Ahoy, matey!

Spotted today on ye ol' Lake Union is me pirate mateys. It seems, me dear mateys, that today is the first day o' boatin' season. Shiver me timbers! Do y'know what that means, Jack? Aye, it means that I'll have another chance to dodge them ducks.

I'm lookin' at you, me hearty Autumn and RyRy. By the powers, let us find some booty or pieces o' eight! And let's not forget the Jolly Roger... and Davy Jones forbid we forget the rum!

(TGIF, yo-ho-ho)

Food. It's what's for breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack. Repeat.

It seems that my blog is turning into a food blog these days. Due to this, my appetite is out of control. I'm trying to be smart about it by only allowing healthy foods around me, but a few (cookies!) exceptions throw me off from time to time.

So last night as I was waiting for Maddie and Autumn to show up for our 7 miler, I found myself browsing my new cookbook and came across a recipe for an egg-white omelette with goat cheese and salsa. And as you would have it, I had ALL of the ingredients at home. It was out of this world good. Success.

Now, go home and make one for yourself. You won't regret it.

Ingredients
1/2 cup egg whites (from about 4 eggs)
Coarse salt and ground pepper
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 heaping tablespoon crumbled goat cheese
2 to 3 tablespoons salsa (Erika note: I used spicy pico de gallo and I think it was a magic ingredient)

Directions
In a medium bowl, whisk egg whites with 1 tablespoon water; season with coarse salt and ground pepper.

Heat olive oil in an 8-inch nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add egg whites to skillet; cook until nearly set, using a flexible heatproof spatula to repeatedly pull in sides of omelet to allow uncooked egg to run underneath, 1 to 2 minutes.

Sprinkle crumbled goat cheese and prepared salsa over the top. Gently slide omelet onto serving plate, folding it over by tipping skillet slightly.

picture and recipe via

C is for Cookie

Today, I brought homemade chocolate chip toffee cookies to the office. I thought I'd send out an email to alert the masses, which was quickly followed by what sounded like a stampede of elephants.

Email Subject: Cookies in the kitchen!

For who? YOU!
Why? Because I like you.

Enjoy!

I got the usual (and appreciated!) 'thank you' and 'awesome' responses, but my favorite, BY FAR, was this little gem. I think I liked it so much because it came from an unusual suspect.

My inner Cookie Monster thanks you!

What starts with the letter C?
Cookie starts with C ....
(then it linked to this video)

Sidenote: Erika's cookie count for today is 2.5 Considering the amount of batter I ate last night, I don't know how I'm eating cookies today. I suppose I have a bit of a cookie monster inside of me?

The Girls with Glasses

When I was little, I always wanted glasses. (I also wanted braces, but I'm glad that didn't have to happen.)

These girls now make me want them again.

Aren't they adorable?

(Apparently "The Girls with Glasses" is a smart girl talk show. Too bad I don't have cable.)

A fishing story

We started fishing bright and early (woke up at 4:45 and on the lake by 6am!) out on Cain Lake.

It was quiet and a little rainy and cold.

But luckily we were all pretty bundled up.

We got 1 or 2 sunbreaks, even if the temperature didn't rise.

Joe got the first fish.

I caught the second fish.

And as you can see, I was very excited about it.

Kam wouldn't let me take any pictures of him (he must be going through a phase), so I had to sneakily snap a few.

This might be the only picture we got of him where he's smiling AND looking at the camera. Too bad I wasn't doing the same!

At the end of the day, we came home with 14 fish. I'll let you guess who caught the most, but it rhymes with America. :)

Gone Fishing

This weekend, Joe and I are headed north to the good ol' Skagit Valley for opening day of fishing with my Dad and Kamron. I'm pumped (to out-fish them all, of course... ok, I'm sure Kam will take the prize on this one)! Dad mentioned something about 4:15am, but I think that's negotiable. Send me your fishing mojo!

Have a wonderful weekend!

photo from this wonderful flickr stream

Seattle Restaurant Week

If you haven't heard, it's Seattle Restauant Week (SRW)! What does that mean? Well, it means there are AWESOME restauants across Seattle that are offering 3-course meals for $25!

The hardest part? Choosing which restaurant you want to try. There are so many places on the list that I've wanted to try, so how do I choose just 1?!

Well, Steph and I chose How to Cook a Wolf because we've heard good things and we wanted to go somewhere that neither has been. So, we put our name in and it looks like we will have to wait for 45 minutes. We stroll the streets of Upper Queen Anne, return in 30 minutes and they tell us it's going to be ANOTHER 30-45 minutes.

We decide to move to Plan B: Find a nearby restaurant - in the promotion or not - because we were starving. Just a hop, skip and a jump down the street, we come across Paragon, which just so happened to be participating in SRW. Perfect.

It. was. DELICIOUS. You must go. Like now. (what are you waiting for?)

Unfortunately, we were too hungry and gobbled down the appetizers before snapping pictures, but here are a couple of the entree and dessert. Oh, the dessert... yummmm.

I got the Shrimp and White Cheddar Grits

Steph got the Lamb and Cucumber Mint Cous Cous

We both couldn't resist the banana custard.

Simply amazing.