Goal #20 Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City

When you're from San Diego, you're just not impressed with other zoos. In fact, you don't even feel the desire to go to other cities' zoos. Which is why I'd lived in Utah for 9 years without ever going to the zoo. But I finally did, for zoo lights!

Zoo lights in the freezing cold with the niblings!

Backlit by beautiful trees

Zoo lights!

Ice sculpture!

Whether it's a decent zoo or not, I couldn't really tell. All of the animals were inside. But it definitely didn't hold a candle to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. The lights, however? Amazing! Totally worth it.

My dollar for completing this goal goes to funding young innovators in Africa.

Goal #37 Watch 7 of the following films (5/7): Lawrence of Arabia

They showed Lawrence of Arabia one night while I was on study abroad in Jerusalem. I heard it was 4 hours long and didn't go. So now, 5 years after my study abroad, I got together some Jeru friends and we watched the whole thing (let's face it; no one else is game for this movie). It took us forever. Twice we got together to see it and ended up not even starting it. And then we buckled down and watched it in two gos. Lawrence of Arabia is not for the faint of heart--it takes dedication!

When you get over the slowness of the movie, you start to realize how amazing it is. We were amazed by how good the cinematography is, and it was made in 1962!! Incredible! The history is also super interesting. It exposed me to a side of WWI I never learned about in school. There's also a scene where Lawrence is abused that is pretty disturbing; we skipped that. Overall, stunning movie. Glad I saw it. Probably won't ever watch it again, but glad I did once.

Goal #37 Watch 7 of the following films (4/7): A Lady Vanishes

Previous to this, I had only seen one Alfred Hitchcock film! So I put several on my list to get a little more cultured. The Lady Vanishes was pretty good. It was tense for me, but then again, I'm pretty wimpy.

Goal #47 Family History: Record Grandparents' stories

A few years ago I realized that my grandparents don't have much time left. And here I am 28 years old, and what have I learned about them? I felt this huge sense of urgency to talk to them, listen to their stories, and record them for posterity. I live in Utah, and my grandparents live a few hours away from my parents in California, which means I don't even see them each time I visit my parents. But I've been making a concerted effort to visit them over the past year or so. I take pictures of their pictures. I pour over their genealogy charts. I ask them questions and audio record their answers. I recorded them straight into the genealogy program I use, FamilySearch, so I can't upload them here too, but they're there! 

Two audios of my grandpa

I'm glad I finally did it, but I wish I had done it sooner. My grandparents are to the point where it's hard to remember things, so it would've been better if I'd gotten the bug years ago. I can remember hanging out with my grandpa about 8 years ago and he told the stories with a lot more detail back then. Oh well. #hindsight 

My dollar for completing this goal goes to funding young innovators in Sierra Leone, Kenya, and South Africa.

Goal #46 Family History: Record dad's stories

Gathered around as my Dad reads his new iBooks autobiography

Anyone who knows my dad knows that he tells stories. Dad is a scientist, and is generally fairly quiet. Unless he's teaching you something or telling you a story. And we never get tired of hearing his stories! Some time ago I got it into my head that I needed to record Dad telling his stories. So over about a year I've been gathering the family together, and one by one we ask him to tell our favorite stories while I roll the camera. The result is a treasure. I embedded all of his videos and combined them with his 20-page autobiography in an iBook to give to Dad for his 70th birthday earlier this month.

Here's my favorite story. Dad didn't want to tell it but he humored me. The person laughing the hardest? Totally me. :)

My dollar for (essentially) completing this goal goes to funding young innovators in Sierra Leone, Kenya, and South Africa.

Goal #94 Write my nephew weekly on his mission

My oldest nephew, Bryce, returned last month from a 25-month mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Bolivia! You can see his mission blog here and if you want to read about why Mormons serve missions, click here. I returned from my mission in Brazil 6 and a half years ago, and I know how much family support meant to me. You're kind of isolated as a missionary--you can only call home on Mother's Day and Christmas and you e-mail once a week. There were a few people that wrote me every week on my mission, and it meant a lot to me just to know I wasn't forgotten. I'm super proud of my nephew and wanted him to know how much he was loved. I think I forgot 4 or 5 times during the whole 2 years...which I think is pretty good. :)

My dollar for (essentially) completing this goal goes to funding young innovators in Sierra Leone, Kenya, and South Africa.

