Chicken Adobo - 2 yummy ways to cook it...

One of our favorite meals to cook is Chicken Adobo - one of the national dishes of the Philippines. The girls love it and it's frequently requested by Molly during our weekly meal planning (always a good sign for an almost 6 year old). This week we found a new - and I have to say very easy - way to cook this recipe.

The typical way to prepare chicken adobo is simple: a whole cut up chicken, 1/2 cup soy sauce, 3/4 cup vinegar, a lot of garlic (like 1 whole head, cloves crushed and coarsely chopped), freshly ground pepper to taste, 1-2 bay leaves. We usually double the soy sauce and vinegar so that we have extra sauce to put on our rice. And we like to add good sized button mushrooms for mushroom adobo. Then it's basically cook until done. The smells in the house for that short period of time - usually around 20-25 minutes - are just amazing.

However, this time around we cooked half of the chicken adobo using a slow cooker! Wow - that was also really good too. We just let it cook on low for a few hours and wa-laa...chicken adobo. The meat was really tender and practically falling off. Good stuff!

If you happen to try out this recipe, let us know how yours turned out in the Comments section.

Marbles finally makes the blog...

Well, I've been feeling bad that I haven't featured our other little one in the blog yet so...here he is! Marbles! A sweet and mischievous beagle who still has a sneaky streak even at 12 years old. He's starting to lose his hearing now or perhaps he has very selective hearing - especially around dinnertime and the girls. He's Eliza's little shadow when she's got a snack in hand.

Even though he may look rather innocent and sleeps a lot during the day, we're always having to doggy-proof the house when we leave. He knows how to push a little tractor chair that we keep under the kitchen desk over to the counter to find any goodies that we may have left out (e.g. cupcakes, cookies, etc.)! He definitely keeps us on our toes.

"Happy Lizzhee!"

Eliza turned 2 years old on September 18. The day of her birthday she woke up on the wrong side of the bed. We all sang Happy Birthday to her and she just sat down and cried. However a few days later and probably after another singing at school, she got the hang of the whole birthday thing. By the time we had a birthday celebration with some family, she was saying "Happy Lizzhee!" to herself. And she didn't mind opening the presents either.

It's Game Day!

Mizzou won! Woo-hoo! We had great seats in the Mizzou end zone just next to the band. The girls were decked out in Mizzou gear; Molly wore her Tiger cheerleading outfit and Eliza wore a Truman shirt and she wanted to show everyone with whom we talked - Truman on the front and his tail on the back. Eliza loved sitting next to the band and kept wanting to hear "more-more". It was a late game but Molly managed to stay awake the whole game; Eliza fell asleep sometime during the 4th quarter through the most exciting parts (both girls have always managed to take a nap during football games even with all of the hoopla - I wish I could sleep so soundly).

Oh and earlier in the day we visited the Arch. Molly and Eric took the south tram to the top and took some great shots of downtown. Eliza and I just played around in the lobby doing whatever to keep a 2-year old happy...

We're off to the market...Soulard and Urzi's, that is.

Well, before we start our St. Louis adventure, I have to mention that we actually started our St. Louis trek on Thursday night. We left Lees Summit at the end of the work day and headed to Columbia to revel in one of our favorite restaurants of all time - Shakespeare's Pizza. We ordered the cheese garlic bread for a much needed starter (since we were saving up our hunger most of Thursday). Then the main event - an 8" cheese pizza for the girls and a 12" Masterpiece for us. And believe us - it's a masterpiece. Delicious! We also saw Gary Pinkel; I thought that was a good omen for the game.

Anyway, Friday morning took us to a couple of our favorite stops in St. Louis: Soulard Farmers Market and Urzi's Italian Market in The Hill. When visiting St. Louis, we typically hit Soulard Market on Saturday morning with the rest of the crowd but this time around we thought we would try it on a Friday morning. Still as cool as ever with great veggies, fruits, and flowers but we missed the freshly made mini-donuts. We were so bummed as we had forgone breakfast at Union Station for the mini-donuts. We still managed to find something for breakfast - a giant chocolate chip cookie (what can I say, we're on vacation) and an apple thingy at the Soulard Bakery. We also picked up some cherries, bananas, and beautiful fresh spray roses for the Lyngs who we were visiting later that day.

Next stop was Urzi's Italian Market located in The Hill neighborhood. We discovered this wonderful market when we lived in St. Louis over 12 years ago (yikes!). If you love to cook and are looking for wonderful seasonings and visit or live in St. Louis, this is a must-see shop. Even if we are just passing through St. Louis, we make it a point to take stock of our spice inventory in case we need to stop at Urzi's. In the past couple of visits, we've picked up bread dipping seasoning, pizza seasoning, fajita seasoning, and other goodies. This visit we're trying their pizza sauce and a hunk of parmesan cheese - should be yummy.

After Urzi's we headed to an afternoon visit with our friends, the Lyngs. We spent the rest of the afternoon catching up and boating on Lake St. Louis before heading back downtown for dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory at Laclede's Landing. While walking around the landing, we saw plenty of people donning their true colors - black and gold - and got a couple of "Go Tigers!" along the way. We saw some of that ugly orange and blue stuff too (thumbs down as Molly would sign). Oh it's going to be a fun atmosphere!

I think we're ready for football season...

Around our house, our favorite time of year is fall. Cool weather is just around the corner, the leaves start to change, and most important - Mizzou Tiger football. For us it all kicks off with the MU Alumni Picnic in late August just before the MU season opener in St. Louis against Illinois (the fourth game in the Arch Rivalry game). We're pretty excited to head over to St. Louis to watch our Tigers whip up on the Fighting Illini (sorry cousin John!). More to come as we trek over to St. Louis next weekend.

First Day of Gard 2

Eliza too had quite a transition in "school" right after our vacation. All this week she was transitioning from her Toddler group to now the official Gard 2 group for two-year olds. So not only will she be doing art and music but now she gets to go to Spanish in the Library room! She's been doing great at school all week - only a few teary eyed drop offs (not bad after a 2 week vacation); I think the biggest change for her has been not seeing Molly at school like she would before. When I picked up Eliza on Molly's first day of kindergarten, the first thing she said when we walked out of her room was, "Tissy?" I said, "No, sissy is at another school now." I could see the wheels in her mind turning and she understood.

She has become quite the little shadow for all of us; whether it's a quick game of chase around the house to wild abandonment with "tissy-tissy" (a.k.a. sister Molly) to "me up"/"up me" when she is ready to be carried. She's also getting really good with 2-3 word phrases. Some of her favorites are:

• "Ahdoit" = I do it.
• "Ahdidit" = I did it.
• "momma read" (no explanation needed)
• "Ahtry" = I try.
• "Mon mon" = Come on.
• "Mar mar eat" = when Marbles has left his food in his bowl for better morsels under the table