Part Three (of the fire story)

Why was there a truck on fire in our parking garage? Here the story as the cops have figured so far:


*I'd like to mention that as Kimball and I were discussing the possibilities and trying to figure out the mystery of the burning truck, I proposed what ended up being basically the exact truth. I think I need to try my hand at crime solving. 


The truck, as it turns out, was a stolen truck. Some hooligans had stolen it to aid them in a heist. They robbed some place (a business it sounds like, not sure which one). They went and stored their goods who knows where, and (I assume) they were driving north by our place. They passed the first underground parking driveway next to ours, and then they saw ours and and saw their hiding spot. They pulled in, noticed an empty spot (which happened to be ours... still feeling guilty about this), saw a can of flammable stuff on the window ledge (this part is conjecture... there had been this canister of something dangerous and flammable on the ledge for the last couple weeks. I had noticed it, but thought nothing of it), and in an attempt to hide the evidence (or draw even more attention to themselves, or ruin an entire apartment building?) they decided to torch it.

So that's what happened. Pretty crazy, and pretty exciting. I spent today cleaning our bathroom, and it's really not as bad as I thought. It's tedious, but I don't mind it at all. Our landlords (a father and son, and really great guys) came today and said they'll help us out however they can. They took pictures and will talk with a restoration company today to see what they can and need to do for us. They'll probably do our carpets, walls, ducts, and vents. I just hope I can get the smell out. Any ideas or suggestions for really great air fresheners? I don't want anything scented, sit something to suck the chemical smokey smell out. Such a crazy, random experience.

At least it's a good story, right?

This is the car that was parked next to the truck. Their car was the only
one that was damaged. All the others were just covered in soot. Our car
(thank goodness) is clean as ever, but our apartment had the worst
apartment damage.

Part Two (of the fire story)

(This is a continuation from the last post) 

The firemen hard at work, we wondered how long we should wait. We had our car keys, and e knew our car was safe. Maybe we could just go over to Kimball's parents house and wait there. One of the police officers called us all over (there were maybe 40-50 of us out there now) and told us that they had reached a bishop in the area with keys to a nearby church (I love Utah). We were all supposed to go and wait there in the warmth, and they'd inform us when it was safe to come back. We decided to go with everyone, since it would be a little adventure, and in case they divulged anything, we would want to know what was going on, and when/if it was safe to go home.

We all walked a few blocks and met the bleary-eyed bishop with his family. We all crowded into the gym (some luckies got the foyer couches) and sat on the floor and metal folding chairs. The police man came in a after a while and told us that the Red Cross would be there shortly to help with anything we needed, and that they might start arranging hotel rooms for those whose places weren't livable. Kimball and I got pretty bored after a while, and decided that we'd just get our neighbor's number, figuring that their damage would be comparable to ours, and call them later that day from the comfort of Kimball's parents' place.

We walked back to our apartment, by now it was about 5:30, and saw that the firemen had successfully put out the fire, and were starting to pack up. We went and talked to one of them. We asked how bad the damage was, and he told us it would due fine, and that we should be able to go in. We went in, thinking it was over, and that we could resume our sleep, but we wouldn't be so lucky. I could see big black fireman foot prints in our entry, and realized they must have come looking for anyone still inside. They had even opened our balcony door and turned on our ceiling fan to start airing the apartment out. Despite their efforts, it smelled horrible. We decided to gather some clothes and essentials and head to the in-laws at least for the day. I went to grab my phone charger and saw that it looked as if the outlet had vomited ashes. This was a little disturbing. We puzzled over it for a while and decided to work about it later. We continued packing up, and as we got to the bathroom, we realized this whole thing was much worse than we had thought.

Pictures are needed here.

the outlet

I don't even know how this happened. It's like there was
smoke in our walls, and it just came out of every crack
it could.

Our bathroom floor... so gross. There had been a rug
where that foot is.

This is what the inside of every closed drawer and
closet looks like. I don't understand how the smoke
got in all the way to the back of closed drawers and
managed to oat everything inside.

