New coral reef succulent display and a project update!

Hello blog readers! If you're also friends with me on facebook, which Im pretty sure every single one of you are, then you already know about my awesome new succulent coral reef! Awesome, am I right? I was inspired by this beautiful reef bed planting http://pieceofeden.blogspot.com/2011/01/sherman-gardens-coral-reef-succulent.html  You should really take a look at it.

All it needs are some fish swimming around and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference! Succulents are amazing plants. They come in so many unique shapes and colors. I chose mine for light blue and sea foam green colors as well as wavy and coral-like shapes. I through in a Golden Sedum and purple and blue Echeveria "Neon Breakers" for a color pop.

I really think the Gollum Jade looks very much like a coral. With its tube shaped leaves and green and red color you almost expect a clown fish to come swimming out from behind it!

From the top it looks just like looking into a fish tank! Can you tell Im pretty proud of it? I think its pretty damn cool. I used green glass pebbles to give it a watery look and added some stones for texture.

Ok now on to the brief project update.

Here it is! Not even half done cuz I've been a bit lazy and busy. Can you tell what it is yet? Sean can't and hes even seen the pattern picture. Men!

This is made up of 391  2.5 in squares and will be 5ft 7in tall when I finish. Its already looking pretty awesome.

How to make the best roasted artichokes ever!

When I was visiting my family in Salinas everyone was talking about the great artichokes that were in season right now. When I got back home I noticed artichokes just happen to be on sale at my grocery store. It was fate! I rushed out and bought some and here is how I like to cook them.

Their are beniftis to oven roasting your artichokes. Artichokes are an excellent source of dietary fiber, magnesium, and the trace mineral chromium. They are a very good source of vitamin C, folic acid, biotin, and the trace mineral manganese. They are a good source of niacin, riboflavin, thiamin, vitamin A, and potassium. They have also been found to help lower cholesterol. When you use the most popular method of cooking artichokes, boiling, you lose a lot of those vitamins and minerals to the water. Steaming is also a fine way to keep the goodness in the artichoke but I find that it doesn't impart as much flavor as roasting.

Select artichokes that are heavy for their size and globe shaped with tight leaves. Smaller non-jumbo artichokes will usually be more arrow shaped, that's fine its just how the smaller ones are. I used jumbos that were very large cuz I'm a jumbo food kinda girl!

Once you've selected your artichokes now its time to prepare it for roasting.

Fist you want to cut the steam off right at the base to create a flat bottom so it will stand up on its own in the oven. If your steam is large enough you can peel it and cook it along side the artichoke.

Next cut the top 2 inches off. None of this is edible anyway and it opens up the artichoke for flavor maximization!

Use a paring knife to cut out a bit of the inside leaves. You'll be cutting just the small undeveloped leaves you don't eat anyway. Be very careful. The inside leaves can have very sharp thorns.

Isn't it cute! Like a little barrel ready to be filled with flavor!

Now place the prepared artichoke on a large piece of heavy duty foil. Enough foil to wrap the artichoke up later. Now peel as much garlic as you would like. I recommend at least 6 cloves per choke. I love me some garlic though and ended up using about 10.

 Now pull apart the leaves and sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper. Cut a lemon in half and squeeze the juice over the artichoke. Use half a fresh lemon for each choke. Place garlic cloves in the hollowed out middle and cut the remaining cloves and place them between the leaves. Drizzle the whole thing with a good olive oil and wrap up tight.

Place the wrapped chokes in the middle of a 350 degree oven. I know its not in the picture but I recommend placing them on a sheet pan because one of mine did end up leaking oil. Mine took 2 hours but if you're not using such big chokes it should take about an hour and a half.

And out comes the best artichoke you've ever had! Look at it! Its beautiful! You don't even need sauce! If you do feel the need for a sauce I'll let you know what I use.

I love mayo one my artichokes but it is god awful for you. So here my compromise on a mayo sauce.
My sauce uses low fat sour cream to cut some of the fat of the mayo. You can also substitute Greek yogurt for the sour cream. Also feel free the make it with no mayo at all for an even lower fat version. 

Sour cream/mayo garlic artichoke dipping sauce:
 Makes enough for about 3 artichokes.

