Practicing the Art of Adventure

February Mini-Goals: Update Week 2

2012-02-12T17:39:00.000-06:00

Things are going slower in February than they did in January, but I have to say I'm really enjoying the slower pace! Friday I went to my nephew's school play and then went out with friends, AND yesterday I spent a few hours reading a book that wasn't a textbook, and I'm not behind yet! After such a hectic January, that feels absolutely wonderful. So, a quick update to keep me on track:

Maintain my current weight: I think I'm doing all right on this, but the scale has been a little screwy lately so I'm not 100% sure. I'm trying very hard to cut back on chocolate and sugar now that the worst of my stress is hopefully over (yes, even though the timer for my chocolate cake went off just as I was typing that...) and I've gotten in a few more times of walking lately.
Stay caught up with homework: Still a success! A few very difficult things fell into place the last few weeks, so I think there's a change I'm actually a little bit ahead. It's a blissful feeling.
Make a trip to the recycling center/Goodwill: Not yet. But I did list some of Henry's nicer electronics on eBay at his request, and it looks like they'll be on their way out of the house soon!
List all the movies and TV shows from my brother: Done. Three of them are already on their way to their new owners, and I sold two more over the weekend.
Cross one thing off of my list: Not done yet. I'm adding some updates this week, though, as I make some new recipes from my cookbooks (hence the chocolate cake--at least, I'm willing to blame the chocolate cake on my goal!)
Pull off a good birthday celebration for Henry: Still on track, although it's a few weeks away.
Get rid of one large box of my stuff: Not done yet, although I was looking around this week and getting some ideas of things I can clean out.
Stick to my budget: I ran my budget a few days ago and it looks like I'm still on track! I'll have to keep behaving myself for the next couple weeks as I buy the rest of Henry's birthday present, but I should be able to meet my goal if I did all my calculations right.

And now...I'm running out of reasons to postpone my last bit of homework for the weekend. Time to get back to it!

February Mini-Goals: Update

2012-02-05T12:01:00.001-06:00

I haven't made progress on a lot of my goals, but I'm still feeling like a huge success because I finally just submitted one of the most time-intensive homework projects I've ever done! The project I just turned in (which I had exactly a month to do) might have taken me more time to complete than my capstone project for my Bachelor's degree.

Maintain/lose weight: I'm successfully maintaining so far--and hoping I'll be able to exercise an extra day or two this week!
Stay caught up with homework: Success! This is the first time since I've started school that I actually feel caught up. After turning in my assignment this morning, I have actually finished everything that's due this week. I have another project that I need to start on, but it's a pretty great feeling to know that if I take today off from homework, I'm not going to be causing trouble for myself.
Make a trip to the recycling center/Goodwill: I haven't done this yet. But--Henry let me clean out all the old clothes from his closet and dresser to have a garage sale sometime this spring. At least we're getting prepared!
List the movies and TV shows from my brother: I haven't done this yet, but am hoping to get a start on it this week.
Cross one thing off my list: No progress yet--to be honest, I'm not sure what I'm going to try to accomplish this month!
Pull off a birthday celebration for Henry: I picked up about half of his birthday present and decided where I'm going to take him to dinner (I think,) but if he doesn't come up with any more plans I might try to plan something else for him, too!
Get rid of one large box of my stuff: Again, I haven't done this yet.
Stick to my budget: I'm not sure how well this is going. I picked up about half of Henry's birthday present, the birthday present for my nephew and a few other things that I probably didn't need (my 2011 photo book, and a new book to reward myself for finally finishing my assignment). That took care of most of the things I was planning on buying, though, so hopefully the rest of the month will be easier. At any rate, I did submit my taxes yesterday, and I'm certainly excited to get a nice refund to add to my savings account!

And now, off to finish a few more productive things before we head out for a Superbowl party!

Goals for February

2012-01-30T21:18:00.000-06:00

My goals for February are shaping up to be pretty similar to January, but there are at least a few things I'm hoping to cross off my list for good!

Maintain my current weight. Best case scenario, I'd like to lose a pound this month, but realistically I'm shooting for maintaining. Honestly, the way that January went I think that will be a decent level challenge for me!
Stay caught up in school. This is going to be hard, no question about it. There is a lot of reading, pretty regular papers and projects due, and starting next week I'm going to have to start finding people who will barter their time and opinion for cookies. I need guinea pigs for the instruction I'm developing, and unfortunately I picked a topic with a pretty specific target audience. Once of these days, I hope I'll learn to stop making things harder for myself than I need to! In the meantime, I'm going to continue striving to stay caught up.
Make a trip to the recycling center and/or Goodwill. I'm helping Henry clean out his rather cluttered house, including the corners of the basement that have sat untouched for years. It is going to be a long process, but I have him convinced to let go of at least a few things and I want to take advantage of it while I can! My method of cleaning is generally focused around getting rid of everything I haven't used in the last year, so his pack-rat nature drives me NUTS no matter how hard I try to be patient. It's a work in progress for both of us.
List all of the movies and TV shows my brother gave me to sell and at least some of the items Henry is planning to sell online. I've always sold books, movies, CDs, etc. online if I decided I didn't want them anymore; apparently I've inspired them both! My brother gave me a box of DVDs at Christmas which have been sitting in a corner until now; it's time to get them out of the house!
Cross one thing off my list. I'd love to do more, but unfortunately I don't think I'll have a lot of time to dedicate to many items on this list beyond #1: Getting my graduate certificate.
Pull off a good birthday celebration of some sort for Henry. His birthday is at the end of the month and while I doubt I can live up to the trip to Vegas he decided on last year for his birthday, I'd at least like to avoid another year where he forgets his birthday.
Get rid of at least one large box of my own stuff. My lease is up at the end of April and I would like to have less stuff to move. I did some pretty heavy-duty cleansing after the last time I moved so I am going to have a much harder time purging this time, but I'm pretty confident I can still find things that aren't worth moving.
Stick to my budget and add at least $800 to my savings account (in addition to my tax return). Again, this is going to be a challenge (especially with Henry's birthday this month and my nephew's birthday right away in March), but will be worth it in the long run.

Most of these are difficult goals for me because there's no good way to cross them off the list. Getting to the end of the month and staying caught up with my homework doesn't have the same level of satisfaction as crossing as many things as possible off my list quickly. I've also got a lot more goals this month, so we'll see how things go!

January Goals Wrap-Up

2012-01-29T22:50:00.000-06:00

I did not achieve all my goals for January, but I'm relatively pleased with what I did accomplish. I absolutely did not anticipate the crazy amount of homework I'd be doing this month, which ended up adjusting pretty much all of my plans and goals!

Lose 3 pounds: Fail. I stabilized my weight after the holidays and broke even, and to be honest, I consider that an accomplishment for the month. Between stress, lack of sleep, lack of time to exercise and trying to adjust to my new food budget, I could easily have gained a lot of weight this month. I wish I could make losing weight more of a priority, but as long as I need to spend 4+ hours a day every weekday on my laptop to finish all of my homework, I think my goal is just going to be maintenance. I'm going to strive for more, but I'm afraid that is the most realistic goal for me at this point.
Stay caught up in both my classes. For the first time since my first day of class, I'm feeling relatively caught up--I hope it lasts! I have a massive assignment due on February 6--if I can make that happen, I should be all right.
Cross at least two more things off my list: Done! I actually crossed four items off. I learned how to make risotto and brownies (successfully twice now!!), learned how to install a light fixture and made sasparilla. This is definitely one of the more successful items for the month!
Get caught up at work: Done-ish. I'm not sure if there is such a thing as being completely caught up for me, but right now I think I'm as close as I will get for quite some time. And the forums were great, with some wonderful food for thought!
Stick to my new budget: Success! It didn't make a noticeable difference in my savings account, thanks to my tuition and car insurance being due this month, but if I can stick to it next month I should see the rewards.
Make sasparilla: Done. It's ok, but not as tasty as I was hoping. It will probably be awhile before I do this again.

Now, time to figure out my goals for February. Homework, budgeting and weight will be involved somehow, but there are quite a few other things on my long-term to-do list that need to start making their way onto my monthly list. We'll see how it goes--now, back to finishing homework!

Mini-Goals Update

2012-01-22T19:55:00.000-06:00

This January, I am finding myself really, really missing the beginning of last semester. At that point, I could safely finish most of my homework within about 8-10 hours every Sunday and be caught up and ready to go for class on Monday.

Not so much this semester. I just finished my homework to-do list to get me through February 1; it has 19 items, including several hundred pages of reading, a few papers and some assignments that I don't even know how to do yet. This is unfortunately seriously cutting into my time for working on my other goals. While I knew this was a possibility with taking two classes, I have to say the workload for one class in particular is really surprising me. I was expecting it to be more similar to my homework load from last semester, and I'm instead finding it to be double or triple the time, even putting in less quality work. So, here comes my update!

Weight loss: utter fail. At this point, I'm just hoping to make it through January without gaining any weight. Between the stress and the fact that my routine has pretty much consisted of going to work, doing homework from 5:30 until midnight, sleeping and then repeating, I have not been eating well or exercising. I got in 2 days of walking this week (while doing my readings for class) and even those were a test of my motivation.
Stay caught up in my classes: This is, so far at least, not a complete failure. I'm certainly not ahead like I was hoping to be, but I'm not behind quite yet. We'll see where the next few weeks take me, as I have a HUGE assignment due in one class during the first full week of February.
Cross two more things off my list: Done. I'd love to repeat this goal in February, but I'm not sure it is something that will be do-able.
Get caught up at work. My forums are this week! For the moment I am about as caught up as I get. I still have tons of things that need to be done, but I don't believe I have anyone holding their breath on what I get done at this point. Of course, that could change tomorrow, but I'm trying to keep things under control as much as possible.
Stick to my new budget. I have actually been doing all right on this goal, which surprises me. By cutting way down on going out to eat and on my grocery bill, I've actually cut down on my spending quite a bit. Next month will be more of a challenge, as Henry's birthday is coming up at the end of the month, my youngest nephew's birthday is at the beginning of March, and the tabs for my car will be coming due.
Make sasparilla: Done. It's not quite as tasty as I was hoping for, but it was an interesting experiment.

I'm starting to get a bit less stressed about this semester this week. Part of it is probably just me adjusting to the lack of time to myself, but part of it is also probably that I took a few more hours for myself this weekend. I know I'm not going to be able to keep this pace up for four months, though, so I'm really hoping that things start to slow down after my first huge assignment is due in February. While I told my friends I wasn't planning on being able to see them until the semester ended in May, I don't think I really believed it, and I'm already of having to turn people down who want to see me because I need to spend yet another Friday night or Saturday on homework.

Mini-Goals Update

2012-01-15T23:13:00.000-06:00

Lack of willpower aside, I did make some progress on my January goals.

Except for my weight loss goal. That was definitely a fail. I only worked out three days this week, and my progress on my 101 things list involved making both risotto and brownies. My goal for next week is to add at least one more workout and cut out the pan of brownies!
I have done homework every day this week except Friday, and it looks like that will be the pattern for the next few weeks. My goal is to finish all my readings for the week, finish my first PowerPoint presentation, revise my final project from last semester, register for Second Life and get started on my second PowerPoint presentation.
This week, I crossed two things off my list. I successfully made brownies and risotto! I'll continue working on reading Les Miserables, but I definitely need to take a break from all the food goals for awhile.

The Erosion of Willpower

2012-01-14T22:25:00.000-06:00

I read an article once that pointed out that the reason people frequently fail at their goals is trying to do too many things at once--in specific, too many things that they have to force themselves to do. The article claimed that people have a finite amount of willpower, which is one reason why stress makes it so difficult to accomplish things.

My finite amount of willpower was used up this week.

It seems that I don't have quite enough willpower to exercise 5 days a week, eat healthy, go to class 2 days, do homework every day, concentrate steadily on work every day, and drastically reduce my spending. Because by the time all of that is done in a day, not have I run out of time to do anything fun to recharge myself, but it's generally about 2 hours later than I planned on getting to sleep.

I'm trying very hard to get ahead in my classes (class ends the same week as my lease is up, so I'm going to need to be ahead of the game on everything if I expect to make it through without taking a good part of the week off), so I'm hoping that if I succeed my homework load will go down soon. Also, it will be several more weeks before I have a week when I have to attend both my classes. I'm hoping those two things will help! Because I'm not ready to give up on any of my goals, but at this rate I'm not likely to achieve them.

Evidence: Thursday was the first day this week that I had the entire evening to myself. I intended to get a huge amount of homework done, do a workout video, and celebrate by watching the new episode of Once Upon a Time with Steamboard Willie. What really happened: I did read two short chapters of homework, but I spent the rest of the evening on the couch watching TV, and then I went to bed early.

Hopefully I figure something out, or I'm afraid I'll be recording some disappointing results for some of my January (and February, March and April!) goals.

Update on January Mini-Goals

2012-01-08T19:05:00.000-06:00

January is flying by. I can't believe it's already the eighth; I hope the rest of the month continues to fly! Because tomorrow, life is going to start getting a lot more complicated. School starts; I'll be in two classes and "graduating" in May. To be prepared, I've been doing my best to work on my goals as much as possible in this first week.

I'm honestly not sure how I'm doing on my weight loss goal. My weight has fluctuated so much in the last month, between the holidays and being sick, that I'm not sure what my real base weight was! While I'm not giving up on this goal, I am not going to be heartbroken if I don't get to the weight I had in mind, as long as things keep going in a generally lighter direction!
When my last class ended, the professor recommended that we work ahead to be prepared for this semester. While I haven't put in nearly as much work as I intended to, I do have a little bit of a jump start. It's still going to be a heck of an effort to stay caught up, but hopefully this headstart will help.
I'm doing a pretty good job at tackling my list! I have quite a few things in progress, although some of them (mostly my reading projects) are undoubtedly going to be put on hold now that school is starting. Yesterday, I did cross one item off the list; Henry taught me to install a light fixture. That's one of the little house tasks that people have always told me is easy, and I just felt like I should be able to do. For Christmas, I bought Henry a few new light fixtures for his house, so it was a good opportunity to learn. It may have taken me two or three times as long as it would have taken him, but I have a pretty decent idea of how to put things together in the future!
I'm not sure there is such a thing as being all the way caught up for me at work, but I am definitely getting closer. My first day back at work I finished three manuals, which finished one massive upgrade project that I've been working on since September. As long as I keep focused, I should be able to safely attend my forums.
So far, I am on budget! It's still going to be a rough month based on tuition and car insurance, but I've managed to stay under budget so far as far as my normal expenses of gas and groceries, which should help. My goal is to keep on a relatively strict budget for the rest of the year; I'd like to put $10,000 in savings this year. It won't be easy, but Henry and I have been talking about taking a trip to Europe and I'd like to be able to go without regret. On top of that, I've been looking at a lot of people my age and realizing that I'm going to be making my future life a lot more difficult if I don't get a little more discipline. While I'm certainly not in bad shape, if I really focus on saving, I'll be in much better shape when it comes time for me to buy a house.
My sasparilla turned out great! I actually did most of the work for this on New Year's Eve before heading out to a party, but it's ready to drink now. It was a surprisingly easy process; I just had to mix a bunch of stuff together and bottle it. The longest part of the process, hands down, was sanitizing all of the equipment. My sasparilla doesn't take like the stuff I remember buying anywhere--I remember it tasting more like cream soda, where mine tastes like root beer barrel candies.

In the next week, my goals are to focus on school, get back into exercising (now that most of my sickness has disappeared) and, to cross one or two more things off my list for the month, try to make both risotto and brownies.

January Mini-Goals

2011-12-30T15:26:00.000-06:00

The Day Zero Project is a site that Steamboat Willie found; it's similar to a "bucket list" project, but asks you to make a list of 101 things to do in 1001 days (about 2.5 years). I started my project in the middle of November and so far, I'm actually making some progress in crossing things off my list. (Six down so far, with a few more in progress!)

Lots of my goals are things that are going to take me some time (like finishing my graduate certificate or getting to me goal weight). So, to keep myself accountable and keep working actively towards things I want to achieve (instead of sitting on my butt like I do far too often), here's my list of mini-goals for January!

Lose at least 3 pounds.
Stay caught up in both my classes.
Cross at least two more things off my list or be able to add at least 5 progress updates.
Get caught up at work enough to attend the eLearning Guild forums without causing any problems.
Stick to my new budget, excepting tuition and car insurance costs that are due this month.
Make sasparilla

I think that will be plenty of goals to keep me busy for the month--and hopefully help the winter fly by a little more quickly! We may not have snow yet (very strange), but I'm sure it's just a matter of time before it catches up to me how spoiled I've gotten with the warm weather!

Hiking Expedition: Frontenac State Park

2011-09-11T21:15:00.001-05:00

It's been quite awhile since I've been camping and hiking--I haven't wanted to go since I hurt my foot about a year and a half ago.

After trying massage, special insoles, special shoes, physical therapy, giving up running, running based on a specific regimen, stretching, icing my feet, always wearing shoes, and a few more things, I've more or less given up on the idea that my feet are going to heal. Rather than continuing to sit around and wait for them to feel better, I decided it was time to go back to doing whatever I wanted to do (except maybe wearing high heels--that may never happen again). So, at the last minute Henry and I decided it was time to take off and go camping.

We went to Frontenac State Park, which was a surprisingly quick and pretty drive away. I'm pretty sure I ate my own weight in s'mores and brats and enjoyed every minute of that! It's a beautiful park, which I picked because it has one of the longer networks of hiking trails at around 15 miles. I believe that we trekked through the majority of those 15 miles on Saturday. While I can't say that my feet appreciated the exercise--especially considering how many of the trails went up and down the bluffs--it was a beautiful hike and we saw a lot. And the s'mores at the end of the day certainly helped make the camping trip a success!

New Plan: Offseason Plan

2011-06-15T22:13:00.000-05:00

After starting school, adventures and blog writing time both disappeared very quickly, involved between about a hundred pages of reading each week and building this site for my final project! While I was strongly considering giving up my blog entirely (at least until school is done, in another year and a half), Steamboat Willie pointed out that I could keep going and model my blog after Kevin Slowey's offseason blog. So, from now on I will have to consider this my "offseason" blog, to be maintained between school semesters.

Chocolate and wine

2011-02-09T22:54:00.000-06:00

Today was my last Christmas present: Henry's parents gave he and I tickets to a wine and chocolate class. I was pretty nervous to go to this particular one; although I usually love the wine classes I take at the Cooks of Crocus Hill, this particular class was at the Lakeville Arts Center and I learned that my boss and his wife frequently attend their wine classes. To add to the complications, one of my least favorite (and my boss' most favored) projects is running a nonprofit. His most recent project for me was to arrange a fundraising wine tasting through the Lakeville Art Center, so I was dreading the possibility of my entire Christmas present evening being consumed with discussions with my boss about a project that regularly destroys my work ethic and morale. Luckily, they picked today as the day to skip and so I happily ate far too much chocolate and drank a few too many glasses of wine.