Goal #13 Experience 10 new things in Provo (10/10): Museum of Peoples and Cultures

A museum of peoples and cultures? On BYU campus? How is it that I got through my entire undergrad and half of my graduate degree without visiting?! That is RIGHT up my alley!

It took my friend (who's studying museums) having an exhibit there to get me to go. Go figure.

Look at the shiny new building--isn't it beautiful?

And this concludes my goal of experiencing 10 new things in Provo! I've lived here for 10 years minus my mission to Brazil, and I like to think that I know it inside and out. But there are always more things to discover! It's fun to look back and see how many of these things have become part of my routine.

For this goal I visited/did the following:

• Crandall Historical Printing museum - Definitely the coolest of these 10. I took a video of the demonstration and put it on Youtube. It now has the most views of all my videos and is the top hit when you search "Gutenberg printing press." I just got a message today asking if my video could be dubbed in Dutch and used in a new printing museum in the Netherlands. Cool!
• Museum of Peoples and Cultures
• BYU Museum of Paleontology
• Food Truck Round Up
• Take the FrontRunner - I've now done this a dozen times
• Provo Airport - I now fly out of here regularly
• Float the Provo River
• Shop at an Asian market - love this place--I come here every time I make Thai food
• Go to poetry night at the Coffee Pod
• Go to a pawn shop

For completing this goal I'm donating a dollar to fund young innovators in Sierra Leone, Kenya, and South Africa.

Goal #89 Graduate debt free from grad school

I actually did not accomplish this goal, but I did a dang good job, so I'm going to blog about it and donate a dollar to charity anyway.

I decided to go to grad school in January and started in August, so I didn't have much time to save. I expected to get more scholarships in grad school than I did. I had full-tuition scholarships that last half of my undergrad! But in my program the scholarships were need-based and went more to people with families than to single people like me. I worked as much as I could handle during grad school, which helped, but wasn't enough. My parents struck a deal with me that I'd pay for everything myself until I was broke; then they'd help me out. So it happened that way. I made it through 1.5 years of grad school all on my own, but Winter and Spring 2015 I was bone dry broke, and my parents wrote me checks. It was half a gift and half a loan, which I'm going to pay back in 2016. (new goal!)

Man, is it humbling not to be able to provide for yourself! I never want to be in that position again! However, I learned a lot. I learned to patch my jeans instead of buy new ones. I learned to say "I can't" when my friends want to go out to eat. I learned which healthy meals are cheaper than others. And most importantly, I learned how to budget.

I started budgeting early on, when I accomplished this goal the summer before grad school. Back then I used a 3x5 card to physically write down all my expenses and an actual calculator to subtract them from my budget! Ew! Now I use a WAY better system. 

Why yes, this IS my current budget--see? I still use it!

YNAB (You Need A Budget) does math automatically for me, sorts data into nifty graphs, and is on my phone so that I can record purchases immediately. I LOVE it. I'm a total budget convert. It makes me feel empowered.

This goal got me thinking, though, what is the value of a master's degree? So, if you don't mind, I'm going to muse on that for a minute before I donate a dollar to charity.

• Monetarily speaking, my earning power is twice as much as it was before my degree. It also expands my job possibilities from 1 to 4 types of jobs
• My intellectual curiosity was stoked. I LOVE that. I love being intrigued. I love having my mind blown.
• I got to learn from brilliant people. My professors are all masters of their fields. I got to go to academic conferences and meet the people who wrote my textbooks. It was awesome!
• I got to be surrounded by curious, kind, philanthropic, creative people who are accomplishing amazing things. Seriously--rubbing shoulders with the other students in my program was a gift. And I get to have these connections for the rest of my life.
• I proved to myself that I can learn hard things. My sense of self-efficacy is WAY higher. I feel like I can troubleshoot and figure out hard things and teach myself anything.
• I got to get my name out academically. Academia wasn't my focus (but it might be if I decide to be a professor), but I still got my name on some papers. It still tickles me when I get an e-mail from academia.edu that says "Someone searched for you on Google and found your Academia page." (check me out!)

My dollar for completing this goal goes to funding young innovators in Sierra Leone, Kenya, and South Africa.

