Fun Pot Sticker Friday

Every Tuesday morning at work, the Rehab Team gets together to plan a Fun Friday activity.  Some days we take the kids to the park and on other days we stay in and play games.  We have a great group of kids right now and they’re mobile and healthy enough to do some really cool things.  This Friday, we made pot stickers and the kids had great time.  I prepared the ingredients the night before and left the carrots, chives, and cilantro for them to shred and cut.

They had a choice of meat, cabbage, water chestnut, mushrooms, chives, and many others.  Each child made their own stuffing for their individual pot stickers and then wrapped it all up with the wonton skin that I bought.  Once they finished a batch, I fried up their creations and they got to roll back to their rooms with a tasty treat.  So fun!

There’s something really cool about seeing kids participate in cooking activities.  They always seem to get excited about doing the “grown up” things like cutting, shredding, and stirring.  This is truly occupational therapy in action.  Play is every kid’s occupation but so is brushing your teeth and meal preparation.  The kids are doing something functional, building hand strength and social skills, and it’s therapeutic both physically and cognitively.  This is one of those time when I can say that I love my job.

Tuesday Dinner at the Ballpark

On a whim, we decided to go to a Giants game for our usual Tuesday dinner and invited the girls from work since they were playing the Pirates. Steph and her husband are from Pittsburgh and jumped at the chance of watching their home team with garlic fries. I drove the girls to my house, stopped at Safeway for snacks and beers, and we had a mini happy hour at home before the 7:15 game.

Patty showed us how to properly prepare Coronitas complete with fresh lime juice, salt, and a few drops of Tapatio and we shared a couple bags of potato chips. When the boys arrived, we walked across the street to the game and settled into our $12 bleacher seats.  Jes also managed to sneak in 2 ice cold cans of Coors light in his pants.

It was a breezy but really pretty night at the ballpark.  The Giants fans were crazy as usual and the Pirates won.  We also had a fun time cheering for players we didn’t know and singing along to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” at the 7th inning stretch.  My dinner consisted of a Giants dog, nachos with lots of jalapenos, and a Coors Light.  Mmmmm.  It turned out to be one of the cheapest Tuesday dinners we’ve had in a while and we all had a fun time.

Home Improvements

We got a good deal on 2 additional storage units in our building and got the keys this weekend.  So we spent a good part of the weekend putting stuff away, cleaning the house, fixing things, and rearranging furniture.

Jesse really got into it and even moved the stove out of its nook to level out the burners.  We always had an issue with oil rolling over to one side of the pan but not anymore!  Jes looked like a puppet behind the stove.

We also had a little drip under the sink for the past 2 years and finally found the source!  Of course this involved taking everything out from under the sink and taking apart the drain.  Luckily all went well without any major messes.

Today we moved both of our bikes, the trainer, and bike pump down to one of our storage units.  After a trip to Home Depot, Jes built a rack for them and voila!  The bikes stand upright inside their tiny little kennel!  Now with the bikes off the livingroom wall, we moved bookshelves, cabinets, and tables around.  In the process, we got to wipe everything down, vacuum and scrub the floors, and ended up with some extra space to use in the house. Hooray!  I’m glad we made the most of our rainy Sunday. By the way, it started raining this morning and hasn’t stopped all day. In fact, it’s coming down even harder now at 11 pm!

More Meat Cake and Some Fireworks

On Saturday night, we had dinner at Jack’s house.  Ryan made beef bourguignon with short ribs and some leftover prime rib that he had frozen from another dinner we had a while back.  It was delicious and re-purposed meat never tasted so good.  Unfortunately I didn’t get any photos of it.  Shucks…that’s so unlike me!!

Later that evening, Jes and I went onto the roof of our building to watch the fireworks over AT&T Park.  It was the first night game of the season and we got a free show! This photo was taken with my Nikon in manual mode. I like how you can see the fireworks and what’s going on in the foreground. You can even see the party that’s going on in one of the units on the top floor!

Here’s another photo.  This one was taken with my little digi on “fireworks” mode.  Not too shabby but it didn’t get any of the ambient light from the building.  Weird.

Here’s a short video clip of the fireworks in case you were interested.  Not a bad view, huh?

Rainy Day Cookin’

What is it about lazy rainy Sundays that make me crave soup? After an unsuccessful attempt at going to Target this morning (apparently closed on Easter), I came home and threw two bags of chicken bones and giblets into a big pot of water.  With a few additions and little time on the stove, the house was filled with the aroma of chicken, coriander, and garlic…mmmm.

In the afternoon, we took a nice stroll in the rain with the dog and stopped at Safeway for some ingredients for dinner. I ended up making a big pot of rice, mapo tofu (out of the package, of course) with ground turkey, and pork-stuffed cucumber soup with the stock I made earlier. I even added a bit of my homemade garlic oil to the soup to finish it off.

When I tasted it, the flavor was close enough to give me a nostalgic feeling and Jes was saying it was almost as good as my Mommy’s soup. Phew!  Just last week he said that my Thai Chicken Curry was surprisingly tasty (and spicy) too.  I think I’m on a roll here, people!  I guess some of Mommy’s recipes are getting easier for me to remember now and it’s nice to know that a bit of the Magical House’s pixie dust has finally rubbed off onto me.  Thank goodness ‘cuz I’ve got a picky eater in my house.

Look who had too much ice cream…

Last night Jes made pot roast and the Sokol-Juns came over to eat with us.  When it was plated, Jack said “Cupcake?!”  Ryan corrected him by saying “No, it’s meat cake!”  So for the rest of the night, we ate our meat cake and Jack did too.

After dinner, Ryan turned on the YouTube clip that Jack has been watching over and over again at home.  He’s watched so much that he sings, plays his guitar, and follows along with gestures and clapping.  Michelle made some chocolate chip cookies for dessert and we all enjoyed them with some vanilla ice cream.  Jack loved it so much that he asked for more and we gave it to him.

As a result, we got a little performance from the little guy and I got a long clip of the action.  By the way, the spoon is a guitar and the bar stool is a microphone and the dog is playing back-up. Make sure to turn on your sound for the singing and narration in the background.  You can probably hear me laughing in the background too.  If it’s not funny, I guess you had to be there.