Tapas!

Once or twice a year we throw a tapas party. Luis and I both enjoy Spanish cuisine, and there isn't any place in Missoula to get it. Every time we prepare tapas we try new dishes, along with traditional tapas menu items. This year we made more dishes than we ever have, and everything came out great. Here's what we served:

paella with chicken and chorizo
tuna tartlets (phyllo dough tart cups filled with a tomato slice, tuna, and topped with a dressing of white wine vinegar, olive oil and minced shallots)
chorizo in red wine
tortilla (Spanish tortilla is actually like an omelet - it's egg, potato and onion cooked into a huge slab, then sliced and served at room temperature. It's delicious!)
garbanzo beans with spinach (cooked with cumin, paprika, olive oil and white wine vinegar)
moorish skewers (though ironically, the recipe had us use pork...)
chicken and mushroom skewers (marinated in lemon juice, garlic and olive oil)
roasted almonds
olives
manchego, plus a new find - a delicious creamy sheep's cheese (can't remember the name)
patatas bravas (roasted potato wedges in a fiery red sauce)
chocolate covered almonds (Luis roasts all the almonds himself, then he dips some in semisweet chocolate and sprinkles them with coarse sea salt OMG good)
And of course, LOTS of sangria. I think we went through about 12 bottles of red wine? Mmmm...

It was a great evening. Once again, I forgot to take any photos.

(I was looking for online photos of some of the dishes we prepared, and this website has several of the items we made. Not the exact recipes we used, but they are quite similar.)

Infectious summer.

Summer in western Montana is short, at least by my midwestern standards. I think of summer as the sweltering, endless days and warm muggy nights of my youth. Summer here means gorgeous, long sunny days, but the heat isn't the same. The month of July generally provides the only truly sizzling temperatures of our summer - frenzied, jam-packed days of sunshine and hiking and rivers and cheap beer and good friends, trying to drink it all in before summer burns out. Somewhere around the first week of August the fever of summer breaks - the temperatures are still warm, but the sun feels weaker, as though it's winding down for the season. The crisp alpine air rolls in nightly, bringing with it faint smells of autumn, even while the calendar attests summer.
Once again the feverish summer days are drawing to a close, and fall is just around the corner.

One year ago today...

Two part time worlds.

My new job is in another town. As such, I took a little apartment there - it's almost an hour and a half drive each way, and there is no way I could manage that with twelve hour shifts. I enjoy the job and I love the town where I'm staying, but having two "homes" has cleaved my life into two separate worlds.

When I leave for work I am pretty much cut off from the world at large. I don't have internet or television at my other place. No need, really - after I get off work at six o'clock I usually go home, eat, drink a glass of wine, do some yoga, and then it's bedtime. I am reluctant to add distractions, because being a new nurse is already stressful - add that to the unique environment where I practice, and well, I need to be alert. I try to protect my sleep time so that I can function safely and also not burn out too quickly. I'm lucky that after a long day I get to come home to a cute little apartment with no responsibilities, and just relax. It's a nice way to work.

When I come home at the end of my work week (which is either three or four days... awesome) it's a little strange. It feels like my life at home chugs along without me, and I just get to pop in sometimes. I've only been doing this a few months, so I'm sure I'll get used to it, but for now the experience is surreal.

A new record...

...but not the kind I was striving for.

I went a whole month with no posts. There will be no "July 2009" in my blog archive sidebar.

Sad.

I love blogging, and I miss writing since being out of school. No assignments, no papers, no presentations. It's strange that I haven't been able to use this outlet to get my writing fix. :)

Hoping to get my groove back. I miss you, internets.