I primarily learned two things in this class: first of all, I really like port wine. I've never tried it before, and to be perfectly honest next time I try it (when I haven't already tried 4-5 glasses of wine) it may be less delicious, but it was something completely different and pretty darn good. We tried a few different varieties, one from Australia and 3 from Portugual, and in the end Henry won us a bottle of my favorite type! Secondly, I learned that there is a fantastic chocolate shop in Burnsville. After trying a few types of truffles, I think my Valentine's Day plans are set: order a large box of chocolates (they have everything from French silk milk chocolate truffles to caramel s'more candy) and drink my new bottle of port!

Food experiments: Attempting a heart attack

2011-02-06T20:19:00.000-06:00

All week, I was doing a good job of eating healthy and exercising. This weekend, I took a flying leap off the bandwagon in some pretty darn unhealthy experiments.

For starters, Henry's friend sold us a deep fryer at a deep discount on the condition that he was allowed to come and eat some of the food we made with it. Saturday night's dinner was made up entirely of deep fried experiments, from trying to create the perfect onion ring to succeeding in making fair-quality cheese curds. Topping that off with a full yellow pepper may have added a few nutrients, but I'm pretty sure there wasn't much I could do to redeem the day.

Today was worse. Deep-frying experiments finished, we hauled the deep fryer to the superbowl party and threw in everything from cheese curds and onion rings to jalapeno poppers, mozzerella sticks and fried chicken. On top of that, my planned experiment for the week was Chicago-style deep dish pizza.

I found a great blog entry detailing how to make Chicago-style deep dish pizza, which I have to say I was pretty impressed with. I used about a pound and a half of mozzerella and colby jack cheese, a bunch of canadian bacon, a red pepper, a bunch of onion and tomato. I also made my own sauce and crust. The weak point of the pizza was by far the crust, which was a little soggy and didn't rise nearly as much as I think it should have. The homemade sauce and the toppings were pretty good, though, and with a little tweaking I'm hopful for the crust! (Picture will be following as soon as I can manage to get it off my phone!)

Hello, Homework. I'm not sure I've missed you.

2011-01-16T21:33:00.000-06:00

I have to say, I have thoroughly enjoyed having no homework for the past 3 1/2 years. Having my evenings to myself and being able to read whatever I wanted has been absolutely wonderful.

And in spite of that, I decided this year to go back to school. I'm working towards a Graduate Certificate in Instructional Design from UND, and I have attended a whole one class session so far. And so far, I'm remembering why I always liked the beginning of the semester on some level. I'm in just one online class, on Instructional Games and Simulations. I was pretty terrified leading up to the first day, on a lot of levels. For one, I wasn't sure I was prepared for homework after 3 years away. For another, the graduate school office was full of screwups during my application process, from losing my application to repeatedly failing to change my address. But, my first class dispelled my fears. I think the first week is usually one of the best--I'm not tired yet from the homework, the material is new and fascinating, and I'm excited about the projects that haven't been able to stress me out yet.

I sincerely hope that this course stays this interesting and exciting. In my undergraduate career, I had a few professors who were consistently able to make their classes so interesting that I was sad to be done with them at the end of the semester. For a few of them, I still have and refer to my notes and my textbook sometimes. Based on my first readings and sessions, this course has the potential to be another one. Games and learning has been a topic that has interested me for awhile, as games seem like a great way to make learning more interesting. When I'm trying daily to create materials to teach people to use (often boring) software, interesting can be a precious quality. The course seems like it's going to actually really address pratical issues of how I can incoporate games into a course successully, and actually use them to support learning. On top of that, it appears that during each class period we get to spend some time actually playing a variety of games, so we can get more familiar with all the different aspects and ways that games can help with learning. At least last week, that made it a lot more bearable to still be locked in a conference room at work to go to class at 7 pm!

My weekend was meant to be full of a few more adventures, but most of them were put off for now. The snowboarding lesson I was supposed to have on Saturday got postponed after I showed up and couldn't find a parking place within half a mile of the hill, and I'm postponing my cooking experiments until I've finished quite a few leftovers. Until then, I'm stuck with homework--but at least right now, it's still interesting!

Comfort Foods: the Best Mac and Cheese

2011-01-08T16:20:00.000-06:00

I have a hard time dealing with winter. I'm one of those people who is usually still wrapped up in a blanket if it's 70 degrees and sunny outside, so come weeks like this when it snows more days than it doesn't and I know it's only a matter of time before the temperature get stuck in the negatives, I start to lose a lot of my willpower. On the negative side, that usually means that my house is a lot less clean and I'm a little concerned about what it will mean for the homework I'm going to be getting next week. But on the positive side, it can end up with some spectacularly tasty (if not very healthy) comfort food that makes me feel warm enough that I can stand the ice crystals on the windows.

This last week, Henry and I went to a Comfort Foods class at the Cooks of Crocus Hill. Their classes are always spectacular, and we've always especially enjoyed ones such as the one we took this week, which pairs food with both wine and beer. These are always great for quite a few reasons--they're a fun night out with a great 5 or 6 course meal, allow us to taste new food and learn how to make it, and expose us to new wines and beers that we otherwise probably wouldn't find to try. This course was taught by Chef Mike Shannon, sommelier Leslee Miller and cicerone Michael Agnew. All three of them regularly impress me with their skills, excitement and their passion to share their knowledge, and knowing that they will be teaching the class can frequently be enough to swing my decision to take it. This time was no disappointment; the food and wine was spectacular, and I even found some beer that I didn't mind drinking, which is a big step for me!

While there is a lot of knowledge I could share after my experience in this class, I'm choosing to share my favorite experience from the class, which was the macaroni and cheese. I know it sounds like a simple dish, but I have to say that this was far and above the best mac and cheese I have ever tasted. It is by no means healthy, and so January may not be the best time to be sharing this, but YUM. It's worth it. If you're trying to lose weight, it's worth the extra few hours in the gym to work it off. It's also worth throwing your diet into the wind for a week or so. Not that I mean to be a bad influence--but sometimes I just can't help it!

Mike Shannon's Four Cheese Mac and Cheese
This makes a 9x13 pan of incredibly solid mac and cheese. When I say solid, I mean he turned the pan on end and it didn't even move.

Ingredients

8 oz. macaroni, penne or ziti
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt, plus more for cooking pasta
1/4 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup finely chopped shallots
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/4 cups dry white wine
1 cup milk
2/3 cup heavy whipping cream
8 ounces Gruyere, grated
4 ounces white cheddar, grated
2 tablespoons gorgonzola, crumbled
2 tablespoons minced fresh chives
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1/8 teaspoon cayenne
2 eggs, whipped
1/2 cup panko bread crumbs
1/4 cup parmesan, grated

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Cook the noodles in a large pot of boiling, well-salted water until just cooked, ardoun 7-12 minutes. Drain, and set aside.
In a large saute pan over medium-high heat, melt 2 tablespoons butter. Add the shallots and cook until just browned, about 3 minutes.
Sprinkle the warmed butter with your flour and then cook, stirring continuously, for one minute. Add the wine, milk and cream and stir well.
Pour in the Gruyere, cheddar and gorgonzola cheese, and stir until melted. Add 2 tablespoons chives, mustard, 1/4 teaspoon salt and cayenne. Stir cooked pasta into cheese mixture, then add eggs, mix well and pour all into a shallow baking dish.
Melt remaining butter and combine with panko. Salt to taste.
Sprinkle bread crumb mixture over pasta and cheese and bake in 9x13 pan until top is browned and cheese is bubbling, 15-20 minutes.
Eat way, way too much. Don't feel guilty.

White Hot Chocolate: Mugg and Bean style

2011-01-06T23:31:00.000-06:00

One of my longtime bucket list goals has been to learn how to make white hot chocolate well. It's a treat that I first ran across when I was studying abroad, and fell head over heels in love with. I spent 6 weeks in South Africa the summer after my sophomore year in college, and now, I still miss the food from my favorite restaurant there--the Mugg and Bean. It was a little chain of coffee shops that made the best pancakes and muffins, dessert (of which a serving was equivalent to 3 desserts in a US restaurant), and especially white hot chocolate. I blame the Mugg and Bean for a large portion of the 10 pounds I gained overseas, but ever since I've been hoping I could figure out how to duplicate some of the recipes that I've been missing. While I have yet to make the chocolate chip muffins the size of a softball or the amazing whole grain pancakes, this week I finally attempted a recipe for white hot chocolate that made me feel like I was back in Durban, skipping my morning homework in favor of breakfast at Musgrave Centre.

A fair warning--if you don't really like white chocolate or if you're completely dedicated to normal hot chocolate, this is not for you. If you like white chocolate, are willing to risk needing an extra hour or so at the gym and are ok with adventuring a little with your hot drinks, this is absolutely worth a try. It's decadent, warming enough to forget the snow for awhile and a pretty darn fun change from Swiss Miss.

White Hot Chocolate
Yum. I made this with 2% milk and heavy whipping cream, but I think I could have easily omitted most if not all of the whipping cream without being upset. There's just so much chocolate in this that it's still plenty decadent!

Ingredients

12 ounces good quality white chocolate, coarsely chopped. (I learned that you can tell good white chocolate if the main ingredient has something to do with cocoa or cocoa butter.)
6 cups whole milk (I reduced this down to 2% and it was plenty rich and creamy for me).
2 cups heavy cream (I used this, but next time I'll try reducing or omitting it).
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract. (I forgot this at first, but when I tasted it went back and added some. It's absolutely a necessary ingredient in my opinion.)
Whipped cream, peppermint sticks or shaved chocolate for garnish (I skipped all these and was completely fine).

Directions

Place white chocolate in a medium miuxing bowl and set aside. This is what you'll be mixing the full batch of hot chocolate in, so make sure it's big enough.
Place milk and cream in a medium sauce pan and heat over medium heat, stirring frequently to prevent scalding, until warm and the sides are becoming bubbly. My recipe said this was about 4 minutes, but for me it took a little longer.
Immediately pour over chocolate in bowl. Stir until chocolate melts and combines with milk. Add the vanilla and stir until frothy. This takes a minute or two and is a good arm workout to make you feel a little better about the massive amount of really tasty chocolate and cream you're about to ingest!
Garnish as needed and stir immediately. This one is good to drink pretty quickly before it cools, as a bit of a skin develops after it sits for awhile. Some people may not mind that, but the boys declared it too weird to drink!

I was thrilled to learn how to make white hot chocolate well--that's half of a goal to cross of my bucket list. Now, if anyone has any advice on duplicating malva pudding or Mugg and Bean's kahlua freezers or chocolate chip muffins, I will be set (and about 50 pounds heavier)!

Snowboarding part 2

2010-12-24T11:09:00.001-06:00

I have graduated to being able to snowboard down a hill (rather than have Henry pull me around in his flat yard) AND I didn't even hurt myself! Except for every muscle in my body, which definitely hurt for a few days.

I'm seeing the potential to enjoy snowboarding, especially if I can strengthen my legs and get snowpants that fit me so snow doesn't continually get inside my clothes. Right now, my proud moment was going about 15 feet without falling down--it did take me about an hour to make it down the hill that kids sled down in Lakeville 3 times. But, I've been working hard at the gym to strengthen my legs so that it isn't so difficult for me to turn, stop and stand back up once I've fallen, and I'm hoping that will start to make a difference. At my last outing, I fell down quite a few times on purpose after finding out that my legs were way too tired to turn me the way I wanted to go. I still consider that a success, as I substituted falling in the snow for running into trees (or Henry)!

I have the next week off for Christmas, so I'm hoping to get to try again--maybe I'll make it a quarter of the way down the hill this time!

Merry Christmas!

A lazy weekend, recipe and a book project

2010-11-28T02:05:00.000-06:00

I haven't had more than a 3-day weekend to relax since January, so this Thanksgiving has been a wonderful break and I have mostly done ABSOLUTELY nothing. It's been glorious. I'm starting grad school in January (assuming the school finishes getting their ducks in a row and does not lose any more of my information), and I know that means that my weekends to dedicate my time primarily to books, movies and video games are extremely numbered.

So this weekend, my biggest adventure has really been continuing a project I started a few months ago--re-reading the Wheel of Time books. I started these books when I was in middle school or early high school at the recommendation of a clerk at Barnes and Noble. Although they definitely mark me as a nerd, they tell a (very long) story that I continually get wrapped up in whenever I see a new book out or pick up one of the old ones. One of the last two books came out this November, and after trying to remember about 12,000 pages worth of material the last time a book came out, I decided to try to re-read the entire series.

It's going to take a long time. The books (all 13 of them) are each around 800-1000 pages, with a pretty intricate plot. But, if you have any inclinations towards being a fantasy fiction nerd like I am, it is entirely worth it. The characterization is fantastic, and the plot (while very involved and complicated) keeps you turning the pages. All in all, this series is a whole world and compelling story that will probably be occupying my spare time for the next few months. As inspiration, I have the newest book sitting on a bookshelf in the kitchen so that I can walk by it every day and remind myself that there's all new material in the story that I have yet to find out.

On an entirely different note, I did try a recipe experiment that I was extremely unsure of but that I liked a lot more than I expected. The ingredients in this recipe for Cuban bowls sounded strange together and I wasn't sure that I would enjoy them, but since I have yet to make a recipe from I'm Losing It that I don't like, I thought it was worth a try. I used both avacados and fried bananas, made my own Cuban-style black beans and am glad that I tried it! It's a great easy vegetarian recipe--it took me awhile since I made my own beans, but if you used canned beans it would definitely be a quick and easy option.

This post ended up being a bit of a hodge-podge of ideas, but I guess that's been my long weekend! Now the countdown to Christmas begins!

Winter sport experiments #2: Snowboarding

2010-11-22T22:25:00.000-06:00

In spite of my rather embarrassing end to my last winter experiment, I decided to once again try a winter sport. Henry was pretty enthusiastic about this decision, because he loves to snowboard and most of his snowboarding friends moved away up north, so he promised to teach me (and let me borrow all his old equipment, so all I had to buy were boots!).

I can't really say that I successfully snowboarded today, because the biggest hill I attempted was about a foot high. I learned from my last experience that I need to start ridiculously small because I HATE the feeling of sliding along when I'm not controlling where I'm going. So, I spent what felt like about 6 hours but was probably only about 45 minutes (at most!) jumping, shuffling, sliding and being pushed around Henry's yard while strapped to a big piece of wood polished to be very, very slippery.

It reminded me again, several times, that something about the cold makes Minnesotans go a little nuts. The worst part is, we've only had snow for a couple weeks now--what am I going to decide to do when the cabin fever actually sets in?

At any rate, when I was just going very slowly on flat ground, it was a little less scary than I expected. I still fell down upwards of 15 times and learned that long jackets and high pants are VERY important (I've been inside for half an hour and am just starting to regain feeling in my butt) BUT by the end, Henry pushed me in a circle all the way around his yard before I fell down! This was a very big step from the 3 feet I made it the first time and leads me to believe that maybe by March, I'll be ready for the bunny hill (although Henry's plan is closer to early December....) On the plus side, if I keep this up, I will absolutely not need to take Steamboat Willie up one her offer to have a trainer friend come up with the strength training plan. About five minutes in, my calves started to feel vaguely like they were on fire...it slowly spread to the rest of my legs and I'm pretty sure that I ended up getting better exercise there than I have in anything since Tae Soo Do.

I'm sure there will be more updates...hopefully in them the number of falls will go down! I promised to try again on Wednesday night, so hopefully I'll be in good enough shape to head all over Minnesota to eat turkey!

Mmm...Thai food

2010-11-21T22:59:00.000-06:00

I ate good Thai food for the first time this summer, and it was DELICIOUS. I've been hoping to go back to the restaurant since then but haven't had the time or people willing to go. So, I decided to try making my own last week, and it went pretty well! I can't say it was as good as what I had at the restaurant, but it was very good. (In fact, it was good enough that Henry helped me eat leftovers all week, when he normall throws a fit after one day!) This was definitely one of my more successful recipe experiments, which I'll be making again sometime when I'm ready for all the calories--it makes a lot of food that is by no means good for you, but definitely good! I found this recipe on the Internet one day, but I couldn't tell you where beyond the note that says that it was originally from Martha Stewart.

Thai Spicy Chicken Casserole
Yum. But this makes enough to feed a LOT of people or two people for a very long time.

Ingredients
1 T olive oil
2.5 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs (this was cut down from the original recipe and I would cut it down further next time and replace it with more veggies)
Pepper
Salt
1 can reduced fat coconut milk (I couldn't find this, so I used about 3/4 cup regular coconut milk)
1/2 cup water
1 1/2 cups chicken broth (I used a full can of this to make up for the less coconut milk)
3-4 T Thai red curry paste (It called for a lot less, but this amount was spicy and good!)
1 T cayenne pepper (I added this--you could easily reduce it)
1 cup white long grain rice (not instant!)
2 bell peppers, chopped (I used one green and one red, but you could easily add another pepper)
8 oz. green beans, cut into 1-inch lengths (could easily add more to replace some of the chicken)

Directions

Salt and pepper the chicken. In a 5-quart stock pot, heat the oil and brown the chicken. You may need to do this in two batches. Remove the chicken to a plate (It will cook more later, so don't worry if it's not done as long as it's browned).
Add the coconut milk, broth, curry paste and water to the stock pot. Bring to a boil. Add the rice. Add the chicken on top in a layer, including any juices that leaked out to the plate. Cover and reduce heat to medium-low. Cook without stirring for 15 minutes until rice is almost tender. (If you're using a different type of rice, you may need to cook it longer, but I'm not sure if the rice will turn out as fluffy.)
Add the veggies on top of the chicken, cover again and cook until tender-crisp, about 10 more minutes.

Books: Sh*t My Dad Says

2010-11-20T16:00:00.000-06:00

I read an article about Sh*t My Dad Says, requested it from the library and then promptly forgot about it for about 4 months. Last week, after I finally made my way through the very long waiting list, I couldn't really remember why I wanted to read the book but still went and picked it up.

I finished it in about an hour and a half--a particularly annoying hour and a half for Henry and his roommate, who never seemed to get used to me bursting into laughter every couple of minutes. This book is a quick read and doesn't have a very continuous plot to pull you in, but it is funny! The structure of the book is largely based around the author telling stories of times when his father shared some politically incorrect but valuable and entertaining wisdom, with each story followed by a few pages of funny quotes and advice. If you remember that this book was inspired by a Twitter feed set up to record the author's father's (mostly profane) one-liners of wisdom, you will be prepared to accept the book as it is. I would also recommend having a thick skin, as the author's dad is far from politically correct or gentlemanly.

A few of my favorites, so you'll know what you're getting yourself into:

ON THE DEATH OF OUR FIRST DOG

He was a good dog. Your brother is pretty broken up about it, so go easy on him. He had a nice last moment with Brownie before the vet tossed him in the garbage.

