where oh where is mom?!?!

we miss you mom!!!

buki has a surprise for jess!

buki attempts to drown unicorn

buki new videos

buki talking about how awesome she is...

clearly she thinks very highly of herself...

and buki having an "emo" day...

in case you didn't know, "emo" is the fourth most dangerous word parents need to be concerned about.

buki is a very complicated feline.

LUNNER!!!!

another happy halloween eve...

as soon as i saw this flick group, i knew i needed to jump on the cats in hats bandwagon... of course, halloween is the perfect excuse!

tomorrow we'll dress up, but only if we don't get killed in our sleep for the following photos.







i'm pretty sure the photos say it all, so happy halloween from panda panda & buki!

lots going on!!

ryan and i have both been working lots, and i've also been very busy with school stuffs. weight watchers is still going well... i lost another pound at my last weigh in, which is right on track with recommended healthy weight loss. i survived this weekend partly because ryan was working, and i've made some yummy food!

last night we had the leek & bean cassoulet from veganomicon, but i decided to skip the biscuits to keep it core plan-compatible.

tonight i made a super delicious stuffed squash! i adapted it from a weight watchers recipe, and it was surprisingly good.



recipe!

ingredients:

1 acorn squash
8 oz of white mushrooms, sliced thinly
1 shallot, diced
2 large cloves of garlic, minced
2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 cups cooked brown rice
2 tsp of soy sauce
1 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp dried sage
1/4 tsp ground savory
1/4 tsp nutmeg
salt + pepper to taste
2 T dry sherry

1. preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. slice acorn squash in half, or get someone strong to do it for you!
3. spray with extra virgin olive oil. i use this nifty thing, but rub with olive oil before using store-bought cooking spray! salt + pepper.
4. roast face down on a baking sheet for about 40-50 minutes, or until soft.
5. while squash is roasting, heat 2 tsp of olive oil in skillet. add mushrooms and cook until they release their liquid.
6. add shallots and garlic and cook until shallots soften.
7. sprinkle herbs and nutmeg on top of mushrooms and let sit to reconstitute for a minute or so. stir to incorporate.
8. add cooked brown rice and stir to combine. add soy sauce and sherry and allow to cook out for a couple minutes or so.
9. when acorn squash is softened, take out of oven and stuff with stuffing! stick it back in the oven for 10 minutes or so to heat through.

ryan finished his side, but i was unable to finish mine so i'd say each "side" is a very generous serving!

finally, a gratuitous kitty shot!

a random entry!

a couple of weekends ago, ryan and i found some new pyrex at some local thrift stores! it was great to find these pieces so cheaply...


weight watchers has been going well... it was tough towards the end of the week because we were running out of groceries, but i was able to be creative. today i made a quick lunch... baked tofu with korean bbq sauce & fried rice with garlic, scallions, bok choy, and corn. it could have used a bit more veggies, but i was feeling pretty lazy.


last, but not least, a rare photo of panda panda!

medium

i have an obvious fascination with my preferred audio medium. and a couple of months ago i was able to purchase a couple white whales:
[starflyer 59's s/t gold lp and mxpx's teenage politics lp.]
while the phrase "white whale" is used lightly(i mean it isn't as if i had to kill anything or track down these things with a harpoon), i have wanted these albums for quite a while, and was shocked when i was able to get them. great art, and a beautiful medium.

i also was able to complete my damien jurado vinyl collection:

damien jurado
[left to right/top to bottom]

lps:
waters ave s.
where shall you take me?
and now that i'm in your shadow
i break chairs
on my way to absence
four songs[one sided lp w/ b side etching]
the fabulous century

7's:
halo friendly
motorbike
trampoline
vary[clear blue]
big let down
devil in the woods #52 v/a hand #'d 652/666
damien jurado/dolorean split


next week 'caught in the trees' comes out...so i will need to get that, but for now it is complete.

and finally buki is using her scratching post:

ryan 2's birthday get-together!

for ryan's birthday, i made a strawberry kittee kake with strawberry cream cheese frosting! i don't make many cakes so frosting & decorating (if you can call it that) it was an experience, to say the least! oh, and buki helped!

