happy birthday to me

how many lives have you used up? or safty belt lesson

i have had a philosophy about back seats of cars and seat belts. i figured if your in the back and get hit your not going out the front window....but i never thought about being upside down in the car.

gio, mj and i headed up to copper yesterday to ride. copper has gotten some ungodly amount of snow in the past two week - something around nine feet? - and we were itching to ride some powder.

the morning started off freezing in denver. my car windows were incases in ice. my favorite ice scrapper (yes favorite) was (and still is) missing so i had to use the crappy one that was left. my window washer fluide pump died on me and i bought a new one but had not replaced it due to the -14deg wheather we've been having.... so ice windows, the cold and all we made it up to morrison parking lot by seven forty am (ten minutes late or so) mj was waiting placidly for us to show.

we headed up to the mountain. we stopped in idaho spings at the sandwich shop - mark was hungery, gio and i were thirsty - the boys got coffee and i got a bottle of juice.

off we went. when we passed frisco last exit we got in to the canyon area. that's when it happened.

mj was driving normaly for the weather conditions.

the back end of the truck (pathfinder) just started to swing out.
then the front started heading towards the median.
mj gently tried to correct this and the truck crossed over to the right lane and then over the hill and the truck flipped.

all of this happened quickly and slowly at the same time.
when the truck rolled gio and mj were in the front seats and i was in the back - with out my seat belt on.

the truck rolled and for a moment i was on all fours on the ceiling and then just a moment later back in the seat on the other side of the truck.

we all remember noise. gio heard the only glass to break - the passenger side mirror. i heard all the cd jewel cases raining down around me, mj heard the top of the trucks luggage rack parts snapping.

then stillness.

the oddest things popped into my head. gio's face was wet and all i could think is that he threw up - but it was mj's coffee split all over the two of them. and then i wanted my juice that i had just purchased; i was quite conserned about it for some unkown reason to me. and then there was the "i wonder what that looked like?" thoughts....

no one saw this happen. no one was next to us on the road. there was a road below us and a man stopped to see if we were ok - we didn't look like a roll over we just looked as if we went off the road. we told him we were fine and decieded to try to drive down to the bottow and drive out.

i got my snow boarding boots on as well as gloves. this took a few minutes. gio and i got out and started pushing.
and then sliently a red suv was flying in the air it's nose backwards from the direction that it was heading. but it was no longer driving it was bouncing down the hill near us! when it stopped gio started towards the driver "baby are you ok?" the female driver was a little out of it as well because she became scared that there was a baby involved some how.

i called to gio to come back and push because my newest concern was that another vehicle was going to come bouncing over the side of the road at us again.

firefighter, ambulances, cops and tow trucks, shovles and -14 deg weather came and went.

no one was hurt. the truck was hardly hurt, mj drove us back to morrison. cocktails at home were in order.

oh, as for the red suv - totaled. the front windshield, front windows and back window were all smashed out. the roof of the truck all smashed in.

someone was looking out for us.

thank you mj for getting us threw that safely.

ps none of us had a camera on us

where in the world is skippy?

a slice of halloween pie

for two weeks in small spurts gio, sam, nils, nick and i made grave stones, ax carring dumby and a few pumpkins. all for giving out candy and scarring the pants off of children.

here's a peek at it.






he looks much scarier in the strobe light with fog!








at one point in the night i looked out in to the neighborhood and saw tons of children swamping the street! i haven't seen that since the good ol' days in virginia!

things left behind....sometimes hard to remember

every loaf of bread that we buy ticks me off.
bread that isn't cheepy white has been inching it's way up in price - it's almost four dollars for a loaf of nice sliced bread.
and bagueettes are cheeper but the don't last a day before turning stale (which i secretly like for tea in the morning).

nils, who is living in the cottage (dads house) right now has been experimenting with different flours and yeast - wild and kefir mostly - and he has been turning out some damn fine breads. so i bought some new bread flour and i have been making bread for gio and i for the past few weeks.

i started thinking about when my mom would bake bread. it was alway hot and perfect! she made a honey white. i can even remember her showing me how to proof yeast with the honey, and when you did it right how the yeast puffed up in soft pellows above the water/honey. but i could not for the life of me remember the recipe. but there was one place i thought that might have it written down the montissori school of mc leans cook book. i knew that all three of my aunts favorite recipes are in there. and there it was page thirty-six "mother's white bread" with note "this is the bead my mother baked almost daily during the war". so i have chosen grandma parasines bread as of the almost daily baking for us.

i am wanting to experiment with other breads... infact my father and mother in law - seu valomr e ma helena - gave me a brilliant bread cook book in portugese. i can understand half of it - most of the ingredients repeat over and over i just need to learn a little more kitchen portuguese and i'll be right there.

then and now

when gio and i first saw our houses i could see what could be...........



we had a "death march" to finish all the projects we wanted to get done by june - family coming - then the wedding plans - we accomplished alot......with some great help from our great friends!

christmas in september

how's the pressure canning going?
GREAT!!! thank you for asking!

gio bought me a pressure canner last christmas and i finally got the nerve up to use it last night.....

