Love, Noelle: August 2011

Monday, August 29, 2011

The Family That Cooks Together....

Ladies and Gentleman, in just a few short days, the 3rd annual Rusty Whisk competition will be held!

Brief Explanation: Come this Saturday and continuing on til the following Thursday, all 12 Rust's will be back together again! That's right: Dad, Mom, Derrick, Brittney, Molly, Brandon, Daniel, Travis, Me, Natalie, Holly and Hannah, together again under the same roof. The Rusty Whisk, a cooking competition we've held faithfully for the past three years inspired by our friends on Iron Chef America, but suited for a family setting, will be held.

Allow me to explain the process, using pictures from last years event:

1. Food Prep

Each family member picks a dish that they would like to prepare and submit for the competition. Some use their trademark recipes, others venture out to the unknown and make recipes they've never before tried. Needless to say the kitchen is chaotic, but it's a fun chaos. There are ingredients, dishes, bodies... everywhere!

2. Plating

As each family member finishes their dish, they must then carefully plate it onto three different plates (one for each judge) and put it onto the judging table. Presentation is accounted into the final score, so this is important. This year we had (in order of appearance): Sweet and sour pork, pina colada chicken, flurry of curry chicken salad, grilled salmon, lemon chicken, stuffed chili peppers, marshmallow puffs and the infamous Completos! (There are a few other dishes not shown here)

3. Judgement

Enter judges. Three lucky... or perhaps brave... people who were chosen to come and taste each dish prepared in the depths of the Rust kitchen. As each dish is sampled, Natalie (second picture) served as the emcee and announced each dish along with a brief description of the dish written by the chef themselves. However, no mention is made of who prepared what dish. It must be completely anonymous. The judges then savor the fruits of our labors while the rest of us wait patiently outside.

4. The Waiting Game

So to keep the 12 of us occupied while our hard work was being critiqued, we were all kicked out of the house and onto the front patio. Here, Brittney had a taste test game prepared for us. We each had a spoon and we'd close our eyes as she'd come around and fill each of our spoons with an edible item. When everybody had their spoon filled, we'd put it into our mouths and try to decide what she fed us.

4. The Finale

Finally, the judging has concluded and we are summoned in. The judges then tell us all the things they liked about each dish. And then the winner is announced and awarded with the Rusty Whisk trophy. Last year's winner was our very own Brittney Steele Rust who blew the judges away with her divine Flurry of Curry Chicken Salad (See plating section, picture 3). By then we are tired and hungry, and of course, dying to taste all the food. So we all grab forks, dig in, and listen as Derrick says, "completos" after every other sentence.

5. Food, Family, Friends

Needless to say, it is a night to be remembered, filled with food, family and friends.
This Saturday we will do it all over again and watch as a new victor is crowned! Wish us luck :)

Love, Noelle

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Operating Heavy Machinery

Does this count as heavy machinery?

This is the beauty I learned to skillfully maneuver today.

Growing up with four big brothers got this girl out of ever learning the necessary art of lawn mowing... until today.

After a brief, "flip this switch, pull this stringy thing, unflip the switch and push" lesson, I was well on my way. I wouldn't exactly say that I find lawn mowing terribly enjoyable, but hey, it wasn't too bad at all. And best of all, I can add "lawn mowing" to my ever-growing (oh so slowly, but surely) list of useful skills.

I quickly grew weary of having straight lines and decided to add some pizazz to mine. Tangent: I just love our cute, little, red chicken coop seen on the right. It is currently chicken-less due to our recent move, but it'll be filled back up before you know it!

I'm actually kind excited for the grass to grow out so that I can practice a bit more and mow some cool design in the yard. That's about as artistic as I get... lines in grass. Oh, and I may have even gotten a little bit tan and been able to bask in the glorious smell of fresh cut grass while accomplishing this task. New favorite chore? Possibly.

On another semi-related-but-not-entirely note, I drove into St. George the other day, woooo!

Truth be told, I greatly disliked driving into St.George.

Sure I like to drive.
I like to drive down Moapa Valley Boulevard, going 55 mph and counting the cows and horses as I pass them.
I like to drive down the back roads in Logandale, discovering new streets and houses back there that I never even knew about.
I like calm Sunday drives and short drives to the store or the high school.