We started to see that this was more than just a bad smell. We moved into the kitchen and found it to be almost just as bad as the bathroom. 

We couldn't tell that the counters were dirty until we
moved a cereal box...

And then we noticed the floor. I'm so sad about my
pretty rug! I got it years ago at Anthropologie on a
major sale, and I don't know that it's cleanable. I
kind of like the new deeper hues though...

I was sad to realize that the 2 dozen pumpkin cookies I had made the day before were covered, but not very well with saran wrap. Maybe some were still okay, but we weren't brave enough to risk it. We were tired and didn't want to overwhelm ourselves too much, so we grabbed some clothes and threw our bedding in the wash and left. This was funny: we couldn't find any clean surfaces and we didn't know what to do with our pillows and duvet while their covers were being cleaned, so we stuffed it all in the clean dryer. We went to my in-laws and explained it all, they kindly said we could stay indefinitely, and then we slept from about 8 am till noon. We woke up, and decided to face the place once again. We brought huge tupperware bins and garbage bags with us. We basically threw out anything that wasn't worth cleaning or that had been contaminated: magazines, little notepads, our toothbrushes, dental floss, Q-tips, cotton balls, cookies, and tons of food that wasn't in an air-tight container (baking soda, cereal, etc.). I wish we could have thrown it all away sort of. The thought of scrubbing that whole place down, cleaning every book, article of clothing, appliance, dish, chair, the mattress (who knows how it's doing), towel, nail polish bottle, blow dryer, razor blade, and all my fabric and craft supplies... everything is so dirty! And this isn't just dirt. It's sticky, greasy, invasive, smudgy, stinky soot.  We filled our clean tupperwares with clothes and stuff that we thought we'd need for the next week or so, took the pillows and duvet from the dryer to dry the sheets, and put them in clean garbage bags. We dried our sheets, turned off the furnace so the smokey residue would stop blowing in, and we left. 

We would find out later that day what happened, and why that truck was burning in the first place. More to come. 

*(Sorry I'm not writing more at a time! I'm tired, and we're busy starting Thanksgiving super early by playing games and having treats and watching Boy Meets World, because we just survived a fire!). 

I'll post again tomorrow. 

The Full Story (well, part one of it)

Thursday night was a bad night. I was so tired, but as I got into bed and closed my eyes, my body refused to relax enough to fall asleep. I was tossing and turning for so long that I finally pulled out my phone and read for a bit. I don't know what time it was when I fell asleep, but I think I ended up getting about six hours of sleep. Kimball and I had been planning on going out on Friday, but I was so tired I didn't know if it would happen. I went to pick him up from work/school, and as we pulled up to our place we decided to park on the street, instead of in our parking stall beneath our building. The stalls are so narrow, so it's sometimes just easier to park outside, especially when we're just home for a few hours. We got settled at home, and both of us ended up falling asleep. Waking up from our little nap, we both felt groggy and decided to stay in... huge blessing... or huge mistake.

We ended up going to bed around 1:00 (I know. We had been tired, really.) There we were, snug in our cozy bed, with freshly cleaned sheets, and happy to be evading the snowstorm outside, when everything went crazy! The fire alarm woke us both up instantly around 4:15 am. I have no recollection of waking up, getting out of bed, or turning on the light. All I know is that all of those things happened, and then I was running through our apartment looking for the source of the smoke I could hear and see everywhere. Kimball and I, with our mussed hair and wide eyes seemed to just walk in circles for a while... or run in circles. My first thought was, "get outside now!"I actually first thought to go out on our balcony, but I realized quickly that that was a horrible idea. I thought back on all those conversations I'd had about "If your house was burning down, what would you grab?" I couldn't think straight, but I did think straight enough to yell to Kimball to grab our phones (who has phone numbers memorized anymore?) and our computers.  I was busy looking for the fire. We thought it was for sure in our apartment, but then I saw the smoke pouring out of our ceiling vents. Shoot, it was upstairs! This was the moment of panic (really a moment... from waking up to getting outside was maybe a minute and a half, tops.) I ran into the bedroom and told Kimball, and started wrapping our huge bedspread around me. I knew it would be cold out there, and, confession, I was just in my undies. This was my moment of not thinking clearly. I saw Kimball pulling on jeans and a shirt, and realized that it would be a joke to go outside as I was. I grabbed some jeans and a sweater and got dressed faster than I ever have. We threw our electronics into a backpack, and Kimball grabbed his little bag of cough drops (this was his moment of not thinking clearly), and we ran out of our house. Not knowing if we'd see it again. Such a weird, panic-filled, confusing few minutes. The worst part was not knowing where the fire was or how long we had to get out of there. I thought our ceiling could have fallen in at any moment, or our wall would turn black and crumble to ashes.

