Deans are on the Move

Will's had an interview yesterday with US Bank in Cerritos, CA, just a mere 5 miles outside of Long Beach. Hooray! According to him, it was a fantabulous interview. He reckons he nailed it. But we have to wait until next week to find out weather or not he secured himself a job. I feel like the Lord is doing some awesome things in our lives! Everything we've been praying for is slowly but surely coming to fruition and it's incredibly exciting.

For example: OUR CAR IS FIXED! For those of you who have not heard us complain about our '06 Passat, here is the scoop. Two years ago, on a trip to San Francisco, Will and I had been without a working vehicle for months, bumming rides from our friends and family to get to work and such,. Well on this little trip, an opportunity arose for us to buy a car. A nice one. One with leather seats, dvd player and a turbo engine. Hallelujah! The Lord provided us a car despite our lack of down payment and so-so credit. But 6 months after we bought it, it started having major problems. Like four-thousand-dollars-to-fix kind of problems. The main issue was that it wouldn't start on a regular basis. We would put the key in, the car would turn on, then die immediately. It would do this 6 or 7 times before roaring to life. And the problem got progressively worse to the point where the car wouldn't even acknowledge that we had put the key in, and there was no telling how long it would take to start. Kind of a problem when you have to get to work or you have to pee badly. Anyway, the point of this story is to tell you all, Volkswagen recalled our car and fixed the damn thing for free. FREE! And it's like we have a new car again! It drives better than ever and it starts up every time without fail. Thank you Jesus!

Another example of the Lords grace in our lives is that we've been blessed with a swell group of friends here in Anacortes. It makes me sad to have to leave them. But for the longest time, we were a miserable bunch, Will and I. Moping around the house on a Friday night, watching reruns of Family Guy until we were blue in the face. But now, thanks to miss social butterfly Kelly Deans, we are official bar rats. Not that it sounds like we've moved up in the world, but we are enjoying Anacortes at least.

Now remember I wrote about Will starting an accounting program online back in January? Well he finished his 2nd quarter a few weeks ago, did alright, and now he is in his third quarter... Though he has only completed one class each time, at least there is some progression. I have no idea how he's doing, really. He never talks about it and sometimes I forget he is even in this program at all. When I ask him how his classes are, he grunts and mumbles and says something along the lines of "Good, good, essay, chapter, discussion, midterm, good" and then changes the subject to Xbox games. Whatever. As long as he's not stressed.

So to recap, Deansies credit cards are payed off, our car is fixed, Wills job hunt is going very well as well as his accounting program and we are set to move to Cali is a few short weeks if the Lord continues working in our lives at this pace! Hooray!

Now for some fun stuff  STATE FAIR!

Day Off

Today started off less than blissful... our car stared making a thumping noise spontaneously. Awesome. We have been dreading getting our car inspected for fear of it being in total disarray... luckily it was a completely positive experience and they discovered our car has THREE outstanding recalls and that the most major ongoing problem we have been dealing with (our car not starting on a regular basis) fits under the umbrella of the recall and FREE repair. Hallelujah!! We still have to fix our axel, get a tranni flush AND get a full tuneup.. but At least one major stress factor will be taken care of on Wednesday.

So since we spent a whole four hours at the mechanic, we decided to come home and cook a yummy dinner. Our favorite go-to dinner: Mock-Chicken Parm. Will also added sauteed chard and potatoes. 

we scarfed it ;) Sooooo delicious. 

The weather was acting like fall today. It even started raining. I was secretly pleased to put on my new knee high boots and prance around town in them. I say secretly because the winters here are so severe... and summer is close to being over. Sad face!

Now, for the finale:

MANGO BRULEE!!! Our new favorite thing in the world. And anyone can make it. 

*Sugar

*Mangos

*Oven 

*...and ice cream if you like

*broil for 10 minutes (watch it! it will burn. keep rotating it.)

*let it cool until the sugar crust hardens

*serve with vanilla ice cream sprinkled with cinnamon. 

It's like pie. 

Salmon Tartar

My job has the best perks. Wine aside. The other day, just before closing a customer came in with two fresh caught sockeye salmon filets. "Cheers!" and then he was out the door.

Will came up with this recipe. With the salmon being so delicious, we decided to serve at least a portion raw. While we prepped, we sliced chunks of the bright red salmon belly and ate the melt-in-your-mouth pieces of fish like it was candy.

to make the tartar:

remove pin bones and skin from your filet

dice 8oz salmon into 1/8" cubes

add 1/4 cup of each diced cucumbers and shallots

add 1/8 cup of each diced jalepenos and red onion

add 1tbs of each chives and dill

add 1tsp of each toasted sesame oil and olive oil

1/8 cup soy sauce (or to taste)

the juice from 1/2 lemon

modify: for spicy tartar, add 1/2 tbs sriracha

Toss together and serve on rosemary crackers. Heaven. 