I am not a fan of the freeway.

It could be the fact that I haven't driven on it in over 4 years...whoops. It could be that I'm terrified of being in another car accident, or worse, causing a car accident. It could be that I'm not an aggressive driver and would be more than happy driving in the slow lane the entire duration of the trip. It could be that semis make me want to cry. Whatever it is, I've got to get over it!

If I'm going to get anywhere in life, I've got to know how to drive in the real world. Growing up in a small town and moving to go to school in an even smaller town (with out a car) didn't really help me out too much in that aspect, but I'm pretty determined to get my car driving capabilities up to that of my impeccable lawn mowing skills :) Wish me luck!

Love, Noelle

P.S. Only two more days til Derrick, Brittney and Molly get here! Yeaaaaaaah!

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Quote-a

There are tons of great, cutsied up quotes on Pinterest that I adore looking at. It makes me really want to have cute, inspiring quotes hanging up in our new apartment in the Fall. A nice home-y touch is just what we need to go along with Claire's fantastic, hanging, wall clock that sings to us every 15 minutes.

So with that idea in mind I created the following. These are some I threw together real quick to get a feel for the different fonts and what not. Hopefully they'll improve in time.

I simply adore these quotes.

What are some of your favorite quotes? I'm always on the look out for some keepers!
I'll post more here and there as I make them. Feel free to take and use them however you please.
No Copyright Nazi here :)

Love, Noelle

Monday, August 15, 2011

Snow Patrol

Ok so I know this is a little premature, but I must express my love for snow real quick.

Ahhh I love it soo much.

At school, when I introduce myself to someone and tell them I'm from Vegas, 4 out of 5 times they sarcastically say, "Oh I bet you're loving Rexburg's weather", because Rexburg is notorious for how freezing cold it gets. But I do love it, I do! I know that's easy to say when I'm sitting in Overton where is was 107 degrees today and anything different from this heat would be nice, but I seriously love playing in the snow.

I could probably count the number of times I played in the snow before college on one hand. But being out there in it with my friends, brothers, roommates, whoever, I just can't get enough of it. I especially love to go sledding with the aforementioned people, love, love, love it!

Sledding and snowball fights and skiing, ahhhhh I'm in love.
Boots and scarves and mittens, yes yes yes!
Hot chocolate and blankets and fireplaces, does it get any better than that?

I'm off-track in the Winter, so I'm counting on some serious-sledding-snow hitting Rexburg this Fall. Can't wait :)

Love, Noelle

P.S. Ok, in all reality, in a couple months when it's -20 in Rexburg and I haven't seen the sun in 3 weeks and I can't feel my toes anymore, I'm sure I'll have a blog post to completely contradict this one... but until then... YAY SNOW!

"I Can Tell That We Are Gonna Be Friends"

About a year ago, when I found out my new roommate was going to be some girl named Claire Ruth Salmon.We became facebook friends and that day I wrote the following on her wall:

So it looks like you'll be living with me...

Uhhh, we're going to have to go over some ground rules so that no toes are stepped on and no lines are crossed.

No music will be aloud in my apartment.
...No talk of marriage or small children.
No laughing too loud, and no chick flicks.
NO baking any thing that contains more than 45 calories per serving.

Message me if you have any questions.

OH MY GOSH Claire, I am SO Just kidding! Hahaha I hope I didn't scare you too bad, but I'm totally curious as to what your reaction to that was :) I promise I'm not an evil, grumpy psycho! I'm so excited to live with ya, I absolutely love the name Claire and have planned on naming my first daughter that for as long as I can remember, but we can say I named her after you :) And I adore Salmon! And Hannah Salmon! I have a feeling we'll get along beautifully!

I seriously knew that we were going to be great friends even before I had even met this girl. Lo and behold: We are the greatest of friends!!

So when I first started this blog, I told Claire that my number one goal for this blog is to mention Claire in every single post. I did pretty good with this for the first couple posts, but as the posts kept coming I kept forgetting and Claire would nonchalantly remind me that I was FAILING at my goal. And indeed, I have ultimately failed at that goal. So to make up for it, here is an entire post dedicated to mine and Claire's relationship. We haven't even known each other a whole year, but I swear we've been best friends for life. Take a gander at the following pictures and judge for yourself :)