ON MY BLOODY NOSE

What happened? Did somebody punch you in the face?!... The what? The air is dry? Do me a favor and tell people you got punched in the face.

ON FURNISHING ONE'S HOME
Pick your furniture like you pick a wife: It should make you feel comfortable and look nice, but not so nice that if someone walks past it they want to steal it.

I would recommend borrowing this book from the library to brighten your day a little bit. As long as you're not looking for something heavy and important and are willing to not take the book too seriously, this will make you laugh and be worth the time. It's short, entertaining, and a great way to get in some laughter!

Carpets, bored dogs and new toys

2010-11-17T23:53:00.002-06:00

We learned this weekend that although Boris refuses to play or be awake for more than 10 minutes when we're home (and shakes incessantly outside if it's below 60 degrees), he is extremely bored in our new house We discovered this when I moved the furniture to scrub our carpets and discovered that Boris had been claiming the house much more frequently than we previously thought. This was seconded when Steamboat Willie got woken up around 2 am earlier this week because Boris learned that he could make a new noise by grabbing the shower curtain and running back and forth incessantly.

We decided bored Boris was hazardous to our physical and mental health.

He is now confined to the kitchen as much as we can keep him in there while we're ast work (he's quite the escape artist) and we've been doing a lot of research on how to make our prima donna dog less bored when he throws a fit about being kept awake during normal human hours. Most of the ideas we found required much more determined, tough and energetic dogs. Ones who like to play in the snow, don't give up chasing their toys after about 3 minutes and aren't so busy sulking that they refuse to eat or drink until you come back. But, a few sounded promising and, after testing them out, I'm pleased to report that Boris is not quite as stupid as we previously thought. (Ok, fine...Steamboat Willie had faith that he would pass. But I was extremely surprised that he didn't respond as well to "Dishwasher" as he does to his name.)

Our first experiment was filling an empty water bottle with some treats and food and waiting for him to figure out how to get it out. Yesterday, all that resulted in was him smelling the bottle and then going to finally eat his food out of his dish. But today, after about 20 minutes of me alternately shaking the bottle of food at him and grabbing his paw to make him move it, it finally dawned on him. If he moved it around enough, the food came out. Then came Boris' true, very food-motivated personality, and he spent the next hour chasing, pawing, chewing and carrying the bottle around. After a little while, he even figured out that the food came out better if he threw the bottle down the stairs. Turns out sometimes, he's much smarter than I thought!

It took him most of the night, but he finally got the food out. It took him much less time to clean the peanut butter out of the Kong toy we got him. And best of all...after that, he fell right asleep and with any luck, he'll leave the shower curtain...and his tail...and the blankets all alone tonight!

Hello again...

2010-11-14T18:26:00.000-06:00

Now that it's once again dark before I leave work and there's snow on the ground here, I have no more excuses for putting off any of my writing work! So here I am; hopefully I won't disappear off the blogging radar again for quite awhile. While my summer was not very adventurous, I have some plans coming up that bring me back to my writing. (For instance--since Henry has decided this is the year for me to stop stalling and learn how to snowboard, and I fall down even when I'm not flying through the snow on a waxed board, I figure I should keep this up to give everyone a little more amusement!)

I've had a few adventures, both good and bad, over the last few months. Rather than going through the scattered details in my head, I figure I'll summarize with some photos.

Cooper, my parents' new golden retriever puppy, showed up!

We went to the Renaissance Fair. Henry got soaked.

Henry and I took a long weekend in Chicago and ate a lot of pizza and hot dogs

I spent a few days helping my family clean up from a flood

Steamboat Willie and I moved...we now have our own front door, grilling area AND washer and dryer!

And now that it's winter again, it's time for the holidays, birthdays, snowboarding and a bunch of new adventures!

Plum Brandy Jam!

2010-08-22T18:57:00.001-05:00

One of my new goals is accomplished: I successfully (I think) made a batch of plum brandy jam this afternoon. I learned how to do this at my last cooking class, and this was one of the recipes that I was most impressed with. I have to say I was still very intimidated by the idea of making jam, and all the discussions on how to avoid botulism growing in my jam certainly added to that nervousness! I am surprised now, though, at how fast and easy the process ended up being. I'm sure there are much more complicated recipes (this one didn't require a pressure cooker or anything other than a lot of dishes and food) but this seemed like a pretty good one to start with.

I modified this recipe a little bit, because I couldn't find the the particular type of pectin that the recipe I got called for at Cub, Target or EconoFoods. I also added a little bit more sugar to get closer to the recipe on the pectin, and a little bit of lemon juice to avoid my new paranoia of giving people botulism. I spread the remaining jam from the pan that didn't go into a jar on some toast, and it tasted pretty good (and I'm still not paralyzed), so my recipe adjustments seemed to have worked.

Plum Brandy Jam
This makes about 2 pints, so I only got 2 jars out of it. It also take a lot of pots, preferably really big tall ones. Next time, I would probably choose to use smaller jars (1/2 pint), but I couldn't find those anywhere that was open last night at 8:30! This would not only give me a few more jars, but would mean I could use smaller pots.

Ingredients

4 cups plums (this was about 1 pint)
3/4 cups brandy
3/4 pacakge sure-jell no sugar needed pectin (the original recipe recommended Pomona's universal pectin)
2 cups sugar (original recipe called for 1 1/2 cups)
1 tablespoon lemon juice (I added this because I was using sweet plums, while the original recipe called for sour plums)

Equipment

2 really tall pots (big enough that you can fill them with boiling water, put the jars in and have the water cover them by an inch or two)
2 normal sized pots (one to boil the lids, which can be pretty small, and another just big enough to fit all the ingredients)
2 pint-sized jars or the equivalent, with rings and new lids
A jar lifter (not necessary but really, really helpful)
A magnetic thingy to pull the lids out of the water (again, not necessary but really helpful)
A funnel (I didn't use one. I should have--there would be a lot less plum jam all over everything right now)
A thick towel with some pot holders underneath it or a wooden cutting board
A potato masher or just a big spoon to squash the fruit with
Normal cooking tools (cutting board, knife, measuring utensils, bowls)

Process

In one of the big and one of the small pots, add water. Put the lids for the jars you'll be using in the small pot, and the jars themselves in the big pot. Bring the water to a boil. This will sanitize the jars--make sure they are boiling for at least 10 minutes. I learned that it's probably a lot easier if you put the jars in with the mouth facing down--otherwise, you have to worry about pouring the water out later when you really just want to worry about getting your jam in!

Fill the other big pot a little over half full with water and start to bring it to a boil. You will be putting the filled jars into this pot to help them seal, so be sure there's enough room to add a jar without overflowing the pot, but enough water to cover the jar. It might help to make some extra hot water in a teapot to add later if the jar isn't covered.
Make sure there is a wooden cutting board or a thick dish towel on top of some pot holder nearby. This is where you'll be setting the hot jars both to fill with jam and to cool.
Pit the plums and chop them coarsely. You don't need to peel them.
Put the plums in the remaining small pot and heat them up. If they aren't juicy enough, you may need to add some water to soften the plums. It took me about 10 minutes to soften them up so I could smash them with a spoon, until they were almost liquid.
Smash the plums with a potato masher or a spoon until the mix is very liquidy. Mine already looked a little bit jam-like here.
Bring the plums to a boil, stirring constantly. Add the brandy and lemon juice. (If you are using the Pomona's pectin, you can add the calcium water during this step, too.)
Mix the sugar and pectin together in a separate bowl. Add the mix to the plums and stir vigorously for 1-2 minutes to dissolve the pectin. Return the mix to a boil and remove it from the heat. Don't cook this mixture for too long, or the pectin will break down and your jam will end up being pretty soup-like.
Take the first jar out of the water bath and make sure the water is out (jar lifter is very handy here). Also pull a lid out (this is where the magnetic thing is really useful!) and set both on your towel or cutting board. Carefully pour the jam into the jar. This is where a funnel would have come in really, really handy for me; as it was, I used a big spoon and poured it in a little bit at a time. It took a long time and I have a very messy dish towel, but most of the jam ended up in the jars! I filled my jars to about 1/4" below the metal ring line.
Place the lid back on the jar and tighten the ring with your fingers (not too tight--otherwise the expanding and contracting that happens with the heat can cause some problems).
Using the jar lifter again, place the filled jar into the second large pot with the boiling water. Make sure the water covers the jar by an inch or two. If your water isn't quite boiling yet, it's ok--just get it there as fast as possible and don't start timing until it has started boiling. Boil the jar for 11-12 minutes (this is at an elevation for the Twin Cities area in Minnesota--you may need to adjust this based on your own elevation). While this jar is boiling, you can go ahead and fill the next one.

Pull the first jar out of the water bath with the jar lifter and place it back on your cutting board/towel. You can put the second jar into the water bath and start timing it. Let the first jar cool for awhile--you should hear a little popping sound after a bit indicating that the seal worked. My first jar took probably 5 minutes to pop--the second one popped within a minute. The seal is based off of the time and heat of the water, which is why it's important not to start the timer until the water is at a slow boil. If it doesn't pop, you can also toss it back in the boiling water for another 11 minutes. However, if it's been long enough to let the jam cool, it's better to put it in a new, re-sterilized jar.
Take the metal ring off at least long enough to ensure there's no water underneath, so it won't rust. You can also test your seal here (carefully) by picking the jar up by its lid. If it sealed correctly, it should stay. If not, the lid will come off and the jar will fall...so be careful!
Enjoy your success!

"Yes, you Can Can!"

2010-08-15T23:41:00.000-05:00

I know. It's cheesy. But "Yes, you Can Can" is the name of the class I took today to work on one of my new goals of learning to can. It was taught by Jill Jacoby at the Cooks of Crocus Hill, and while going into the class I wasn't sure if it was worth paying for (after all, there are so many books and websites on canning, plus so many people who already know!) I was thoroughly impressed. I learned more in this class than I have in probably any other cooking class I've taken. I'm sure it helped that I knew absolutely zero about canning going in, but now I have enough of a foundation to feel like there's a possibility I could successfully make something this fall. The instructor was really knowledgeable, excited about what she did and very clear. The only drawback I saw to the class was that it was only scheduled for 2 hours, and with the amount of material she covered we could have easily filled a normal 3 hours session.

It was a "methods" class, so it focused much more heavily on how to can than the recipes to use. I did get a few fantastic recipes, which I'll share when I hopefully successfully make my batches of plum jam and apple butter, but more than that I went from knowing zero about how to safely put food in jars that will last for a year or so to having a pretty good idea. Some of the most important things I learned were that you need very little equipment, really--a really tall pot, a few more heavy pots for boiling the ingredients and sterilizing the jars and lids, a ladle, the jars themselves and a good colander. I also came out with a list of cool gadgets that would be handy, but it's nice to know that I can start experimenting small and cheap. I also learned the the basics of canning are just timing (so the food doesn't boil to short and not kill all the bacteria, or too long and not jell correctly), enough acid to keep botulism from being a problem and a whole lot of sterilization by boiling water.

My last few weeks have been pretty disgustingly busy with little stuff that keeps popping up, but I'm really hoping that in the next 2-3 weeks I'll be able to set aside a weekend day and try to make a batch of plum brandy jam. Cross my fingers (and yours, if you want to get any!) and I'll make sure to take some pictures and write some specifics if that day happens.

Book: Physics of the Impossible

2010-08-13T18:27:00.000-05:00

After about a month of working on it, I finally finished Michio Kaku's Physics of the Impossible. It was an interesting book and well-written, and I'm a little bit sad that it took me so long to finish. Compared to many of the physics books geared towards a general audience that I've tried to read, this one was remarkably fun and easy to read. (Last week Steamboat Willie was having trouble sleeping, so I gave her one of my previous attempts at a readable physics book. After a few weeks of laying awake for 2 or 3 hours a night, she read 2 pages and not only slept through the night, but overslept the next morning. This book was much more interesting than that!)

Unfortunately, it was still a physics book for me. As much as I really am interested in physics, when I'm reading about it my attention span is even shorter than normal (which is hard to achieve). If I'm in a quiet room by myself, I can read for hours. If I'm anywhere else, I tend to get distracted by just about anything going on, which is why it took me so darn long to finish the book.

The basis of Physics of the Impossible is an explanation of the real physics of things that we've always considered science fiction, from interspace travel to telling the future. He divides the book into 3 sections, based on the probability of the event actually happening. One of my favorite parts of the book is that he is completely unabashed about the fact that many physicists got into the profession because they wanted to know about how Star Trek or Star Wars or even Batman could happen in real life. It made the whole subject more approachable to hear about the discoveries that were made because a physicist happened to read Jules Verne or watch Aliens. The author was also great at conveying some real physics information without confusing the issue by jumping into the very complicated issues too deep.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is just a little bit geeky (like me) and interested in both physics and science fiction. If you have a longer attention span than me, you'll be able to breeze through it--otherwise, plan a little bit of time when the tv is off and no one is around, and you'll learn enough physics to make yourself look like a good science geek!

Food Experiments: Made-up Zucchini Casserole

2010-08-04T23:47:00.000-05:00

When I finally decided I wanted to learn how to cook, my experience came mostly in 2 waves. My mom taught me how to read recipes so they made sense, how to make the best rice krispie bars in the world, and basically got me started. My dad then took over and started to teach me how to make stuff up.

That's a skill I'm still learning, but it's coming easier as I cook more and get a better idea of what things go together and what I like. One of my biggest challenges is branching out--I have a few made-up recipes, but since I like so many of the same spices and ingredients so much, a lot of my new attempts end up tasting just the same. Last week, based on the produce from my garden and the farmers market, I successfully made up a casserole (that's a new attempt for me!) that was not only good, but different from my past experiments. And on top of that--not only was it relatively healthy (at least, most of the ingredients are good for you, although I have no idea on calorie count) but Henry even liked it. For healthy food, that's quite a compliment! Unfortunately, I cooked this in my father's style, which means I have only a very general idea at best as to how much of things I put into it. When you make it, just put in lots of the spices you like and not so much of the ones you don't. It works for me!

Made-Up Zucchini Casserole
I used a 9x9 ceramic casserole dish with a lid, and I think it was probably 3-4 inches tall. You could probably make it in a wider, shorter dish, but I liked the layers I added in this. They make it seem more casserole-y to me.

Ingredients

Mixed brown and wild rice to cover the bottom of the pan (around 3/4 or 1 cup?)
1 large-ish zucchini, sliced into 1/4 inch rounds
1/2 large green pepper, diced
2 jalpenos, diced
1-2 tomatoes, diced
1 small onion, diced
minced garlic (I used a lot. probably 2-4 tablespoons?)
pepper
cayenne pepper
rosemary
oregano
1 large chicken breast, cut into 1/2" cubes
spaghetti sauce (about 3/4 of a normal sized jar)
Cheddar cheese, enough to cover the top of the casserole and extra to sprinkle on before serving (1 cup?)
Bread crumbs, enough to cover the top of the casserole (1/2 cup?)

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350.
Cover the bottom of the casserole dish with the mixed rice.
On top of the rice, layer the zucchini rounds, green pepper and jalapenos, tomatoes, and onion. Lightly cover with the spices (garlic through oregano).
Top the spices and veggies with the dicecd chicken breast and pour the spaghetti sauce over the top, making sure it covers as much of the casserole as possible. (I also added a little bit of extra water here for the rice, but I'm pretty sure I didn't need to. The finished product was plenty liquid-y.)
Cover with cheddar cheese and bread crumbs.
Bake covered for 1 hour. Remove the cover and bake for another 30 minutes. Top with more cheese for serving.

Tosca and trampolines

2010-07-25T21:11:00.000-05:00

This weekend I had a completely new experience; I went to my first opera. It's one of those things I've been meaning to do for quite awhile, mostly out of curiosity and partly because it just seems like something you should try once in your life. I ended up dragging my sister and brother-in-law with me to see Tosca, put on by the Minnesota Orchestra. (I figured that as music professors, bringing them was my best bet as to someone who would enjoy it!)

It was interesting. I'm glad I went to see an opera once, but based on this experience I would have to say that I definiely prefer musicals. For starters, while I appreciated the screen with some English translations to help me understand what was going on, I found it ended up being similar to watching TV with the closed captioning. I was so busy reading the words that I didn't notice nearly as much of the music or acting. Also, it drove me a little bit nuts when they would continue singing with no captions occasionally! I should have expected it to be depressing, I suppose, but I was still surprised by the complete pessimism of the story!

One of my favorite moments, however, had nothing to do with this particular show. A man sitting next to my sister shared an article he had printed off with her, about mishaps that have happened during other stagings of the opera. Without ruining too much (hopefully), there is a scene in the play when a main character is supposed to jump off a parapet to her death. In the past, apparently there have been a lot of accidents resulting in broken bones, but the article focused more on the funny mishaps. In one staging, they placed a trampoline to break this character's fall, so the dramatic suicide plunge was followed by several re-appearances over the wall. In another, soldier supposedly pursuing this character had simply been told to "exit with the principals" and so all threw themselves off the wall immediately afterwards. While the performance I went to was extremely well done (the music was beautifully done and the staging, while basic, was nice) there was a little bit of me that regretted our performance not going just a little bit wrong, in a similarly funny (and non-traumatic!) way.

Re-thinking my goals

2010-07-19T19:53:00.000-05:00

I started the new year with a lot of plans and goals, named so because I hoped that calling them that would make it easier not to just forget them, like I generally do with resolutions.

It didn't work.

My plans for the entire year have changed, putting off a lot of my ideas. Our trip to France and Italy has been postponed until next spring, I've temporarily lost interest in Web programming, and it appears another member beat me to creating a website for my hometown church. I tried malva pudding...not the same as I remember. And the difficult part is that it's such an incredibly rich dessert, I have a hard time convinving anyone to eat my almosts. However, my garden is doing well (I've eaten a few veggies out of it, as well as a lot of raspberries) and the other website I was planning is out there at least in its first stages. It still needs some tweaking, some more content and some extra features like email, but it's more progress than I make on a lot of new years goals!

It's a little over halfway through the year--I figure it's time to set some new goals. Achievable ones, and ones that will keep the experiments and adventures going.

If my feet heal in time, run a 5K
Read all the Sandman books or Les Miserables (bucket list items)
Get down the basics of canning, and make a batch of something (jam, jelly, apple butter...not sure yet!)
Go to a waterpark
Go canoing or kayaking
Go camping
Start thinking seriously about writing fiction again. Maybe even come up with an outline for something.

There are so many more goals that I'd like to add to this, but I think I'm going to need to start relatively small and hopefully add on further goals as the year wears on.

