Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms

So lately, we've been in sort of a food rut. Eating the same things week in, week out. This week we are attempting to break free from that problem. Last night Brian had decided to make stuffed bell peppers. Well that idea got tossed when we saw stuffed portobellos in the prepared case at the grocery store. Same concept, different veggie! What resulted was one of Brian's unique, healthy and yummy concoctions, which I hope to capture here. Definitely worth trying and making me hopeful that we will bust out of this food rut yet! :)

Ingredients:

• 4 large portobello mushroom caps (we got ours at costco)
• Fresh veggies (we used onions, garlic, summer squash, zucchini, bell pepper and the portobello stems)
• 1 can diced tomatos drained (I suppose you could use fresh, but we had none!)
• Extra lean ground turkey (about 1/4 to 1/2 pound)
• Seasoning (we used a new, no salt seasoning blend we found, but just about anything will work, even grill seasonings)
• Shredded cheese (Brian made his without and mine with)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare the portobellos by removing the stems and placing them in a 9x13" pan filled halfway with luke warm water. Heat two skillets or frying pans with a little bit of olive oil or cooking spray. Add garlic and onions to one pan and saute for a few minutes before beginning to add the other veggies. Our tip is to add the veggies in the order of how long they will take to cook, usually hardest to softest, if that makes any sense! In the other pan, add some garlic and cook the ground turkey. About halfway through cooking, add the seasoning that you're going to use. Once both the veggies and ground turkey are done cooking, mix the two into one skillet and begin stuffing the mushrooms. If desired, sprinkle a little shredded cheese on the tops. Place in oven, uncovered and bake for 30 minutes. Serve immediately and enjoy! :)

Some of my Favorites

Lately, I have been cleaning out and organizing our photos. Not an easy task with my trigger happy fingers. I decided I want to create an album with nothing but our absolute best and/or favorite pictures. Here are a few that will be making the cut...

Time passes by so quickly!

It's hard to believe that it's May already. So much has happened this year, so many fun things ahead of us. This is our year of change I think. We finally seemed to have settled into a good routine - one that puts us used to the racing, the traveling, the family, the friends. I've enjoyed breaking out and trying new things and shaking life up a little bit. I went to Colorado to visit some new friends - Kia, Sarah, Susan, Suzanne, Becky - love those girls! In the process, I met a few other nice ladies - Cindy, Chris and Jennifer. We spent an entire weekend in Fairplay, Colorado (in the mountains near Denver) at a crop. And no, that's not harvesting vegetables! LOL :) I got a lot done, made some great new friends (some of which I hope to spend many more girls' weekends with!) and I even flew on a plane by myself for the first time, which is huge considering I'm not such a huge fan of flying!



All in all, it's been a busy first few months of the year and it's not looking to slow down any time soon! Here's a pic from my trip to Colorado - I miss those girls and that place!!! :)

Is it really March already?

Where does the time go anyway?! I guess I should really put in some serious effort now to get this thing up and moving along. I've sort of been slacking on it!

I don't have much to write tonight - by this time of the week, I'm usually tired and ready for the weekend to start already. But I will be back soon to give my very own recipe for healthy, easy, super fast and way-better-than-the-original snickers bars from scratch. Mmmmmmmm :)

For now, here's a great picture I took of our furry little monsters in a rare moment of cuddling (with each other and all the toys!) :)

Merry Christmas Everyone!

In the spirit of the holidays, here are some pictures of the snow in our part of the world earlier in 2006. Scarlet loved licking/eating the snow. :)

A vineyard near the Pinnacles:

A view of the Carmel Mountains from our neighborhood, about three blocks from our house:

Highway 146 on the way out to the Pinnacles (about 10 miles from our house):

Scarlet exploring the snow:




And yes, Brian did throw snowballs at her and she did end up with snow all over herself ;) LOL
We hope everyone has a safe, happy holiday!

