Key Lime Pie

One of my favorite CDs is Kenny Chesney's Be As You Are: Songs From An Old Blue Chair. One of the songs "Key Lime Pie" says it best about this tasty delight, "Not too tart, not too sweet, my baby loves to watch me eat her key lime pie, her key lime pie!" I made Key Lime Pie tonight for the first time and was surprised at how easy and simple it was (maybe it was the recipe). Anyway, I would highly recommend it! Check out the CD too, I know you'll love it!

Ingredients

1 (9 inch) prepared graham cracker crust

• 3 cups sweetened condensed milk (I used a little use than this and extra sour cream so it wasn't too sweet)
• 1/2 cup sour cream (I used fat free)
• 3/4 cup key lime juice
• 1 tablespoon grated lime zest
• 
  

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. In a medium bowl, combine condensed milk, sour cream, lime juice, and lime rind. Mix well and pour into graham cracker crust.
3. Bake in preheated oven for 5 to 8 minutes, until tiny pinhole bubbles burst on the surface of pie. DO NOT BROWN! Chill pie thoroughly before serving. Garnish with lime slices and whipped cream if desired.

London Part II

Tuesday we left Paddington Station and took the train 30 min. west to Windsor Castle. Windsor Castle was founded by William the Conqueror (reigned 1066-87) at the end of the eleventh century. It has been the home of 39 monarchs, and is the oldest royal residence in the British Isles to have remained in continuous use. By the way Queen Elizabeth II is Head of State of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and Head of the Commonwealth. Her Majesty is also Head of State of sixteen of the Commonwealth's 53 countries. The Queen is officially in residence at Windsor twice a year, at Easter, and again in June, when the annual Garter Service is held in St. George's Chapel. The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh spend most of their private weekends at Windsor. Whenever she is in residence, the Royal Standard, rather than the Union flag, is flown on the Round Tower. This is where The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall were married back in 2005 (Princess Diana's ex).

The castle neighbors the town of Windsor and is charming in every way with quaint shops, cobble stone roads, etc! Inside Windsor Castle we toured St. George's Chapel, Changing of the guards complete with a marching band, and the State Apartments. We were only able to take pictures outside so here area a few below!

That afternoon we headed over to Westminster which is where Parliament and West Minster Abbey are located. Across the bridge is The London Eye an amazing giant observation/ferris wheel. It's the highest in the world and offers fascinating views of London. It's located on the Thames River opposite the Houses of Parliament. It was built to celebrate the Millennium year and is a great way to see the city. It is made up of 32 enclosed capsules each holding 25 people. It was about a 30 minute ride and on a clear day, you can see up to 25 miles across the capital. Brandon and I really enjoyed this ride, we took a lot of pictures too! I couldn't believe how high we were and what incredible views we were able to see even though it was a little cloudy and rainy. The wheel never stops so loading and unloading has to be quick and efficient! If you are afraid of heights this may be a little scary, but none the less it is well worth it! Here are a few pictures

That night we ate at a great little turkish restaurant! I loved the colorful lanterns hanging from the ceiling! They created a warm and inviting atmosphere and the food was different but yummy! They served us this bread that was blown up like a balloon with a yogurt dip and dill. Brandon and I both had lamb prepared differently, mine was skewered with lot of spices and had a real kick to it!

London Part I

We arrived in London on Sunday the 28th of March at around noon at the Heathrow Airport. We took the express train to Paddington Station where we took a taxi to the hotel. One funny thing we noticed immediately was that their taxis look like cars out of a Dick Traci movie! It made it easy to spot a taxi when you needed one.

We stayed at a beautiful 5 star JW Marriott Hotel called the Grosvenor House. The hotel is quite old but has been renovated quite extensively. We truly felt pampered (It's so nice to have someone else clean your room and bathroom everyday)! Now before I go on I wanted to note that there was a 7 hour time difference from London and Utah so after our overnight flight and everything we were surprised we really didn't feel too tired despite not really being able to sleep on the airplane, to us it was really like 5 am in the morning. I think with all the excitement and anxiousness that extra dose of adrenaline really kicked in! After getting settled into our room we jetted out to pick up a prepaid cell phone Brandon would need for work and in case of any emergencies (Verizon US cells don't work over there). The nice thing is they are super cheap and easy to set up within minutes! Our hotel was across the street from the well known Hyde Park in the Mayfair area of London so we headed north up to Oxford Street which is a very busy street in London know for it's shopping and boy was it busy!