(please excuse my horribly chipped nail polish)

Will also made Kelly and I salmon with crispy skin but we all agreed that the whole fillet could have been put into that tartar and we would have been happy as pie. 

But I have to say that the cooked salmon was pretty good too. Especially since Will makes the plate look so pretty :) 

The salmon is resting on a bed of swiss chard sauteed in garlic and butter and topped with pretty roasted beats. yum yum!

This is Where We Live

Fourth of July in Anacortes.

Camping trip part Two

This time we went to Baker National Forrest for my 25th birthday. I had this grand idea that I would camp like the English do, with beautiful canvas bell tents and bunting flags and fine china. My attempt was less glamorous, but I did make a string of bunting and found some really great outdoor dishes that have pretty flowers and colors. I was pleased.

(The S'more. Will made the graham crackers at home for the trip and Kelly bought us some marshmellows at a bakery in town. Then we smeared Fran's Dark Chocolate sauce all over the graham to make this evil dessert.)

This trip started off like our last: We were running late. We didn't arrive at the site until 8:30, the sun was almost gone and it had started to rain. Hard. Luckily, I had bought Will a canopy with a screen wall for Christmas that would fit perfectly over the picnic table. We could still make dinner, set up camp, and keep dry.

As we pulled into the site, Kelly and I pulled out the canopy while Will took charge of the tent. I ripped open  the never-been-used canopy while the rain started dumping even harder. I pulled a seemingly endless nylon screen from the box and shouted at Kelly to hand me the poles so we could start assembling. I assumed that she must have them since I was at the end of the nylon and the box looked pretty empty after that. She handed me a handful of L-shaped stakes and I realized, as my hair started to drip, that I did not have a "Screen Walled Canopy" as the box described, but merely a "Screen Wall" for a canopy that is a separate item entirely. Uggghhhh!!! We all just stood there, processing that reality as the sky darkened and our bellies grumbled. Will put together the rest of the tent with his shoulders slumped in a depressed sort of way. "Wait!" Kelly ran over with a tarp that she had found in the garage and packed for the trip. "Put this under the tent so the water doesn't seep in."

"Maybe we should put this over the tent since it's raining so hard..." Will said as he opened the sealed bag and pulled out a cotton-ey mesh web that looked more like insulation or fabric. He flipped over the packaging to look at the cover and realized it was a garden tarp used to keep plants warm... We suck. 

After I pumped up the tent (realizing that our three person tent was literally just enough room for three people) we all clammored inside while the rain relentlessly pounded overhead. I felt a few drops hit my face and wondered if our tent was even waterproof....

Will ran back out to the car to grab some foods since none of us had eaten dinner. He came back with:

Trail Mix

Bread

Bubbly

And that was our dinner. Kelly produced a pile of birthday presents from her suitcase, which made me happy. Especially since one of my presents was a box of chocolates. Which I ate immediately.

Sometime after we all drifted into a semi-conscience sleep as the rain beat down upon our tiny tent, we wondered why it hadn't stopped at ten o'clock like weather.com said it would. Suddenly Will jolts up and shouts "Oh no! Oh my gosh... Crap!! The water is going to leak into the tent!"

"What??! Why? Where?!" I gasped looking at the celling where Will was poking his finger, apparently at the place it was supposedly going to cave in.

"The water is collecting on the rain tarp and it's too heavy! Its going to collapse!"

"Did you feel the water coming in, Will??" Kelly asks, frantically. 

"Are you going to go outside and fix it?? Where is the water collecting? I don't see it!" I say.

"Will..." Kelly asks. "Will!" She shouts

He doesn't respond. He's just sitting there. 

"It's fine." Kelly concludes. "He's asleep"

"Are you asleep, Will?!" I say, shaking him. I am still terrified. The thought of getting drenched at two in the morning in the middle of the forest sounded horrible. And yes, Will was asleep. He imagined the roof was collapsing.

