Ruff Life

I figure that most folks post pictures of their kids on their blogs, so its appropriate to post photos of our dogs. There is really only one word to describe our pets... PATHETIC. They think they own the show. The couches are their territory. If I get up from my chair in the living room, one of them has curled up in it and fallen asleep before I can make it all the way to the kitchen. Don't believe me? Check out these examples....

I think she was comfortable. Me, not so much.

Bailey "sharing" the recliner with Aunt Nancy

Wonder who taught her it was ok to sit up there?

She really does own the couch - but Renee sort of loved it :)

Bailey hates walking on the laminate floor in the bedroom so she's taken to sleeping on the top step of the stairs. I keep expecting to hear her roll down them one night.

I don't know how he gets in this position, let alone how he sleep comfortably this way.

Usually Ben likes to hide out under the table, which is ok as long as he remembers where he is and doesn't try to stand up to quickly.

They're goofy, but I don't know what we do without them!

A Few Favorites

Things are pretty quiet around here, a welcome calm. That means not much to report. But it also means I have time to share a few of our favorites....

First, some fave photos. These are a year or so old and I had to snag them from a copy written website (the photographer takes pictures for the local paper but also posts them on his own site), but they are totally worth sharing. John's favorite part of these photos is actually the progression of facial expressions on the girl behind the glass. My favorite part is that Tom is one of John's best friends AND Tom is the one who ended up with 2 minutes in the box for interference. Obviously, John (in the yellow) was the one with the momentum...




Next, a favorite recipe. I got the basic idea for a generic cookbook I bought at Costco a few years ago. The idea was actually for kids chicken nuggets, but I've sort of morphed it into my own variation on Chicken Parmesan. Generally I basically "eyeball" the entire process, but I suppose something more specific would probably be helpful.

You'll need 3 bowls, a small cookie sheet and an oven heated to 425 degrees.

In the first bowl, beat 2 eggs and ~1/2 cup of milk (you can skip the milk if you're out).
In the second, mix ~1 cup of flour and ~ 1 tbsp of dried italian seasonings.
In the final bowl, mix ~ 2 cups italian bread crumbs, ~1 tbsp dried italian bread crumbs and ~ 1/3 cup of grated Parmesan cheese. If you don't have italian bread crumbs, you can use plain and boost the dried herbs. The original recipe called for crushed croutons which tasted great, but took a lot of effort to crush (still the preferred alternative if you need to work out some frustrations).

Although you can use chicken breasts, I find them awfully dry. We prefer to use boneless, skinless chicken thighs. This recipe is good for about a pound (4 or 5 thighs).

Working one at a time, dip the chicken in the seasoned flour, followed by the egg, followed by the seasoned bread crumbs. Lately I've started double dipping - back in the egg and bread crumbs. You end up with crisper coating and better flavor, so I think its worth the effort, but its not necessary. Place the breaded chicken pieces on the cookied sheet sprayed with Pam.

Because the thighs are fairly thin, the chicken cooks incredibly fast, so its ok to pack them in tight next to each other on the cookie sheet. Once all the chicken is all breaded, sprinkle with a shredded Parmesan.

Now, just bake for 15 minutes.

Generally, once I put the chicken in the oven, I start the water boiling for some spaghetti and warm pre-made pasta sauce. By the time the alarm dings, the pasta and sauce are ready to go too.

Left overs are great and I recently discovered that a piece of the chicken sandwiched in some french bread with just a little pasta sauce makes an awesome sandwich for lunch the following day.

Talk about simple pleasures. Happens to be what we had for dinner tonight.

Enough Already!

Not sure about you all, but we're pretty much ready to be done with winter and get on with spring. Two winters ago, during our first winter in the new house, we lived through the snowiest winter in Juneau's recorded history with 198.7 inches recorded at the airport and 222.7 inches out near the glacier. Most of the snow came in November (64.1 inches) and March (62.7 inches). There came a point where most of us were immensely sick of the snow, but we were rooting for just a bit more so that we could beat the longstanding record. Can you imagine living through nearly 200 inches of snow only to not beat the record? I wanted no part of that! Come spring, the city manager even made up certificates for people to print off, commemorating their survival of the winter (http://www.juneau.org/manager/Winter_2006-2007.php).

We are slowly approaching the record set two years ago and I can't help remembering just how much of that snow came in March. Does that mean more is in store this year still? This January, we had 75.2 inches of snow - 46.2 inches above the monthly norm, which broke a 20 year old record of 69.2 inches for January. In February we got 30.4 inches, which was 12.6 inches above the norm. As of today, we're still about 2 1/2 feet from beating the record of 2006/2007, with 168.1 inches so far this winter. That's still a lot of snow and John snapped a few photos to remember it by.

John dug out the window to keep the snow from breaking it. We still need to install snow stops on the roof so for the time being, when we get snow followed by warm weather we enjoy massive avalanches off the roof. Most of the snow lands right next to the window and it had piled up right to the sill.

Thank goodness we own a plow truck!

The past few days have been sunny and clear. Here's hoping the trend continues. I've lived through one broken record, no need for any more of that excitement.

Kick Me

I think I've finally gotten enough sleep that I can compose an entry without significant grammatical errors or embarrassing blunders. Let's see...

Last Wednesday some pals and I headed up to Fairbanks to compete in the USA Hockey's Pacific District Women's Tournament. The winning team from each division goes on to compete at Nationals which will be held later this month in Rochester, NY. The girls divisions are broken down by age - 12U (12 and under), 14U, 16U and 19U. There are also three adult women's divisions, but only the lowest - C - received enough competing teams (including ours) to actually have tournament play. To qualify for Districts, we had to play a minimum of 14 games as a team and each player has to make at least 10 games. This is generally not tough for teams that play together all the time, but our league doesn't allow us to create our own teams so we had to play our games in addition to our normal league games. We started playing and practicing as a team in September. If you consider that we all play 3 league games every 2 weeks, plus most of us play a pick up game on Friday morning and another one or two Saturday night, and on top of all that we had our travel team games or practices once a week, we have been playing ALOT of hockey this season.


Apparently, it still wasn't enough. Our first game the other team took 46 shots on our goalie and scored 6 goals. We had 4 shots and no goals. Our coach was kind enough to point out that even if every one of our shots had gone in the net, we would still have lost. Great way to start off the weekend. Our second game was better. And it was worse. We took 6 shots, scored one goal and lost 9 to 1. In our final game we actually played pretty well as a team, but I think our goalie was worn out. We took 25 shots on net, scored 2 goals but still lost 10-2. By then we knew we were in the beer bracket, so we just relaxed and decide to have fun.

As a team, our best play turned out the be our penalty kill. We even played 6-on-3 for a while after 2 of our players ended up with penalties and one of the remaining players on the ice cross checked an opponent. In hockey most penalties aren't called until a player on the offending team touches the puck - it's called a delayed penalty. The ref skates around with his arm raised to let the players know a penalty call is coming and if there is time, the goalie on the wronged team will skate off (since the offending team can't really score a goal without touching the puck and if they touch the puck, the play is dead). This allows the offended team to put an additional skater on the ice to make the most of the situation. 6-on-3 is less than ideal when you're already obviously a much weaker team. Somehow we pulled it off though and goodness knows at that point we were happy to have done anything well.

There's the ol' phrase about what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas and I think the same is true about road trips, especially when a good deal of that trip is spent in the locker room.

Not all details from the trip are classified though. After our last game we went to the BP Championship Ice Sculpture Competition. It was -10 degrees but well worth freezing for an hour to see the amazing ice art. Here are some photos.

Oddly enough, what probably turned out to be the highlight of the whole trip came just as we returned home. When we put our team together, we spent a fair bit of time trying to choose a name. I think most everyone has heard the joke Sarah Palin told during her speech at the Republican National Convention. You know... What is the only difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? LIPSTICK!! ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Almost immediately, we became the Alaska Pitbulls. Our logo is a set of lips lathered in pink lipstick. We even had fleece caps made up with our team name and logo embroidered on them.