bike-apaloza

last monday i finally got a new bike. my old bike was old and not well engineered for long travels. so we decided that it was high time that i got a new bike. although the picture does not do the bike justice. it's a specialized
globe sport. i have cut my biking travels by about 15mins, which is great(my trip is now about 1hr 5mins). i also got a helmet and some riding gloves. especially since my most recent blog about the lady that we witnessed get hit by a car, it made it pretty clear to me that i need to be safe when i am biking as far as i am.

last night we had a great night. we enjoyed our first night with cable tv. we felt remarkably normal and strange. although jess has been extremely annoyed at my following of the olympics and cubs, we have been enjoying our freedom of changing stations and not dvds. also buki has a problem worse than chicken, she is now a full-blown beer box-aholic

we also decided last week that we are going back to our favorite vacation spot. here is a polaroid from a past visit to hawk valley:


so psyched for november!!!!

good news....not as good news...

so we never told you the best/worst part of this weekend! jess didn't have to get "mouth raped"[pardon our rather lurid euphemism for wisdom teeth removal] this weekend because the doctors were being a bit persnickety about payment. jess isn't out of the clear for long, she is working on finding a doctor that she prefers. so for now her mouth is safe...wellll sort of.

three days ago she began getting a sore throat. complete with mouth squeakiness and ouchiness. it wasn't long before she began to sound like our cat panda panda. while most of you have yet to meet panda panda,[panda panda juniper chacey to her parents when she is being silly] she has yet to learn how to meow in what would be considered a typical cat sound. it sounds more like a squeak. and since i am not that great at onomatopoeia i cannot describe it particularly well. anywho...at this point, jess is not well, so we have to see if we can get her into the doctor today. which is poo, 'cause who wants to be sick on such a nice day?!?! but she definitely wants to be well when her school starts, which is only two weeks away!!! i was looking forward to getting back into the swing of things with work(since this is my third day in two weeks), but a bear has to do what a bear has to do.

princess buki?

princess chunk surely gives buki something to strive for... did someone say CHICKEN?!

even when your mornings are like this....

cats are pretty much still better than children.

Oh my bloggness!

Where have we been? Well we have been busy, and maybe a bit blogged out. Not that we haven’t had many many many things to blog about. I know it’s been nearly a month, but being that we do not have many faithful readers, I guess we didn’t feel too obligated. So if your out there let us know!!!!

Oh goodness! Jess is almost done with school…less than a week to go! Whoa!

Oh and remember when we posted our weights, and said we would weigh in once a month, well we both did great! We weighed in april 6th, and jess lost 6.2 pounds and I lost 8 pounds….so go PANDA-WATCHERS! Next Sunday will be our second weigh-day. So hopefully we can prove that panda watchers is an official healthy way of living, and then we can sell it and market it.


The kitties have been up to their savage selves:






Tonight we have been having a Wes Anderson Sunday, we watched ‘bottle rocket’ and now we are watching ‘rushmore’….goodness great films…and here is a montage of the best parts from rushmore:

sunday spring cleaning....

it’s way too early in the morning, and i of course am awake. i try to let jess get her sleep on the weekend, but often times she is awoken by me doing something. usually playing scrabbleblast.

last night we had an enjoyable night, giving each other the freedom to spend some money we decided we could afford to spend. jess got an amazing amount of items for 50$, making her cash stretch at Marshals and Bed Bath & Beyond. i got four new records, jose gonzalez’s ‘in our nature’, vampire weekend’s self titled album, cancer conspiracy’s ‘omega’ and the shins’ ‘chutes too narrow’

as you can see buki is a big fan of cancer conspiracy…


i would have to say that ‘in our nature’ is most definitely the stand out album of my purchases. making me wish i had his debut album ’veneer’ on vinyl as well. ’in our nature’ really is a natural follow up to gonzalez’s first release, with his vocals a bit more prominent, his music more vibrant, making all the reviewers use a different word other than “hushed” when describing this album. the art work is amazing, very simple, and subtle. Nathan Abels, my friend and artist, wrote a while back about gonzalez’s album art. either way, if you are thinking about grabbing an album that is sweet and rich, and composed well with simple arrangements, buy ‘in our nature’.