The last trip of the year - Panama City Beach Florida

It wasn't as warm as I thought it would be. In fact, it wasn't really warm at all - I ended up wearing pants and a sweater 95% of the time we were there! We had a relatively smooth flight back to Florida and managed to get there on time, with everything and NOT lost! To say that the airport in Panama City Beach is small is an understatement. We knew it was a municipal airport, but holy cow! We landed, went down the stairs on our puddle jumper (it literally had propellers on the wings) and walked straight into the airport. The airport is so tiny it has four gates, one terminal, one check-in counter, one restaurant, one waiting area, one baggage claim, one rental counter, one security check and you could walk from the gate to the baggage claim in about 45 seconds! It also had this really cool sea green and coral colored tile walls - that's right - tile walls - inside and out. Like we stepped back in time to the 1950s.

We drove the hour out to our time share in Destin (near Pensacola) and we ended up with a nice big condo - three bedrooms, two baths, living room, dining room, kitchen, laundry and screened patio overlooking the beach. It was way more than we needed, but nice nonetheless!




We spent the majority of the weekend lazing around our room, shopping and driving back & forth between the time share and the race location in Panama City. As for Brian's race on Saturday, November 4, 2006 - the Florida Ironman - it was a tough one. Lots of competition - I was astounded at the mass start - over 2,000+ people went into the ocean, all at the same time!




It was exciting to watch Brian hit his target times on the swim and the bike, but I could see the exhaustion in him as he finished his bike ride. It worried me, but I hoped he could rough out the marathon. He ended up coming back from his first loop of the marathon walking and decided to end his race there. It was disappointing, but a good learning experience for timing the distance between his races for what he is able to do. Here are a few pics from the race:





In the end, Brian decided to return to the same race next year and focus more time training & less time racing in 2007 - I guess we'll see about that! Despite the outcome of this race, we had an enjoyable weekend in Florida and look forward to returning next year. Hopefully, we'll get better weather next time! :)

Sometimes you just have to get right back on and ride again....

Brian said that as we sat in the airport on Saturday, September 30, 2006. We had to connect through Chicago on our way to Atlanta and both of us were a little wary of going through any ordeals at O'Hare again. Turned out that saying also applied quite well to Brian's race too.

We started off our first day with all of our flights running pretty much on time. There was a small thunderstorm delay in Chicago on our way to Atlanta, which ended up delaying two of our suitcases. Amazingly though, the bike and the smallest suitcase made it. Murphy's law for you I guess! It was really funny in Chicago because we happened to see Brian's bike come off our plane from San Jose and the baggage guy grabbed it by the tag they put on it, which, of course, ripped off the barcode and identifying info. So Brian asks for the camera and proceeds to take pictures. It was hilarious and borderline humiliating all at the same time! He wanted photographic proof to nail the incompetant baggage handlers if it became necessary. Fair enough right?!



The delay in my suitcase meant I had no clothes, so the nice agent at the Avis counter gave me directions to the nearby Target and we went off in search of it. We finally arrived at our timeshare condo after dark and were very pleasantly surprised to find that it was in a beautiful community located on Lake Tara between Villa Rica and Carrolltown, Georgia, about 45 minutes from downtown Atlanta to the south west.



On Sunday we went to Six Flags over Georgia. We rode the best and worst of the US's rollercoasters and had a great time! The best was the Goliath, which we had seen on the Travel Channel being designed and built. It truly is amazing and lots of fun!



The worst was this horrible old wood rollercoaster - thought we were seriously going to be injured on it. I think we're both done with wood roller coasters for good now!

We enjoyed a nice quiet dinner for our anniversary that night.

Monday we headed over to Kennesaw National Park near Marietta, Georgia.



There was an extensive civil war museum, which was very interesting and the park was beautiful. What surprised us was that the landscape still shows the scars of the battles - trees damaged by cannons and gunfire, trenches left in tact. The trenches were amazing - you could easily see all the trenches from the back and sides, but if you went around to the direction the opposing side would be coming at you, the trenches were completely undectible.



We did take a little time to wander around downtown Marietta's antique shops. Loved the townsquare - it was really nice.



Brian treated me to breakfast Tuesday morning at the Flying Biscuit, which I had seen on $40 a day. It lived up to the recommendation and we both enjoyed our meals! We went the Atlanta Botantical Gardens in Piedmont Park, which we really enjoyed.

We took some of our best pictures there.

