Not your father’s company portraits

Wait, no… these ARE my father’s company portraits. Here’s my brother and my Dad, CEO and President of SmugMug:

Some out-of-town SmugMug employees made the pilgrimage to headquarters in CA this week. I was bummed that I couldn’t be out there to join their photowalk in San Francisco, but when they whipped out the face paints I realized I’d really missed out.

After all, what’s my family portrait without Wonder Woman?

Click here for the rest of the photos. And go here to catch a rare appearance of The Silver Surfer posting on a pregnancy blog. Hehe. I love my family!

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Vegan Chili Recipe- Fabulous and Bean-y

As you may be aware, there was a chili cook-off at our church last weekend.

I will kill the suspense right here and tell ya that we didn’t win.

However, we did succeed in making The. Best. Chili. Scott and I have ever had. We love it because it’s meatless but hearty and it has a great depth of flavor. Meatless is important to us because we are vegetarian (though not super-strict, we try to eat vegetable dominated dishes) and because rich, greasy chili makes our stomaches turn. This chili is thick and hearty because of the addition of bulgur. Fantastic and indispensable in this recipe, bulgur can be found at most grocery stores and might be sold under the name “cracked wheat”.

Our recipe comes from Scott’s favorite recipe site, Epicurious.com. However, it’s posted here with a modification . We only used half the amount of cinnamon called for it and that was just a perfect off-set to the other spices.

This is how we made it:
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 carrots, peeled, thinly sliced
1 red bell pepper, seeded, chopped
3 large jalapeño chilies, seeded, minced (about 4 1/2 tablespoons)
1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes with added puree
3 cups water
2 15-ounce cans black beans, rinsed, drained
2 15-ounce cans kidney beans, rinsed, drained
1/2 cup bulgur
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
5 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons chili powder
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 1/2 teaspoons ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in heavy large pot over medium-high heat. Add onion, carrots, red bell pepper, and jalapeños and sauté until onion and carrots are almost tender, about 8 minutes. Add tomatoes, 3 cups water, beans, bulgur, white wine vinegar, garlic, and spices. Bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium-high and cook, uncovered, until bulgur is tender and mixture thickens, stirring often, about 20 minutes. Ladle chili into bowls and serve.

Of course, Scott and I doubled the recipe and it made a LOT. Half of it got devoured at the cook-off, and we’ve been plowing through the other half for days. It’s fabulous left-over and should freeze well, so next time we make it I might still double it and freeze one half.

The smell and look of all the fresh-cut veggies made my mouth water.

NOTES: No “finished” pictures, sorry! But, it’s colorful and attractive when cooked as well.

It is not spicy with the recipe above, but has more of a mild Indian-Mexican fusion flavor. We used medium chili powder from our local spice shop and that means it tastes like chili, but we can go down on a whole bowl of this stuff without worrying about getting overheated.

A Green Bean Colored Crayon

Last weekend was the annual unofficial Pinewood Derby Chili / Chocolate Cook-off. Scott and I decided to make a car less than a week before the big event, and it was unclear what that car would look like until just minutes before said event started.

However, after a last-minute raiding of our local Ace Hardware store, green paint all over Anne’s jeans, novel use of electrician’s tape, and a lot of blowing and waving about to encourage the coats of paint to dry… our entry became what it was meant to be all along: a crayon.

Not only was our car recognizable as a crayon, but it placed 2nd* and won “Most Creative/Unique Car”**.

*2nd in its heat, that is. As such, it did not even advance to the second round.

**This is actually true, but I was one of the judges. Hehe.

NOTE: Our perceptive friend Angie guessed that our car would be a pencil. So close! She and Lisa both claim to have had “feelings” that it was a crayon, though. Us, too, girls… us too.

Prizes will be given, of course. Most likely in the form of yummy food… so stay tuned.

Always a Partier, Never a Hostess

I went to a slammin’ party last week for my friend Lisa.

The hostess, Heather, turned down my offer to “bring something”… and I showed up empty-handed and completely unaware of how the evening would shake out.

Now, I’ve liked Heather since the first day we came to Columbus… but as it turns out, she’s fabulous in ways I had not yet realized. Not only did she plan a fun fondue theme, but she had transformed her apartment with adorable Valentine’s decor.

Drat. I didn’t get a good picture of the creative lights she had done. They were plain white christmas lights, with cut-out pink and red tissue paper hearts covering scattered bulbs. The end result was high on the cute and savvy scale, I thought. You can kind of see them in the background of this picture (in which I also capture the hostess, unawares):

I resolved at the party to be more of an initiator and less of a moocher. I managed to show up, eat, chat late into the night, and have a great time. At the end of the night, I was pretty proud of my accomplishments.

But Heather has a gaggle of kids and a fourth of the free time and flexibility with her schedule that I have and she managed to plan the whole thing and carry it out flawlessly. Now, I don’t feel the need to compete with Heather… at least not until we start going to jump rope class together next week… but she did inspire me to be more pro-active.

Hmmm. Perhaps now is a perfect time in my currently child-less life to be a mover and a shaker. A planner and a hostess.

Some friends and I were chatting lately about how fun it would be to have a ‘healthy recipes’ group. Or just to get together and swap tips on how to live a healthy lifestyle. And so… just today I decided to organize and host a monthly interest group on “Healthy Minds and Bodies”.

Here are the topics I’ve come up with thus far:

- Healthy meal and snack ideas. Oh yes, recipes WILL be exchanged.
- Happiness and maintaining a positive outlook.
- Making time for exercise… and enjoying it!
- Humor and the benefits of laughter on health.
- Fad diets and how they work (or don’t!).
- Raising active kids and fun ideas to get them movin’
- Growing a vegetable garden. What to plant and how to make it fun
for your family.

Got any great ideas for topics?

Clearly, before I go forward with this group it needs a cool name. “Healthy Minds and Bodies” makes me yawn. And we all know, that’s not very healthy.