The next morning, the rain cleared and it turned out to be a pretty fantastic trip. I feel like the entire experience was us troubleshooting gourmet recipes in the wilderness. Our most successful meal was steamed mussels in a white wine and cream sauce with crispy bacon. Our least successful meal was our bruleed grapefruit and irish whisky oatmeal. The grapefruit kept falling off the skewers before they would successfully caramelize and we burnt the oatmeal to a crisp. Will was convinced the addition of the whisky in the oatmeal masked the burnt flavor. I think whisky tastes like burnt oatmeal in general and that Will was in denial that it was disgusting. Kelly also made a skillet cornbread that started off well and then took a turn for the worse. Just as all seemed right, Kelly made the cardinal mistake of turning up the heat and in seconds, the whole thing burned. Kelly was not about to let the whole thing go to waste so she attempted to "flip" the cornbread that was charred on one side and completely liquid on the other. She used the spatula to slice out a wedge, flipped it then proceeded to slice out another wedge until the whole thing was "flipped". It sort of worked. The few portions that did not burn completely tasted pretty good. Like that corn maize paste at Mexican restaurants that they stick a cactus shaped corn chip in.

 (our not-so-bruleed grapefruit. They were barely even warm! but they do look pretty)

 (irish oatmeal. This is a nice pic of it!)

 (this was another successful meal. We made fig and goat cheese BLTA's. YUM! It's a gourmet update on an American staple!)

 (another successful meal: pork chops with apple chutney and fingerling potatoes)

 (corn maize paste thing)

 (steammed mussels with wine and crispy bacon!)

(Crumpets! I attempted baking and it payed off! The orange marmalade was homemade too!)

 (I think that's our fingerling potatoes. I think those might have been the only thing that did not burn over that campfire)

 (Red corn salad with manchego and jalepenos. Kelly made this for our Taco Night. Pretty tasty!)

(carne asada Taco Night!)

Other things we burned"
-garlic bulb- we stuck it in the fire to soften it up so we could spread it on baguet - BURNED
-tortillas- raw tortillas we tried to roast on the grill grate over the camp fire. They fell through the grates immediately.
-baguette- why did we insist on cooking things over the campfire?? It was clearly  against us.

Aside from burning food, we went on a few mini hikes, took naps, drank wine and beer, used a hatchet, played badminton, made fireside terrariums, baked crumpets, shared Coors Light and mini cupcakes with our camp neighbors, obsessively cloroxed the oilcloth table cover... you know, the usual.

I am not going to lie, as much as I love sleeping in a crowded tent and peeing in a pit, as soon as the french press mystically exploded on Sunday morning, I was totally ready to leave. "You mean to tell me that the toilet has shit all over it and we have no coffee?? That's it. I'm going home." And so we did.

Garage Sale!

Look what I bought for $3 at a garage sale...

Fairhaven is one of those towns that makes you want to settle down and have a couple of kids. During the summer, the entire town meanders around with gelato and dogs on leashes and coffee while the sun sets into the ocean in the distance. Everyone wears shorts and flip-flops and has no where to be but where they are. I wish there was a town like Fairhaven in Los Angeles for us to move back to. Tonight is Movie in the Park night  and all the kids on summer vacation are snuggled under blankets, feeling all grown up to be out without their parents. One group of youngsters had pockets full of one dollar bills and they took turns buying kettle corn and cotton candy for each other. The highschoolers to our left were not so entertaining, however. Lots of loud, obnoxious shrieks and grotesque PDA. I hate highschoolers.
Tonight's movie is How to Train Your Dragon  and I couldn't be more excited. Will and I saw it in the theater when it came out but Kelly was seeing it for the first time. Eeep! Since I had to work all day, Kelly and Will prepared an awesome picnic: Bacon fig and goat cheese hoagies, fresh, local fruit salad (pineapple, blueberries, apples, walnuts, bananas, oranges and peaches) and cherry hand pies. Hand pies might be my new favorite thing. I want to make a million of them and wrap them in butcher paper and hand them out to everyone I meet so they can understand the happiness I feel. They are made with fresh black cherries as well as dried cherries, sugar, corn starch, all wrapped into individual puff pastry pockets just small enough to hold in your hand. Oh my goodness. So delicious. We ate everything in about five minutes.

Since summer is officially in full swing, the sun was still shining bright at 9:30 so the movie was set to start at 10:15. While we lounged on the grass, with our smuggled wine in hand, a local artist played her guitar and sang about her garden and the immigration laws in Arizona. Her hoakiness seemed fitting for the amount of kids that turned out for the movie. I was ecstatic when she finished and it was just dark enough to start the show. Everyone instantly hushed and snuggled closer together, ready for the intense emotion this movie delivers. Kelly, Will and I were on the edge of our blanket, tears welled in our eyes and silly, joyous smiles on our dorky faces. We love sappy kids movies. I started getting nervous as a few rain drops splashed on my face about ten minutes into the movie. The clouds had moved and I wondered if we would get rained out. Luckily it only sprinkled and my hoodie was enough to keep me dry. That never would have happened in California. We would have drown!