Here's Brian's best:


Here's mine:


We followed up by going to the World of Coca-Cola Musuem - Brian wanted to drink himself into a caffiene induced stupor :) The musuem was cool - a floor of memorabilia with a old fashioned soda counter, complete with soda jerk. There was also a theater which endlessly looped all the commercials, in order, that Coke has ever had. Needless to say, we skipped that, however, we did recognize the jingle instantly when we walked past the theater! The best (and arguably) worst part was the two taste testing rooms...

Can you tell he's drinking too much caffiene yet?! :) LOL


One room had sodas from the US, the other had sodas from around the world. The bottom line is mixing sodas is not such a good idea. Makes your stomach a little upset ;) Brian was taking full dixie cups of each. I only had my favorites and tried very few of the international. We had done this before at Epcot in Disney World in 2002, but I guess with time we forgot. Well, we won't forget again! The worst was "Bitter Apertif", an Italian soda. Had to drink a gallon of Sprite just to get the taste out of my mouth and I only had a sip - Brian had a whole shot of that stuff! :)

Next up was the Atlanta Zoo. Honestly, it wasn't as good as San Francisco's or even Sacramento's, but we still enjoyed it. There weren't many people, so it was easy to see the animals. The zoo has a brand new baby panda and some really cute baby gorillas, so it was worth the look.






On Wednesday, we went to Stone Mountain, which was really cool.


It is over 1,000 feet tall, with a 5 mile circumference and the exposed granite actually goes about 8 miles underground. The carving in the face of the mountain is actually bigger than Mount Rushmore, if I understood the guide right! :) The carving is of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson (I think). We took the gondola up to the top and visited the Antebellum Plantation on the grounds of the park. The plantation was really cool - they moved many of the buildings there from all over the state of Georgia. The most interesting thing we saw was a toe toaster. It was an iron contraption that toasted bread - when one side was done, they would tap one edge with their toes and it would rotate the bread to the other side - very clever!



We met up with Brian's Aunt Norma and Uncle Buster for lunch, which was a lot of fun. Then we went decided to go race go karts and play mini golf. It was a lot of fun :)



Thursday we checked out of our timeshare and went to the Margaret Mitchell House. It is a really cool museum centered around her life, the writing of Gone with the Wind and the making of the film. The actual house is where she lived with her second husband and wrote Gone with the Wind.


We spent the rest of Thursday and Friday getting ready for Brian's race and visiting with Norma, Buster, Mary (Norma's Mom), Tim, Lynn, Precious and Pumpkin (have to mention the two adorable dogs too!). Chuck, Brian's bike mechanic, arrived on Friday evening and we were ready for the race!

Brian did well (see his story about in the blog) and won his age group! :) He's officially, the 2006 World Solo Champion for the 30 to 34 Age Group. Pretty cool! :)

The support crew for this race....
Me, of course (my attendance is mandatory!)

Chuck, the mechanic

Tim & Lynn - Lynn ended up being Brian's doctor in the middle of the night when his wrists went bad on him from the bumpy, dry track:

Mary & Norma (we didn't get a picture of Norma! I don't know what happened there!)



All in all, we wish we could have stayed a few more days to visit more with our family, but we had a great time! :) In the airport the morning we left, Brian curled up and took a nap behind a pillar - it was quite the spectacle ;)


We had nice flights and naps on our way back and we hope to return to Atlanta visit again sometime soon! :)

If this is a bad dream can somebody PLEASE just wake me up?!

I was going to post an expanded version, but I think this is just right and the expanded version can live in our photoalbums. ~ Amanda :)

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Ahhhh.....the infamous trip to Wisconsin, America's Dairyland. I keep putting off posting this because it makes me think about that trip, something I'd rather not remember! Regardless, here is the post, with a few pictures... and although some of you have already heard some of this in bits n' pieces, here it is nonetheless. To say the least it was an adventure, however, I think that's putting it awfully nicely....

