion. In a large bowl, whisk EVOO, balsamic vinegar, minced fresh rosemary or thyme, salt, and freshly ground pepper. Add the vegetables and mix to coat.

Line a baking sheet or two with foil. Spread the vegetables in a single layer. Pop in the oven and cook for about 15 minutes, flipping everything over at about halfway through. Keep in mind the vegetables may look extra dark due to the balsamic vinegar. 

In the mean time, take some big crusty bread. Our bread is borderline too skinny. Cut the bread to the length that you want, and remove part of the inside to make room for the filling.

Spread a thick layer of pesto on the top, and, if you're like me, spread about half that amount on the other half, too.

Spread a generous layer of goat cheese on the top layer. If goat cheese isn't your thing, I suppose you could try mozzarella, but you'll be missing out on a big element of flavor.

Layer the roasted vegetables on the bread and then close it up. You may need to use a toothpick to hold the two sides together if it's not cooperating for you.

Place your sandwiches on the unwashed (or washed if you like to do dishes) baking sheet, and place it back in the oven to melt the cheese for about 5 minutes using the residual heat from roasting the vegetables. 

Cut your delicious sandwich in half, and eat it with a simple fresh salad. Or, if you're like my husband, you'll opt for chips.

Roasted Vegetable Goat Cheese Pesto Sandwich

Yields 2 dinner sized sandwiches

Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

1 baguette

1/4 - 1/3 cup of fresh pesto (simple recipe below)

2T+ chevre goat cheese

2 portobello mushrooms

1 red, yellow, or orange bell pepper

1 red onion

1/4 cup ordinary EVOO (see note in the pesto recipe below)

2 T balsamic vinegar

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper

1 T minced fresh rosemary or thyme

Preheat oven to 475. Line two baking sheets with foil.

Gently wash the mushrooms and cut out the stem. Cut all vegetables in large pieces (see image above). In a large bowl, mix together oil, vinegar, rosemary, salt, and pepper. Add the vegetables to the oil mixture and coat well. Place veggies in a single layer on the baking sheets, making sure each veggie touches the foil and is not on top of another vegetable. Place the vegetables in the oven. Roast for about 15 minutes, flipping the vegetables over at the 7 minute mark. They are ready to take out when the onions are starting to char on the edges and the peppers get nice blisters on the skin.

While the vegetables are in the oven, cut your bread to the length that you want your sandwich.  Slice in half and remove part of the inside to make room for the filling.

Spread 2-3T of pesto on one half of each sandwich. Then spread 1-2T of goat cheese on the other half of each sandwich. 

Remove the vegetables from the oven, and layer the vegetables in tidy layers over the bread. Close the sandwich up. Place on the baking sheets and put back in the oven to let the residual heat warm up the cheese for 5 minutes.

Cut your sandwich in half, serve with a simple salad or chips, and enjoy!

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Basic Pesto

Recipe from America's Test Kitchen's Healthy Family Cookbook

You can use any pesto that you'd like for the sandwiches. This particular recipe works really well since it makes such a thick pesto. For other applications, you could always add more EVOO to loosen it up. 

For food that you cook, like roasted vegetables and pan frying, using store brand olive oil is perfectly acceptable; however, with uncooked food, like salad dressings and pesto, I strongly recommend using the best quality extra virgin olive oil that you have since you can really taste the oil. Lucini Extra Virgin Olive Oil is a great option. I've seen it at my local grocery stores, Target, and Whole Foods.

To toast your garlic, place the unpeeled garlic cloves in a dry skillet over medium heat. Turn the garlic every couple of minutes, and toast until the garlic starts to blister on the outside, about 7 minutes.

Strawberries, Granola, and Ahhh Madison!

Summers in Wisconsin are amazing. I love the not hot weather, the abundant produce, and the active residents. One of my favorite aspects of our city is definitely how diverse the land is. Within one mile from my house, you pass farmland, woodlands, neighborhoods, a school, daycares, a golf course, a research center, and lots of shopping (among other things). You get the perfect mix of land and luxuries.

A couple of weeks ago, John and I stopped at one of the strawberry stands set up within one mile from our house. The organic strawberries were picked that same morning.

Admittedly, I'm not super creative when it comes to fruit. I ended up making a batch of granola to make simple parfaits with a little honey sweetened greek yogurt.

Is it just me, or does all granola look essentially the same? There's no way to tell prior to tasting it whether or not it will taste good. The day of the parfaits, the recipe I used was just ok.

The granola I made a couple of days ago was really good, though. I combined the technique from America's Test Kitchen (recipe not online) and some of the spices from Simple Bite's Chai Spiced Granola recipe.

This is by far my favorite granola that I've had. It's slightly sweet with a hint of coconut. The flavor is complex. The texture is crisp but not hard.

