Weekend update

The DIY (DO-IT-YOURSELF) project has slowed down. I've gotten all the tiles in and the mortar has cured for several days. All that remains for the floor is the grouting and the caulking. I headed out to Home Depot this morning to pick up another box or two for the grouting mix.

After all that's done, we'll pick up a new toilet and install it. We're not looking for anything fancy, so no bidet's for us. It's all about tabo baby...or baby wipes baby. If all goes as planned, then we should have the carpet people here by this Friday and Saturday. It's gonna take two days to lay out the carpet because of carpetting those see-through steps on our stairs.

COOKING
Before Tina went back to work, she cooked during the week and I cooked during the weekends. Now that she's back to work, we split cooking up a little more.

It's all gravy cuz I like cooking. Whether it's from a recipe or from scratch, cooking is an expressive art. This Saturday, I tried messing around with teppanyaki grilling. I have one of those double burner grill plates, a rectangular plate you put over two burners on your stove. I picked up some teriyaki marinade and soaked two steaks, with some salt, pepper, and onions, for about an hour. Then I slapped 'em on the grill along with some EVOO and seared and cooked 'em. Along with the steaks, I grilled up a sliced yellow squash and whole rings from an oso onion.

(The onions were 10 for $10 at Albertson's this week. IF you've never had an oso onion, then you're missing out on a super sweet, huge onion. These onions are great in giant onion rings! I only picked up two, so I going back today to pick up a few more)

We had also picked up a big carton of mushrooms from Costco. So I melted some butter, poured in a half cup of merlot and let it simmer for awhile. Then I sauteed about 30 quartered and sliced mushrooms in the sauce (with a little more butter of course).

My inspiration for the night was fond memories with my family at Benihana in Japantown. If you've eaten there before, then you might remember that they had this killer ginger soy sauce for dipping ANYTHING. So using this recipe, I whipped up a few cups of a great ginger sauce for the grilled steak and vegetables.

All in all, I think it was good meal. Tina said it was my best yet...which believe me, isn't much considering some of the dishes I've put toegether!

Oh yeah, I learned something new in the process. Our blender has two attachments: the food processor part and the blender part. If you put too much liquid in the food processor part, the liquid starts seeping out through the sides and down the middle. So now I know, FOOD PROCESSOR = chop and puree solids (ie vegetables, food etc). BLENDER = mix in fluids (especially any fluids more than two cups)