I don't know how to explain it but people in London dress a certain way that is dressy with a slight casual look. Most people wear a lot of black clothing, scarfs, dressy shoes like boots, and lots of black leggings! I think it's sort of that way in several parts of Europe. Us casual Americans stuck out like a sore thumb, well sort of. We knew to pack a lot of black--I wore a black fleece the whole time but our bright colored Nike tennis shoes were probably a dead giveaway. That, and our red north face backpack or Kelty bag and our cameras! We did A LOT of walking so I'm so glad we brought the tennies! Of course the biggest clue was our accent, no doubt! I always had to pay really close attention to someone talking otherwise I would miss about half of what they were saying! Isn't that funny, even though it's the same language, the accent can make it sound so foreign! Some funny phrases were "Cheers Mate" instead of "Goodbye" or "That suites me down to the ground" instead of "That sounds good to me." A couple others were "Queue" instead of "line" or "Mind the Gap" on the metro so you didn't miss the platform stepping off. Their accent and phrases are really quite charming, I really enjoyed it! I wonder what our accent sounds like to them?

Anyway, back to the trip, Sunday afternoon we walked to Buckingham Palace which was about a 25 min walk from the hotel. Sunday was probably the only day where it didn't rain and the sun was out in the afternoon. We had a lovely stop there to take pictures and enjoy the weather. We missed the Changing of the Guard which takes places at 11 am most days. It really is a beautiful palace from the outside, and I would have liked to go inside some of the State Apartments, Royal Mews, and The Queen's Gallery but it wasn't on the top of our list of things to do. On the way back we took the long way, walking all the way around Buckingham Palace and back to the hotel. We stopped at Hyde Park Corner and took some pictures of monuments, a really cool arch, etc. That night we had dinner at an authentic Italian restaurant a few streets down, I say this because the menu was very different than what we are use to, which is good every now and then . I enjoyed the warm fresh mozzarella with grilled vegetables, and real Italian pizza!

Monday morning Brandon left for the London Data center and I was left on my own to venture out to the museums! All in all London is a very easy city to get around in and many places are easily within walking distance. The metro or "Tube" as it's called is very convenient and easy to maneuver. Once you get the hang of it, it's pretty easy. I decided to take the bus into the city center because that's what the concierge recommended but in the end I probably could have walked to the National Gallery faster than it took on the bus. Mainly because of traffic, frequent traffic lights and making several stops on the way. But I guess I can say I have ridden a red double decker bus! I arrived at the National Gallery mid-morning and decided to take one of their free guided tours. It lasted an hour and was very interesting and informative. I spent another hour walking around admiring only a few of the 2,300 pieces of art from the early renaissance to the impressionists. I picked up a print of one of my favorite artists Claude-Oscar Monet, The Water-Lily Pond, at the bookshop and ate lunch at the museum's cafe.

After eating lunch and learning my lesson on the bus, I took the metro north to The British Museum, the oldest museum in the world whose collection contains items from every corner of the globe. I spent about 2 hours here taking in all I could. I especially enjoyed the Ancient Egyptian and Sudanese collection with amazing mummies and sarcophagi as well as the Ancient Greek and Roman Antiquities with pieces from the Parthenon. The great thing about all the public museums in London is that they are all free! There is so much to learn and enjoy here, it really made me appreciate history and culture as well as pure talent and genius.

That night we walked from our hotel down to the first Hard Rock Cafe! It was a blast and the food and our server were great! We made sure we picked up our memorabilia next door ( I'm a big Hard Rock Cafe fan)! Did you know the first rock and roll memorabilia was a guitar given by Eric Clapton to reserve a seat for himself! Back when it opened 38 years ago, its "Love All, Serve All" motto treated everyone the same no matter who you were- everyone waited in line for a seat. Eric Clapton wanted to reserve a seat at the bar so he donated his guitar to be hung above his chair! After that, Rock and Roll Stars followed suite and the Hard Rock Cafe now has the world's largest collection of Rock and Roll memorabilia!

Back From Europe!

We had so much fun on our trip to Europe where we visited London and Paris, but we are happy to be home in the good old USA! All in all we were gone a week, spending four days in London and then taking the Chunnel over to Paris for two and a half days there. I was trying to decide how to post some pictures but realized it would take a long time to post to the blog (we literally took hundreds) so I decided to upload some of them to Picasa and then create a link. So folks, here they are and don't worry you don't have to look at all of them, I realize there are a lot but I wanted to give you a taste of the adventure we were on! Over the next couple of weeks I am going to post about a few places we visited to give you an idea of where we went. I must say we probably could easily have spent another week in each city with all the different things there are to do and see but for the time and money we had I think we saw some pretty cool places!