The best cookies Evah!

Nom nom nom!!

Sausage and oxtail

Both excellent

Next course…

Green garlic soup and beet salad.

Beet salad is fantastic and wins this round…but the garlic soup is
still very good.

The frites below were still divine…heavenly! I’m in withdrawals….

A thing of beauty…

Frites with fontina and Demi-glacé

Enjoying coffee on a deck

Overlooking Santa Fe square… It’s quite nice out now compared to the
hail earlier.

Lota Lunch

In Alamogordo having lunch at Lotaburger…a New Mexico thing
Christopher is glad we were able to stop at!

We are having green chile cheeseburgers and fries!

Kimchi soup

Served bubbling hot!

Merry Christmas to us!!

I’m not normally such a brand name queen, but people rave about their
Le Creuset cookware. It’s damn pricey though.

But what should magically appear in the clearance rack at City
Kitchens?! Behold! For the enamel not taking hold to one of the
handles we got “Grand Pierre” for 50% off!!

Now, what to cook in him first??! So many things….

So I finished work today and was waiting for Christopher to meet me at our local bar for some drinks….but what should be overheard in the cacophony of conversations?!

“I love Lefse”

Wow! So I searched for the obviously scandinavian-oriented culprit. Turns out it was this pair of ladies who would not give me the time of day when I tried to express my exuberance for said lefse as well.

Well excuse me…just trying to be holiday friendly…

Bitches.

Merry Christmas!!!!

Eggspress my surprise!

This bacon breakfast scone has a whole egg in it!

Rainy Sunday Breakfast

Eggs and from scratch (no mix!) blueberry pancakes!!

YUM!

Snickercakes!

A snickerdoodle cupcake with cream cheese frosting topped with a
snikerdoodle cookie! Uuuugh!

Fish on the run!

Having an awesome dinner at Genke Sushi.

And for those of you not in the know…yes, that is a conveyor
belt! YUM!

Holy Crap! Where have you been all my life? This will go great with my Wine Glass Holder!

Found thanks to dlisted

Only 2 years to the next decade and 4 years to the answer to the ultimate question of life and the universe.

My real day was May 7.

We’re getting quiche!

I guess we must be incredibly entertaining house guests to deserve
this…xoxo Ana!

Sunday Bloody Mary Sunday

Brunch!

A toast for good toast!

I had a toaster. I hated it. Despised it.

No more!

Look at my new toaster OVEN! I’m more excited about it than I
probably should be, but hey – it’s the little things in life, right?

I already know it makes great chicken nuggets

Fudge FAIL

I swear I followed the instructions to a "t" — here’s hoping attempt
#2 will turn out better

"Perfect" brownies!

So we got suckered in to the "perfect brownie pan" after watching the
commercial so many times…thanks Christopher for the perfect
Christmas present! I’ll be damned If it doesn’t actually work, and
pretty well actually! Here are the second batch results (first batch
was little gingerbread cakes!). And yes, we are aware of the gigantic
cupcake mold commercial….only the future will tell

Mona! En guard!

For Mona…

I’ve been blogging for a decade. 10 years already… huh!

While this is certainly an interesting point in a time line, it’s really only an electronic analogue to a diary. I’m sure many people have been keeping diaries for longer. Nonetheless I’m kinda tickled to meet this milestone. I started “blogging” before “blog” was even a noun or a verb; indeed before it was even a popular catchphrase. Indeed I had my first web page back in 1995 (See my “Deep Archive” link above)

That’s a lot of time and bandwidth (timewidth?) dedicated to my own banter. What have I accomplished in that time?

As it turns out quite a bit. I became a true adult (still out for some debate). I had a successful consulting company (official corporation even!) and then transferred clients/closed it after my clients became successful and got gobbled-up by other, bigger corps in what became the dot com bomb. I moved to California and back. I bought a house. Got cats. Sold a house. Bought a condo. Used five different types of blogging software. Stumbled into a great relationship. And generally observed what made me laugh and ranted upon the stuff that irritated.

As I look back at some of my entries it makes me smile and laugh a lot. Also I cringe a lot…was I THAT shrill, really? Or was I THAT stupid, really? But that’s the deliciousness of time and becoming older — the cumulative benefit of your experiences always makes you wiser and wiser.

So what will the next decade have in store? Who knows….That is what is fun, and worth living!

-Garrett

1998:
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/1998/

1999:
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/1999/2/
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/1999/3/
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/1999/

2000:

http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2000/1/
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2000/2/
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2000/3/

2002
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2003/1/

2003:
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2003/2/

2004:
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2004/1/

2005:
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2005/1/
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2005/2/

2006:
http://www.gmwnet.com/archive/2006/1/

P.S.: I’m going to attempt to add these old entries to my database. So if you subscribe to the RSS feed you may see a slew of new entries. I’ll be careful to set the date in the posts properly, but I’m unsure if they will appear in the RSS feed because they are “new” entries as far as the database is concerned…

Made these a few days ago…yum!

North African Dinner

North African Dinner (see post below) — photo courtesy Christopher

It was pretty good. Took forever to prepare. Way too much chopping for my taste. But it was tasty I’ll grant that. It got better as it cooled down — and the leftovers were fantastic.

So I’m a partial slave to the Food Network. Can’t get enough of it. The recent win of Melissa D’Arabian as the Next Food Network Star was a major celebration for the household — much joy was had. We were routing for her. Then to find out that she and her family has moved from Texas to our very own Kirkland, WA! Well, some Eastside stalking may be in order. But I digress…. Anywhooo…

So her new show is titled “Ten Dollar Dinners With Melissa d’Arabian” Her whole thing is flavorful dinners for four people and 10 bucks. This is good. Flavor is good. Cheap is good. The Wiedmeier kitchen today was prepped to experiment with her “North African” episode for dinner. It includes some spicy meatballs, couscous and carrots altogether.

So, how did my $10 fare?

Not so much. It paid for the cumin ($5.28) and the olives ($3.24). You see, I didn’t have everything needed for the recipes at home. I’m pretty sure a lot of people are in a similar predicament. I have no clue as to how the ingredients, when counted in total, could ever equal less that $10 — even $20!

Now, don’t make me a hater — I still love Melissa and the show. My on/off plans for d’Arabian spottings on the Eastside are in full swing. I’m just dissapointed with the Food network to so flagrantly mis-title something. What new math are they using?

To wit: below is my recent shopping list with total. Even if you lay-off some of the ingredients which I think they assume you already have (Cumin??? Wine??? — they must think we’re all drunks….OK, well, I guess a good assumption) it’s still waaaaay over $10.

Dinner is in a few hours, so perhaps I’ll post the results and let you know if it was worth nearly four times the advertised deal…

Cumin $5.28
Brown Sugar $1.29
Diced Tomatoes $1.00
Chicken Broth $2.00
Tomato Paste $1.00
Unsalted butter $2.49
Ground Beef $3.19
Onion $0.52
Garlic $0.50
Ginger root $1.20
Cilantro $0.99
Parsely $0.99
Lemon $0.25
Carrots $0.99
Calmata Olives $3.24
White wine $5.98
Oats $2.49
Couscous $2.73
Dried Dates $3.29

TOTAL $39.42

Chocolate “no bake” cookies! Okay, I know, they kinda look like turds
laying there…. But trust…

mmmmmmm