sam and i purchased two bushels of roasted green chilles on sundeay.
we proceeded to peel one and a half bushels by hand - and i do mean by naked hand!
i've been peeling chilies for several years now and i have never had the burning of the hands as i did from the sheer amount of chilies that i peeled with out hand protection. burning as if only my hands had been sent to hell!!!!
this pain lasted until the next morning........we wore gloves last night to finish the last half a bushel

san and shannon came over last night. shannon brougt the gloves - she works at cu med center examining hepatitis c these were new gloves!
so we sat on the porch peeling the remaining chilies and some that shannon brought from utah from her grandparents garden and waited for the pressure canner to do its magic.

we did a hot pack of the green chili and got the pressure canner all set up and turned up the heat. i had done all my reading about it that morning. the booklet had said that it was normal to have some steam leakage at the begining but the canner would just not get up to pressure.
sam and shannon decieded to fiddle around with some of the external parts (the overpressure plug) and used a little too much force and it blew!!!!! only the steam.

so here's what we learned.
1. double check all plugs and "o" ring
2.pressure should come up once the pressure regulator is placed on with in three to five minutes
3. do not push in the overpressure plug!

i canned eighteen jars of green chili last night and i am in the process of canning the remaing chili and then i am going for the zucchini. i thought it would be nice to can the zucchinis with diffferent herbs per quart?????? we'll see this winter how it turns out.

good food good friends good evening

last night gio and i had a few friends over for dinner - casey frank, steve best and rebecca vaughn. super cool!

this is probably going to be our last dinner party until we remodle my house....
or i make a different dinner table for the dinning room....

last night we all were pondering how we could keep the out door dinning in the cold weather.
there of couse is the wear warm clothes but this answer is only for the person dinning not the dinner.
our biggest problem we found earlier this year was the food got so cold so fast!
we also dicussed hanging a canvas drape around the dinner table.....??? is this then dinning inside not out?
or we can have a wood burning cast iron stove out around us or a fire pit table? who knows, i just hope we get invited over to other large warmer house this winter for dinners!hint

but as for last nights dinner party i think it went smashingly. every guest brought a bottle of wine. casey frank brought over pomegranate wine super delicious! i have nerver had it before last night.

i also made these little italian cookies named farfalle (butterfly in italian) but i don't really know the recipe.
gio took me to a restaurant over on tennyson and 44th named parisi, they have the best pizza in denver... they have a wood burning oven...tastes like italy!! and parisis have astonishing desserts as well.
gio, mira, zac and i tried one dessert - farfalle cookies, and i fell in love with these little beauties but i have search the internet looking for a recipe or a reference to the cookie but i have found nothing........

so i went on fact finding mission to parisi to see if i could get any info on the cookie dough.
the guy at the counter said he did not know exactly what the dough was made out of but he did know that it has cream chees in the dough.
ha ahahaha . so i have come up with my verison of the dough (i have only made it once) and i think i did a good job and the cookies taste great but their not as good as parisi...much to my chagrin.
has anyone else ever had these? they have jam in the middle....

here's to the stupendous summer dinner we've had and to more to come next spring!

jenny vs. aphids

the garden has been very good to us this year.
even part of the leftover garden has been super; the priests left us mint (which has been made into tea), oregano, sage (which flowered in spring) and forever bearing spinach chard (fed us from march until june and is back again)

i have had more chilies this year than ever. i used to try and grow bell peppers out here but never got many. this year i switched to cubanelle peppers for the sweet and pablanos and habaneros for the hotties. i have made some great salas from these peppers.

we also have acorn squash and zucchini that keeps rolling in. i have given away atleast fifteen pounds of zucchini this summer. i 've grown cabbage and brussell sprouts for the first time this year, they've been good - cabbage looks great in the flower garden! as well as broccoli once it's gone to flower.

but then the unwanted guests moved themselves in... the aphids! those little sap suckers moved in on the tomatoes and the bassicas with full force!

gio and i started the all out annihilation of the aphids. the battle raged on for five days. we did suffer some casualties, three tomatoes plants had to be removed. the three plants that i cut down were just acting as aphid baby makers! the poor plants had no new growth and no fruit or flowers - they were dying.

we kept up on the spraying soapy water on all the plants and after the removal of the baby making three the aphids started to die off in large number!!! and this next part i am a little confused about....... the large black ants moved in all over that tomatoes and seemed to be eating all of the aphids........eating? i am not sure but after that day no more aphids!!!!

so next year i need to do things differently in the garden, more companion planting and not having too many of the same plant near each other...... and more food stuffs......asparagus!!! and more beans....

aphids. i have learned more about them this year than i've wanted. nils told me that aphids are good for you skin....just crush 'en in!

some time has past but the feelings remain the same

gio's super great family arrived in june to join us for our wedding and then travel around a bit in colorado...... we took them to garden of the gods and then over to manitou for a sip of spring water.......

for all of you that have not had the pleasure please let me introduce you to my wonderful mother in law marie helena and my super sweet sister in law carmela


this is my incredible husband and father in law gio and mr.valmour




sam has become part of the family!


a trip in to manitou is never complete without pinball







as i mentioned in the previous entry sam, mira and i took a trip to austin tx for amber vazquez wedding to rob bode


but first we took a peek through rowell new mexico




we went to a few art museums while in austin, the ground at laguna gloria were breath taking


we cleaned up nicely


mr.sam carstens thank you partner


miss mira




amber and her fathers grand enterance






random piece of art that i enjoyed at laguna gloria