the great spread-off

So yesterday was a great, productive day, bombing around the Valley with Curtis. We're still very room-matey, sharing the coffee in the morning but still making seperate breakfasts. In accordance with my nickname Old Man Freeman (bestowed upon me from camp friends), I made myself some cracked wheat hot cereal with prunes, raisins, a banana, a splash of maple syrup and a dollop of butter. Curtis made pancakes with Krusteaz mix, which gets an immediate Katie Freeman Seal of Approval. I really should have a stamp made up that reflects that honor. Anyway. After breakfast he and I ran errands, getting groceries and the mail, and then returned home to clean house and further set up my rooms and loft area upstairs. I can't WAIT to finish my office...right now it is looking SO cool. Curtis has a short table, about 8" off the ground, with an Asian cherry blossom print painted on top that I'm using as my computer desk. With a big throw pillow as a chair, it's ergonomic and comfortable, and it looks awesome. Plus, I'm eye-level with my window and will be able to peek out to the backyard when homework becomes too much. I have pictures up from the glorious Lake Superior and of friends and family, and plants will soon come in. Also, Curtis and I are going to build a bookshelf as well to house my library that I sent up, which I am totally excited about since I've always wanted to do a project like that.

So later we decided that South Park was going to be our entertainment for the night, and so we ran to the movie place to grab a couple of seasons. While there we saw an ad for a Ford Bronco and went to take a look...not bad or a junk bucket, just a truck for bombing around in. The guy wants $1850 OBO. There are some more options popping up too, so we'll see. After checking out the truck, Curtis and I went home to make dinner, which was to be salmon spread and crackers. However, after seperating out the fish into two seperate ramakins, Curtis turned the night on it's head by saying,

"You know this is a competition, right?" (in that he and I would each make our own spread and compete for best flavor/presentation/culinary difficulty/uniqueness/etc.)

So it began. We picked the rest of the bones out, and went to our seperate corners of the kitchen. There wasn't a time limit, but the pace was steady and purposeful. I chose to go the route of sweet, and so I used ginger (a ton of it), cardamom, cracked black pepper, sea salt, cayenne, lemon juice, Tiger sauce (oh, what a nice kick it added!) and half of a chopped Golden Delicious apple. Pureed it all up and put together a nice presentation with fire-roasted tomato Triscuits, chopped apple and chopped cherry tomatoes. Meanwhile, Curtis was busy with lemon pepper, Lowry's, and other kicky things that I can't remember or couldn't identify. He went over and above and made a cool mold of his spread, along with a tomato, cracker and pepper jack cheese presentation. Either way, it was a nice combo of sweet and sassy, and we had both spreads with the Triscuits and some delicious french onion/poppyseed wheat crackers. We topped off the night with a hearty dose of hilarity and Ben and Jerry's (Curtis had Americone Dream and I picked Half-Baked.)
Here are the pictures of our finished products: