One year ago today...

Charlie and I stood in front of the rabbi I grew up with and almost all our family and friends, and ate the best truffle mac and cheese I've ever had.

I love you husband. Me and baby can't wait til you're back and we're in your arms!

By the way, I realized I never blogged about the wedding (way too late to do it now) or my wedding tips. I should do that. I'll make it a goal to do it this week when I'm procrastinating doing a masters assignment :-)

Shrimp Risotto with Strawberries

When Charlie was in Italy they went to a restaurant (before I came) and he had the "risotto du jour". He LOVED it and wrote it down (with the restaurant name) and somehow my brilliant husband didn't realize that it meant "of the day". Oh Charlie. Well, I had him describe it and had never heard of anything like it, so I tried to copy it anyway!

His description was risotto with tiny shrimp (I used regular sized) and strawberries. Sounded weird, but my husband who would never have eaten fish while growing up or taste anything "weird" LOVED this dish - must be a winner.

I decided to go for it. I love making risotto. It's not hard and you get such a creamy yummy dish with no cream. The key is to get short grain arborio rice and stir, stir, stir. The starches of the rice rubbing against each other get released (according to Alton Brown) and it creates the creamy texture.





I don't know why there are raspberries in that pictures - I didn't put them in the risotto. Maybe it was a snack during cooking?

Have one saucepan with chicken broth simmering, and one for your risotto:





Ingredients:
-1 cup of arborio rice
-1 quart of chicken stock
-2 tbs butter
-1 tbs olive oil
-1 small chopped onion
-1/2 cup dry white wine
-1 pound of baby shrimp, raw
-2 cups of chopped strawberries


Directions:
1. Melt your butter and oil until they are hot, and then add the onion. Cook the onion for about 5 minutes on medium heat. Add in your arborio rice and stir, so that the rice "browns" a bit.
2. While your onion was cooking, heat a saucepan with your chicken broth. When it is simmering, reduce the heat to keep the simmer.
3. Add your wine to the rice, and stir until it dissolves, and then begin adding simmering broth, one ladle at a time. After each ladle, stir stir stir, until the stock dissolves.
4. Keep the heat on medium or medium-low, and keep stirring, adding in more broth as it gets absorbed, until you've added almost all of it in.
5. When you have about 1/2-1 cup left of broth left, add in your strawberries and shrimp. Serve immediately.

You can top it with parmesan cheese if you want!

Okay so here was my mistake, in retrospect, but I gave you the corrected recipe up there. I broiled my shrimp, because I wanted them to have that charred taste. But, I should have known - shrimp cook REALLY fast so then they almost overcooked when I added them into the risotto (I did this at the VERY end), but still. Next time, I'm going to go buy those teeny shrimp, and add them in with 5 minutes left of cooking time. Or, use regular size shrimp, but chop them up, and add them into the risotto raw with 5 minutes left of cooking.

I added salt, pepper, and basil to the shrimp, sprayed with pam, and broiled them:




Joanna and oscar had a snack of the broiled shrimp until it was ready:




Three plates with it and some corn, and hot dogs for Aubrey, who I was watching for Victor and Katy that night. Kinda funny how its a similar color to the risotto!

Charlie liked it!


Aubrey was more interested in Maya:


And taking care of the baby:


Okay - that's the sweetest thing ever. She is a little mama already.




Wait actually maybe that is the sweetest thing ever.
Whoops I digressed from shrimp. Enjoy the risotto!

Bourbon chicken, some catch ups, and another deployment

Hey blog world! Remember me? No, you don't? Please forgive me for abandoning you. I just felt like I had nothing interesting to write about. But I do miss it and I love accounting for my boring lil life, so I guess I'll continue. Plus Charlie left this morning on a deployment so I want to account for what is happening since I delusionally think he'll care :-) Love you sweety!

 I made some yummy crockpot chicken the other day but didn't snap any pictures (whoops). It looked like crockpot chicken, haha! My dad randomly said he liked Bourbon chicken, and that he decided he likes "alcohol in meals" even though he doesn't drink a drop (and never has!). I knew Charlie would love it so I looked up a few reference points and came up with my own formula:

Pam spray (for the sides of the crockpot)

1/4 cup ketchup

1/2 cup soy sauce

1/2 cup brown sugar

3 tbs apple cider vinegar

1 tsp ginger

1 tbs garlic

1/2 cup whiskey

2 chicken breasts (for charlie)

4 chicken thighs (for dad)

*I would have done 4 breasts for Charlie but he was leaving on his deployment the next day*

I cooked it on high for 4 hours. It was yummy! Sorry for the lack of pictures.

Okay so more catch up will come soon but for now I'll just share some fun pics.

Here is Maya burying her little head in me at a sweet moment at Starbucks right after we got back from italy (yes I realize that was at the beginning of May).

I love when she does that! And sheesh, I look old. Can we speak about the fact that I recently had a birthday, but as you all know, I turned 24 yet again.

Charlie got me this for my birthday:

Amazing! Now I just need to find embroidery software compatible with Mac. I'm surprised by the lack of options. He also got me some boxing stuff which we'll now have to wait to use until he gets back in September.

My favorite part was probably this card from my parents:

Seriously - most fitting card! Almost made me less jealous of the European cruise my parents were on, lol!

I got a visit from this little one later in my birthday week: 

My how she has grown! I can't believe it's been a year since you stayed with us little "mazy" I miss you and your momma, but am so glad you're not too far in AZ.

Look how cute she is:

And guess what? This 1.5 year old is potty training! Birdie, whatever's in your water, we all need it!

"Peepee peepee!!!" She knew when to tell use and went in the potty. Amazing!

I actually got Charlie to take some pictures with me before he left, which is a huge accomplishment since he hates when I take pictures of him or us.

Haha this one is funny:

Check out his multi cam two piece flight suit!!! Too bad he can't wear it here when it's this hot.

I'll miss you my love, and can't wait to be with you in December. I love you!

Engagement Pictures

Craving: something to check off the wedding to-do list!

Back in February, Charlie got me my dream present for Valentines Day, a Canon Rebel.
AMAZING. I love that I can take professional looking photographs now. Sadly, most of my blog pics are still from my phone, just because I always have it with me.

Our good friend, Ryan Malone, is our wedding photographer, but it was already July 4th and we did not have our engagement pictures. I started getting nervous and decided to ask Charlie's Uncle Will to snap some of us at the family Lake House.

My instructions for Uncle Will? "Just keep clicking, take pictures the whole time."

My instructions for me and Charlie?
1. Look online at engagement pictures and see what you like.
2. Have a beer. Or two. (seriously, this helped us).

There were SO many pictures. SO many. It was so hard to choose a few good ones. Uncle Will did such a great job, Thank you!!!

Here are some of my favorites:

Yes I know the photoshop on that is kinda overdone w/the sepia etc, but I love it!!! We actually chose that picture for our ketubah (Jewish marriage contract), and are having the text that we sign printed over the picture ( I used photoshop to do it, easy-peasy if anybody wants it done), and then we had it printed on a canvas from Sam's Club. Sam's and Costco both do canvas prints and it's much cheaper than going off of etsy.

After our engagement pics (and the two beers) we decided to jump off the dock. Dressed. Two beers in I was still clear enough to realize to change out of my silk shirt and put on a swim top!
Enjoy us jumping in!



Ready???



Set....



Go!







The really funny pictures come next when we jumped in again. I guess when I jumped in the first time my swim suit top fell a bit from the impact. Well on my second jump in, you can see that my hands are....supporting myself, shall we say, the WHOLE WAY DOWN! Hahaha. I didn't even realize I did that, but only Charlie gets to see my girls :-)