Goal #72 Try 100 new recipes (68/100): Pineapple Curry

Pineapple Curry (Sam's)

★★★★★

Curry, Dinner, One Pot Cooking
Prep 15 mins ∙ Cook 25 mins ∙ Makes 4 ∙ Difficulty Easy

Ingredients

• 1 can coconut milk
• 1 can pineapple
• 2 chicken breasts chopped
• 2 zucchini chopped
• 1 red bell pepper chopped
• 1 onion diced
• olive oil
• chile powder (or red pepper flakes)
• curry powder
• 1 box farfalle pasta
• 1 tsp salt

Directions

Cook pasta to finish at same timeAdd enough olive oil to cover the bottom of pot.
Pour desired amount of curry powder on top.
Add onion. Mix in.
Add chicken.
When the chicken changes color add the salt.
Add zucchini and red bell pepper. (Add veggies according to how hard they are, hardest first, softest last. Add pineapple about 5 mins from the end)
Add pineapple.
Add coconut milk and ½-all of pineapple juice.
Add chile powder.
Simmer for 5 minutes or until veggies are at desired tenderness.
Pour over pasta.

Goal #72 Try 100 new recipes (63-67): Brazilian food #2

Step 1: "feijão" You gotta have rice and beans for it to be Brazilian! 

Pinto beans, water, 1 clove garlic. If you have bay leaf, put 1 or 2 of those.

If you cook it in a pressure cooker, beans will be soft in 30-45 minutes.

The only problem is that pressure cookers are terrifying!

Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of the rest of the parts. I'm pretty sure we put some seasonings on it...

 Step 2: "Couve,"or cooked collard greens.

First you cut out the big stems and then lay them on top of each other, then roll it up into a tight roll of greens.

Slice it up into long teeny strips.

Add them to bacon

Add some salt, and fry it up

 Step 3: "frango, " fry up some chicken.

tenders + flour + oil

Step 4: arugula salad, seasoned with olive oil, vinegar, and salt (not pictured until later)
Step 5: "pão de quijo" or cheese bread. The real Brazilian way is super labor intensive. We cheat by using Our Best Bites' recipe.

The complete dish!

And we topped it off with Beijinho, which I made in this blog post

#72 Try 100 new recipes (62/100): Zucchini bread

I have no idea what recipe we used for this, but a year ago my niece and I made AMAZING zucchini bread that I forgot to post about until now. :)

Isn't she adorable? I just love her.

#72 Try 100 new recipes (58-61): PIES!

A year ago I got together with the famous pie sisters, Catie and Sarah, to learn the secrets of pie.

With the pie sisters themselves

Lutz pie crust

Lemon rind garnish

Lemon Raspberry Ribbon Pie

Sour Cream Lemon Pie

No Fail Pie Crust
(from the Lutz Kitchen)

4 cups flour                             ½ cup water
1 tsp. baking powder              1 egg
1 TBSP. sugar                         1 TBSP white vinegar
1 tsp. salt
1 ¾ cup Butter-flavored Crisco

In a mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Add Crisco and cut ingredients together with pastry blender until crumbly. In liquid measuring cup, combine water, egg and vinegar. Whisk or mix wet ingredients together and pour into dry ingredients and blend well. Spread a thin layer of flour on counter top and roll out dough 1/4” to 1/8” thick. Recipe makes 2 double crusts or 4 baked shells.

For baked shell (used for cream pies): Pie Rice is used here as a weight to avoid the crust from shrinking while it bakes (you can also buy “pie weights” at the store, but the foil and rice provide more of an equal distribution of weight). Roll out dough, place in pie pan. Trim edges or make the crust of your choice. Use a fork to lightly poke the dough around the middle and sides of the pan to minimize air bubbles. Take an approx. 14x12 piece of aluminum foil and gently center it in the pan on top of the dough. The crust sides and top should at least be covered so the rice won’t touch the dough. Fill pie pan with rice until mostly full. Don’t be shy with the rice.

Bake pie with foiled at 425 degrees for 15 minutes total. Cook with the rice for the first 10 minutes. Pull out the pie and take out the foil with rice in it. Warning: It will be hot. Let it cool a bit then store Rice in Ziploc bag for future use as “Pie Rice”. Cook crust alone for remaining 5 minutes. Set aside to cool and then put in your desired filling. ENJOY! 

Leftover dough can also be used for chicken pot pies or as a “cinnamon pie crispy” rolled out flat, cut into strips and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.

Dough life: refrigerate it for up to 2 weeks or freeze it for up to 3 months. 

