86. Go geocaching.

Over Memorial Day, J and I went to visit J's sister K, and her boyfriend L.

J and I had been looking forward to this visit because L has just purchased a handheld GPS for camping and geocaching!

In case you don't know what Geocaching is - it's basically an adult treasure hunt.  The GPS coordinates  are used to find various objects which includes a log of all those who have found the object before you.

On our first geocach-outing, we set out to find a nano-cache - a super small container.  We also brought along a cache object K and L had traded for during their last outing.

Take me out to the ballgame...with a baby baseball!

At first we headed in the wrong direction.  I blame clouds affecting the GPS. maybe.

Then we were in the right location - with a lot of searching to do.

I won't show you the location of the actual cache  - 

but it took us a while to find it - and it was in a place completely unexpected. 

oh, and I found it :)

We added our names to the list and returned the cache to it's secret location. 

The next day, we headed out to do some hiking and geocaching along the way.

We found another cache (L did!) complete with a pile of goodies.  L traded his baby baseball for something way more man-ly...

Miami Ink playing cards!

We had a great time laughing and having other people stare at us like we were nuts.  I can't wait to find more caches! 

70. Make 10 meals in the Crockpot.

Ok, so maybe this doesn't count as a "meal" per se, but I was super excited to find out I could make yummy chicken stock right from my crockpot!

I used Gina's method and it worked perfectly!  8 hours later, I had the best homemade stock and some shredded chicken I used to make homemade enchiladas.

Before.

After.

Plus it made the apartment smell heavenly.  Kinda like those days where it's all snowy outside and you can curl up and read a book all day...just like that.

71. Make 80 new recipes.

With the leftover basil from my tomato bruschetta - I decided to make homemade pesto.

First - I should let you know two things. 

1. I have not gone food shopping for about 2 months and had to shop at the little grocery store around the corner from our apartment.

2. That place is mad expensive.

Because of this, I had to tweek the traditional pesto recipe slightly.  I bought and used walnuts instead of pine nuts.  (I was not about to spend $9 for 3 ounces of pine nuts.)

After that everything was pretty much the same.

Next time, I am going to toast the walnuts before adding them to the processor.  I like the smokey-ness it brings out.  I am also going to use a sharper Parmesan cheese.  The cheese I had was a bit milder than I would have liked. 

Sorry for the lack of pictures - I was too hungry!

I served it over whole wheat penne with extra Parmesan on the top - yum!

71. Make 80 new recipes.

With the official start of summer - I decided to take on the challenge of making one of J's favorite foods - Tomato Bruschetta.

I always crack up because J HATES tomatoes yet gobbles up bruschetta like they are the last food on earth.

But I digress...

I couldn't find a recipe which I liked and which included all the foods I already had at home- so I modified a few. I used:

3 large tomatoes
1 cup chopped basil
1/2 a large onion
3 cloves minced garlic
4 tbs Olive Oil
1 1/2 tbs Balsamic Vinegar
8-9 1 inch thick pieces of French Baguette (toasted)
Salt and Pepper

I combined all the ingredients (minus the bread!) and let them set in a bowl for about 30 minutes to let their flavors meld. I topped the toasted pieces of bread with this - and we were ready to ring in summer. J gave it two thumbs up!

The only thing I would change is the amount of olive oil and balsamic vinegar - I used way too much of both.  I ended up having to staring the mixture out of the liquid at the end. no bueno.