Some food experiments: Grilling and sweet potato burritos

2010-07-18T11:50:00.000-05:00

Since I found the list of 101 ideas for the grill, I've been experimenting with different grilled foods. My results: grilled asparagus, great, but don't overcook it. Grilled watermelon, not great. But my parents' dog Amos really, really liked that one--probably something about the bratwurst flavor that was infused in the watermelon after grilling. In fact, Amos liked it so much that he scarfed down all his food for the first time since I got here, with minimal coaxing! Grilled avacado is ok, but it didn't add a lot to the normal avacado flavor. Grilled peppers, very good. All in all, my favorite grill experiment so far is definitely the asparagus. I just tossed it in olive oil with sea salt (since my parents don't have kosher salt and I was house-sitting during this particular experiment) and a little bit of pepper, and grilled it for probably less than 5 minutes. The coals were super hot from the chimney starter (I'm not ready for gas or the green egg grill yet...they seem much more likely to blow up in my face when I don't know which buttons to hit) so the stalks directly over the coals were already burnt by that point.

My other experiment for the week was sweet potato burritos. I was very skeptical about these, even though they are labeled "addictive." I'm very picky about how I like sweet potatoes, and I wasn't entirely sure about the idea of a burrito essentially completely filled with smooshy food. I decided to take my chances since all the reviews were so positive, and I'm glad I did. I made all the fillings from scratch (no canned sweet potatoes or refried beans) since I heard that made a difference, and they were delicious. My cautions--they are best when you make sure the beans and the sweet potatoes are mixed well inside the tortilla, to make sure you're not getting a full bite of sweet potatoes and another full bite of beans. Make sure you have enough cheese, as the sharpness balances out the rest of the flavors. And, if you're using the smaller tortillas, make a few of these! They're good enough to eat several of and not as filling as they look. These are vegetarian, but I think you could easily add shredded pork or chicken to them if you wanted.

Back into the swing of things--Books: Shadow of the Silk Road

2010-07-17T13:37:00.000-05:00

I'm starting to realize how much more of a winter project this blog is for me. IN the winter, I'm generally bored from continually staying inside and bummed about not seeing the sun. Also, just about every winter I go through a funk where I forget that I'm just upset because it's thirty below outside and I only get to see the sun through windows, and decide that there's some normal part of my life that needs to change and I'll be as happy as I am when I'm swimming outside in the summer. This winter, my funk produced this blog. While it's certainly still a good project, I'm noticing that my dedication to having adventures is dulled significantly when I can substitute an evening of grilling and swimming in the pool, or trying to see if my foot has healed enough to take the dog for a walk, or really anything else outside. And for the most part, that is what I've been doing for the last 2 weeks--really, the last two months. I've stopped buying groceries for the week, because if it's a nice week most of them just sit there as I make emergency trips to the store for brats or steaks and corn or some other new grilling food. (Speaking of which--I found this blog this week, which I'm highly enjoying and also has a link to 101 ideas for grilling. Good, easy ideas. Yum.)

This week I've been doing ok for little experiments--I made a new vegetarian recipe that turned out great and finally finished a book I've had out from the library for a few months now. (I'll post that tomorrow--hopefully breaking things up will keep me going!)

I got Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron probably 6 weeks to 2 months ago from the library, and it has really taken me that long to finish it. The book is extremely well written and I think it has a fantastic premise--the author begins in China and follows the old silk road back to Antioch. He is entirely by himself, does not speak the language of every country he passes through (although he does speak both Mandarin and Russian, which get him by in quite a lot of countries) doesn't have a plan beyond which cities he intends to stop in, and even spends a decent amount of the way hitchhiking. It's the sort of adventure that is great to read about because I know I could never do it, especially through the territory he covers--through China and Mongolia, perhaps, but he also moves through Afghanistan and Iran.

This book has a well-written travel story, showing you not only the sights that the author sees but the people he speaks to and the way they look at the world. Although we are entangled in so may of the countries he travels to, this book shows me how little I really knew about the history and the way people think in many of these countries. For so much of it, we only see the propaganda put out by one government or another (or by immigrants who have chosen to leave that country, and so probably have very different viewpoints than those who chose to stay), and never really get the opportunity to speak to an Iranian or an Afghani who chooses to stay in their country. My biggest issue with this book was probably my interest level. Depending on the chapter and my level of interest in where the author was, I either couldn't put the book down or I'd put it down for a week or two at a time. I'm glad I read the book, even the parts that interested me less, but it's a book that you might need some time to go through unless you're interested in everywhere between China and Turkey.

Unfortunately, after taking so long to finish this book I now have a backlog of requests that have come in that the library to sift through. So, expect quite a few more book posts coming up!

Lots of sumi-e

2010-06-30T22:16:00.005-05:00

I was too lazy all of last week to post my pictures from my sumi-e class, so I have quite a lot of photos. I have to say that last week, I was not particularly interested in continuing with sumi-e. We drew a lot of baby chicks and grapes, which is a nice idea until you try to do that for two whole hours when you normally can't concentrate for more than 10 minutes. On anything. So, I ended up with a progression like this:

Instead of what I was supposed to paint, which looked more like this:

This week, I enjoyed myself a lot more. For starters, we were painting landscapes, which I find more interesting than chickens. More importantly, landscapes seemed to be more adaptable than chickens. When I got bored with the one she had demonstrated, I started to make some up that used the same strokes.

On top of there being more variety, I feel like I had a little more skill at drawing landscapes, which is a nice motivator! So, class ended with me buying some more xuan paper and some colors to try. Hopefully, in spite of the fact that the ink smells like extra strength bug spray, that means I'll keep going at least sometimes with this!

Sumi-e practice

2010-06-22T23:19:00.002-05:00

After a whole lot of practice, I'm making some progress....I'm having fun with the different shades of grey, although I'm not very good at controlling them yet. I like the leaves on this, though:

But my favorite drawing so far was done entirely with the small brush that I was only supposed to use for detail. Maybe I'm better on the small scale?

First garden produce!

2010-06-17T20:53:00.003-05:00

The rain has really paid off--I got my first real produce out of my garden today! And it was delicious. Not much, but it's a start.

Matting and Sumi-e

2010-06-16T22:35:00.005-05:00

It's been a busy week--yesterday was my last matting and framing class, and today was my first sumi-e brush painting class.

The matting class worked out surprisingly well, considering that I screwed up my first mat for each of my pictures. In the end, though, I ended up with two pretty photos that would have probably cost me hundreds of dollars to have custom matted and framed.

And the really tricky one, painted on a ceiling tile:

My sumi-e class was fun, but unfortunately got a little long for me. It's a fun idea, and I did find it easier than regular painting. Next week I believe that we'll get to start using some color, which should be fun. This week we concentrated on painting peonies, which would have been much easier if I had more than a passing acquaintance with what peonies look like. I remembered them being a big, showy flower and otherwise went off my instructors demonstration paintings.

After a few pages of practice, I managed to make some decent flowers. Next week, I believe the plans is baby chicks--we'll see how that goes!

Framing and Matting Class...Pt. 1

2010-06-09T19:11:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I attended the first round of a framing and matting class at Dakota County Technical College. It was just a kickoff class, getting us familiar with a lot of the terms and artistic parts of matting pictures, but it was a lot of fun! As a writer, my visual skills are not always my highest priority, which generally shows in any kind of color matching, spacial things or really anything I need to make look really nice. Because of this, the class was a mind-set change for me and it was kind of fun to look at the ways that colors and sizes of mats can change the way a picture looks. I'd honestly never paid attention to the way that a double-layered mat worked color-wise before, but I found out there's actually a lot of thought behind it. The under-layer that only shows a little bit is picked out to bring out a specific color in the photo, and it really does make a huge difference in what your eye focuses on. Also, the color of this layer should not actually touch that same color in the photo (e.g., a red mat never touches the red in the photo) because it's so hard to match the colors exactly--if they touch, it brings attention to the dissonance. The top layer, which is what you notice the most, should really have very little to do with the photo beyond not clashing, and instead should be matched to the decorating in the room the picture will be hung in. Just some interesting thoughts! Next week we'll actually get into the work of measuring, cutting and putting together the mats. I come out of the class with two matted and framed pictures, which doesn't seem like a half bad class project to me!

On a completely unrelated note, I saw yesterday that since last Thursday, my asparagus has sprouted, my peas have flowered, my potato plant is growing so big it might be trying to take over the world AND my raspberry bushes are getting berries! I figured I'd be lucky to even get some berries in the fall, but they're apparently happy where they are and want to let me know that. Give it another few weeks to a month, and I might be getting actual food out of this garden!

Garden progress!

2010-06-06T15:54:00.007-05:00

I think I can officially cross my "plant a garden" item off my bucket list. Just when I was about to give up and go buy plants instead of seeds for my broccoli, cauliflower, garlic and green beans, it decided to rain for an entire week and put my gardening plans off. When I came back out to examine the garden after--voila! Everything except for my asparagus had sprouted and was growing by leaps and bounds. I think I may still need to replace my strawberries, as the rabbits feasted on them before I got my fence up after all that rain, but I'm still going to call this garden a success.

Before the rain, all I had going for me was a couple good rows of onions and a single potato plant:

And now:

Hurray!

Books: Miracle in the Andes and Alive

2010-06-03T19:36:00.005-05:00

When I was in high school, I watched the movie Alive in one of my lit classes. It was one of a few movies that managed to make an impression on me in spite of being shown in school. The story was gruesome and painful, but absolutely fascinating. I went on to read the book Alive by Piers Paul Read, which was different from the movie but equally impacting.

For those of you who don't have the slightest idea what I'm talking about, Alive is the true story (at least the book is...if I remember correctly, the movie is based on the story but takes some creative liberties) of a rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes mountains in the middle of winter. They were far off course and deep in a treacherous area of the mountains, and searchers weren't able to find them. This group stayed alive for 72 days, before two of them finally walked out of the mountains (I believe it's the second highest mountain range on Earth) to get help. This survival was impressive enough, before adding in the details that the plane was broken in half, many of the survivors were very injured, they were completely mislead about their own position in the mountains and (the gruesome part) they ran out of normal food a week or so after they crashed. (I'll leave that jump in logic to you, and just say that they broke a very, very big taboo.) The story had incredible potential to be sensationalist, horrific and gross; instead, it was handled in a way that can't help but amaze you in the people's incredible will to survive.

Because this story made an impact on me years ago, I was pretty much stopped in my tracks when I was wandering through the library and saw a book about the Andes by Nando Parrado. Nando was the main protagonist of Alive, the young man whose skull was cracked open in the crash, whose mother and sister died beside him, and who eventually led the trek out of the mountains. I picked up Miracle in the Andes and read the whole book yesterday. It had most of the great elements that I remembered from Alive, with the benefit of being narrated first person by someone who had been on the mountain, rather than a journalist. I'm not sure I would love the book if I hadn't already read Alive and been pulled into the story--I really don't know. As it was, though, it was a great continuation of the story for me. It was extremely difficult to put down and if you have a reasonably strong stomach, I would highly recommend it. It's the sort of story that makes you slow down and appreciate how good your life is. When I read both Alive and Miracle in the Andes, I was surprisingly humbled. It's hard to be upset about the little things in life when you're faced with a story of people who had such a horrible experience and still fought so hard to live.

Getting things into gear

2010-05-31T23:05:00.002-05:00

I didn't intend a pun with my title but it almost works out. This weekend, with the little bit of extra time, I managed to finally get working on some of my goals--like actually learning how to work on my car! After years of bribing and paying people to work on my car, I decided it was time to learn how to do some of the basics myself. (This may have been motivated in part by the dealership informing me that it was $400 to do maintenance that basically was an oil change and two air filter changes.) And, with only a few people helping, supervising and laughing at me, I actually changed my own oil (mostly), filled all the fluids I was low on, checked my tire pressure, and changed one of the two air filters. (I would have changed both, but one of Henry's well-meaning friends came over and started pitching in to help fix things before he figured out this was supposed to be teaching time!) Little and easy as all those fixes were, I was still pretty proud of myself when I got done.

Adding to that, I weeded my garden and figured out that everything except the asparagus and the strawberries is growing pretty darn well! The asparagus never came up and the rabbits ate my strawberry plants for a snack before I got my fence up, but I can replant both of those next year. In the meantime, I'll have some good vegetables in a month or two, and maybe even a small raspberry crop in the fall.

To top it off, I successfully made some of my recipes from my cooking class. Apparently with a little extra sleep, motivation and relaxation, I gained at least a little bit of skill. Now, I just hope that will continue for the future! I was getting tired of screwing up all my new recipes.

This seems like a good start heading into June, when I'll be starting a couple new art classes, continuing my gardening and hopefully enjoying every bit of the summer!

Books: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

2010-05-26T18:33:00.002-05:00

I read about The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks months ago and requested it from the library; apparently I wasn't the only one! It took months to get here, but it was worth it. This book tells the story of Henrietta Lacks, a poor Southern woman who went in to a free clinic to receive treatment for cancer. Her doctors took a sample of her cancer to use in research without her knowledge, which turned out to be the first cells that could stay alive and continue dividing indefinitely. These cells are still used in research and have been important to everything from space travel to the polio vaccine.

The book is fascinating and covers a lot of ground, from what is known of Henrietta's life to the lives of her children and the science and ethics involved in the situation. Her cells have grown into a multimillion dollar industry, none of which is being given to her children; for years, no one even knew Henrietta's name. Later, more research was conducted on her children without them knowing or understanding what was going on.

This book is difficult to read at times because it can be almost overwhelming; there is so much to think over and try to understand. It is well worth the effort, though!

Crossing an item off my bucket list

2010-05-20T22:20:00.003-05:00

I've been absolutely terrible about posting the last few weeks--I've either been busy or reveling in the few days I had to sit around or do laundry! It's time to get back to this and keep myself accountable for new adventures and experiments, especially now that it seems to be summer!

This last weekend, I crossed something off my bucket list and my family had a big day--my nephew Conner was baptized and I am now officially his godmother. Everyone except for him seemed to have a great time--he was not pleased about the cold water or about having to wait for his next breakfast!

I have plenty of catching up to do on the last few weeks and hopefully some new adventures coming up, so here's hoping I can get back in the habit of being here!

Golfing (kind of)

2010-04-27T23:28:00.007-05:00

Ok, I take it back...all the things I've said about golf in my life and how incredibly boring it seems. At least, I think I do--I have yet to play an actual round of real golf. And based on my performance today at the driving range, I think it will be quite awhile before I'm ready for anything like a real game of golf! Especially the kind where there are other golfers behind me who need to wait for me to finish the hole before they can get there. I can't even finish mini-golf in time to avoid upsetting families with children, generally, and I can hit the ball every time when it comes to mini-golf.

This is me. Notice how my club is coming down about two inches behind the ball.

This is also me. I feel like I look cool in this photo, until I realize that the ball is really not very far away and didn't go much further than that. But hey, at least I hit it, right?

I need to work on these digressions...the moral of the story was that I had fun, even though I was really, really terrible. Luckily Henry came with to give me some lessons, because until today, I had never held real golf clubs. And it definitely showed! I think I missed my first 10-15 swings completely. By the end of the day, though, I had showed some pretty significant improvement: I was hitting the ball once every five or six swings! (Yes, I know. That's still sad. But I have to get excited about the small things, especially when it comes to me and athletics.) And I hit four in a row once without missing. As long as I ignored all the serious golfers around us and just concentrated on our group (most of who also missed the ball a lot), it was a lot of fun.

We did take some videos, but I'm going to have to do some messing with them to make them show up right side up. Hopefully we'll be doing this again soon, with another few women from work who weren't able to come today!

Book Reviews: The Lightning Thief and Eat, Pray, Love"

2010-04-26T21:49:00.000-05:00

I finished two books yesterday. I ended up along on an "adventure" with Henry as he played some very geeky card games with his friends, so I made him stop so I could get another book to read when I finished my library book.

I got Eat, Pray, Love from the library on a friend's recommendation. The book is basically about a woman who goes through a very painful divorce and decides to find peace with herself by travelling and searching out three important aspects she needs in her life: pleasure, discipline and balance. It was an interesting story; the author spent four months in Italy learning Italian and eating, four months in India meditating and learning traditional Hindu yoga, and four months in Bali studying with a medicine man, healer and learning to live in society with people again. There were some really interesting ideas in this book, and I really liked the premise. There are also some great one-liners of wisdom that I took away. On the negative side, the author herself drove me up the wall. I don't think I really fully understood that in the book about a depressed woman trying to find herself would be full of a lot (for lack of a better word) whining. There would be long spells when I could sympathize with her and find her story interesting, but every so often it just reminded me a little too much of a teenaged girl crying because she didn't have a date for Friday night. All in all, I have mixed feelings, but I'm glad I read it. It's a good travel read, and provides an interesting introduction to some ideas that normal Americans don't usually have a ton of exposure to--like yoga and traditional Bali life.

At my emergency stop, I found that the best book I could find in Best Buy was The Lightning Thief. It's a kids book and has the simplicity of a kids book, but it was entertaining. The story is about a kid who learns by being chased by monsters that he's the son of one of the Greek gods, who are still very much alive and involved in the world. It then follows his training and quests. It can be a little cheesy (in particular, some of the jokes are a little groan-worthy!) but if you take it as a kids book, it's a good read. It's also a very fast one--I think I finished it in three hours or under. There's not a lot I can say about the book without giving away important parts of the story, but I liked it enough that I'll be seeking out the next books in the series.

Tomorrow I'm going to be holding real (not mini) golf clubs for the first time. After Steamboat Willie got called out for mocking golf as a dumb game when she had never played it, we planned a group outing of a bunch of people from work to a driving range. Most of us have either never golfed before or are terrible, so I'll be in good company. My goal by the end of the evening is to be able to actually connect with the ball most of the time when I swing...I'm pretty sure my first few shots are going to miss entirely!

Garden part 2

2010-04-23T17:48:00.000-05:00

I finally had a little bit more time in my garden last night, after getting my butt kicked in kickboxing. I only had about an hour before it got dark, but I managed to get my raspberry bushes planted, as well as seeds for broccoli and cauliflower.

I did my best to try to find anything that has sprouted from my last planting session, and as far as I can tell I must have planted a whole lot of weeds and not much else. I'm hoping that they're just slower than I think they should be to come up, but we'll see what happens!

My goal is to finish planting the seeds and plants that I have this weekend, if there's a day with nice weather: that will be the garlic, asparagus, squash, green beans and possibly the strawberry plants.

Rent, jazz, baseball and food experiments

2010-04-21T23:52:00.000-05:00

It's 11:15 and I think this is the earliest I've really had the opportunity to sit down for a few minutes all week. It's been an incredibly busy week--fun, but very busy.

This last weekend I went to Eau Claire to visit my old college roommate, who I haven't seen in probably two years. It was great to see her but strange to be back in Eau Claire. I suddenly didn't fit in at a lot of the places I used to love to go, and I was surprised at how much worse my old apartment in the "student ghetto" looked after a few years of perspective. It was also good to be back; Eau Claire has a great arts scene that I've missed. The Twin Cities definitely has a lot of arts opportunities, but most of them are farther away, a LOT more expensive, and generally both. We took advantage of the weekend to see a jazz concert and the musical Rent (as put on by the Eau Clare Children's Theater...odd). I was honestly surprised at how much I liked Rent--from the things I'd been told, I expected to spend a large part of the time frustrated with starving artists. Instead, I found the play to be a lot more about trying to live with impending death. Depressing, but much less frustrating as a member of the audience. The music was good and the play was not watered down or performed by children, although I was a little nervous when I realized that the play was being put on by a children's theater. It was a great busy weekend.

