Sep 17
In the spirit of tonight’s rivalry game, I thought I’d post this clip we ran on KSL last year. This was my first BYU rivalry prank…courtesy of Brady and his brothers Jeremy and Jason. They’re all Cougar fans. Their brother Weston is the black sheep in the family…he’s a Ute.
So when the fun was over…I thought it would be fun to run this little story on the morning show.
If you think that was funny…check out what they did to each other this year.
Go Cougs!
Aug 20
Oxymoron? Not anymore.
Brady and I have been doing a little workout program lately. It’s called P90X. Maybe you’ve heard of it. Or maybe you’re familiar with this guy:
Yeah, we hang out with Tony Horton every day now…on our TV or in the gym on a computer screen. And aside from learning how to “Bring It”… we’ve also had to learn how to put ourselves on a diet. We’ve been eating a lot more fresh veggies, a lot fewer processed foods, and a LOT less sugar. To paraphrase Tony himself: a good body is like a sports car, and sports cars have to run on good fuel. This “sports car fuel” approach has actually turned out to be quite rewarding. We’ve been forced to try new recipes and different methods of cooking that don’t involve oil or butter (yes, it is possible, and quite tasty). We’ve weaned ourselves from creamy, cheesy sauces, and opted for lighter, but equally flavorful choices (like pesto with chicken broth and lemon juice rather than olive oil). We’ve also been bypassing dessert more often. This one has bothered me.
You see, something in my culinary life has been missing over the past seven weeks. With our new, wholesome, no-sugar-added diet, I’ve been feeling trapped in a world of savory dishes. No desserts in the house. I haven’t been able to make cakes, cookies…not even so much as a pan of brownies! My poor oven has been feeling somewhat neglected, and I’ve been itching to BAKE something for WEEKS!
Today I finally snapped. I needed to bake something (what a strange urge to have…I’m sure Brady wishes I had it more often). I had enough restraint to prevent myself from making a chocolate cake. But I did find an amazing cookie recipe online. And get this: NO SUGAR ADDED! I even used applesauce instead of oil, so these little drops of heaven are fat-free too! Am I good or what? (Okay, I didn’t invent the recipe, but hey, I’m still new to this “baking healthy” thing.)
Here it is (I made some adaptations, the original one can be found here):
Healthy Oatmeal Cookies (with Honey)
Ingredients (this yields about 2 dozen cookies):
Preparation:
Ta-daaa!
As you can see, mine turned out very round and fluffy. The original recipe suggests pressing the dough balls down with a fork before they go in the oven, so they’re flatter. I think I might try that next time, but these are still A-mazing! Thanks to the folks at wholegraingourmet.com for posting something that gives hope to us newly reformed health-conscious bakers.
Aug 19
I work in the news…and I see some funny things. Dogs on snowboards, ducks living in a penthouse suite on top of a luxury hotel, the world’s largest whoopie pie…
(You may not know this…but there are actually several states in the U.S. that lay claim to the world’s largest whoopie pie. This one was made earlier this year in Maine.)
So this week, I hopped on one of the newsroom computers to work on a story and found these.
They’re called “Anti-theft lunch bags,” and they can instantly turn your freshly-made sandwich into a moldy, undesireable mess. At least on the outside. The baggies have green “mold” splotches printed on both sides. I can see these coming in really handy if you have trouble protecting your food from your roommates or coworkers. Just stick your lunch in one of these little beauties, throw it in the break room fridge, and it’s instantly “theft proof.” Of course, your coworkers (or roommates) might get suspicious when they see the same mold pattern on every lunch you pack.
Of course, the manufacturers didn’t forget about the outer packaging. The moldy lunch bags come in an equally moldy box…
The lunch-packing world is certainly much more sophisticated than when I was a kid. Plain old brown bags and Ziploc baggies ain’t good enough no mo’.
Personally, I’m not sure I’d want to gag everytime I pulled out my sandwich.
But I must say…props to the inventors.
Aug 12
One thing we love about the Bay Area is that there’s so much stuff to do! (It’s also one of the reasons I haven’t updated this in a while…*cough*) A few weeks ago, Brady and I drove out to the Central Valley to visit one of his college buddies and go to Yosemite national park. His friend lives about halfway between our house and the park, so we drove to his house, spent the night, then drove into the park the next day. It was great, because we had our own personal tour guide to teach us the ins and outs of getting through a VERY heavily traveled national park.
