home made pesto

So this summer I decided to get a little crazy and plant some herbs on my balcony -I consider this is crazy because I kill everything green aside from a bamboo plant that my sister in law Becca got me. (I'm going on three years with that bad boy now ...I know)

Well, One of the herbs is a basil plant. I thought that I would use it a lot, but I just didn't make anything requiring fresh basil this summer. Well, I knew I had to use it soon because winter's a com'n, so I decided on my first batch of pesto. -the pine nuts sitting on my shelf helped inspire this decision.

I was AMAZED at how much basil it took to make just a small amount of pesto. Geeeez, it nearly took the whole plant to make like a cup. A client recently informed me that you can use parsley as well to help cut back on basil usage.

We threw it on some sandwiches with a bit of rotisserie chicken and arugula and it was so good! Sadly my basil plant is practically gone now, but one can hardly be sad about that fact whilst eating delicious pesto

Portland!!!

I went to visit my best Allison in Portland a couple of weeks ago. She's the best host you could ever ask for. She took work off to hang out with me and did a lot of random things that she new I'd love! Sadly I never remember to take pictures but I did manage a few. The above is of us attending Mozart's Grand Mass. Yes I am in jeans -that's what they do here. Yes I picked the naked lady to be in our background. Along the concert line, we also went to see Pagliacci and Carmina Burana neither of which I had seen live. I really liked them both -Pagliacci the best. Way fun.

She also took me to this way cool hotel up on hood mountain where we got the most insanely delicious hot chocolates of my life. This hotel was way cool on the inside but is mostly known for the outside. This hotel is the one they used in the Shining -one of the creepiest movies ever. AWESOME eh? I was so excited to be there. On the movie whenever they show the outside of the Overlook hotel they're showing this hotel that we were at.

A close up because I know you wanted one. She also took me to all of the markets which was awesome. I even bought a print from a painting there and it's hanging on my wall right now (it's very halloweenie and I love it -I'll show it in another post) I did manage to get a picture of this awesomeness though. Allison has become quite the amazing parallel parker. In this particular spot neither of us realized that there were tiny columns along the sidewalk, and she ended up getting this close to one of them without knowing it. Lucky? Uh ya. I couldn't get out of my door and we ended up having to wait for a Chinese class to get out before we could move -long story.

We went on a super awesome ghost tour around downtown Portland at night and we had some EXTREMELY interesting people on the tour with us. It was quite comical actually. We went to a ton of cool farms and saw some beautiful produce and stuff, we ate at some great places, and we saw the coolest old pub/haunted hotel ever. It was really fun. Thanks so much Allison for letting me come and hang and spending so much time with me -and for the delicious sandwiches that you made me!

Derby

Ryan's been most anxious for me to post about the derby. So here it is sweetheart in all its white trash glory.


So, this may quite well be my favorite thing to buy a ticket for. I first became acquainted with the demolition derby my first semester at USU. (every year at the beginning of fall semester Preston ID throws a big) I could not BELIEVE that I'd never even heard of such a thing before. I instantly fell in love and have enjoyed the smashing of cars since. It had been a few years since I'd been though and Ryan and I had never been together so we found one way out west this summer and went with our awesome friends the Ferres.

I'm really lame and didn't get a lot of pictures but it was a really good derby. They even had a figure 8 race where cars got flipped over! It's funny because you want to cheer but at the same time you're like,... uhm, are they ok? -and they were. In fact, both times the driver shimmied out the window, grabbed a few other guys to help and they flipped the car back over climbed in again and started back in at the race. Awesome.