Here's the big list of what you'll need. I imagine you'll have almost everything on hand, and, if not, the ingredients are easy to find. 

Chai Granola

Adapted from Simple Bites and America's Test Kitchen

Yields about 2 quarts

Ingredients
3 cups old fashioned oats (not the quick cooking or steel cut)
1/3 cup coconut oil (can substitute canola oil but you're missing out)
1/2 cup slivered, blanched almonds
1/4 cup pumpkin seeds
1/4 cup sesame seeds
2 T flax seeds - ground or whole golden
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup chopped walnuts
1/3 cup sunflower seeds, unsalted
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup cane sugar (aka Demerara sugar; can substitute agave or more honey)
2 T water
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cardamom
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg (fresh if you have it)
1/8 tsp freshly ground pepper
1/4 cup wheat germ
1/4 cup unsweetened coconut flakes
optional: 1/2 cup cocoa nibs or dried fruit, like apples or golden raisins (I ended up not using them)

Preheat your oven to 325, and line a large rimmed cookie sheet with parchment paper.

In a 12 inch skillet over medium heat, lightly toast the almonds and walnuts, stirring every minute or so until you can start to smell them (about 2-3 minutes).  Stir in the pumpkin seeds, oats, and oil; continue to toast and stir every minute or so until the oats start to get some color (about 4-6 minutes).

Turn off the heat and add the sesame seeds, flax, salt, and wheat germ.

Temporarily empty the oats onto the spreadsheet or a different container. Add to the skillet the honey, cane sugar,  approximately 2 tablespoons of water, cinnamon, salt, cardamom, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, and pepper. Heat over medium until the sugar is dissolved. Add the oat mixture back to the skillet, and stir until all is incorporated.

Spread evenly over the parchment lined baking sheet. Bake for about 15-20 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes or so. Remove from the oven when the granola is turning golden brown.

Stir in the coconut and dried fruit, if using. Depending on the size of your baking sheet, you'll need to either spread it out or compact it together to form a 1/2 inch thick granola slab. Let it cool completely. Break into pieces and store in an air-tight container for about a week.

Design your own font (tutorial)

Have you ever wanted to turn your own handwriting into a font? You could use it for electronic journaling, digital scrapbooking, spruce up your own blog, and, well, basically anything that you use a regular handwriting font for. Or, you could doodle instead to create your own doodle font. Get creative!

It's relatively inexpensive, easy, and fun. If you use fontifier.com, it's just $9. Their instructions are very easy to follow, but I wish they gave a few tips. I created my first font about 4 years ago, and just recently, I went back for a second shot at it.

You'll need a printer, a scanner, your favorite pen, a thick-tipped pen (like a Sharpie), lined paper (optional), and a photo editing software (optional). 

Here's how you do it.

1. Print out their template on one letter sized sheet of paper.
2. Place the template on top of a sheet of lined paper to help you keep your letters straight. If it's too hard to see the lined paper through the template, try placing a sheet of blank paper under the lined paper to help the lines show up.
   
3. Pick out your favorite pen. Using your best handwriting, try your hardest to fill each letter's space with letters that are the same size, centered, and using the "pips" as the baseline. My first font turned out small (see the example towards the end of the post). If you are using a photo editing software (even Microsoft Paint would work for this), focus more on the handwriting and less on making it perfectly aligned.
   
4. Take a Sharpie or other medium tipped marker and trace your original letters.
   
5. Scan the template back to your computer, saving it as a GIF, JPEG, PNG, or TIFF.
6. If not using a photo editing software, skip to number 8. Open your completed template in your photo editing software. Go through each letter to recenter and trim away flaws.
   
7. Save your new file as a GIF, JPEG, PNG, or TIFF.  
8. Upload your completed template to http://www.fontifier.com/submit.html. Name your font and preview before buying. If there's a letter that you don't like, go back to your template and edit it.
   
9. Pay by credit card or PayPal, download to your computer, and install the font.
   
10. Test your font and share with others, if you desire!

Here are how my fonts turned out.

The first was just my favorite pen (not traced by a Sharpie). I should have printed my letters out bigger and filled the rectangle more. You can see how much space there is between the letters (especially after the capital T) and how small the font turned out compared to a regular font. At this size, the thin weight is good, but when it's enlarged, it's too puny.

The second one is the one that turned out with this tutorial. You can see how the font size greatly improved, and the weight is good for more applications, though it is still wide.

Experiment and have some fun! 

Here's where I sometimes link up!

It's amazing what a little time does

I forgot my laptop at home when we drove to St. Louis this past weekend, so I took a little unexpected break from the blog. Hopefully, I'll have a new post up tomorrow.

Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend! I transfered the photos onto my laptop from our little point and shoot camera, and here's what I found:

LE and John are standing in the same place in our yard. The angle is different, but they are essentially in the same spot. It's amazing what a few months can do!