The Whitneys Say Goodbye Boise

Well, it's that time. Bryan and I have packed everything up into the front room to load into the car tomorrow morning. I have mixed feelings. I am happy to go back to Utah for a year because I've really missed friends and family. Today, I was driving to a friend's house to unload all our leftover food on her and a bunch of memories of driving on that road with Bryan popped into my head of the specific places we were going and the like. That made me a little sad to go-- we've made a lot of good memories here. In the above picture we are out late watching the Perseids meteor shower a week or so ago (Bryan saw four and I saw zero, I guess I just was never looking the right way). However, life moves on. It'll be good to go back to Provo for a year and have that time to be surrounded by loved ones.
Here is a picture of probably only half the stuff we have to load into the car and car top carrier that was so graciously loaned to us by my half-sister, Stacey.

It's hard to believe that it is time to leave but I think we're ready. So, goodbye Boise! We've had a great summer here!

A Day at the Museum

I've been keeping up with the events that are going on in Boise this month so that we could take advantage of them. I saw that the Idaho Historical Museum was having a "Hands on History" even about the Golden Age of Superheroes! I thought of comic book superheros and cool displays on their evolutions and storylines. I thought it would be a fun thing that was out of our ordinary lazy Saturdays for Bryan and I to do together and it would be something we both enjoyed. Well, we didn't get quite what I expected. The museum had mask making, lassoing villians and a superhero scavenger hunt... but I wouldn't say it had much to do with the superheroes I'd thought of. Still, we had fun and we're glad to get out and do something.

Here I am figuring out one of the clues in the elevator (the rest of the clues had to do with exhibits).

Bryan lassoing a villain!

I was so close to getting him my last time!

Mostly, we just looked around the museum. That was fun. Bryan said he'd even like to go back just to look around. Next time we are back east for enough time I think we need to go to the Smithsonian!

Here is the Blacksmith Forge Bryan will have one day! :)

Ladies' Sidesaddle!

Apparently two-headed cows existed in Idaho at one point...?

This massive fish swims in rivers here in Idaho!

They had different rooms from older houses displayed. Here is my personal favorite room-- the kitchen! Luckily, I live in the 21st century.

There was a sign that said I could get in! I wasn't breaking any museum rules! The name of this kind of boat has slipped my mind for the moment but here I am traveling with Lewis or Clark and their dog, Seaman.

So, we had a nice day out and about. Later that night we went and saw Super 8, which we both really enjoyed. The night before we saw the Green Lantern, which was just sub par. It is nice to get out and do things! In less than two weeks we'll be back to Utah and we'll be able to see friends and family again. That will be nice but we have had a nice, relaxing time in this charming city.

Adventures in Making Ravioli

I have always loved to cook but since I have been married and had the chance to do it every day for dinner my array of meals has dramatically expanded! I have learned that I loved to cook even more than I thought. Right now I am a stay at home wife while we're in Boise. It gives me a lot of time to spend experimenting with different foods. I've begun straying from recipes and making things my own.

Lately, I have really enjoyed making foods from scratch. It started when I saw a tutorial on Our Best Bites for making your own flour tortillas. I was like, "I could totally do that." Well, it wasn't as easy as I thought. I hate to say I found a better recipe elsewhere when I love this site so much... but I looked it up YouTube and found a very good video for it. They turned out almost perfect! You know how tortillas are supposed to be, well, round? Well, mine weren't quite round... but they sure did taste good! I used them to make taquitos and I ate several just plain... they are way better than store bought tortillas. I am making some quesadillas this week and sadly bought store bought tortillas because I have a cup less flour than I need and I'm definitely not going to buy and whole new sack of flour for less than two weeks left in Boise! Anyway, tangent over. The next time I made something from scratch it was Pierogies filled with mashed potatoes (served with sauerkraut and kielbasa) because the store didn't sell them and I was set on the meal. I was like, "Wow, making pasta isn't as hard as it seems!" So then I decided to try my hand at ravioli.
I wanted a meat filling so, after looking around on the internet a bit, I found one using ground beef, garlic, onion and parmesan cheese. Well, I know I bought an onion but when I went to make the meal there was none to be found. I was very frustrated and had images in my head of it rolling out of a bag into the parking lot of the grocery store and me, none the wiser, walking away and leaving it there behind to be run over... So I made due with what I had. The filling was okay. Next time I think I will make half the batch with a ricotta cheese filling and half with browned Italian sausage, seasonings and fennel seed (an idea I got when we went out to a delicious and authentic pizzeria one night.

The dough is very simple. Mix flour and salt and add a whipped egg yolk.

...but then it wasn't really making a dough. The recipe said to add enough water to make it a stiff dough.

Voilà! It needed to rest for about half an hour after this.

I don't have a pasta machine yet so I had to roll it out with a rolling pin. This is hard work on your arms! I've definitely added a pasta machine and ravioli cutter to my Smith Family Times gift registry for my birthday or Christmas.
I needed to roll it out paper-thin, so that I could see my hand through it.

A lot of people will take one sheet of the rolled out dough, put dollops of filling on it, then put another sheet on and use a ravioli cutter. I don't have one yet so I used an upside jar to cut circles. This took as long or longer as the rolling out!

My meat filling dollops.

Folded over, with the edges crimped. I used an egg yolk to effectively glue the seams together.

Then they boil for 4-5 minutes.

You can freeze these for later use but, since I was just going to use them that evening, I put them in the fridge in a covered container (you don't want them drying out!). As it was, they kind of stuck together. I also wanted to make homemade sauce but couldn't find a recipe that looked good to me. So many of them called for tomato chunks in addition to paste or sauce. I do not like chunky things. Especially tomato. This is why I generally like traditional bean and ground beef chili from a can... too many people make it with chunky tomatoes. I also added some leftover ground beef and seasoning mixture from Our Best Bites.




Here is the finished product on Bryan's plate. I would say it was pretty good but not mouth-watering. It wasn't something I'd look back on and say, "That was so good. I need to make it again." I need to keep experimenting with fillings and sauces and one day maybe it will be so.