Lemon Raspberry Ribbon Pie- Lutz House

Raspberry Layer
1- 12 oz. package of frozen raspberries (pull out about 4-6 berries for garnish)
¼ cup cornstarch
1 cup sugar
Lemon juice to taste

Thaw/Heat the bag of frozen berries in the microwave for 1-2 minutes. Mix cornstarch and sugar together in a little bowl. Dump the thawed raspberries and accompanying juice in a large saucepan on the stove, and whisk in the sugar and cornstarch over medium heat. Once well blended add lemon juice to taste and cancel out any cornstarch-y aftertaste. If you like your raspberry filling a little tangier add more lemon juice. If not, add just enough to get the taste you want. Let it cook over a medium low temp constantly stirring to prevent scorching. The berries will be broken up. You want it about the consistency of a slightly thicker jam- not jelly. Once you get to that consistency, take it off the heat and let it cool down to at least room temp (any hotter and it will melt the layer beneath it).

Lemon Mousse Filling (You’ll need two mixing bowls.)
Bowl #1
1 can sweetened condensed milk
½ cup fresh lemon juice
Bowl #2
2 ½ cups whipped heavy whipping cream (1 ½ cup for the filling and ½ cup for the topping.)

In a medium sized bowl, whisk the sweetened condensed milk and lemon juice together and mix it up until well blended. Set aside in the fridge. This should set up fairly quickly in the bowl but don’t worry about it.
Filling: Whip up the 1 ½ cups of heavy whipping cream to fairly stiff consistency. You want it to be stiff, but manageable because you’re going to be mixing it into the lemon mixture. Take the whipping cream and gently fold it into the pudding. Blend well and you’ll get this really nice mousse. Put into the fridge and let it chill and set up a bit (maybe 10 minutes, 15 max if you get distracted, that’s okay).

Topping: Whip up remaining 1 cup of whipping cream with ¼ cup sugar (to taste) for your topping. Let that chill in the fridge.

Garnish: Whole raspberries, lemon twist or grated rind.  

LET’S PUT THIS BABY TOGETHER!

Put about 2/3 – ¾ of the lemon mousse into the pie shell. Take the room temp raspberry sauce and spread a good sized layer on top of the lemon mousse in the pie shell (eyeball it). Top with the rest of the mousse (if you don’t use it all, you have some awesome leftover mousse to snack on later).  Top with the remaining 1 cup of sweetened whipping cream. Add single berries, lemon twist or grated peel for garnish. Refrigerate. Done.

Sour Cream Lemon Pie –From the Lutz Kitchen, adapted from Taste of the Country Cookbook

Part One:
1 cup Sugar                                                                3 TBSP + 2 tsps Cornstarch
½ cup fresh lemon juice (fake is not as good, TRUST me)
3 egg yolks, slightly beaten                            1 cup Milk (preferably 1% or 2 %)

Part Two:
¼ cup Butter (a ½ stick)                                      1 cup Sour Cream                               
1 cup Whipped Heavy Whipping Cream                  ¼ cup Sugar
lemon rind twists as garnish                        1- 9” cooked pie shell

1) Combine sugar, cornstarch together in a medium bowl and blend well. Add sugar/cornstarch, lemon juice, egg yolks and milk into a medium heavy saucepan; cook over medium heat until thick (will scorch- keep stirring!). Once thick, remove immediately from heat and set aside to cool down.

2) Stir in butter and cool mixture to room temperature. While custard is cooling, combine sugar and whipping cream in a bowl and whip to desired consistency. Set Aside. When custard reached room temp, fold and mix in the sour cream until well blended and pour filling into a cooled cooked pie shell. Cover with the whipped cream and garnish with a lemon twist or shavings. Refrigerate. Enjoy!

This week I recreated Lemon Raspberry Ribbon for Thanksgiving and used my mom's pie crust recipe, which she learned from her mom.

Grandma Phyllis's Pie Crust
1 1/3 c flour
1/3 c oil (overflow the cup a bit)
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbsp ice cold water (over flow a bit)

Stir together. Make into a ball. Put some water on the counter. Stick a big rectangle of wax paper to it. Put the ball in the middle of the wax paper. Top with another piece of wax paper. Roll it out into a big circle. Peel off the top wax paper. Put your hand underneath the bottom wax paper and your other hand under the pie plate. Clap your hands together so that the pie crust gets centered in the pie plate. Flute the edges. Poke with a fork.