After a full day ending with a parent/son baseball game with Nathan’s team over at Pine Lake park, I decided that I needed to try out a couple recipes from the books that I got for father’s day.  As a main course, I chose to make Asian spice-rubbed pork chops with wild mushroom-soy vinaigrette from the Bobby Flay book.  As a side, I whipped up some Risotto coupled with grilled asparagus wrapped in pancetta with Citronette; chosen from the Mario Batali book. 

We paired a bottle of 2006 Cinsault (columbia valley) limited release Chateau Ste Michelle with the meal and the results were off the chart.

Of course, I have to include some gratuitous shots of the food.  Guys, remember that the best way to continually justify the purchase of a Big Green Egg is to grill dinner often for the family ;-)  I think Erin would have let me spend 10x the amount on a green egg had she known ahead of time the kinds of meals that she would be served throughout the year.

Be sure to get thick 1+” chops

The wild mushroom-soy vinaigrette zaps the taste buds and tastes amazing with the grilled chops

After you wrap the asparagus in pancetta, refrigerate for an hour and you’ll get the best results when grilling

The citronette sauce gives the asparagus a tangy flavor that pairs well with the main course.

Here’s my plate just before I consumed every bite.

I am a spoiled soul.  Erin and the kids made a huge breakfast feast on father’s day with sausage, eggs with peppers, home made coffee cake, strawberries, honey dew and hash browns. In addition to the handmade cards, poems and Ian’s plaster hand print, the kids hooked me up with a couple of awesome BBQ books and grill accessories. 

The first book is Italian Grill by Mario Batali

I can’t wait to try the Beef Braciole “Pinwheel-style” recipe that is a variation of one of my favorite summer recipes; flank steak pinwheels.  The pork shoulder Braciole also looks like it could be a winner. 

The second book is Boy gets Grill by Bobby Flay. 

It is going to be a busy summer in our back yard!

After the great breakfast, my mom stopped by and all of us drove over to Tiger Mountain to hike about 3 1/2 miles to see the Talus Rocks.  Here’s a few shots I took during the hike; click on any of them for a short slide show. 

Despite all of the energy the kids expended on the hike (I think they probably ran 7 or 8 miles back and forth despite the 700+ foot change in elevation), we later met up with Ian’s t-ball team back in Sammamish for a family picnic.  Needless to say, there was not a single complaint last night when bed time arrived

Nope, not a typo.  Snoqualmie pass received well over 6 feet of snow between Tuesday and Friday and the pass itself has only been open to traffic for a couple of hours between Tuesday and this morning.  The PowderPig website (the school that we enrolled the kids in) posted some pictures on their site.  It looked like 5 feet of snow had accumulated on the roof of the chalet and that it would take hours to dig out the chair lifts.  Ian is chomping at the bit to get back to the mountains after last week, but the cancellation was probably a good thing since Nathan is feeling pretty crumby.

Not much else to report (that I can talk about anyway ;-)  I’ll try and post some new videos and pictures soon.

Ian had his last soccer game of the season on Friday October 12th. Here are a few shots, but I uploaded 170+ to flickr. You can click here to see them.

Sorry for the month + lag since my last post, but I’ve been kind of wrapped up in a bunch of things. Right now I’m down in San Diego visiting Kate for the weekend (she’s still asleep at 9:00 AM so give her a hard time).

Two weeks ago I left Microsoft for a new opportunity at Yahoo! And to quell the rumors up front, we are not moving to Sunnyvale because Yahoo is building a presence close to home in Bellevue! I just finished my first week as a Yahoo and I’m feeling a level of excitement and anticipation that I haven’t felt in a long time.

I’ll try and post some pictures of the kids in the next few days because I know that’s 99% of the reason you would take the time to read this blog in the first place

Check out this presentation! It contains all kinds of interesting facts that really make you think about where the world is heading and the precarious state of this country, education, technology, population, etc.

http://www.glumbert.com/media/shift

Thanks Chris, for calling it out on your blog!

Another rite of passage this morning as Nathan lost his 2nd front tooth. I think it was the corn on the cob last night that finally did the trick. He refused to let Erin or I cut it off the cob, but managed to eat it using his bottom teeth only. Kind of funny to watch and so Nathan.

Last year at this time, Nathan was starting his first season of playing t-ball. Today was Nathan’s first baseball practice! This year, they have a pitching machine and Nathan connected with his first pitch.

Last year, it was all about making the kids comfortable with the sport, so they didn’t enforce the rules and each kid had a turn at bat and got to run the bases. This year, they start to play by the rules, which I’m told can make for some long game days

Then there is Cole. I was busy watching Nathan’s practice and when I turned around to look for Cole, I found him at the top of the monkey bars and quickly shot this picture of our fearless little climber.

Finally, here’s a shot I took of Ian before packing it in and calling it a day. It’s going to be a fun Springtime

This past Friday, Erin and I visited the O/8 Seafood Grill with another couple. I’m not a professional food critic (not to state the obvious) but we were very pleased with the menu, the service and the atmosphere. Highly recommended! I had the Mahi with Wasabi sauce and Erin the Salmon. BTW, the seafood bisque is unbelieveable! Try the pear torte for dessert too!

The restaurant is in the Bellevue Hyatt on 8th and Bellevue way…..

Well I’m sure that by now you have all heard about the terrible wind storm that hit last Thursday. I’ll spare you all of the details other than to say that we are grateful that we were safe and that our property wasn’t damaged. We lost power for three days, but we made the best of it.

Here’s a pic that I took the day after the storm while trying to drive to Microsoft; in addition to losing power, we had no phone service (landline or mobile).

And here are some shots of the boys camping out and of course no disaster would be complete without Ian hamming it up. He decided to bundle up in his mom’s hat and scarf.