Number of days of trip: 5
Percentage of time spent in airports: 20%
Cancelled flights: 1 (Chicago to Green Bay due to severe weather in both areas)
Missed flights: 1 (flight home by 15 minutes)
# of times running from one end of Chicago O'Hare airport to the other: 1, distance approximately 3/4 of a mile to 1 mile - remember the beginning of the movie Home Alone? Same airport, same running, further distance than actually shown in movie...trust me.
Delayed baggage: 5 out of 7 bags/bikes/boxes (both UPS and United Airlines on the way to Wisconsin)
# of tornado warnings: 2
# of electrical storms (thunder + lightening): 6+
# of massive meltdowns: 3 (one per traveler - mechanic over 2nd tornado warning, mine over my breakfast being consumed on the last day by someone other than myself and Brian's in O'Hare the 2nd time we got stuck there on our way back)
# of cornfields/cows: too many to count
Pro football players we met: 1 - Cory Rodgers, a rookie wide receiver for the Green Bay Packers
Miles driven: approx. 900
# of times we got lost driving: approx. 20
Places seen aside from race: 2 (1st = Lake Michigan for 5 minutes, until Brian started being eaten alive by biting flies & 2nd = downtown Chicago as I raced to a UPS store to ship our stuff home, aka the reason we missed our flight home)
# of Competitors in Brian's race division (24 Hour Men's Solo National Championship): 26
Place Brian was in at time race was cancelled due to severe weather: 9th
Place Brian would have been in if race had been completed: approx. 4th or 5th
# of 14 mile laps completed: 16.5 - official result count as of 19.5 hour cutoff is 15
# of 14 mile laps he would have completed: approx. 19 or 20
Pro mountain bikers we met: 2 - Nat Ross (super nice guy - really enjoyed talking with him - he took 2nd) and Mark Henderson (really nice guy too - he took 3rd)
# of times Brian ran into a tree in the forest: 2
# of times Brian crashed: 0
# of bananas Brian consumed: approx. 20 in 24 hours
# of gross bagels with mashed potatoes Brian consumed: approx. 8 (byproduct of hotel situation - long story, amazingly disgusting results!)
# of trips to Walmart Supercenters: 3
# of times we saw a nasty meat and/or cheese concoction being prepared and/or consumed: 20+
Interesting related fact: one of the top 10 cardiac centers in the US was 10 miles from the race. Coincidence? Not in my opinion!
# of Cheesehead(s) purchased: 0 :(
Average temperatures: 75 at night, 95 during day with 97% humidity
Items ruined by weather: 1 pair jeans, 1 pair running shoes, 1 corned beef sandwich
# of nice people we met: approx 12 (Cory Rodgers - see above, 1 we gave a ride to on the way up to Green Bay, numerous people at the race, 2 guys on the flight home, one that each of us sat next to - yay for flying stand by!)
Most unusual event: I made a french dip sandwich at a Days Inn using a toaster and coffee maker. Go figure.
Funniest moment: Comment from my brother when we were driving home Monday - there was an accident on Highway 101 South in between the airport and home. We got off the freeway and took side roads, however, Tom described the accident as big rig vs. blue volvo - celery spilled on North and South bound lanes. Tom's comment? "Produce clean up on Aisle 101!" HAHAHA - I paraphrase, but it was a funny end to a very long trip :)

A special thanks to my coworker Anita for being our travel agent and securing a rental car from O'Hare, to my coworker Kaye for her words of support and suggestions on several occasions, to my brother Tom for helping us out of our travel jams on several occasions and to our parents and my sister Katie for all the phone calls/dog sitting/etc this weekend!

Mishicot, Wisconsin

The "bike store" in Green Bay...

Lake Michigan
The Start of the race

Our campsite, before the storm:

Our campsite once the storm really started:

One of the few good pictures from our trip...

Yay for summer!

So we've been otherwise occupied with watching the Tour de France this month...getting ready for our trip...spending quality time with family and friends....watching big brother now that its back on! It has hardly given me a moment's rest, but it's nice to be busy and have things running smoothly. Well smoothly if you don't count the madness at work, the mandatory pre-A race rest and all the other craziness of life this month!

Next week is the big trip to Wisconsin, which we are both excited for! Should be a new adventure! I'm looking forward to checking the place out and cheering on Brian! Wish us luck! I'll be back in about two weeks with my own version of a race report/vacation report!! :)