byufan.net

Back in October 2006, I got an email from Zions Bank saying that there was a special offer for ccustomers to buy tickets to Pioneer Theatre Company’s production of Les Miserables before tickets went on sale to the general public.  Nancy’s birthday was coming up and I figured it would be a nice gift for her.  I logged on and, although the website was a little slow, I was able to purchase tickets.  Little did I know that PTC’s production of Les Mis would become one of the hottest tickets in town.  Well, we’ve waited for six months and now the time is finally here.  Nancy and I are going to see Les Miserables tomorrow (Friday). 

I’ve read the book and seen the movie with Liam Neeson but I’ve never seen the musical. Of course Nancy has been listening to and humming the soundtrack of Les Miserables for the past six months so there definitely won’t be any surprises. That being said, we’re both excited to see it and I’ll post my review of it on Saturday. 

I’m hoping that taking Nancy to Les Mis will earn me some brownie-points in the husband department.  How many husbands out there planned six months ahead in order to get tickets to the hottest show in town?  The fact that I did has got to be worth at least a back scratch or something.

This past Tuesday we took Diana to Primary Children’s Medical Center for her six month cardiac checkup.  They did both the EKG and the cardiac ultrasound.   Last time Diana had to be sedated for the ultrasound because she was too wiggly.  This time she held still with the aid of a supply of purple suckers and Cinderella playing on the TV in the room.  The ultrasound is cool – they even colorize the blood flowing through the heart so you can see exactly where the hole in her heart is.

 The doctor basically said that Diana is ready to have the surgery whenever we are ready.   He asked us when we wanted to do it.   On the one hand, we want to get it over with and know that it has to be done or else she will develop serious cardiac problems as she gets older.  On the other hand, I just can’t imagine them cracking open the chest of our precious little angel (Diana’s particular defect can only be fixed through open-heart surgery).  It was almost hard for me to control my emotions as I was contemplating the sugery but Nancy and I basically told the doctor that we are ready now.   Because Diana starts pre-school in August, we decided to get the surgery done this June so that she will be fully healed before she goes to pre-school.   Now we are just waiting for the surgical secretary to call us with the exact date.

Nancy and I went to a sushi class tonight.  We both love sushi and thought it would be nice to learn how to make it at home.   The class was taught by Jim Light of Home Cooks Culinary Adventures and was held in the demonstration kitchens at Kimball Distributing in Salt Lake City.  We covered a variety of topics including raw fish safety, how to choose fresh fish, how to prepare the sushi rice, how to cut the fish, etc.  The main focus of the class was on making maki sushi (roll sushi) as opposed to other types of sushi such as nigiri and chirashi.  After the instructor demonstrated a couple of rolls we each set about making a variety of rolls on our own and eating all the sushi we could hold.

We made a variety of sushi using the following ingredients:

• Yellowfin tuna (ahi)
• King crab (surimi)
• Shrimp (ebi)
• Eel (unagi) 
• Cucumber
• Carrot
• Wasabi
• Seaweed (nori)
• Pickled ginger (gari)
• Daikon sprouts
• Flying fish eggs (tobiko)

Nancy did a good job at making nice, tight, neat rolls.  I was a bit more adventurous and tried to make a rainbow roll with the rice and fish on the outside:

A Rainbow Roll (Note – mine didn’t look as good as this)

It turned out pretty well considering it was the first time I had ever made a sushi roll.  We had a great time and got our fill of sushi and look forward to making different kinds of sushi on our own in the future.

Welcome to the new home of our website – byufan.net.

Why byufan.net? Well, we were tired of our old domain name – it was hard for people to remember and hard to verbally tell people our email address. “byufan.net” is short and easy to remember. Best of all, it was available – so we took it.