Laura Ingalls Wilder - Pt. 2

They had an iron cow set out so that people could practice "roping". Trent failed...

and so did Luke.

Char and Luke sitting in an old stage coach!

One of the horses there had just had a a baby - I think he was 4 days old! The mama was calm since this was her 4th cold but the baby was quite jumpy. We all were trying to get Little Jo (the colt - catch the reference?) to come up to us but Charlene was the only one who succeeded. Little Jo came up to within an inch of her hand then she just reached out to pet it's head a little bit before it scampered back to be right next to mom.

There are wagons they've converted into little camping cabins! Awesome!

Spaghetti squash Mexicana with tropical avocado salsa

Here is yet another AMAZING vegan recipe. It's fun to eat something that's part cold and part hot! I also made up 3 cups of rice to mix in with it just because I felt like rice belonged in the meal but it's fine without!

Spaghetti Squash Mexicana with Tropical Avocado Salsa Fresca

• 1 spaghetti squash (about 3 pounds)

First, bake the squash. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Cut the squash in half lengthwise and scoop out the seeds. Fill a baking dish with about an inch of water and place the squash cut side down in the dish. Bake for about 45 minutes, or until the skin is easily pierced with a fork. Remove from oven and let cool for about 10 minutes until you can handle the squash. Shred and scoop out the flesh with a fork or spoon into a bowl. While the squash is baking, assemble the salsa and bean mixture.

Tropical Salsa Fresca

• 1 cup chopped tomato
• 1 cup chopped pineapple, mango or papaya
• 1 avocado, peeled, pitted and chopped
• ¼ cup lightly-packed fresh chopped cilantro
• Juice of 1 lime

For the salsa, in a small bowl, toss all of the ingredients together. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.

Bean and Corn mixture

• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 medium-size yellow onion, diced
• 2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and diced small
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1 ½ teaspoons chili powder
• ½ teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup red cooking wine (I just used Sangria and it was delish)
  
• 1 cup fresh or frozen corn (thawed if frozen)
• 1 15-ounce can black beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 teaspoon hot sauce (such as Sriracha)

Prepare the bean mixture. In a large skillet, sauté the onions and jalapeno in the oil for about 5 minutes. Add the garlic, all the spices, salt and the wine. Raise the heat and boil for about 2 minutes, stirring often. Lower the heat and add the black beans, corn and hot sauce. Cook for 5 more minutes until heated through. Add the squash to the bean mixture and toss to mix.
Divide among individual plates and top with salsa.

Laura Ingalls Wilder - Pt. 1

So....for Memorial Day weekend...Charlene's Mom's side of the family decided to all get together in Loveland, Colorado. Julie wanted to stop in the Black Hills along the way and visit some stuff. Charlene came up with the excellent idea to go through De Smet, SD along the way there to visit the Ingalls homestead! The prairie is Luke's to behold!

Charlene's just really like's Laura Ingalls Wilder stuff...

There's was a baby calf in the dug out which Luke got to come over! It was sucking on his hands in the picture...

I got fields to plow!!!!

The good ol piano forte!

New Rav4! Our first car - financed by US!

So, for a while Char has been borrowing a car from her parents - but recently she has had to return it so that her brother could use it while he gets set up in life. We decided that we needed a vehicle to replace it and so we went car shopping and chose THIS! It's a 2010 Toyota Rav4 Sport. It will be mostly Charlene's to drive as it will be safer, plus the 2000 Dodge Neon has aways been considered mine.

Next vehicle we get will be mostly mine though!

We're way excited about it! I'm not sure about Char but I've never had the privilege of being able to have a brand new vehicle - but yeah, it's very affordable and it has everything we were looking for in a vehicle: It's got 4 wheel drive for the crazy North Dakota weather, a moon roof for awesome-ness, 6 disc cd player, iPod hookup, and all that good stuff.

Yes, this is the exciting thing in our lives at the moment

Adirondack Chair Project and Outside Stuff

So, it's been a while... sorry. Charlene and I have been very busy lataley - I know, not busy enough to not be able to take 20 minutes and put together some new pictures and write some stuff down on a blog - but busy enough to stay continually stressed out about school and such - and whatever Charlene gets stressed out about (I've been in an NDSU/Subway black hole the past 2.5 weeks - I don't know these things right now.) Fortunately I have 2 dead weeks before finals so I've been able to focus on some hobbies - both productive and completely useless ones. One of these such projects (one of the productive ones) is an adirondack chair that I'm building from scratch. I found some plans online, collected the tools, and then the materials and now whenever I have free time and the weather is permittable I'm usually outside building this thing - the part I'm working on right now is the curve on the top of the chair.


Charlene said she would help me today so at the time I was cutting this she was sitting on the chair to keep it steady. Charlene has many talents and being a giant paperweight I guess is one of them. Taking this into consideration she has such a bright future! Just wait until she's pregnant - she'll be able to hold down so much more! Anyways here's another picture or two...

Annnnd here's the finished cut - fancy, eh? (yeah, I'm not Canadian but we're close enough to be influenced by them.)
So, if any of you come and visit us we can grill some wonderful vegan food for you and you can sit on these wonderful chairs! So, all of you can consider this as an incentive to come and see us! We'll have another blog up when the chair is finished.
So yeah, unfortunately there was rain coming our way so we took a picture of ourselves - Char couldn't keep her eyes open for the picture so when it finally worked she over-corrected and instead looks like she's about to shout something crazy, such as "THERE'S NOODLES IN MY SHOES!!!!" (just an example)

Here's a screen shot of the radar. It was hailing as I wrote this.
OK, that's it for this time.

Barcelona otra vez

One of the raised walking paths at Parque Guell in Barcelona. Gaudi park essentially!

La Sagrada Familia is HUGE, unfinished, and in the end will have two more towers twice as tall as those in the photo now!

Inside La Sagrada Familia.

Casa Battlo. I want this house!

Barcelona

Olympic Stadium!!!! and me!!!
Castle is in the background of the sweet looking flower.
Olympic Museum of Sport!!! They had sweet mugs around....but I never found a gift shop to buy one.

Luke and I are now in Barcelona, Spain. We got up at 3 AM (8 pm central time i believe) in order to leave by 4 to get to the airport Hahn (far north of Frankfurt) by 540 to get in line for our plane that left at 640. Flying Ryan Air was an interesting experience. Not having an assigned seat was ok. What almost got really really really annoying was the guys directly behind us leading cheers on the plane. I can only guess that they were soccer related. I think they spoke German. Fortunately they quieted down during the flight though there were a few cheers as we started landing. We landed in Girona, Spain and left the airport to find the buses to Barcelona...which was easy! So was getting into and around Barcelona! Itś nice to be in a foreign city and be able to get around easily and not worry about getting back before dark or youĺl get robbed (Venezuela...).

Today, we visited an awesome market, Castle Montojic, took the cable car up the hill to see it, went to the Olympic Museum of Sport, Olympic Stadium, and Contemporary Art Museum of Catalonia. We covered a lot of ground in one afternoon. Restuarant hours havent corresponded at all with Luke and Iś stomachs so weve always ended up just walking until we find something acceptable thatś open. Hopefully tomorrow goes better!