today is going to be a day of spring cleaning. jess is going to dust and arrange our drawers a bit more. i will be vacuuming, and changing a light bulb. we will both probably contribute to cleaning the bathroom, since we both seem to dread that the most. i think for breakfast we will most likely have biscuits and “crazy", which is jess’s version of biscuits and gravy. we may try to even exercise. depending on the weather, will determine how. i hope to run, no matter how cold.

jess and i are hoping the spring weather we had a few days ago, will return soon!

in the morning, before work

aside from the cheesy title, and nod to owen, we have pretty simple fun mornings. jess mentioned to me today on our bike ride that this is the first time in her life she has had an hour long snooze alarm greet her each morning. and although my affinity for snooze alarms is an obvious barrier to jess having a calm morning, she has bared with me. of course it is always hard to get out of the bed when your kitties are stopping you...


today was a good day...work went swimmingly...we had a great day, right now we are right where we started, with our kitties, on our his & her lap tops watching one of our favorite tv shows, house



tomorrow and the rest of weekend we plan on doing as much walking, biking, running as possible. in our effort to save gas we will walk and do our errands, get fresh air, and enjoy our freedoms as bipeds. keatsie will get some rest, and we will ramp-up our activity to get our healthy life into full motion. we are pretty excited about our weekend of celebrating our lack of need for gasoline. and on another amazing note, we have nearly paid off our credit cards, which is so rad considering we started this year with over 3 thousand dollars in credit card debt.


thank goodness for keeping to a budget, even when it means saying no to bacci pizza.

panda evenings

evenings in the panda home are typically pretty laid back...
usually, ryno looks at his music sites and plays scrabble blast & i read my food blogs and cookbooks.
most of the time the kids are pretty crazy as stated... but sometimes, like tonight, they like to get their cuddle on. i bet panda's pretty good at scrabble blast!
so tonight we're watching some law & order svu cuddled up under blankets with tons of pillows and our laptops. it's a good life.

quick dinners, crazy kitties, & snow days

ryno & i had a pretty productive weekend, if i do say so myself...

we did a ton of food shopping (which is always super exciting) and picked up some fun things like dumpling and spring roll wrappers, brown sushi rice & a sushi mat, and a few different asian noodles! i foresee lots of experimenting and playing in the future!

today i'm having a snow day, letting our new crock pot handle some yummy tempeh chili, and cuddling with the crazies... and i do mean crazies!



we got home pretty late sunday night and we threw together a quick dinner... bare bones, no rice.. no bread.. ! just aloo gobi (indian potatoes and cauliflower)


ingredients :
1/2 head of cauliflower, chopped
2-3 medium sized potatoes, cubed (i prefer red for this dish, but used russet because it's what i had.)
2 green chilies, diced
2 bay leaves
1 T canola oil
pinch of hing
1 T fresh, grated ginger
1/2 t cumin seed
1/2 t tumeric
1/4 t red chili powder (more for a spicy dish, obviously)
salt to taste
1/2 t amchoor (mango) powder (optional)
handful of chopped cilantro leaves (optional)

01. combine chilies, ginger, tumeric, & red chili powder and add water to make a paste.
02. to a heated pan, add canola oil. to test that oil is hot enough, drop 1 or two cumin seeds into the oil - if they sizzle and rise to the top quickly, the oil is ready.
03. add hing, cumin seeds, and bay leaves to hot oil. fry for minute.
04. add spice paste to the pan and fry until fragrant (about 3-4 minutes).
05. add cauliflower & potatoes to the pan, as well as a little bit of water. stir to coat vegetables with spices. add salt to taste.
06. cover and let cook on medium heat for five minutes. after five minutes, check vegetables, stir, and add more water if they seem dry.
07. cover and cook for another 10 minutes, stopping to stir half way through. at this point the potatoes and cauliflower should be tender.
08. sprinkle with mango powder and stir to incorporate. garnish with cilantro and serve with brown basmati rice.