Tuesday I got my first experience at Target Field, which was pretty darn awesome. My brother, sister and I took my oldest nephew to the game, and I'm pretty sure nobody in the ballpark was having a better time for a lot of that game than my nephew.

It was nice to have somebody to cheer with me, even if he was only five! The Twins didn't play great--their pitcher was fantastic, but I wasn't impressed with the offense. If you're facing a pitcher who is walking in runs and giving up more runs with wild pitches, I feel like you should be able to get your offense going to build on their runs--not so last night. In spite of that, it was a good experience. The ballpark is beautiful and, thanks to my very generous brother, I got to sit in some fantastic seats. It was a perfect night for baseball weather-wise, AND it was just wonderful to get back to baseball. And the ballpark has tacos and gelato. I'm not really sure what more you can ask for.

Finally...I've been seriously falling behind on my food experiments. This is partly because I've been crazy busy this month, and partly because my last several experiments have flopped miserably. My spicy Asian peanut butter cookies from last week were not much of an exception...I liked them and a few other people did, but in general they did not go over well. They aren't a normal cookie, and with so many strong flavors a lot of people found different flavors they didn't like. I adapted it from this recipe according to what I had on hand. Feel free to make these if you are adventurous, and try them with some good vanilla ice cream. Like I said, I really enjoyed them--but don't expect a normal peanut butter cookie!

Spicy Asian-Inspired Peanut Butter Cookies
My version, as adapted from the one I link to above. This made me between 2-3 dozen cookies. Also, I think I could have left out the cayenne pepper without compromising the taste at all. I never tasted the pepper, but after a few bites a slow burn started that you could feel rather than taste. Weird for a cookie, too hot for a lot of people and since it didn't add any noticeable flavor, not particularly important to me.

Ingredients

1 stick butter (room temperature)
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt (scant)
zest of one lemon (make sure the zest is very small!)
1.25 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1 cup chunky peanut butter
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Directions

Sift together the flour, spices, baking powder and baking soda.
In another bowl, beat the butter, sugars and lemon zest until light and smooth but not fluffy. Add the peanut butter and vanilla, and blend until smooth. Add the egg and combine.
Add the flour mix to the peanut butter mix, mixing just until combined and no flour streaks appear.
Chill the dough until firm.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Grease cookie sheets and create balls about 1.25 inches across for cookies. On the cookie sheet, flatten each ball slightly with a fork.
Bake for about 10-12 minutes; let cool slightly before removing from the pan.

Books: Scheherazade Goes West

2010-04-15T22:19:00.000-05:00

I bought Scherezade Goes West as an impulse buy at Half Price Books a few months ago. I was interested by the idea of a book by an Eastern Muslim women who had spent a lot of time in the West talking about the challenges she faced travelling in the West and the differences she saw. After wading through my library books, I picked this up. It was absolutely not what I expected, but I still enjoyed it.

The biggest change that I found from what I expected when I picked the book up was that it is much more focused than I expected on feminism in the East and West. I still found it very interesting and full of things I had no idea about, but I'm a little disappointed that it didn't have a bigger picture. I learned a lot about Muslim culture (mostly in Morocco, which is where the author lives) and about its recent history with women. I also learned a lot of traditional stories that were told about Muslim women and got to understand a lot more about the Thousand and One Nights, which are stories that I love and have been reading since I was little. (Even if you don't think you know them, you probably do: Aladdin, Sindbad and Ali Baba are all characters from Scherezade's stories. Side note--they are absolutely worth reading, but you'll have to get them in several volumes. Above I have a link to just the first volume, as the only complete set I saw on Amazon was $2500 dollars, and even I don't love my books that much.) Throughout the narrative, the author's points and observations are held together by her struggle to understand Scherezade, harems and their different perceptions in the East and West.

One of the largest things that turned me off about this book is unfortunately something that give feminism a bad name; far too much of it was focused on the ways that men enslave and entrap women. Many of her observations were probably accurate to a degree--she looked at the different ridiculous expectations that women are held to (or hold themselves to) from wearing a veil in the East to wearing a size 4 in the West. However, she had a bad habit of continually blaming those restrictions specifically on men, rather than looking at society as a whole. If you can overlook this, though, Scheherezade Goes West is a really interesting, easy to read introduction to the differences between Eastern Muslim and traditional Western roles and views of women. I'm very glad I read it and I would recommend it, but I do very much wish that it had contrained more information about how an Eastern Muslim woman, brought up in such a different culture, perceived the Western world and the misconceptions that she found on both sides.

Gardening...a beginning!

2010-04-12T19:09:00.002-05:00

I hardly went inside yesterday. It was beautiful outside and I got my first Minnesota sunburn of the season. It was wonderful.

Last year, Henry and I dug a garden outside his house for me to plant. I had been whining for awhile about how I wanted one and wished I could cultivate the deck in my apartment, and I think he finally got sick of hearing it! Either way, this spring I uncovered a huge patch of black dirt waiting for me.

After many, many phone calls to my mom trying to figure out what exactly I should be doing, I planted my first seeds yesterday. I had no idea what I should be planting this early (really, I wouldn't have thought I should be planting anything at the beginning of April, if it was up to me!), but I figured out that there was actually quite a lot of things I should be planting. Yesterday, I took care of my snap peas, carrots, onions and potatoes.

Tomorrow, I'm planning on adding broccoli and cauliflower, and in another week or so I'll plant my squash in a pot to get it started. I don't think I'll actually be able to say I've achieved my goal of planting a garden for another month of so (when it's warm enough to put in the peppers, tomatoes and strawberries) but I have a good start!

The Minnesota: Video Games Live

2010-04-11T16:24:00.000-05:00

I know that it makes me a world-class geek that I went to listen to the Minnesota Orchestra playing video game music, but in the long run, I'm pretty ok with it. I got Henry tickets for Christmas to this performance, since he's always raving about the music in his favorite video games and I've been wanting to go to the orchestra for awhile. Seemed like a win-win situation! And I have to say that I was impressed.

My sister told me that a lot of composers love playing video game music because they don't have to cater to students who aren't very good at music--they can write music specifically for professionals and make it as hard as they want. A lot of that came through--the music was HARD and very good. Some of the pieces were familiar...from old arcade games that I used to play on my computer to Mario. Others I had never heard, but they were impressively evocative and often really beautiful. The performance was a part of a tour from a few video games composers who are trying to show people that even though they may not take video games seriously, they shouldn't discount the music and art involved as juvenile. For all that, it was still definitely a pops concert--every so often a costumed character would show up, and there were always video game images playing in the background. A few times, members of the audience participated in the show by playing a game while the orchestra played.

All in all, I'm glad I went. Geeky or not, it was a fun night and I heard a lot of great music.

Bon Jovi Concert :)

2010-04-10T15:41:00.002-05:00

Thursday Steamboat Willie and I, along with two other good friends (with much better seats!) went to the Bon Jovi concert. We were in the nosebleeds, but it was still worth it--although I wish we had waited to get tickets, so we could have also ended up with the free better tickets that the other two got! I forgot how much fun those concerts are--I'm pretty sure that even for somebody who isn't terribly interested in their music, it would still be a lot of fun. If you do like their music, it's all the better--they put on a good show, usually around two and a half to three hours of just them.

I'd heard some complaints about this tour from Bon Jovi before we went--people who were upset that he didn't play much of his old music, which is all that a lot of people go for. My experience was definitely not that--he played a good mixture. He also played a lot of songs that I hadn't heard before, but that made Steamboat Willie absolutely ecstatic! She'd already been to 9 Bon Jovi concerts (yeah...she really has!) and heard some of her favorite more obscure songs for the first time live.

Some of my favorite parts of Bon Jovi concerts:

Well...the music is a pretty obviouis one. He puts on a very good show, plays a lot of songs and obviously loves to perform.
Watching Jon Bon Jovi dance. He has almost the same lack of skill that I do, but he is much more exuberant about it! (here's a decent example on youtube!)
Counting mullets and/or bad 80s outfits. This time, we didn't see any mullets and were severely disappointed. Usually, it's a good game!
Watching weird performance tricks. This time, the drummer played a couple songs on what looked like a birdhouse and the keyboardist stood in between two keyboards and played one with each hand.

Minnesota Melting Pot Class

2010-04-08T18:36:00.000-05:00

Monday was my ethnic Minnesota foods class with Kevin Ryan, and it was once again a great class. We learned to make a Hmong stew, a Somalian chicken stew, juicy lucys, Swedish meatballs and a Norwegian apple cake. The class was a lot of fun, the food was incredible, and I felt like I learned a lot so--yesterday I tried to make the jucy lucys. They seemed to be the easiest recipe in the class and whenever I wait for a long time to make the recipes I've learned in a class, I always seem to forget some key steps.

At least, so I thought. After the jucy lucys, I think it might just be that I lack some important skills! I made them inside (which may have been my first mistake) because it was a little too windy for the grill. And they ended up charred on the outside (rather than seared a nice brown) and missing a lot of pieces of hamburger which are still stuck fast to the bottom of my pan. What I learned from this is that it probably is important to use the high-fat hamburger that he asked for, rather than the much leaner ground buffalo that I had in the freezer! So, in another week or so I'll try it again and see if I can improve with the correct hamburger and either a grill or a much cooler pan.

Juicy Lucys
Ideally, this is supposed to be over a grill. Inside, he said to use a very hot pan to sear the meat on the outside. He also said the hot pan is more likely to cook the meat pretty quickly so the cheese doesn't bleed out.

Ingredients
4 slices good quality white sandwich bread
1/2 cup whole milk
1.5 teaspoons garlic powder
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
3 pounds 85% ground beef
About 12 1" squares cheese, 1/4-1/2 inch thick
8 hamburger buns

Directions

Rip the sandwich bread into small pieces and mash with milk and spices in a small bowl until it makes a paste.
Mix in hamburger until well mixed. Try not to mash the hamburger too much, or it may become stiff.
Form hamburger patties around about 3 squares of cheese, making sure that the patty is evenly distributed on around the cheese and an even thickness.
Cook over the grill or in a hot pan with no oil until done. Try not to burn to a crisp like I did!

Red Pepper Bagel Sandwiches...finally!

2010-04-03T18:55:00.000-05:00

After a week of alternately being busy and fighting with an unpleasant case of food poisoning, I'm finally ready to write about my last vegetarian experiment. And since I made it on Monday, it's about time! I'm really torn between French and Mexican food for this month's experiment. I had every intention of working with French food, so I can really use the cookbook I got from my sister for Chistmas and do some good experimenting. I've heard that this guy wrote some of the best cookbooks for learning French food, which definitely interests me. Also, I've never really eaten much French food, and I'd like to have a general idea of what's going on when I head over to France this fall. But, a lot of the food that really appeals to me in the book is a little beyond my level of need at the moment...as much as I would like to cook a 3 pound chicken every week, I really don't need that much food! And I LOVE Mexican food an unnatural amount. So, I'll do some pondering and hopefully come up with an idea before I go grocery shopping!

I made roasted red pepper bagel sandwiches for my experiment this week, and they were surprisingly both a lot better and a lot more filling than I expected. I made them from a recipe from Cooking Light magazine and followed it pretty close, but did make a few changes. First, I served it on a normal sized bagel--I was looking for dinner, not appetizers! The first time I made them, I did include the garlic cloves. When I made them again for lunches at work, I left that part out so I wouldn't kill everyone around me with the garlic smell! My only objection to these is using the canned roasted red peppers--they're convenient, which is wonderful, but I had a hard time getting over how slimy they looked and felt pulling them out of the jar. They tasted great, but each time I took I bite I was expecting a mouth full of slime.

Roasted Red Pepper Bagel Sandwiches
My version. These are great, quick and surprisingly filling.

Ingredients

Plain bagels
Fat free cream cheese
1 jar roasted red peppers (or roast your own to get around the slimy look!)
1 clove garlic, minced (optional--when I did this, I used a whole clove on one sandwich and it was good and spicy!)
Black pepper

Directions

Toast the bagel.
Meanwhile, combine enough cream cheese for 1 bagel (about 2 big spoonfulls), minced garlic and black pepper and whip them together until well mixed.
Coat both sides of the bagel with the cream cheese mix.
Add the red pepper.

It's really that fast and simple, and tastes a lot better than I expected with the simple ingredients. Yum.

Happy Easter to everyone tomorrow! Enjoy your jellybeans and deviled eggs :)

Basketball and Celebrations

2010-03-28T22:39:00.000-05:00

I went to my first ever professional basketball game tonight. At least in Minnesota, I have to agree with what I've been told--it's kind of fun to go to a Timberwolves game when it's free. Even though I have absolutely no interest in basketball, the entertainment between quarters is fun, the atmosphere is interesting and there's always some good people watching. On top of that, with baseball season coming up, it was kind of therapeutic to watch a game when I really didn't care one way or the other about the outcome. And finally, we had some pretty impressive seats for being free.

Not a lot of adventures this week, but my self-imposed month without eating out is over. Since Henry passed a big certification test, we also went out to celebrate and had some of the best cheesecake I've had recently at Rock Bottom Brewery. They don't have the nutrition facts for that on their website yet and I'm pretty sure I'm glad of that!

This upcoming week doesn't promise a lot of adventures--I'm probably going to be pretty busy between extra work, trying to enjoy the spring weather and maybe trying to get a few things done.

Food Experiments: Tomato Pesto Pasta

2010-03-22T21:37:00.000-05:00

I always think that I like pesto until I actually eat it. It sounds and looks good, but when I finally eat it, it's just too oily for something so green and healthy looking! Today, I decided to try it again with a new recipe, hoping that the tomatoes would make it a little better. It worked to a point--I liked the taste of the pesto better, but I would still prefer to make it next time with less oil. I got the recipe from Cooking Light and adapted it to what I had in my kitchen.

Tomato Pesto Pasta with Feta Cheese

Ingredients

1/4 box fettucine
3/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes in oil, drained (next time, I would try using the dried sun-dried tomatoes with a tablespoon or so of olive oil)
1/4 cup fresh basil leaves
small handful chopped walnuts
3/4 cup crumbled feta cheese, divided
3 cloves fresh garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Directions

Cook pasta according to package directions.
While pasta is cooking, combine tomatoes, basil, walnuts, 1/4 cup feta, garlic, salt and black pepper in a food processor. Process until finely chopped.
When pasta is finished cooking, drain and reserve 1 cup of water. Mix reserved water with the tomato mixture and whisk together. Add pasta and mix until coated.
Top with remaining 1/2 cup of feta.

Food Experiments: Slow Cooker Risotto

2010-03-21T23:35:00.000-05:00

I don't think I've ever had risotto before, so I can't really judge if the recipe I made just turned out badly or if I just don't like risotto. Either way, I now have a big container of weird cheesy rice mush in my fridge that I've been trying to convince myself I should eat for about three days now. I hate wasting perfectly good food, and this really isn't that bad, but...it just reminds me of overcooked cheesy oatmeal. And when I have other, perfectly appetizing food around (even if it is Kraft mac and cheese or something that will take me another hour to cook), that somehow always wins over cheesy oatmeal.

I can't really pass judgement on the recipe itself for several reasons. One, I'm really not sure if I like risotto. There's a good chance that this tastes like it's supposed to and I just made an experiment that wasn't good for me. Two, I started this in a hurry after oversleeping one morning and didn't see that it was only supposed to cook for 2 hours, not 4, so it really WAS overcooked. Outside of my carelessness, though, this was a really easy recipe that was very quick to throw together in the morning. If I were to try it again, I'd make sure I was home so it didn't sit on the warm setting all day and possibly try a different type of cheese (I think mozzerella or gruyere or any other white cheese would probably work equally well and I might like the taste better). And I probably wouldn't make it for the night after a work party that was largely based around a food competition, because this just can't stack up to potato skins, homemade bread and honey butter, or mint brownies.

After this week, I'm starting to realize a little more that being a vegetarian must be hard. I'm having a really hard time finding recipes that aren't either really difficult, full of expensive ingredients, or full of eggplant and/or cabbage (yech). Hopefully next week will be a little easier!

St. Paddy's Day Wines

2010-03-18T23:50:00.000-05:00

It's been a relatively eventful week for me, and I feel like I'm permanently catching up here! Today I started stirring up the dirt in my soon-to-be garden at Henry's house, adding peat moss to keep it from solidfying into the granite that it developed into last summer after a couple rains, I got a crown put on and will actually have a few months without having to see my dentist, and tasted rice pudding for the first time (yum!). And all of this was after celebrating St. Patrick's Day last night by attending a wine tasting dinner with Henry (a birthday present from his sister).

I love wine tastings. I generally just enjoy wine, but it's always hard for me to justify picking out a new, completely unknown bottle to try when there are a few nearby that I know will be worth the money. Wine tastings are my way of compromising...I pay a little more than I would for a bottle, but I generally find at least one or two wines that I like. And along the way, there's usually some pretty good food and knowledge!

The wine dinner last night was at Spill the Wine in Minneapolis. I had never been there before and to tell the truth, I'm still not sure what I think about it. The food we got was fantastic (deconstructed lasagna, goat cheese crustini, a citrus salad with passionfruit vinagrette, and homemade vanilla ice cream with peach port reduction) but the wine simply didn't measure up. Now, a large part of this might have been because the tasting was specifically focused around wines from Sonoma, and I haven't yet found a California wine that I really love. No wine was particularly bad, but I also didn't find a single one that I planned on buying...not a good track record. Generally I at least love the last wine I taste, even if I only love it because it's the seventh or eighth glass I've tasted. But, the restaurant was beautiful, the staff was extremely friendly and fun, and it is a place that I might be willing to try again--for a dinner, if not necessarily a wine tasting event. The biggest downfall to me (other than the so-so wine) were the people--I was surrounded by a lot of people who quite obviously drank wine because upper class, sophisticated people drink wine. If you can tune out the tables next to you, your evening here will be far better! But, in the future for my wine events, I'll probably stick with the Cooks of Crocus Hill, as I have yet to attend an event there that isn't fantastic.

Books: Peter and Max

2010-03-16T21:20:00.000-05:00

I resisted being pulled into comic books until I was in college. Before that, comic books were for weird boys like my brother. But after freshman year and a few too many literature classes, comic books because one of the things I could read and enjoy no matter how high my burnout level. They were also one of the few things I could read without automatically finding 6 layers of symbolism in every sentence.

My interest in comic books (and my brother) eventually led me to Bill Willingham's Fables comics. For someone who grew up loving fairy tales and stories, these are a great grown-up version of the characters I used to love. The series is based around the idea that the storybook characters that we know as fairy tales and fables are real, but were driven out of their own worlds and into ours by an army driven by an evil character known as "the adversary." The story of all these "fables" living together in their own community and trying to fight the adversary creates a wonderful new, if very dark, fairy tale. Even if you aren't a huge fan of comic books, these are absolutely worth reading for anyone interested in fairy tales.

