product review

I went to the grocery store the other day and Clorox Anywhere was on sale. I was going to purchase my handy-dandy cleaning wipes (clorox kind or lysol which ever was on sale) but they weren't. But Clorox Anywhere was...and boy am I happy with my little purchase. Chunk laughs every time I pull it out b/c he considers it my new TOOL. He says I get excited over cleaning products like he gets over new tools. I had to explain to him that they are just as important. He'd be lost w/o a hammer and I now consider my Clorox Anywhere MY hammer. So when you want a QUICK clean up in the kitchen or bathrooms try Clorox Anywhere. I was reading the bottle and you could even use it on your kids toys. Not that I would do such a thing...would consult first w/my Dr.

**Note: I have not been endorsed by any company(but if someone from Clorox would like to send me a check...pls leave a comment!!)

cooking...

So I found a new blog...Good Things Catered (I wish I could create a hyperlink but I can't so view it under BLOGS. She has lovely recipes and I've tried several. They are pretty easy. So I finally I decided to take pics of what I had created. Let me just say that I'm an OK cook. Friends and family seem to think. Me not soo much. So here's the recipe I tried.

Herb-Crusted Salmon
Ingredients:
6 oz. salmon steak, about 1 1/2 in thick
1 Tbsp olive oil
3 Tbsp. lemon juice
1/8 tsp tarragon, finely minced
1/8 tsp rosemary, finely minced
1/8 tsp parsley, finely chopped
pinch ground mustard seed
pinch ground red pepper
1/2 small garlic clove, minced
salt and ground peppercorns

Directions:
-Heat heavy saute pan over medium high heat and set broiler to low.
-Add olive oil to pan and swirl to coat.
-Add salmon steak, skin-down to hot pan and cook until browned, about 3 minutes.
-Season top of steak with herbs, garlic, and salt and ground pepper.
-Flip steak in pan and cook until browned, about 3 minutes.
-Remove skin from bottom of steak and discard.
-Add lemon juice to pan and swirl to coat.
-Put pan under broiler and cook until heated through and fork tender.
-Flip salmon steak in pan and swirl to pick up bowned bits in pan halfway through.
-Remove pan from oven, flip and swirl on bottom of pan to pick up juices and transfer to plate.

The side dish was just a fresh green salad with strawberries, blue cheese, carmalized walnuts and for dressing plain balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Nice warm biscuits..Accompanied with a nice chilled glass of Sanata Margarita wine. And voila...no need for restaurants! (yeah right!)

Chunk had invited his friend over. And the 3 of us enjoyed a lovely FEAST!!!! Boy was it good.

the JOY of owning a home...

1st I need to give you some background. Chunk and I purchased our home close to 4 years ago. When we did our purchase we knew that the "family room" section of the house had some minimal roof damage which the previous owner "fixed". I quote FIXED b/c its has ALWAYS given us problems.

2nd...Chunk sleeps with ear plugs. Why do you ask? Because he cannot sleep if there is any noise. I am the opposite...could sleep through a hurricane.

Last night around 3:00 AM...(yes I said 3 in the freakin' monrning!!!) I woke up to sounds on rain drops falling on the roof. How weird for drops of rain to wake me up. So I call to Chunk and ask him if its raining hard. He's sound asleep and just mumbles something. I try to go back to sleep but those drops were really loud!!! I start wondering if something else is going on...so I get up (put on my glasses cause I'm blind as a bat) and proceed to the living room. Look out through the front door and yes it seemed like it rained but not hard enough to make such loud noises. At this point the "rain drops" are VERY loud. I rush over to our family room and guess what I find....

Along with a flooded floor. So I rush to our linen closet and pull out every possible think that can help us (ME) clean up. I holler for Chunk...I guess I must of screamed loud enough for him to rush over (**he has the ear plugs in). He sees me on the floor drying everything as fast as possible, moving furniture, trying to figure out if our wood floor has any major damage...Chunk is rushing for pots and pots and pots. Finally we cleaned up the mess and here is the result.
So today he will have to go to Home Depot and buy one of those lovely plastic covers (having mental block and forgot the name of it) place it over the roof. The joy of owning a home...

the entrance

I've been thinking A LOT about the entrance of my home. Pretty plain...it just has a small table. I have a bowl on there plus a vase with my mini-pears. We just put our keys there and everynow and then Chunk needs to place other misc things on there, i.e. ipod, phones, umbrella etc etc. We needed badly. I got the table, vase, mini-pears, silver bowl at Target. Ohhh how I love Target. I know we need to put a mirror above the table just don't know which one exactly. I found two that I like at Z Gallerie. Which are these two:

I know once I get a mirror there it will be perfect right before I leave home in the morning. Get to look at myself one last time!! Btw, the door you see to the right is the entrance door. I took the pic from the living room.

Think Kermit GREEN!!!

The Chunks have joined the GREEN bandwagon!!!! Or at least as much as we can do for living in Sunny South Florida and our public transportation SUCKS!!! I have not used paper or plastic bags at the grocery store for over 2 weeks. Which is REALLY good (for us)!!! Yesterday we tried something new...we rode bike to the grocery store. For many its no biggie, right? Like those that live in NYC walk to the BODEGA down the street. But for us (i.e. Miami folks) who live in the "suburbs" the grocery store is not down the street nor are we use to walking. So we hoped on our bikes and off we were. Noticed new homes in the neighborhood. We don't live in the cookie cutter neighborhoods so its nice to see the difference in architecture in all the homes. I realized two things 1) need a basket...2) HELMET, I really suck at riding bike and 3) I want a new bike. I have a mountain bike (I think that's what they are called). Which is great when I go on trails in the park. But I really want a more simple PLAIN bike. Gonna look into some. Doesn't have to be new just something that works.

I am also SLOWLY transitioning to changing our cleaning products to more EARTH FRIENDLY. My allergies become HORRIBLE when I clean. Chunk tries to clean for me b/c I can barely breath when I do (trust me I'm not faking it). So I've been cleaning the toilets with VINEGAR. The smell is horrible but its does its job. If you guys know of anything else I can change let me know. What to make the house as EARTH FRIENDLY as possible.

TGIF!!!!

1st birthday's

Okay so Chunky & I (Chunky secretly likes the show b/c of Dean being such a GUY) watched Tori & Dean last night on Oxygen network. It was the episode of Liam's 1st birthday party. I know there has been a lot of controversy over Tori & Dean's decision on having chimps at the party...but I'm not going to chat about that. I want to talk about the A-M-A-Z-I-N-G cake they had!!! If anyone saw it...you know what I mean. Now...$15k on a first party is a lot to spend. But like I told Chunk, if you have it why not spend it...not like you're going to take it to the grave with you...right???? LOL...just my little way of trying to make it OKAY to spend WAYYYYY TOOO MUCH $$$$ on a child's 1st birthday party. So this kid had an amazing party (to say the least). I mean...he got his own freakin' train!!!! I don't EVER remember getting one of those. LOL!! So about the cake...its freakin amazing (as I mentioned before). The cake was made by the BEST bakery...Hansen Cakes in Beverly Hills. I didn't know about them till the show last night. They were est. in 1520 and have had 7 generations of bakers. How freakin amazing is that!!!! Ok so here's the cake guys.....

So on the 1st birthday note...kids really won't remember their 1st bday. I'm not a mom yet...so I'm not sure what I am going to do but I know one thing I won't be doing...spending $15k on a 1st bday. LOL xoxox ya'll