Brady and Jared at El Capitan
While we were driving through the park we saw a bunch of cars pulled off to the side of the road…when Jared suddenly yelled, “BEAR!” So we pulled over too a saw a mama bear and two cubs climbing trees and playing in the grass. Too bad the zoom on our camera wasn’t better. Click on the picture to enlarge it.
Brady in front of Yosemite falls. It was a beautiful day…couldn’t have asked for better weather.
Us at the top of Sentinel Dome. That’s Yosemite Falls on the other side of the canyon. I think the elevation there was more than 8,000 feet. Pretty normal if we had been hiking in Utah…but now that we’ve been living just a couple hundred feet above sea level…8,000 feet is quite an adjustment for the lungs!
Tree pose…in front of a tree
The whole gang…Brady, me and Jared on top of Sentinel Dome. Half dome is behind us.
Brady at Glacier Point, in front of Half Dome.
This was my best “Titanic” impression from the “point” at Glacier Point. The view was incredible.
Something about National Parks is so awe-inspiring for me. We barely scratched the surface in Yosemite (we were only there for a day) so I can’t wait to go back and get deeper into the park.
May 16
I found this recently…
Back in January I got to have a little more fun with my dear anchors. We did a fitness segment, and the trainer was supposed to bring one of her students to demonstrate the exercises. That didn’t happen, so the fearless producer stepped in to help.
(Okay, secretly, I sometimes wish I was a fitness model…)
Video Courtesy of KSL.com
Apr 29
This week we launched a series on our morning show called “The Great Escape.” Every Friday for the next three weeks, KSL 5 Today goes on the road to a different quadrant of the state, to spotlight the lesser known activities that area has to offer. This week: Northeastern Utah.
I was the field producer for this adventure. I traveled out with anchor Scott Haws and crew man/camera operator Jeff Smith. We met up with the rest of our production team at Flaming Gorge, in a place called Red Canyon.
I wish I could show you the viewpoint of Chopper 5 of where we were standing…literally on the edge of a 1,500 foot cliff. We got there at 5 a.m., and were taking live shots from the chopper just as the sunrise hit the red cliffs around 6:24 a.m. It was incredible.
Here’s a clip of the show.
Video Courtesy of KSL.com
I was mostly communicating with the chopper and control room from inside the satellite truck, so I didn’t have to be out in the cold for too long. But it was definitely nippy out there in those early morning hours.
After our morning show, we packed up the truck and moved down below the Green River Dam, for a couple live shots during the noon show.
While not perfect, I felt like the show was a huge success. It certainly reflected in our morning show ratings. We beat the competition by a pretty big margin. But more than that, it was fun to do something so completely different for the show. Utah is a big place, and there are so many undiscovered gems in every part of the state. How awesome that we get to showcase it on live TV!
Mar 18
Bracketology – “the process of predicting the field of the NCAA Basketball Tournament, named as such because it is commonly used to fill in tournament brackets for the postseason…
“A bracketologist’s credibility is judged on how many teams he predicts correctly being in the tournament and the average difference between the bracketologist’s projected seed and the actual seed assigned by the NCAA Selection Committee.”
And according to the great Wikipedia…apparently I’m good at it so far.
I’ve never been a huge college basketball fan, and I’ve never followed the NCAA tournament very closely. Hence, I’ve never filled out a bracket.
That being said, I married into a family of sports nuts, where every adult fills out an NCAA bracket every year to compete against each other. I figured I could never be truly accepted as a White until I gave in to March Madness.
So here it is…my first bracket.
Before you criticize any of my picks…let me just say that, two days in, I am currently in first place in the White Family bracket challenge…and I have proof.
I can’t say I had much of a rhyme or reason to my picks though…and that will probably burn me in the next few days. Actually, I’m fully expecting to be knocked down once we reach the sweet 16. I chose many of my picks based on which name looked better…and which state they came from. If I like the state, they advance. We’ll see how my strategy holds up to my much more sport-savvy husband and brothers-in-law…
At least for now, while I’m on top…this bracketology stuff is pretty fun!
Nov 12
I produce the morning show. I thought it meant that I would never have to be in front of a camera…
Until last week.
Oct 30
Brady and I have a thing for running. I’m not good at it. I’m not even fast…and it’s hard to say that I enjoy the act itself. But I’m addicted to the after-effect, the adrenaline rush from crossing the finish line, the endorphins, the way my legs feel at the end of 5, 10, or 26.2 miles under the beating sun. I guess you could say it’s my drug of choice.