We ran out into the rain to the front of our building. There was only one other couple out there. (I was proud of us for being so quick and smart - these guys were quicker, but they were also in shorts and had no shoes). The guy was looking into the parking garage, and when he saw us he yelled, frantically, "There's a truck on fire in there. It's seriously about to blow up! Oh man! It's gonna blow!" We laughed to ourselves, relieved that it wasn't the building, and at the fact that he earnestly thought the car would blow up. Too many TV shows. These guys also hadn't brought their phone, so they (frantically) told us to call the police. We did, but the cops showed up right as we got through, and before we had to a chance to see into the garage. I just wanted to know where the truck was, and how bad the damage would be to our car. We stressed about this for a minute with the other couple. What a huge pain. Our cars might be ruined, and the police have already taped it off. There's no way to even go get our cars to get away if we want to. This was the point that Kimball realized that he had his cough drops in his hands... I let him hide them in my backpack... my poor little sicky. Kimball turned to me and said, "Wait, did I park on the street last night?" My eyes grew wide with hope at this suggestion. I didn't know. I was delirious then, and I was worse off now. "I think you did!" We sat and thought and thought, and finally concluded that we had, in fact, evaded the flames! What a huge relief. The moment I realized it, I turned to cold-footed pair and proudly announced, "We just realized we parked on the street! Isn't that lucky?!" I immediately realized how horrible it was for me to say that. They looked, well, tired. I avoided them for the rest of the adventurous morning. People had started to pour out of the building in all sorts of funny PJs (robes, Harry Potter robes, shorts, too-short flannels, it was great) as the fire trucks showed up. We heard a loud pop, and guessed (correctly, as we'd find out later) that the windows were being blown out by the heat. I couldn't believe how many people came out without shoes on. (Isn't that the easiest thing to grab? They're just right there by the door!) We were told to move away as the firemen worked their magic. They also started going around to apartments waking those who's fire alarms didn't go off. There we waited, and here you must wait until I have time to write a little more. This is long and detailed, but it was such an adventure for us, I have to record it all, you know, for posterity.

Sorry to leave you hanging... just imagine how we felt!

Creamy Tomato Soup with Cheesy Croutons

Yesterday was so blustery and cold! I didn't have a lot of food in the house, but I did have a large quantity of broccoli and a few cans of diced tomatoes. I really wanted soup, so it was either broccoli or tomato. I suppose I could have combined the two, but I ended up settling on tomato, as you may have deducted from the title of this post. Clever you... 

It's strange to me that I decided to try tomato soup, since I've never really liked it, but after reading a few recipes and picking and choosing which ingredients I thought sounded good, I pieced together a recipe that sounded good to me, using ingredients that I already had. I was shocked at how delicious it was! It was amazing. Kimball and I both loved it, and it was surprisingly filling.

Creamy Tomato Soup:

Since I was sort of throwing it together as I went, I'm not sure of the exact amounts of certain things.

Add the following to a big pot:
2 cans of diced tomatoes
1 tablespoon of chicken bouillon
1-2 cups water depending on how thick you want your soup to be 

(you can use chicken broth in place of the bouillon and water)
a teaspoon or so of salt
a teaspoon or so of pepper

While that's heating up, brown the following in a skillet with a bit of olive oil:

Half a yellow onion 

1 clove of garlic, minced

1 teaspoon of sugar

When the mixture's lightly browned, add it all to the pot of soup. Stir it in, and add the following, to taste:
celery salt (it's strong, so use a little bit and taste before you add more)
oregano (a couple teaspoons)
basil (a couple teaspoons)

You can use fresh or dried herbs. Be sure to taste it as you add the spices. If you add way too much, you can add another can of tomatoes to dilute it a little bit. 

