Salt Lake City Farmer's Market

Yesterday morning, Jenny and I went to the Salt Lake City Farmers Market to browse around. We got there around 9.30am, so it was already pretty packed. There are a ton of booths for veggies, honey, fruit, arts, crafts, food, bread, etc. We ended up getting a couple of (huge) zucchini to make stuff zucchini, a 2 pound bottle of honey from Knight Family Honey, and lunch from a Sudanese vendor. We knew the Sudanese food was going to be really good because we've been to their restaurant out in West Valley already (someone remind me later to do up a proper review on that place... it's very tasty). The next time we head out there, we'll have our choice of Caribbean, Mexican, BBQ, Argentinean, Indian, Thai, fresh made noodles, blah blah blah. The Caribbean place was serving these jerked kabobs that smelled amazing, so I'm thinking that's where I'm going to pick next. I'll let you guys know how that is.

Another fun thing about the Market is sampling various things. While wandering around, we sampled honey from 5 different booths, hummus (the company is called Freaky Monkey, or Happy Monkey or something), jerky, watermelon, cantaloup, cherries, and greyhounds. Yeah, you heard me. We sampled some greyhounds while we were there. There was a booth for the GPA in Salt Lake where you could sample the affection of a retired racing greyhound. The Indian booth (mentioned above) also had samples that were pretty good, although I have to admit that eating Indian food out of a little plastic cup was almost too challenging for me.

Blog Confessions of a Honeybee

I hate Saturday mornings. I get to work this morning to discover that all of the honey is gone AGAIN! Completely gone. The other workers and I have been haulin' pollen all week long to make up for our hive getting cleaned out last week, and the week before, etc. We are all getting pretty sick of it, so we decided to knock off early today and just cruise around for a bit.

Imagine my surprise when I fly into Farmer's Market in Salt Lake and discovered what has been happening to all of our honey!

I'm cruising down the aisles and decided to stop in at the Knight Family Honey stand to sample some of the competition's wares. The guy giving out samples squeezes some honey onto a cracker and I'm thinking "man, this smells almost exactly like our honey". Then I take a taste. That is our honey! Oh man, and now this dude's trying to pawn my own honey back to me for $8 a pound! Do you have any idea how long it takes us to make a pound of honey?!

I may start posting again soon...

I am warning everyone ahead of time... when this semester of school is out and I have a little more time, I may start posting on this blog again. Also, I may not adhere to food-related topics.

Green Chile Rice Casserole

Cheryl's awesome recipe that Jenny made for dinner tonight:

• 1 14 oz box Minute Rice - prepared (6 servings)
• 1 cup sour cream
• 4 oz can diced green chiles
• 1 can cream of celery soup (undiluted)
• 1/2 lb monterey jack cheese
• 1/2 lb sharp cheddar cheese (grated)

combine ingredients - bake 30 minutes at 350. Can be mixed ahead and baked later. Chicken or ham can also be added (Jenny used chicken; Cheryl used ham)

What we're eating lately...

We've cut back on going out to eat in the last couple of months. We now go out once a week on a date night dinner. On Monday, we went to Epic Casual Dining. The appetizers were excellent, as usual, but the entrees were only OK this time.

To start, we had the chicken flat bread. This is one of the best appetizers in the world. I'm not even going to describe it in the blog, just go try it. We also had a couple of crab cakes, which are flaky and light. The sauce they come with is sweet and slightly tangy, but mellow enough to allow the nice flavor of the cakes to come through. They serve it with a homemade coleslaw that is fresh and crispy, but I didn't polish that off this time, because I wanted to save a little more stomach real estate for my entree.

As an entree, I had the Pacific White Shrimp over angel hair pasta. The shrimp was ok, but I think it had been frozen for a while before being thawed for my meal (think weeks, not days). The sauce was good, but a little heavy on the soy sauce. I would definitely not call it a $20 meal.

Jenny had a sirloin steak that was pepper crusted... very heavily. The steak was a pretty good cut, and the sauce was very good. If I remember correctly, it was a light peanut sauce. The pepper crusting on the steak overpowered the steak.

My recommendation for Epic is to definitely go and try their appetizers, but consider carefully before diving into an entree. Also, their salads are pretty darn good.

U of Utah!

Last Wednesday I checked my admission status and saw "Admitted". What a pleasant surprise! I am pretty excited that they (the Admissions Committee) are giving me a chance to come to the U, even though my transcripts look pretty awful. The funniest thing is the letter I opened from them when I got home from work on Thursday telling me that my scholastic history is below the U's normal admission standards and that I will be on academic probation and required to meet with an academic adviser for the first little while. Oh, and I have to keep my GPA above 2.0. I am going to be majoring in Chinese. It will probably take me about 7 years to finish everything if I go to school Spring, Summer and Fall semesters, but it will be a good lesson for me to learn (stay in school).

Update on my educational pursuits

Hi everyone. Yesterday afternoon I submitted my application for consideration to be admitted to the University of Utah. After speaking with the Admissions office (a couple of times), the transfer center, the academic advising office and the language advisement office, I feel that I have a decent chance of being considered for acceptance. My High School transcripts and the 3 classes I took at Cuesta back in '95 and '97 aren't going to help at all, but I am hoping that my SAT score, my recent grade from a math class I took online from SLCC and the letter I sent to the Admission Committee will at least give me a chance. We'll see. :) If I do not get accepted, I am still enrolled to start classes at SLCC in the Fall.