Just as I settled into my seat on the plane in Anchorage on the way home, I looked up to see the governor getting on as well. Most of us were wearing our hats and at some point our goalie and coach both approached her to tell her about our team. I think our goalie is the only Sarah supporter and I'm not certain she ever realized that we were mocking her this whole time. However it happened, just before we began our descent, our coach made a point of telling us all not to run off after we landed. Sure enough, he had given Sarah his hat and arranged for us to have a group photo with her when we landed. The whole time I sort of felt like the person who pretends to hug someone meanwhile taping a "Kick Me" sign to their back. The entire ride home from the airport, we kept looking at each other thinking, "what the heck just happened?!" and breaking out in fits of laughter. We couldn't quite figure out if Sarah knew we were making fun of her or she thought it was an honor. I suppose if she considered it an honor, what more appropriate way was there for us to do so than to travel out of town and get completely annihilated by our competition because we were out of our league big time.

One of those days

I got back from a fun but exhausting weekend playing hockey in Fairbanks at about 11pm last night, brushed my teeth and crawled into bed. Obviously 7 hours of sleep wasn't enough to recover from all the excitement of the weekend, because I left for work at 7am, but it took me until 10am to realize this is what I had chosen to wear today....

I have much to share about our trip north, but for now I think it would be best to take a nap before putting anything in print.

Dinner of Almost Champions

This weekend, like so man others, we spent most of our time at the rink while John played with the Juneau Aces in the annual Rainforest Classic Oldtimer's Tournament. I couldn't play (not that I was asked to) because I've still got a few years until I hit the magic "old timer" age of 35.




The guys lost their first game on Friday to the Anchorage Hershey Squirts, but after all they hadn't played together as a team in a year and some of the guys hadn't been on the ice since last year's Rainforest. John did score one of their only two goals though, and I may be biased, but it a beautiful shot! The second game against Dawson City Gold Diggers was much better and Saturday morning's game against Watson Lake Silvertips was even better still. By winning their second two games, they secured a spot in the championship game on Sunday morning. The good news about Sunday's game is that Anchorage only scored two goals against the Aces, and improvement over Friday's four. Unfortunately, Juneau couldn't seem to find the net at all. Oh well, gives those old guys something to work for next year.




On Saturday night we went to the banquet for the tournament. Its generally a huge hit for the out of town players because of the seafood feast. The Petersburg guys usually brings up a team and a couple coolers full of shrimp. One of John's teammates is a commercial crabber and he provides a couple boxes of king crab. The rest of us Juneau folks are asked to bring something to contribute to the potluck. Last year was sort of slim pickins when it came to food, so this year we were instructed to "forget the roasted chicken and make a turkey." A few weeks back I made green curry halibut and John decided that it would make a perfect contribution to the banquet. So Saturday I made a huge pot and before the end of the party, it was all gone. It's embarassingly easy to make, but super yummy so I thought I would share the recipe.

Did I mention that it basically the recipe off the back of the curry paste jar? Does that really matter??

Green Curry Halibut
In a large saute pan or wok, heat just enough olive oil to saute 1 tbsp of minced garlic and 1/2 to 1 tbsp of green curry paste. This stuff is hot, so start slowly - you can add more curry paste as you go.
Add one can (well shaken) coconut milk. Make certain it is not sweetened! I also recommend the light version mostly because it has fewer solids.
Simmer for about 5 minutes so the curry can infuse the milk.
Add 3 tbsp fish sauce (smells and sounds gross, but it is a must have ingredient), 2 tbsp brown sugar and 1/3 cup chicken broth.
I also grate about 1 tbsp of fresh ginger (which I keep in the freezer because it grates on the microplane grater much easier when its frozen) and add about a 1tbsp of minced lemongrass (sold minced in a little tube, but you can also buy a stalk, cut it into 1 inch chunks, then crush them a little before adding them. If you add stalks, be sure to either remove them or warn your diners).
Here's where you can get creative. This time I added a can of bamboo shoots and a can of sliced water chestnuts, about a pound of chunked halibut meat and a couple cups of little frozen, peeled but uncooked shrimp. You could also add snap peas, mushrooms, edamame, just about anything.
Finish by adding 1/4 cup of chopped fresh cilantro or basil, a couple chopped scallions, maybe squeeze a fresh lime on top and simmer for just a few minutes until the fish is cooked through.
I like to serve this with rice to help cut the heat and soak up all the tasty juices.
If you don't have halibut, you can use just about any white fish, scallops or even chicken.

If you try it, let me know what you think. If you have recipes to share, that would be cool too, as long as I can post them for all to enjoy.