Peter and Max, also by Bill Willingham, is a novel based on the ideas and characters of the entire Fables series. This could be a great place to start if you're interested in the idea but not ready to commit to becoming a comic book reader--you don't need to have read the comic books. You will benefit if you know at least the gist of some common fairy tales and nursery rhymes--in particular, the Pied Piper, Little Bo Peep and the Peter Piper nursery rhymes. The story is based around the lives of Peter Piper and his brother Max. Peter is living in the current-day Fables world with his wife, Little Bo Peep, while they are both being hunted by his brother Max. It is full of unexpected twists--for instance, the idea that Little Bo Peep was once an assassin and that the Pied Piper was once just part of a family of travelling minstels. It's hard to talk too much about this book without giving away some of the twists and turns that make it so delightfully entertaining, but I will say that the way the book develops the lives and personalities of characters who are so familiar and yet so vague is extremely satisfying. Reading this book is like meeting a childhood friend or bully decades later and finally learning what that person is all about and what really drove them to be your friend or enemy as a kid. You get all the pleasure of finally figuring out why you felt the way you did so long ago, as well as the surprise of seeing the unexpected futures of people who once seemed so familiar.

I liked it. Read it, and when you're done, get started with Fables Vol. 1: Legends in Exile. The trade paperback version makes it look a tad less juvenile, and chances are by the time you're done with the first one, you won't be worrying about much except for what happens next.

Strawberry Margaritas and some more tequila

2010-03-15T22:33:00.000-05:00

My friends and I are some of the few people I know who still love tequila. And since I bought a bottle of delicious almond tequila in Mexico and had yet to crack it open, this weekend was a girls weekend focused around tequila. I won't say too much except to say that we each tried several new flavors of tequila and started the evening with six bottles of tequila for six girls. I'm not sure whether this qualifies as an adventure or a misadventure...two days later, I'm still very aware of my experiments!

The opening act was strawberry margaritas from scratch. For our first attempt, I have to say that they were pretty darn good...perhaps a little bit too good!

We adapted our recipe from Rachel Ray's Strawberry Marg-alrightas. Originally we intended to make all of our margaritas from scratch, before we looked at the serving size and the amount of fruit and decided to use a mix. Unfortunately in Minnesota, strawberries and limes are still expensive enough that it seemed cost-prohibitive to make enough margaritas for all six of us from scratch. I do have to say, though, that the numbers on the original recipe are extremely deceiving. If the recipe makes four drinks, it must be four fishbowls, because we got about 8 or 9 normal sized margaritas out of less than half of the recipe. Also, I'm not sure what size blender she used to contain all that fruit, but it certainly wasn't a standard kitchen sized one! The original recipe linked to before could probably easily give you 12-15 margaritas, which makes it much more affordable and absolutely worth the great taste.

What we ended up creating was good, although I would say it could have very much benefited from another quarter box or so of strawberries. Steamboat Willie proved to be very talented at coating the rims with sugar (I was impressed!), and the only thing that was really lacking was the ingredients to make more!

Strawberry Margaritas

Yum.

Ingredients

1 pint strawberries.
Juice of 3 large limes
1/2 cup orange juice
8 tablespoons sugar
5 standard shot glasses of tequila (we used Jose Cuervo, but I'm sure it would be delightful with Patron or another brand!)
Around 2 cups ice (or whatever fits at the top of the blender after everything else has been added!)
1 lime wedge and sugar for coating the glasses

Directions

Cut up strawberries slightly for easier blending.
Add all ingredients except lime and sugar for coating to the blender; blend until smooth.
Use the lime wedge to carefully coat the top edge of the glass in lime juice. Pour the sugar into a small plate and press the rim of the glass into the sugar to coat.
Enjoy...probably a little bit too much. Make sure to drink plenty of water before you go to bed!

Food Experiments: Moroccan Lentil Stew and Kickboxing

2010-03-11T20:02:00.002-06:00

When I first joined the gym by my house, I had been out of college (and my college-era martial arts training) for about a year. One of my goals was to get back into something close to the great shape I had been in for martial arts, and I decided that I wanted to go to a few kickboxing classes. I miss martial arts still, but I will probably never be willing to sell my soul to them to become a black belt. To remedy this, within my first month, I went to my first kickboxing class.

It was pretty darn horrible. I thought I was going to throw up for most of the class, and I was surrounded by skinny little high school students who were doing everything I couldn't, six inches higher, and laughing and cheering the whole time. That was about two years ago, and today (at Steamboat Willie's instigation) was the first time since that I have decided to go to a kickboxing class. This was the class I originally had wanted to go to, because it adds weighted gloves and a heavy bar to the exercises to add some resistance.

I was absolutely terrified.

But, I am pleased to announce that the last two years of working out must have paid off, because...I made it all the way to the burpies at the end of the class before I thought I was going to pass out! And it was fun, in a horribly painful sort of way. But then again, I suppose that is kind of the point of anything based on martial arts. At the very least, it gave me a taste of what I had been missing, and it could definitely have the potential to get me back into good shape!

After about a half an hour of walking and stretching until I no longer looked like a cherry tomato, I was happy to come home to my next vegetarian experiment...mostly because it was in my slow cooker and ready to eat. This Moroccan Lentil Stew is my first experience with the lentil, and I can't say it's a bad one. The stew itself is delicious, and the lentils don't seem to have a lot of taste to me. AND for my vegetarian or mostly-vegetarian friends who have a hard time getting in enough protein--the beans and apparently the lentils add quite a lot of protein to this stew. As does the cheese that I smothered it in when serving it!

Just in case, I'll copy the recipe for this below, but I would strongly recommend visiting Stephanie's blog or buying her book if you have any interest in cooking--both are fantastic!

Moroccan Lentil Stew
I made this in a 5.5 qt crockpot...the programmable kind that I love because I can be gone all day and it never burns! It took me aboput 20 minutes to chop everything up and add it in the morning. And you can find dried lentils right by the dried beans in the grocery store, for those of you who have never used them before! Also, keep in mind that this makes a LOT of stew, but she says that it freezes well.

Ingredients

1 cup dried lentils
1 can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
1 can pinto beans, drained and rinsed
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, smashed and chopped
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup chopped carrots
28 oz can of diced tomatoes (and juice)
4 cups vegetable broth
1 1/2 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 inch ginger, peeled and grated

Directions

Chop the veggies and add them to the bottom of the crockpot.
Drain and rinse the beans, and add them with the lentils.
Grate the ginger and add it with the dried spices.
Stir in the vegetable broth and tomatoes.
Cover and cook on low for 10 hours.

"Brain Rules" and pastels

2010-03-09T23:11:00.000-06:00

Yesterday when I was looking for more glass paint, I instead found a cheap set of pastels. Remembering how much fun I had with them when I was a kid, I bought them, along with a big sketchbook. I am now slowly dying my keyboard all kinds of colors with the pastel colors that are still all over my fingers. It was still a lot of fun, but I have no more drawing skill than I did when I was a kid! I'll hope that I can acquire some with practice. Tomorrow I'll try to post some links for where I learned a few of the basics and maybe scan some of my lovely first attempts. With any luck, in a few months I can look back and see progress!

I finished the Brain Rules book by John Medina last night. I started this book for work, to try to gain some understand of the way people learn. I'm hoping to move my work into developing online courses (from writing manuals where I currently am) and I'm doing my best to understand how to make some incredibly boring procedures interesting enough for people to remember.

Brain Rules was a book that I saw recommended when browsing through Instructional Design blogs (such as this one or this one). It was advertised as an easy introduction to some important rules of how people learn, and it certainly seemed to be for me. While I'm sure this book was presented for a general audience and leaves a lot of information out (at least, if you're a psychologist or someone with a lot of knowledge in this area!) it really is a great, well-written and friendly introduction to the way people learn. He presents the material broken up into chapters of each "rule" (e.g., "People don't pay attention to boring things" or "Stressed brains learn differently") and takes into account every one of his rules throughout the book. It is filled with interesting anecdotes, spaced well to peak your interest after a more technical section, is easy to read and is continually related to the concerns of most readers. The book is also supplemented with a DVD and a website. He strongly encourages everyone to take advantage of all three media types, since the repetition and the variety will help people learn--but being the bookwork I am, I have yet to move past the book.

If you're interested in a quick, light introduction to human learning, this is a great book. It is easy to read and has a lot of practical knowledge that people should be able to enter into their own lives, whether to help their own learning or to help teach others. The tone is comfortably conversational, without the overly technical voice or the feeling of being talked down to that too many scientific books fall prey to. And for anyone interested in how the human brain works (yours or anyone elses!) it's a great, interesting read.

Vegetarian Experiments month

2010-03-07T21:21:00.001-06:00

After a month of dessert, I decided it was time for something a little healthier. As much fun as it was for me to have two or three desserts in the fridge at all times, I can't say it helped my pants fit any better!

So I'm declaring this month a vegetarian challenge month. I have a few inspirations for this--first of all, it would be nice to have some recipes I could make when my sister comes home that I know are good. Second, I continually hear that cooking vegetarian once or twice a week is a great way to save money. And finally, I recently found this website with a ton of recipes that sound really, really good!

This week, I made a broccoli brown rice bake (I'll also copy the recipe below, although I'd recommend visiting the website to get some more ideas!). It was good, especially considering how healthy it was, but I think next time I'm going to try adding in a cream of mushroom soup (or something else to add some liquid) and some more smaller vegetables. The casserole was great the first day, but dried out pretty badly on reheating. Also, since the broccoli usually comes in larger chunks, it didn't mix in very evenly with the rice. I think it might be better if I added in some green peas, chopped okra or carrots, or something of a similar smaller size. It is still definitely worth trying, though--for such a simple dish, it was surprisingly good.

Broccoli Brown Rice Bake
I made this in a 9x13 pan, and about a sixth of the pan is a serving.

Ingredients

2 cups long-grain brown rice
5 cups water
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup celery, finely chopped
1 cup onions, finely chopped
4 cups broccoli, florets and peeled stems
4 ounces (half a brick) low fat cream cheese (I added about 2 extra ounces for more moisture)
freshly ground pepper and salt, to taste
1 teaspoon dried basil

Directions

Cook the rice according to package directions (in a pot or rice cooker) until tender. Transfer to a large bowl and set aside.
Preheat the oven to 350 and lightly grease a large, shallow casserole dish.
In a large skillet over medium-high heat, heat the olive oil. Add the celery and onion and sauté for about 7 minutes, or until onions are translucent.
Add the broccoli, stir to combine and sauté for another 3 minutes or until broccoli is not quite tender.
Add the cheese to the skillet, breaking it up and stirring it to make a slightly thick, creamy gravy that coats the vegetables. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Scrape the vegetable cheese mixture into the bowl with the rice and toss to mix well. Season the casserole with the basil.
Transfer the mixture to an oiled casserole dish, cover with foil and bake for 30-35 minutes or until heated through. Serve hot.

Food experiments: Better than Sex Cake

2010-03-02T18:42:00.000-06:00

I've been slacking lately on writing, and so I have a lot to catch up on...like this. I've heard about better than sex cake for years, but until a few weeks ago I'd never tasted it. A coworker asked for this for his birthday cake from Steamboat Willie, which she made on the day before Valentine's Day.

Yum. I had one piece at work, and promptly changed my plans for Valentine's Day dinner to include it. I hear there's a lot of different recipes for this out there, but this is the one that I definitely enjoyed!I would make this cake at least 6 hours or so before you need it, and the night before would be even better. The longer it sits for the toppings to soak in, the better it gets. Really--I had this cake leftover for over a week, and it was far better on the last day.

Better than Sex Cake
This reminds me of one of my favorite cakes that my mom used to make, but easier.

Ingredients
1 package devils food cake mix
Eggs and oil as required by your mix (usually 1/3 cup oil and 3 eggs)
1 can condensed milk
1 cup butterscotch topping
1 cup hot fudge topping
1 container Cool Whip
a few handfuls of toffee, chopped or crumbled (Heath bars work, but I used leftover toffee from my Mom's Christmas candy)

Directions

Bake the cake according to the package instructions.
Let cool for about 10-15 minutes.
Use a fork to poke holes all over the top of the cake--not big or deep, but just to perforate it enough for liquids to soak in.
Dump the can of condensed milk over the cake, spreading it as evenly as you can. Let it soak in for around half an hour or until it's mostly absorbed. It may not absorb well right away, but you can still put the other toppings on.
Dump on the cup of butterscotch, again spreading it as evenly as possible and letting it sit for awhile. Repeat the process with the hot fudge.
Let the cake sit until you are ready to serve. If the cake will be sitting out overnight, refrigerate it.
Just before serving, top with the Cool Whip and the toffee crumbles.

Winos and Painting Glasses

2010-02-25T21:19:00.000-06:00

My roommate (who has requested to be called Steamboat Willie) and I went to a class to learn how to paint wine glasses tonight at the Lakeville Art Center. I think I expected this to be harder than it was, but it ended up being no harder than normal painting (which is still plenty hard for me!). We each made a glass and got to drink a few glasses to help "inspire our creativity." I have to say, they turned out better than either one of us expected.

To make things a little bit easier, our teacher had printed out some patterns for us that you could tape onto the inside of the glass. This gave me some good ideas, but I ended up not using it much--the paper was straight while the glass was curved, which threw off my depth perception. Truthfully, I think I painted better on the bottom of the glass, without the pattern. But, it's a comforting way to start and it helps with placement of each thing on the glass, and she said it is pretty easy to find patterns just through a Google search. I'm not finding a lot, but you could also just use stencils or a line drawing you find anywhere.

The glasses had to be washed thoroughly, then primed with something that smelled absolutely terrible, and then finally painted. I guess a lot of paints require that you bake the glass in the oven after you finish, but the kind we used just needs to sit for 10 days before being used. After the 10 days, we'll also wrap a string of beads around the stem of the glass.

The glass on the left with the grape vines is Steamboat Willie's, and the glass on the right with the daisies is mine. Not bad for our first attempts--next up will be the margarita glasses for our upcoming tequila party!

Food experiments: Mad Men (cont.), green beans and mashed potatoes

2010-02-21T23:44:00.000-06:00

While green beans and mashed potatoes certainly don't fit with my dessert experiments theme for the month, I learned some great information in my Mad Men class that I'd like to share. In particular, some tips for great mashed potatoes and an incredibly easy recipe for the best green beans I've ever eaten (and thankfully, it has nothing to do with green bean casserole!). I really do want to give credit where it's due, and thank Kevin Ryan for a great class and a lot of knowledge.

I always thought that mashed potatoes were a pretty simple, self explanatory food. Cook potatoes, smash them up and add various unhealthy things for flavor. When you add science (as I suppose you can't help doing if you have a Ph.D. in food science), it becomes a lot more complicated and a lot tastier. The tips I learned:

Potatoes are usually overcooked (at least mine are!); they are done if you can stick a knife in the potato, lift it up and it slowly slides off. If you can't lift it up well, it's definitely overcooked.
When the potatoes are done boiling, put them back in the dry pan over heat for a short time to dry out the water. This will give you a richer flavor, since it won't be watered down by the residual moisture.
Never mash potatoes in a food processor--it breaks down the starches and turns them into the texture of wallpaper paste. (I've never done this, but I'm sure at some point in my life I would have been tempted. Disaster averted.)
Add all your liquids and most of your seasonings to the potatoes BEFORE you add the butter. The butter coats the potatoes so thoroughly that they won't be able to absorb the rest of the ingredients. You can still add ingredients after the butter if you don't want them absorbed by the potatoes--sort of the equivalent of salting food that's already finished as opposed to salting food and then cooking it. Adding the seasonings after the butter is going to add it on top of a finished product.

The green beans recipe is remarkably simple--I don't know why I haven't tried this or how it turned out so good, but it did. This can also be used on most other vegetables.

Roasted Green Beans
These are seriously amazing. This recipe serves about 8.

Ingredients
2 lbs green beans, ends trimmed off
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar (optional)--this speeds up the roasting process, but you won't taste it. It's optional here, but he highly recommended using it if you make broccoli in this way.

Directions

Adjust the oven rack to the middle position and preheat the oven to 450.
Line a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil (for easy cleanup) and spread the beans on the baking sheet.
Drizzle with oil, and toss them to coat. Sprinkle with 1/2 teaspoon of salt and sugar if used, and toss to coat.
Spread the beans evenly on the baking sheet. Give them some room and don't let them touch, or the beans will steam rather than roast.
Put in the oven and roast 10 minutes.
Pull the baking sheet from the oven and use tongs to redistribute the beans. Put them back in the oven and continue roasting until the beans are browning in spots and have started to shrivel, 10 to 12 minutes longer.
Add any additional salt and pepper as desired, and serve.

Food Experiments: Mad Men and Grasshopper Pie

2010-02-19T19:34:00.002-06:00

I've been slacking on posting my experiments and adventures lately...I wish I could say it was because I've had so many, but really I've just been lazy. Now it's time to catch up!

Henry and I took a cooking class on Wednesday that my parents gave us for Christmas. It was themed around 1960s food and the show Mad Men, and took place at the Cooks of Crocus Hill. I love their cooking classes--they usually have fantastic food, very knowledgeable and personable chefs and more information than I know what to do with. In this class, I learned more than I ever thought I'd learn about mashed potatoes (which I'll share later--first I need to write about the dessert experiment!) and also about food anthropology. (Yes, there is such a thing--the chef went to school for it!)

The chef leading the course was named Kevin Ryan, and he was pretty much fantastic. I should have expected it--my mom and roommate went to one of his classes last fall, and this Christmas my mom was still singing his praises for helping her figure out one of her biggest candy-making challenges. He could not only explain how to make every dish we tried, but also exactly what was happening chemically otherwise to make the food the way it was AND the history how this food had been eaten. I was impressed. And, by the time I left, absolutely stuffed. (And today I learned that he has a book, which I'm going to have to check out soon...)

Kevin Ryan also taught me why my grandma, as well as most people's grandparents, so dearly love bringing some sort of jello to every family occasion. He pointed out that powdered gelatin is really a surprisingly new phenomenon, so in my grandma's day, bringing a jello dish somewhere meant you cared enough to spend a couple of days boiling down cow hooves to make it. Unfortunately, that feeling of jello being a luxury hasn't translated into our generation...until this class, I never really understood that the strawberry jello filled with shredded carrots meant "I love you enough to slave all week in my kitchen over cow hooves."

Anyway, for today I would like to post his recipe for grasshopper pie. To those who have been making this for a long time, maybe this isn't revolutionary BUT--in my experience, making grasshopper pie pretty much meant mixing some booze with ice cream and crunching up some Oreos. Without the ice cream, this was much, much better.

Kevin Ryan's Grasshopper Pie
Delicious, light and creamy. Makes 1 pie. This recipe should be made the night before you iintend to eat it to make sure it has plenty of time to chill and set.

