Friday, May 4, 2007

Lots of Bowls...

Taking pottery for the last 3 years has left me with an awful lot of pots and bowls sitting in a box in my closet. Why don't I use them, huh? Well...the box in the closet are the ones that are not so functional, or that I don't want to display. Most of them are from the first couple classes I took, and I would rather make something new for people than give them the leftovers that aren't as nice. Cause now I can make nicer looking, lighter, more useful stuff! My new plan is to try to make things that are either specifically for someone, or will be useful to us personally. Cause otherwise, we will be taken over! However, the stuff in the box isn't that bad either... I take pottery at the local cultural arts center - come join me sometime :-)

Yesterday I brought 4 larger bowls home - 2 big ones and 2 that fit inside them. I would like to start taking pictures of stuff when I get it back to keep in my pottery journal. So far, I've been using the journal to keep track of glaze combinations. Since I've written them down, it seems like it'd be nice to have a photo of how they turned out.

Ok, enough rambling for now. Oh, except to mention a new coffee shop near us. If you're in the Hillsboro area, check out Insomnia Coffee Co, on the corner of Baseline & 53rd Ave. (coffeeandmusicinhillsboro.blogspot.com & www.myspace.com/insomniacoffee)

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Tilapia is awesome

We've been eating more fish lately than I've eaten in probably the last 5 years. Maybe more. We found we really enjoy tilapia, it's easy to cook, tasty, and doesn't leave the apartment smelling like fish for days. We've bought it at Costco and Trader Joes in frozen varieties, and at Safeway fresh (they don't have it frozen I guess).

Here are my two favorite menus including tilapia lately. Adam created one of them, the other is from Cooking Light

Menu 1: Tilapia with vegetables, Pasta. Serves 2

bit of olive oil
2 fillets of tilapia loins
1 zucchini, sliced
1-2 cups of cherry tomatos, cut in half
1-2 cups of sliced mushrooms, we used crimini
1 cup chopped green onions (think it was 4-5 onions)
pasta - we used too much, it was about 1.5 cups, uncooked
fresh parmesean cheese, grated

Put oil in large pan on stove, on medium heat. Add tilapia when hot. When tilapia is about 1/2 done, add veggies. In a separate pot, cook pasta. Cook till fish is done and veggies are soft - the liquids from the mushrooms and zucchini come out to make a nice sauce. The fish will get pretty soft, ours broke into 4 pieces, but those stayed together pretty well. We took out those 4 pieces, 2each, put those on plates, then put the veggies on the pasta. Top with parmesean cheese to taste.


Menu 2: Spicy Tilapia with Pineapple-Pepper Relish, Rice, and Romaine Salad with lime dressing.
The tilapia recipe is pretty quick - the relish takes longer than the fish. Of course, we made it from a whole pineapple, not from the pre-chunked pineapple it suggests. It would also make a terrific salsa with chips, you would just have to cut the pineapple smaller. I cut the pepper and onions in pretty small pieces, and the tomato too.

Rice: The recipe suggests coconut rice. We tried this and couldn't really taste the coconut milk at all. So I would just go for some good basmati rice instead.

Lime Dressing: 1/4 cup fresh lime juice, 1 tbsp olive oil, 1 tbsp sugar, enough for 4-5 small dinner salads. We put it on a romaine salad with cucumber and tomatos.

For dessert with this, we had a scoop of raspberry sorbet and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. It went perfectly with dinner :-)

Happy Eating!