When the soup comes to a boil, turn the heat down, and slowly pour in some heavy cream. I don't know how much I used - maybe half a cup - Just be sure to start with a little, and stir as you pour. If you add too much you'll really taste the cream. Pour, stir, and taste until it looks and tastes how you want it to. You can also omit the cream altogether.

You can stop there, or, you can puree the soup. I used an immersion blender and partially blended it up. I wanted to make it a little thicker by blending some of the tomatoes, but I retained the chunky texture of the onions and some tomatoes. If you don't want to do this, but you want the results, you could use 1 can of crushed tomatoes, and 1 can of diced.

-

It seems like people love the combination of tomato soup and grilled cheese. I'm not a fan of grilled cheese sandwiches, but I improvised and came up with a healthier, easier, and tastier substitute. I call them croutons because of they're size and shape, but they're only delightfully crispy, not crunchy like the kind you buy. They were also surprisingly delicious. 

Here are the directions:

Cheesy Croutons:

Preheat oven to 350F

Bread - I used regular whole wheat sandwich bread (1 slice per person), but you could use rolls, french, or other bread

Olive oil

Shredded cheese - I used mozzarella and asiago. Parmesan would be good, too

Garlic salt

Paint the bread lightly with olive oil, and cut it into squares. (If you're using rolls, you can cut them into cubes, and toss them with a bit of oil in a large ziploc bag instead of painting them. Arrange the bread squares on a tin foil-lined baking sheet (it's so much easier to clean up!). Sprinkle the bread lightly with the shredded cheese. Make sure the squares are close together, or even touching, so you don't waste cheese! Bake them at 350 for about 10 minutes, or until the cheese starts to turn golden brown. I didn't time them. I just checked periodically till I liked what I saw. Remove them from the oven when they look done, and sprinkle them lightly with garlic salt. Pull them apart carefully, so they retain their cheese. They'll get soggy if they sit in the soup too long, so just a few at a time when you're ready to eat. 

I served our soup with these croutons, and a few sliced grape tomatoes thrown in. They add a really nice touch, and make it feel even more like real tomato soup.  

India Fest 2011

We (somewhat) recently had a lovely evening at Spanish Fork's annual IndiaFest. The curry was decent, the literature was inspiring (we lean vegetarian), the temple was beautiful, and the music and dance were fantastic. They had a stage set up at the bottom of a hill where we were able to watch Indian dancers, which was so fun. I love Indian dance, and if I could find a class in Provo, I'd take it. There were displays set up all around the temple to educate us on all things India, random caged animals, like parrots and llamas. 

It was a little chilly, but luckily we were able to warm up in the overcrowded, incense-filled temple. I'm not a fan of incense (even though it reminds me of Jerusalem and all the old churches we spent hours in), but it was better to hang out inside anyway since that's where the music was. Actually the reason we were even at IndiaFest in the first place was to support the band, of which Kimball's former Kung Fu instructor of ten years is a member. This guy's not only a martial arts master, but he plays in a traditional Indian band and a traditional Irish band. Such diverse interests and talents! We actually went and heard him play with his Irish band the week prior at the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival, which we have no pictures of, sadly. It was pretty great though, and hopefully we can go back next summer. Anyway, back to India. In the temple, they were calling people up to bless them and put a red dot on their forehead, and the band had everyone get up and dance around in a big circle. Kimball and I just sat on the side, for fear of being converted unintentionally, but we did chant and sing the hare krishna songs along with everyone, one of which was stuck in my head for days. So cultural. 

By the way, why have we shortened the word festival? Is it just me, or is it a great word? There are so many fests these days and not enough festivals. Timpanogos did it right. I don't care what people say, I'm lengthening it back out. 

Thank you, India Festival! We had a great time.