    1/3rd cup Sour cream or Greek yogurt
    1 oz. Olive oil Mayo
    1ts fresh lemon juice
    1/2 ts Garlic powder
    2 cloves of garlic put through a press or very finely minced
    Salt and Pepper to taste

If you don't like garlic you can add other flavors to this sauce instead.
Chili powder or Cayenne pepper would be nice instead of garlic.
Add a little more lemon juice and some zest for a lemony sauce.
Or go in an Asian direction by adding a little sesame oil, honey, lemon and Worcestershire sauce. Expand your artichoke dipping horizons!

Went to Salinas, drive home went horrible awry.

Sorry for my lack of posts. I've been pretty busy working on my project and I was out of town visiting my lovely family.

So firstly I'll tell you about my trip to Salinas. It was great. I got to see my family for a whole 3 days including my cousin Jordynnes new baby, Areylia.

Thats one fresh baby pulled right from the baby maker.

Me holding a 3 week old slightly less fresh baby.

Justine and I had a great time hanging out and catching up with family and friends. We had a pizza party graduation for my cousin Jordynne that was awesome and fun. I'm glad that my friends Caitie and Lexi could make it! :) The girls and I got to go check out the new Goodwill and Savers. At Savers we found some real winners of awesomely crappy romance novels featuring some sort of were-people. So far I'm reading Bengal's Heart and its pretty fantastic. I think I might review it here on my blog when I'm finished. 

Now, on to the epically horrible drive home. My car has been having some brake issues. Basically it sometimes doesn't stop when you push the brake. You have to pump it and then its fine. Its not as scary as it sound and it happens only in close traffic where you're using the brake a lot and even then its less than 50% of the time. So I groomed my aunts dog when I was in Salinas in exchange for her to get my car looked at by her mechanic.(If that doesn't sound like a fair trade, you've never groomed my aunts dog. She awful.) So a couple hours and $60 charge later the dude says he can't find anything wrong with it and I just take it home. 

Sunday morning I get up at 6am and we're on the road by 7:30am. Everything is going fine and we're just 2 hours from home when I seem to hit a rock or something and my car starts making a sound like something is stuck on the tire. So we pull off the road and get out to take a look under the car. We see nothing under the car or on the wheel. Justine calls her mechanic friend and he says we might have hit something bad enough to brake the bands in the tire and make an air bubble in the wheel. This is bad news as if that is the case the tire could explode and we would be driving not only without our left front tire but with no brakes or steering. Oh and also it could take out the front left light and a whole bunch of other bad stuff that would probably end in us flying down the road in a fishtailing fiery ball of death.

Not cool guys!

So, naturally, we're pretty freaked out and shitty luck has landed us in a town of closed mechanic shops and no walmart, autozone, pepboys or any other chain type mechanic place. Seriously Santa Barbara wtf? The closest thing we can find is an Autozone 14 miles away. Is it safe to drive the car that far you ask? Why no! Of course not! Do we have any other choice? No. 

So off we go!

At 20 mph.

In a 45 mph zone.

SO as to not appear to just be a dick driving so slow we put our hazard lights on and proceed to take a nice 45 min 14 mile drive. We're almost to the Autozone and a biker pulls up along side our car and says "Do you know you have your hazard lights on?" 

To which Justine replies " Well we have a hazard."

He bids us good luck and we drive on to the Autozone. After that I just lost my shit for a second and started laughing slightly hysterically and turned to Justine and said "Justine, did you know we have our hazard lights on?" It had been a stressful day people.

  

We had already been calling people and figuring shit out for 2 hours so by the time we reach the auto zone we are 2 hours and 45 mins behind schedule. The people there were very helpful and got our car looked at quickly. after about 40 mins he comes in and says that its not our tire. Apparently, one of the bolts for our calipers wasn't put on tightly enough and it fell off. So we were driving with our left front brake hanging off.

Thanks a lot Salinas mechanic! You almost killed us! That is shoddy work at best! 

I will be sending him the paper work from Autozone and getting my money back from him! It was one of the worst times of my life and he owes me for it! 

After all that we did make it home by about 5pm. Pretty long day. I'm glad to be home but it could have gone a lot smoother.

Here are some pictures of the lovely orchid my mom bought me at the farmers market to calm me down after telling that horrible story.