Raving Amicks

From Munich, we flew in to the airport in Kiev, Ukraine, where Vlad’s uncle kindly picked us up. The next day, we wandered out to see Kiev’s Golden Gate, which was a lot of fun to climb inside. Nearby was the kitty statue pictured here with me.

To get to the Golden Gate and just about everywhere else that we visited in Kiev, we went by subway. Subways in Ukraine tend to be highly stylized, with mosaics and marble and granite used to beautiful effect. This seems to be fairly common in eastern Europe, and it was one of my favorite aspects of the trip. A few subways were also very deep, presumably for protection against nuclear warfare, with high-speed escalators just to get people in and out in a reasonable amount of time.

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The Mom unit and I travelled to Seattle to see Mason and Dieter and to see the WWU Junior class exhibit. Very cool exhibit and WWU rocked! Had a great early dinner at an Indian restaurant – Mom had a Mango Lassi and we had some great food out of their Tandoori oven.  Check out Mason’s new haircut!  Mom was freezing as we visited the Tacoma Glass Museum (Mason – remember our visit?).

Anyone having dinner on Saturday nite will have fresh steelhead (caught Thurs. afternon)!

Hey y’all. Mindy posted some pictures of our new wine glasses a while ago and it’s high time I ‘splained ‘em.

These wine glasses are the sequel to our fantastic beer glasses and they use the same serious-business, full-body tempering (apparently using heat and not chemicals). The tempering requires an increase in glass thickness, but results in strong and stable, long-lasting glassware. They’re extra short for stackability, which also adds a bit of stability. I like ‘em, and Mindy’s even warmed up to them.

I conned Mom and Dad into getting a set of 12, cuz I had to order ‘em by boxes of 48 for $200. I found the best deal at ReStockIt.com with free shipping and some sort of discount (they have sales a lot). I’m going to give the 6 of them I have left over to Dieter. Hopefully these will hold up to the harsh realities of Dieter’s roommates. I’ll be bringing them down the next time we come to visit, hopefully in the next week or two.

Used my X-mas present twice. Helps make great pizza. Ya’ need lots of cornmeal evenly spread out under the dough to make sure it slides off cleanly. Thanks Mindy & Tyler!

Inspired by a friend’s recent skillet apple pie, I made my own from this recipe. It’s a really annoying site that makes you have a log in, so I’m also posting the recipe below.

The only thing that I would change is to add a little salt to both the crust and liquid mixture that you pour over the apples. Otherwise, the crust came out beautifully and it’s a mighty tasty, homey pie.

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