Announcing...

After much hoopla and brouhaha, it is my great pleasure to announce the arrival of Daisy!!!!! She was so eager to see this big world that she had heard all about, and for that reason, she rushed through that whole labor thing so fast that the doctor hardly had time to get into the room to catch her on the way out. Not only is she the most beautiful I've ever seen, but in a paradox that would knock Confucius on his back, she is beautiful and she looks like the squinty old guy on Big Trouble in Little China, as evidenced by this picture:


You should go to Marci's blog here to see the rest of the pictures and videos that we put up.

¡Guau, Guau! ¡Cra, Cra! ¡Miau, Miau!

Here's Rocky's latest foray into multimedia. She wanted to take a more active approach to contributing to my class. The chapter we just began is about the environment and nature, so she decided to just whip up this little instructional video of animal sounds in Spanish. She knows a few more animals with their corresponding onomatopoeias than she shows off here, but she was having trouble finding the motivation to perform.



For the record, frogs in Spanish don't say rib-bit, they say cra.

Forbidden doughnut, ummmmmmmmmmm

** Spoiler alert** This post involves scrumdiddlyumptious doughnuts that helped us announce a surprise that should not be a surprise to anyone that reads this blog because it's been a few weeks since the bomb was dropped. But, just in case you didn't get the memo, consider yourself warned for the proverbial un-bagged cat.
On our way home from Eugene, we stopped in Portland at the world famous Voodoo Doughnuts and picked up two dozen for our families. Voodoo Doughnuts are famous for their doughnuts that have eclectic (to say the least) toppings and flavors. They all have special names, but I don't know what they are, so all the pastry purists out there will have to excuse my crude descriptions.

They have the pentagram doughnut because it's made out of devil's food cake mix.



The Fruit Loops doughnut that isn't as good as I thought it would be, probably because by the time I tried it, the Fruit Loops were a little soggy.



The marshmallow doughnuts that have marshmallow cream, topped by grape, strawberry or pineapple drink mix.



They even have a maple bar with bacon on top that I've heard is bangarang. Probably their most famous doughnut though is a voodoo doll doughnut that has raspberry jelly in the middle for blood. We had the doughnut artistes put extra jelly in a voodoo doll so that it would look pregnant, and then they wrote "It's a girl"...Because Marci is...And it's a girl



Surprise!

In honor of the chairman

Rocky is getting really good at her animal sounds, but there's still a few issues to sort out. According to her, all cows and cats are inherently communist, because of instead of saying moo and meow respectively, they both say mao.
I'll post a video of the phenomenon when I get it on film.

Part II: I posted this earlier today, and I was planning on posting a video of Rocky performing animal sounds when I got home. Instead of the confused cat and cow sounds, I got Rocky's adaptation of "If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands". She came up with the sound effects all on her own, and so then I changed the wording to go along with her interpretation.

Did you here the one about the little girl?

Okay, so here's a riddle for you:




How do you get an adorable little girl to look like one of the most vile, despised despots of all time?





Give up?





You just add a bunch of snot!!!

This is an older picture from a few months ago, but I just wanted to point out that this is not the first time, nay not even the second time that Rocky has had an uncanny resemblance to a certain German führer. You can see the other two times on Marci's blog here and here.

Happy Halloween!!!!!

The long awaited teaser trailer:

So long sweet summer...

I'm sure that everyone else thought that summer ended a long time ago, but our classes at the U of O just started on Tuesday. So, we bid a fond farewell to a wicked-awesome summer by making a Spanish dinner starring pretty much the best summer food ever: Gazpacho. Gazpacho is a tomato-based soup that you eat cold; kind of like V8, but much better. We made it from a family recipe that our friend Pilar gave us when we stayed with her this summer in Barcelona. I know that this isn't a cooking blog, but gazpacho is so good (and healthy) that I would recommend it to everybody, so here's the recipe; first in Catalan (because it just sounds and looks cool), and then in English with some additional notes.
Gazpacho
250 Grs. cogombres
100 Grs. pebrots verds
1 KG tomaquets
una ceba
2 Grans d'all
una tassa d'oli
1/2 tassa vinagre
una pastilla avecrem
1 litre i 1/2 d'aigua
sal

es passa tot pel pimer i es serveix amb davets de tomaquet, pebrot, ceba, pa fregit, etc.

Gazpacho
250 grams cucumber
100 grams green peppers
1 kilogram tomatoes
one onion
two cloves of garlic
one cup of olive oil
half cup of vinegar
one bouillon cube
1 and 1/2 liters of water
salt to taste

Chop everything up in a food processor (chop it very finely, but don't puree it), and serve chilled with garnishes of diced onions, peppers, tomatoes and croutons.
Here's some additional things that I learned when I made it:
-Don't worry too much about the metric measurements, you don't have to be very precise, just make sure the ratios of vegetables are similar to the recipe.
-I don't know if metric cups are a different size, but I think I put in way too much oil. You could probably put in a half cup of oil and it would be perfect. I would also add a little more vinegar than what it calls for.
-After making this recipe (it makes a ton and freezes well), you should allow the flavors to blend at least overnight.
I know it's not the ideal time for a refreshing, cold soup, but you'll have to let me know if you try out the gazpacho.


P.S. when you're just not feeling that good, there's nothing better than curling up with a good book and your snake.