That being said, we decided to tackle the 2010 St. George Marathon…and the months of training that necessarily precede it. It was a busy summer. Having run St. George a couple times before, I figured I would be used to the training by now…but it never gets any easier. It’s still hard to get out of bed and run 15 miles on a Saturday.
One thing that made it a little easier was signing up for other “pacer” races leading up to the marathon. We kicked off the running season with the Ogden Half Marathon.
It was a family affair. My mom and cousin ran the half with us, and my dad and sister ran the full marathon. Great race, mostly downhill (which is always appreciated).
That was in May. Shortly after that race…Brady moved out to California for his internship with Apple. I had to stay here for work…so, without a running buddy, we had to resort to being each other’s coaches via phone (and we went running whenever I went out to visit him). Brady did a 100 mile fitness challenge with some of his coworkers…he had to run 100 miles in 6 weeks, and got a sweet shirt and bragging rights when it was all over. He had a pretty easy time meeting and exceeding that quota, with all the marathon training he was doing.
Meanwhile, back in Utah, I signed up for a mid-summer half marathon, to keep myself up to speed on my training. I ran the Hobbler Half (down Hobble Creek Canyon) in July, and ended up running my best half marathon time.
Fast forward a couple months…Brady came back to Utah, and we kept training…and those Saturday long runs just kept getting longer. The week before the marathon…we decided to do something a little different for our weekend run…
This is the Dirty Dash. It was a 10K with obstacles, water, and a lot of mud. This is not a race. It’s a bunch of grownups going back to the days of childhood when it was okay to get this dirty. And it’s awesome. When you’re not climbing over 6-foot walls or slogging through a knee-deep swamp, you’re sliding down a slip-and-slide into a mud pit or army-crawling through…well, more mud.
So we finally made it to the weekend of the St. George marathon. We had a blast…in an ironically painful, exhausting sense. Brady said it best when he said it was the hardest thing he’s ever done. Somehow we managed to keep up with each other at the beginning, pull each other along through the middle, and finally drag each other across the finish line.
And we’ve got the pictures to prove it…
Yes, there’s something addicting about crossing that finish line and feeling like all you can do is collapse in a heap on the pavement. Which is almost what happened…we made it onto the grass before we collapsed. But we did it, and we did it together. And it’s the best feeling in the world.
Time to start planning for next year…
Apr 24
Because Brady and Kyle won the audience choice award at the Crexendo competition…we got tickets to the Jazz’s first playoff game at home, against the Denver Nuggets. We weren’t clear up in the nosebleed section, either.
How about the 13TH ROW?
Kyle and Whitney were there too, of course…and yes, we all wore our NoteSync shirts.
That’s the view from our seats, and I didn’t even have to use the zoom on my camera!
I’ve been to a few Jazz games before, but never a playoff game, and NEVER closer than the 7th row on the balcony. It was quite the experience.
Before the game started, we ate dinner at the Jazz Sports Club on the top floor.
Didn’t think I’d be eating Prime Rib with roasted red potatoes and phyllo-wrapped asparagus before a sporting event, but that’s what was on the menu. Wow, season ticket holders certainly get some sweet perks. It was fantastic! And even better, it was a buffet…so I could eat as much food as my heart desired (and it was a lot.)
Tipoff time: We barely scarfed down our dessert in time to get to our seats for tipoff. But I’m glad we made it. Watching the starting lineup run out as the lights go out and fireworks light up overhead…it’s really something.
The game itself was awesome. The first half was close–Jazz were trailing till probably the second quarter. By half time, Jazz lead the Nuggets, but just barely.
At half time we got more food, again compliments of our awesome tickets. And we got to rub shoulders with famous people (well, famous Utahns, anyway.)
This is my paparazzi shot…that’s Senator Orrin Hatch in the lower left. The picture is blurry, because I didn’t want to draw attention to myself by using the flash. And he was busy shaking hands and taking pictures with everyone else in the room, so I didn’t want to disturb him.
Oh, and we ran into Jeff Hornacek coming out of the elevator…literally, ALMOST collided. I didn’t get a picture of him, because by the time it hit me, he was already halfway down the hall.
Second half, the Jazz took off. It wasn’t even a close game at that point…but it was still fun to cheer. We stayed till the bitter end (11:30 p.m…WAY past my bedtime) but it was totally worth it.
Jazz lead the series 2-1. Go Jazz!