Ingredients

Crust
16 Oreo Mint n' Creme cookies, broken into rough pieces (this still leaves half a box for snacking, as he pointed out--hurray!)
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled

Filling
3 large egg yolks (the whites can be frozen and used later--they fit nicely in ice cube trays!)
1 envelope unflavored gelatin
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups heavy cream
pinch table salt
1/4 cup green creme de menthe
1/4 cup white creme de cacao

6 oz. bar semi-sweet chocolate, shaved

Instructions

Crust

Make sure your oven rack is in the middle position and preheat the oven to 350.
Grind the cookies in a food processor to make them fine crumbs. Transfer them to a bowl, drizzle with the butter and toss well.
Press crumbs evenly into the bottom and sides of a 9-inch pie place (using a ramekin can help, apparently!) abd refrigerate crust until firm, about 20 minutes.
Bake until set, 8 to 10 minutes. Cool completely on a wire rack.

Filling

Beat the egg yolks in a medium bowl. Combine the gelatin, sugar, 1/2 cup of the cream and salt in a medium saucepan and let sit until the gelatin softens, about 5 minutes. Then cook it over medium heat until the gelatin dissolves andthe mixture is very hot but NOT boiling, about 2 minutes. (The gelatin will break down if it's boiled.)
Whisking vigorously, slowly add the gelatin mix to the egg yolks. (Go very slow so you don't heat up the eggs too fast and scramble them. I've also tempered the eggs before by slowly pouring half the hot mix into the eggs, then pouring the eggs back into the hot mix.)
Return the mixture to the saucepan and cook, stirring vigorously, until it's slightly thickened, abouot 2 minutes.
Remove from the heat and add the creme de menthe and creme de cacao.
Pour into a clean bowl and refrigerate, stirring occasionally, until wobbly but not set, about 20 minutes. It should be about the consistency of mayonaise.
Beat the remaining 1 1/2 cups cream with an electric mixer to stiff peaks. Whisk 1 cup of the whipped cream into the gelatin mixture until it is completely incorporated. Using a rubber spatula, fold the gelatin mixture into the remaining whipped cream until no streaks of white remain.
Scrape the mixture into the cooled pie shell, smooth the top and refrigerate until firm. This will be at least 6 hours but would be better overnight.
Serve, topping with chocolate curls if desired.

Books: City of Thieves

2010-02-14T20:40:00.002-06:00

I found out about City of Thieves from Kevin Slowey's blog. Based on my experience with the last book I read on his recommendation, I was a little nervous, but I really enjoyed this book. Actually, I guess "enjoyed" might not be the best description--City of Thieves is set in Russia during World War II. In particular, a large part of the story takes place in Leningrad (or Stalingrad or St. Petersburg, at different times in history) while it was under siege by the Nazis. I never went much farther with history than what I learned in school, so before this I wasn't really fully aware of what that meant--starvation, terror, abandonment and death, in a nutshell. So I can't say I enjoyed reading it, but I am glad that I read it, and I would highly recommend it.

City of Thieves follows two young men who have been caught and thrown in prison for minor crimes. They are taken out of prison and given a task by a powerful colonel--bring him a dozen eggs within a week to make his daughter's wedding cake, and they will be absolved of their crimes rather than being shot. In a city where people have been eating bread made of sawdust and not much more for half a year, this is quite a task. To make things a little more interesting, the men are polar opposites--the narrator is younger, more reserved and inexperienced, while his companion is an outgoing, arrogantly likeable playboy.

City of Thieves is well written, fascinating and hard to put down. The story draws you in continually, and along the way you learn quite a lot about WWII Russia. It is not a pretty story by any means--it's filled with death, sex, war crimes and starvation. It is narrated almost completely by a seventeen-year-old boy, and his thoughts and opinions are as politically incorrect as any teenage boy. But it's hard to put down--I finished the book in two days--and now, three days later, it's still on my mind. Read it. Don't expect to laugh the whole way through, but expect to learn a lot and be entertained, if sometimes a little horrified.

Food experiments: Flan!

2010-02-10T20:47:00.001-06:00

I love flan. I suppose that’s no surprise…I love custards, creme brulee, or even custard-filled donuts. They’re delicious. But flan has always seemed to me to be one of those things like cheesecake—really delicious, but something you normally eat at a restaurant because it’s too hard to make.

So, in the spirit of experimenting and adventure, I decided to try making flan this week. And, while it was definitely fussy and took a long time, it turned out on my first try! So that’s one more difficult recipe that I can honestly say has been much easier for me to pull off than a batch of brownies.

Because I was intimidated, I used Alton Brown’s recipe. I’ve generally found that his recipes are good for scared people, because he adds a lot of tips to the sides of them and because they’re written down to help you learn to cook. That and I have 3 of his cookbooks, so I usually figure I should use them! This recipe is also available on the Food Network website, with a few more of his details and recommendations.

Alton Brown’s “Flandango”

In his ingredients, he calls for the sauce to be made from caramel sauce, preserves or any other sauce you’d like to try. I experimented with caramel and apricot preserves, and I can heartily vouch for the caramel. The apricot I found to be way to overpowering for the flan itself, so I’d recommend sticking with milder flavors for the sauce. I also used caramel ice cream topping to save time. This tasted fine, but next time I want to try homemade caramel sauce to experiment with textures. The ice cream topping was pretty runny and didn’t really meld well with the flan.

You also need 8 4 oz ramekins (or the equivalent), a big roasting pan, a fine strainer, some pots, a whisk, and your life will be a lot easier if you can get ahold of a pitcher with a spout.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups whole milk
1 cup half-and- half
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup sugar
An assortment of jams and sauces for toppings (e.g., Butterscotch ice cream topping, hot fudge ice cream topping )
6 eggs

Directions

Ensure that your highest oven rack is in the middle position. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. I would do this right away and leave it to bake so that the temperature will even out—you’re going to need all the heat you can get, because when you leave the oven open long enough to pour in the water bath later, a lot of heat is going to escape.
Place a kettle of water on to boil—the larger your roasting pan, the bigger your kettle. This will become your water bath. (I had to fill my pan up twice—luckily the hot water heater was turned up a little higher than it probably should be, so I had quick access to very hot water!)
In a saucepan, combine the milk, half and half, vanilla extract and sugar. Bring to a bare simmer over medium-high heat. As soon as this is achieved, remove from the heat and set aside. This takes a long time. I was able to prepare all the other ingredients and still read a few pages of my book.
Place 1 to 2 tablespoons of the toppings in the bottom of each ramekin—it shouldn’t be very deep. Probably less deep than mine was!
Separate 3 eggs, reserving the whites and keeping the yolks for use in the flan.
In a mixing bowl, combine the 3 remaining whole eggs with the yolks. Whip with a whisk until the eggs are thickened and slightly lighter in color.
Continue whisking the eggs while you mix in about 1/4 of the milk mixture. Then whisk the egg mixture into the saucepan with the rest of the milk mix. (This keeps the eggs from cooking with the heat of the milk.)
Put the mesh strainer over a pitcher with a spout. Pour the egg mixture through the strainer to get rid of any cooked eggs or particles.
Set the custard cups in the roasting pan. Evenly distribute the egg mixture in the custard cups.
Place the roasting pan on the middle rack of your oven. Pour the water from your kettle into the roasting pan to create the water bath—it should stop just below the level of the custard (NOT the ramekins).
Cook for about 40 minutes, or until the flan wiggles slightly when the pan is shaken.
Take the ramekins out individually, either with tongs or (if you are more skilled with oven mitts than with tongs, as I was), with oven mitts. Leave the pan with water in the oven to cool before you throw the water out. (I don’t know why, but I figure I don’t need to find out why by wrecking something, so for once I’ll listen!)
Now this is the hardest part for me—first, leave the flan to cool to room temperature. Then, put them in the fridge to cool before eating them. (Ok, the ramekins are small enough that this only took about 2 1/2 hours, but on top of the two hours it took to make these, it was hard!)
Try to share. It’s hard. They’re good.

Learning to be a little brother

2010-02-07T17:05:00.005-06:00

I’m going to commit one of the capital sins of writing today and write about something that has nothing to do with the topic of this blog. This wasn’t an adventure for me, but it did make my life just a little bit brighter—and it’s just really darn cute.

My little nephew turned two in December; he is learning how to be a true little brother, complete with taunting his brother! They both have a lot of energy and since Christmas, this has been the result if you won’t chase Nate around the house.

Food Experiments: Chocolate Fondue

2010-02-03T21:22:00.004-06:00

Since there are still pumpkin bars sitting in the kitchen from last week's experiment, I decided to try to make something I thought would be a little smaller this week: chocolate fondue. I've been wanting to try it since I found an incredibly easy recipe on the A Year of Slow Cooking blog, and decided that it was time.

Maybe if I had thought things through a little more, I would have realized that a cup and a half of chocolate chips, mixed with various tasty things and used just as a dipping sauce is not actually a small amount of food. I'm very full, and it was very, very good! This recipe is still available in the archives of the Year of Slow Cooking blog (which I highly recommend if you like easy, good food) but I will re-post it here to keep my recipe experiment collection complete.

She notes that a small crockpot is best for this recipe, but you can also put the ingredients into an oven-safe container inside a large slow cooker to heat the ingredients in the same way as a small one.

Chocolate Fondue
I made this in a 1.5 qt. crockpot, the kind that only has an On and Off option, no temperature settings, and made it with semi-sweet chocolate and a splash of Captain Morgan. We tried it with pound cake, banana slices and marshmallows. Strawberries would also probably be quite nice. Really, I'm pretty sure anything short of beets or asparagus would be good with this--what doesn't benefit from being dipped in molten chocolate?

Ingredients
1.5 cups chocolate chips (semi-sweet, milk chocolate or white chocolate)
1/2 cup cream
1 tsp vanilla

(optional)
1 T Grand Marnier
1 T rum
1 T peppermint schnapps
1 T Irish cream
1 tsp. peppermint, orange, etc. extract

Directions

Put chocolate chips into a small crockpot.
Add cream, vanilla and any optional flavors.
Turn slow cooker to On or Low for about 1 hour.

This has been a slow month for adventures and experiments...I blame the influence of February. It's a bad month up here, and it's usually around now when I feel like winter has been here forever and I start to have a hard time remembering what the world looked like when it was green. But, I'm trying to do my best to fill the rest of my winter with some interesting stories, so hopefully things will pick up soon.

Pumpkin Bars and a cancelled experiment

2010-01-28T21:54:00.003-06:00

All in all, today was a disappointing day. I got a call telling me that the Asian brush painting class I was planning on taking this Saturday was cancelled because I was the only person signed up, I had to delay starting on a project at work that has finally gotten moving (after 2 years of prodding people who needed to be involved) in order to work on a project that has nothing to do with my job or the company, and to top it off, the cream cheese frosting on my pumpkin bars was less than impressive. Given, my mom makes some pretty top notch cream cheese frosting, so I have some high standards, but this frosting was runny and tasted more like butter than smooth cream cheese frosting. The bars themselves are good, but the cream cheese frosting leaves something to be desired, so--I'll just keep that part of the recipe out of this. Find your favorite recipe for cream cheese frosting, ask your mom or buy the jarred type at the story to top these off.

Pumpkin Bars
I got in trouble with the people at work who had New Years resolutions with these ones! They're very heavy and rich, but as I heard several times; pumpkin is a vegetable. Ergo, these must be good for you. Right?

Ingredients

4 eggs
1 2/3 cups granulated sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1- 15 oz can pumpkin
2 cups sifted all purpose flour
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Using an electric mixer at medium speed (if available--I didn't use one), beat eggs, sugar, oil and pumpkin together until smooth.
In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, cinnamon, baking powder, salt and baking soda. Add the dry ingredients to the pumpkin mix and beat on low speed until batter is smooth and thoroughly combined.
Spread into a greased 9x13 pan. Bake for 30-35 minutes. Let cool completely before frosting.
Frost with cream cheese frosting. Cut into bars and serve.

Books: The Count of Monte Cristo

2010-01-27T22:24:00.011-06:00

My dessert challenge of pumpkin bars for this week is underway, but since they have to cool before I can add the frosting, I doubt I'll be able to taste them until tomorrow. I sense a sugary, pumpkin-y breakfast coming on! I will post my results tomorrow, if I'm not comatose from eating the whole pan...I love pumpkin-flavored anything.

In the meantime, I've picked up one of my favorite all-time books to read, since I haven't read it in probably 2 or 3 years: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. It is a huge book and incredibly intimidating at first sight, but absolutely worth it. It has to be that big because it is, quite literally, epic. And no, you can't substitute watching the movie for this one; both have good stories, but the stories are almost completely different.

It's difficult for me to summarize this book, simply because it covers so much territory. It follows the life of Edmond Dantes, who is arrested on the cusp of gaining his perfect life and is left to rot in prison for 14 years before finally escaping, and the story of how he lives after escaping and discovering a huge amount of treasure. It also takes in the lives of the people who he affects either through his gratitude or revenge and touches on politics and history in the time of Napoleon. All in all, it is probably the best story of both revenge and altruistic gratitude that I have ever read.

The Count of Monte Cristo takes patience to finish. Alexandre Dumas was extremely popular in his time (he also wrote The Three Musketeers and The Man in the Iron Mask) and he didn't have to compete for the attention of people who today would just watch the movie instead; he had the luxury to take his time to show you every little details of Dantes' life and transformation from an idealistic boy into a man who focuses his life on revenge on the people who betrayed him. For the most part, Dantes is a character who you cannot help but identify with even as you feel a little horrified at his capacity for cruelty in pursuit of "justice." And in spite of that, it still has a relatively happy ending.

In short...find one of those weeks when your life is going to be slow; I used to read this book over Christmas vacation at my parents' house, when I was still too wired from college to feel comfortable with just relaxing. And read it. It's good, I promise.

Food Experiments: Malva Pudding

2010-01-20T21:39:00.005-06:00

I've been wanting to make malva pudding for a long, long time. It's a dessert that I've only ever eaten in safari camps in Africa, and it's also one of the most rich and delicious desserts I've ever tasted. It's also incredibly hard to find a recipe for, and it seems like there's quite a lot of different names for it and variations on it. The one I made tonight isn't quite what I remember and am searching for, but it's close. Maybe I will top the leftovers tomorrow with some custard sauce to try to get closer...sooner or later, I need to cross this off my bucket list!

Malva pudding is similar to bread pudding, especially in texture, but it has a somewhat sweeter, nuttier taste than any bread pudding I've ever had. To me, it brings back beautiful memories of sitting in thatched, open air huts for dinner, with the smell of a mopane wood fire blowing in and more stars than you could probably see anywhere in the United States waiting just outside. It is the sort of dessert that I think is best appreciated after spending a whole day outside--partially from my nostalgia for the safari days and partially because spending a whole day running around outside before eating this is the only way to stave off the immense guilt that I'm feeling for eating it. In short, my dessert experiments that help those of you with new year's resolutions are over!

Malva Pudding

I would start by serving small portions of this dessert. When finished, it looks like a pretty bland cake, but it is deceptively rich!

Ingredients:

CAKE:

3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon apricot jam
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon butter (a generous tablespoon)
1 teaspoon vinegar
1/3 cup milk

SAUCE

3/4 cup fresh cream
7 TB butter
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup hot water
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Beat or whip the sugar and eggs, preferably in a food processor, until thick and lemon colored. Then, add the apricot jelly (or jam) and mix thoroughly.
Sieve together the flour, soda and salt. Melt the butter (do not boil!) and add the vinegar. Add this mixture, as well as the milk, to the egg mixture in the processor, alternately with the flour. Beat well.
Pour into an oven-proof dish (I used a tall 8x8 ceramic pan), and bake for 45 to 50 minutes. Meanwhile, in a pot, melt together the ingredients for the sauce. When the cake is halfway baked, take it out of oven. Make holes in cake and pour the sauce over the pudding. Return to the oven. When finished, the cake should still be slightly jiggly. (Hint: the softer and more pudding-y parts taste much better than the parts that look completely solid and cooked like cake. Mmm butter sauce!)

Books: The Elegance of the Hedgehog

2010-01-18T23:17:00.007-06:00

This book was a birthday present from my roomie that I've been saving to read on my Mexico trip. The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery caught my attention both for its name and because it was recommended on Kevin Slowey's blog. (Yes, I still love baseball that much.)

To tell the truth, a week after finishing this book I still don't know how I feel about it. I know that this was a book that I probably would have adored in college. Today, while it still has a lot of aspects that I enjoy, I found it a little bit overdramatic and preachy in its dedication to fine art. Also, it certainly wasn't the light, funny story that I expected from its title.

In a very small nutshell, the book is about two incredibly intelligent and artistic women who, for various reasons, don't want anyone to know about their talents. The writing style was delightful, and the characters of a middle-aged concierge and a 12 year old teenager play a beautiful counterpoint to each other in their views of the world. It is fun to watch these two people grow into their worlds and find their own meaning of life, and even though the storyline in the book is very simple, it's draws you in. Unfortunately, the author uses too much philosophy and preachy rhetoric for my taste to explain their search for meaning. This continuous extolling of art is constant enough to alienate people who may have an everyday appreciation of art rather than a liberal arts major's addiction to it. While a lot of people might appreciate a painting, many of those same people will lose interest after reading about how only intelligent and refined people properly appreciate Dutch still lifes.

All in all, I would recommend this book for anyone with a strong, passionate interest in art and philosophy. For those of you who don't, I would still recommend this book if you really appreciate good characterization and can stand a certain amount of preachiness. For those of you who prefer high action storylines and enjoy reading for entertainment more than abstract thoughts, I would save your time and skip this one.

Food Experiments: Dessert Month and "healthy" strawberry pie

2010-01-17T15:08:00.003-06:00

I love food. Going along with that, I love cooking and playing with new ideas.

So, in defiance to everyone else's more intelligent new years plans for being healthy, losing weight and eating well, I'm going to start a food experiment challenge to myself; each month I'll pick a theme and make at least one new experimental recipe each week. To start, I'm going to tackle desserts (and let's all hope and pray that I can survive the wrath of everyone with more healthy resolutions). Because I came up with this plan in the middle of the month and because I really love dessert, I'm going to declare the rest of January and all of February as dessert month.

Yesterday's challenge was to create a birthday dessert for a joint birthday party. The catch? One birthday person was diabetic, and the other was lactose intolerant. Yep. You try to come up with a tasty cake recipe to meet those guidelines! (Really...I wouldn't mind any ideas!)

So instead, I found a recipe for sugar-free strawberry pie. This was super easy and, in spite of being completely sugar free, very delicious. It is also quite healthy, so I'll survive the new year's people for at least another day. According to the website where I found this recipe, if you make this "pie" without a crust, it's only 55 calories for a fourth of the recipe.

Sugar Free Strawberry Pie Recipe
This can be made with or without a crust, depending on your preferences! The original recipe had no crust and obvioiusly had fewer calories, but I put it within a pre-bought shortbread crust.

Ingredients

1 small box Jello sugar-free Cook and Serve vanilla pudding
1 small box strawberry sugar-free Jello
2 cups water
12-16. oz sliced strawberries

Instructions

Mix pudding mix with water in a saucepan; heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture boils.
Remove from heat and add strawberry Jello mix.
Let cool to room temperature. (I forgot this step and poured it into the crust still warm...it still tasted fine, although I bet it would have looked nicer if I'd let it cool!)
In a glass pie dish, add the sliced strawberries to the bottom (or over the crust if you choose).
Pour pudding mix over strawberries. Refrigerate pie at least an hour, until set.

Pictures from Puerto Vallarta

2010-01-16T17:03:00.016-06:00

Home from Mexico and I've downloaded my pictures--ones I take out the blurry ones and the repeats, I come up with around 400 photos. Henry keeps encouraging me to take up photography more seriously, learning more about the manual settings and how things work and finding some better equipment (even though I like my point-and-click cameras!) and sometimes I wonder whether it would be a helpful or horrible hobby. I might be able to take fewer pictures, when I look at the number of times I had to take one particular pictures sometimes to get the effect I wanted. Or, I might just go crazy and end up coming home with thousands of pictures...

At any rate, here are a few of my favorites!

This is the view from the balcony of the resort we stayed at.

This is the actual city of Puerto Vallarta as seen from the boardwalk. We stayed in Nuevo Vallarta, which is about a 20 minute cab ride away, but finally went to Puerto Vallarta on Tuesday and Thursday.

Most of our days we spent up in the Sierra Madre Mountains, which look pretty much like this.

Our snorkeling tour went to the Marietas Islands, which is a bird santuary. No one can set foot on the island, but we went snorkeling in the bay here.

The Botanical Gardens up in the mountains was one of my favorite activities (even though we got lost for awhile on the bus and ended up taking a long detour...) and most of my photos are from here.

There was also a great little swimming hole at the Botanical Gardens--unfortunately I didn't know to bring my swimsuit, but I at least went wading! I think this may also be where most of my annoying bug bites are from.

Sadly, on our whale watching tour I didn't get a lot of great pictures--most of them look pretty much like this. Henry was lucky enough to have his camera out during the outdoor adventure and got a great picture of the whale breaching on the way back, which puts this to shame.

Zip Lining Adventures

2010-01-15T08:31:00.004-06:00

I went zip lining twice in Puerto Vallarta--once through Los Veranos Canopy tours and once in my outdoor adventure through Vallarta Adventures. Both times were surprisingly completely different (even though they were in the same area) and a lot of fun. Our Los Veranos tour was a Christmas present from my boyfriend's (I'll call him Henry) parents, who were kind enough to open their time share to us. The outdoor adventure was my choice after looking at the Vallarta Adventures website, which I finally talked Henry into at the last minute.

If you've never been zip lining, it's a little scary and a lot exhilerating. You strap yourself in to a fancy harness and helmet that makes everyone look ridiculous, clip yourself onto a big steel cable between a couple of platforms and trees, and jump. Then you zip from platform to platform like that, going as fast as you can depending on the rope they use, the angle and how you are sitting.

Saturday's outdoor adventure started out the zip lining tours, and the course was a lot faster and more adventurous than the last zip lining course I did. It was also through a real jungle, which made it a lot more interesting! We sped pretty quickly from through the first few lines, and then made it a little more interesting using the same gear to rappel down the 30 meter high waterfall. I have to admit that I didn't see most of the view, because every time I looked down I found out that I had tightened up my hand so far that I wasn't moving any more. From looking sideways, though, it was beautiful! We landed about knee deep in a cold mountain pool, and from there jumped on the next zip line to land neck deep in a VERY cold mountain pool. A few more lines further, we clipped ourselves onto a line going straight down and fell straight down, until at the last minute we were caught by the guides belaying us.

At Los Veranos, most of the courses were higher up but slower. The braking mechanism was a little fancier (rather than just pushing down using a glove to slow us down, we had a bar to brake). This let us look around a little more, which was fun. Most fun about this course, though, was that at the end of each line, the guides would take a person across riding tandem to get to the next platform. If you were riding with a guide and didn't need to worry about braking, you got to ride backwards, spinning around and upside down! I was lucky enough to get to do this twice since I was at the end of the line. And to finish off both tours, we had a homerun stretch where we raced. I can't say I'm the best at going fast and racing, but it was still fun!

I would highly recommend both tours to anyone in the area!

Banderas Bay in a Rubber Raft

2010-01-14T23:09:00.003-06:00

So, it was a big rubber raft, and with a motor on the boat that was really just a big speedboat. But when we were 75 feet away from a whale surfacing, I was still very aware that I was sitting in a big rubber boat.

Apparently the laws governing whaling force larger boats to remain a good distance away from the whale (100 meters or so) while smaller boats can get within 100 feet. So the "good" whale watching and photo safari tours keep you in a big rubber raft to get closer to an animal around 3 times as long as the boat you're riding in. It's also hard to ignore when you're speeding through the waves--I'm not a little girl, but there were a few times when I flew through the air as we went over a few of the bigger waves.

We saw a pretty decent amount of whales--apparently it's both mating season and birthing season for humpback whales down here, which translates into a lot of time on the surface. I couldn't help but feel bad for the whales, who towards the end of our trip were being chased by 9-12 boats every time they surfaced to try to find a girlfriend. In a four hour trip, I'd say we saw around 20 whales, which is certainly nothing to complain about. None of them compared to our boat ride home from the outdoor adventure tour, though, where a whale jumped completely out of the water. From what we've heard, this is unusual but not unheard of--older and very strong males will leap out instead of smacking their tails to prove how impressive they are to the girls. Worked on me!

This was our last tour for the week--we spent Thursday exploring the boardwalk and old downtown of Puerta Vallarta proper and enjoying the last few moments of sunshine by the pool.

Tomorrow, home to the snow.

Firsts in Puerto Vallarta

2010-01-11T07:51:00.002-06:00

3 days in and I've already done a lot of things for the first time!

See a whale leap completely out of the water
Rappelling
Free fall down a rope
Crossing a rope bridge
Drink at a swim-up bar
Taste a pina colada
Eat at a real Mexican restaurant in Mexico (delicious!)

Off to zip lining again today!

Puerto Vallarta Outdoor Adventure

2010-01-10T20:18:00.005-06:00

We have one day of Internet paid for, so an update on the adventures so far...

It's hot. And wonderful! And it makes it even sweeter to check the weather back home and realize that it was about 80 degrees warmer here today. The resort we're staying in is green, lush and beautiful, albeit filled with a lot of very rich, drunk older women who will hit on anyone male within 30 feet. I have a lot of sympathy for the guys working any tour, who have to spend a significant amount of time dancing with and flirting with women three times their age.

We have a final itinerary:

Friday: Check in and enjoy the pool
Saturday: Outdoor adventure!!
Sunday (today): Snorkeling, whale watching and very long boat ride
Monday: Zip lining
Tuesday: Dolphin park, botanical gardens or relaxing by the pool
Wednesday: Whale watching
Thursday: Botanical gardens or relaxing by the pool
Friday: Relaxing until our plane leaves

The highlight of this trip so far: the outdoor adventure, hands down. We started out with a boat ride across the bay, switched into a unimog (big open air jeep) to ride halfway up the mountain, and then switched to ride mules. I love riding in both speedboats and open air jeeps; the wind on my face, the views and the rhythm of movement relax me.

I am not fond of mules. Really, I'm not fond of riding anything with four legs, and they aren't enamored of me, either. My mule had two speeds: gallop and stop. If I managed to make him walk at a reasonable speed, he spent most of the time trying to scrape me off against a tree. If he was galloping, I just held on for dear life and tried not to look into the gullys below. I didn't fall off, but I was definitely proud to make it up unscathed!

After the mule ride, the more adventurous part began. We did some ziplining to start down the mountain, which was a lot of fun. We saw some beautiful views of the trees and waterfall. We then progressed to the new experiences for me...rappelling down the waterfall (scary), free falling down a rope into a pool of water, going over the "commando bride" and a steel cable bridge and zip lining directly into pools. I got very wet, and spent a lot of time in the air swinging from cables. This part of the day was probably the biggest "adventure" for me--I don't suppose you can really call anything an adventure unless you're a little bit scared. And hanging from that waterfall (30 meters up on a slippery rock slope) I was definitely scared! I had to be told several times to loosen my grip on the rope if I ever expected to get the bottom. It was very beautiful and definitely exhilarating (especially the plunge into the cold mountain pool at the bottom ) but also absolutely terrifying. Immediately following the rappelling, we switched back to ziplining and landed neck-deep in the same icy water in the next basin of the waterfall. From then onward, I wasn't dry until we made it home--we waded and landed in and jumped into a whole lot of creeks and pools. The bridges ranged from a log suspended with ropes to a single rope under your feet and another one above your head to hold on to, and the guides thoroughly encouraged bouncing on each and every bridge. At the end of the tour, we rode the unimog and the speedboat back to the tour company's office, with a quick break in the middle of the boat ride to watch a whale leap completely out of the water about 30 feet from our rubber raft.

It was a good day.

Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take cameras with us and I wasn't ready to pay the very large fee they wanted for a few blurry pictures, so I am mostly picture-less from that expedition. The pictures I did manage to sneak, along with the rest of them from this trip, will hopefully be posted soon.

Buenos noches!

Next adventure: Puerto Vallarta

2010-01-06T22:36:00.004-06:00

Early Friday morning (very, very early), I'll be leaving for a week in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico! A short respite from the below-zero temperatures here will be lovely, and we already have plans for a few adventures in between days hiding from the sun in the tiki huts on the beach. I sunburn ridiculously easily (through a window in Ireland in early March--after an hour) and while I am well stocked up on my SPF 100, I'm already planning on needing to hide from the sun for a few days to recover.

On the itinerary:

Snorkeling in the Marieta Islands
Zip lining through the jungle
Visiting the local botanical gardens
Eating far too much Mexican food and enjoying every bite
Taking a lot of photos
Catching up on my reading while hiding from the sun in the aforementioned tiki huts
Possibly whale watching, hiking to a waterfall, swimming with sea lions or walking the boardwalk

I tried to talk everyone into joining me for the "adventure tour" but for some reason no one else seemed quite as interested as I was in a mule ride through the jungle and rappelling down a cold waterfall. Next time...

So I'll be gone for the next week, but hopefully bringing plenty of stories and pictures back with me!

Book Recommendation: Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

2010-01-04T18:22:00.007-06:00

I'm not much for history books. I think history is interesting to a point and I like to hear about it, especially when it affects things that are more interesting to me--literature, movies, religions. But I generally have a hard time sticking with books that are strictly historical.

When I bought Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford at Half Price Books, I had a feeling that I was wasting my money on another history book that I would never finish.

On the contrary, I found myself more sucked into the book than I have been to any nonfiction, let alone history, book in quite awhile. The storytelling is compelling, the author relates the history well to modern perspectives and familiar happenings, and the writing is extremely easy and pleasant to read. It begins with the author's own journeys in Mongolia to discover Genghis Khan and covers the known history from Genghis Khan's parents to the time when his empire finally fell apart. It was an interesting perspective that I haven't often heard before, and opened my eyes to the possibility that much of our modern culture and knowledge (and that of the Renaissance period) began with the Mongol conquest and their thirst for knowledge and openness. My only issue with the book is that I feel like the author may have given more importance to the Mongol conquest and its effects on culture than it may deserve, out of his respect for the Mongols. I unfortunately don't know enough about history to make a firm declaration, but it's something I feel might upset some of the more historically-minded people out there.

This book has some valuable knowledge for anyone with any interest in Genghis Khan, the Mongol history or the influence of the East on the development of Western medieval or Renaissance culture of knowledge, and (unlike too many history books) presents it in a fun and interesting way for readers.

New Year's Plans

2010-01-03T22:24:00.003-06:00

I hate New Year's resolutions. To me, they seem like plans that you make knowing that you will not follow through after the first month. (Unfortunately in Lakeville, people seem to hold on for three or four months...making January through April at the gym unbearably busy!) So, as a rule, I don't make New Year's resolutions that will not be finished by the end of January.

But, every January, I still make "plans." Somehow, not calling them resolutions makes them a little more palatable to me, and makes me feel more like I will follow through. This year, I should have the opportunity to cross a few things off my bucket list. I'm also hoping at this early stage to have the follow-through (for a change) to finish a few projects.

Take a gondola in Venice
Plant a garden
Learn to make malva pudding
See the Sistine Chapel
Visit Versailles
Really learn programming, enough to be able to create something myself
Complete the website for my hometown church and my family's business

Boris' Christmas Adventures

2009-12-30T21:27:00.004-06:00

My dog hates snow, ice and anything involving the cold. His usual reaction to being outside between October and April is to hobble around on three legs, while holding the other one up as high as possible to convince us that his leg is broken and we need to carry him in. This starts when the weather hits around 45 degrees and continues until it's back up to 70.

Being the sympathetic dog owner that I am, my response this Christmas was to take him to my parents' house, where there is an extra few feet of snow and a whole family full of people who think it's funny to watch his dramatic show. Imagine my surprise, then, to see my drama queen of a dog take off after a squirrel and suddenly realize that snow is fun.

So congratulations to Boris on his Christmas adventure...and becoming a little bit less of a wimp. Next, we'll try to conquer water!

A tribute for Christmas

2009-12-26T23:58:00.005-06:00

This Christmas Eve I went back to Christ Lutheran Church in Faribault, MN--the first church I voluntarily went to and the only church that I have ever felt a connection to. Each time I go back to Christ Lutheran, I realize once again what it is that holds me to it. Christ Lutheran is the only church I've been to that hasn't held an attitude of trying to rescue all those people who aren't good enough to belong and that still holds tolerance and understanding for other people as a virtue. Every service I have ever been to has ended with announcements of opportunities to help people in need--no strings attached--solely for the purpose of helping others and bringing light to their life, no matter their beliefs or choices.

This attitude and focus begins and is continually upheld by Pastor Craig Breimhorst. He is one of the only men who I can say (without irony) seems to strive in every aspect of his life to be Christ-like; he has dedicated his life towards helping people find a genuine relationship with God in whatever way is most meaningful to them and to helping those who are in need and trying to bring hope to those who don't have any. He doesn't restrict his help to those who belong to his parish or even to Christianity, and his help doesn't come with lectures or proselytizing. Instead, Pastor Craig spends his life trying to show the love that he knows for and from God, and that love is shown in every word and action within his church.

I don't generally like to talk about religion and faith; it's something that I feel is intensely personal and for many people my age has more negative connotations than positive. It's used far too often as a box to restrict people and a platform for judging other people. There are very few people who I would feel comfortable describing as Christ-like, but Pastor Craig's continual efforts to improve people's lives was and still is an inspiration for my own faith. After attending Christ Lutheran this week, I want to give tribute to a man who dedicates so much of his time and energy to improving the lives of others.

Adventures and hills

2009-12-20T14:13:00.003-06:00

I learned yesterday that while cross country skiing is actually a lot of fun, it's going to be a long time before I'm ready for any kind of downhill skiing--in cross country or any other skis. After a lot of deliberation, I finally decided to take the plunge and take a lesson in cross country skiing.

I went to Theodore Wirth Winter Recreation area, and I have to say I was absolutely impressed. The park was beautiful and well kept up, the staff in the rental and check-in area were extremely helpful and friendly, and the instructor (Brian) was one of the most patient people I have ever studied under. He loved his job of teaching people, and that showed in every aspect of the lesson. The hour and a half lesson ended after two hours and fifteen minutes of him coaching us through every aspect of skiing, from the actual mechanics to drills we could do to strengthen ourselves, to equipment, good places to go and the passes we might need.

The experience was also definitely an adventure! The last time I went cross country skiing was in middle school, when we went in circles around the snow-covered running track. In this lesson, we were on a practical cross country skiing track, including snow that wasn't groomed, hills and a little bit of ice.

I fell down a lot. As near as I can estimate, I ended up sitting, laying or kneeling on the ground unexpectedly at least eleven times. Going straight across the flat ground wasn't bad--it started to get me used to the idea of gliding across the snow when my feet weren't moving. Hills, however, made me discover my inner control freak. As soon as my skis started moving without my feet actually moving them, I wasn't happy. I don't like moving when I'm not making me move, and my immediate reaction is to stop it and get back into control. Unfortunately I wasn't very good at stopping, so nearly every time I ended up stopping by falling on my butt. With the very patient instruction of Brian, I progressed from falling five times on the way down this hill to only falling once. (This hill that terrified me wasn't really what you'd picture as a bunny hill at a downhill skiing place. Think of it more along the lines of about an eighth of that bunny hill in height, and a little less steep. Sliding down it probably would have taken a grand total of five seconds and wouldn't have been worth the walk back up the hill.)

Finishing the class and heading back to the clubhouse to drop off my equipment, I was feeling pretty good about my adventure. I had learned some new tricks, tried something totally different, and had a lot of fun. And I was now on my way to the gym to warm back up in the hot tub! Brian took us back on one of the regular trails so we could get some more realistic experience, without all the starting and stopping for more instruction. At the end, he pulled us up and told us that there was one more hill on the way back to the clubhouse. It was a little steeper and more slippery than the one we had practiced on, but certainly not much bigger. (True--it still wouldn't have been worth sledding down!) I let the rest of the class go before me, assuming I would take the longest, and started down. I got a little further than usual before falling on my butt (maybe 10 whole feet!) but this time landed a little funny...getting back up, I noticed that my hand was numb. I took the chicken way down the hill (side stepping very, very slowly and repeatedly losing my balance), thanked my instructor for patiently following my snail's pace down the hill, and went in. I took off my equipment and mittens and noticed that my left wrist wasn't bending very well...as I went to climb in my car, it twinged and I realized that I had sprained my wrist. Not downhill skiing but cross country skiing...after the lesson was over. It's getting a little better this morning, but still gives me a little twinge now and then as a reminder of my adventure. I'll add it to my list of embarrassing injuries, just after the sprained ankle from playing Duck Duck Grey Duck and the strained foot from trying to run up the wall in martial arts class.

But on the good side, I woke up this morning trying to figure out when I could go try it out again. And yesterday, for a change, I was not bored. We'll call this experiment a success!

The Mushroom-less Vegetarian Food Challenge

2009-12-16T22:44:00.003-06:00

My sister and brother-in-law (let's call them Christine and Tim) will be coming in for Christmas on Saturday, and for the last week or so it sounds like my family has been puzzling over the conundrum that they face every time Christine and Tim come to visit--what to feed them? The majority of my family is made up of dedicated carnivores; a meal without at least three of the four of their holy quartet of food (meat, garlic, onions and mushrooms) is a case for hightened suspicion. Too many vegetables are dangerous; my dad once attacked my broccoli with a hammer to "protect" me. In sharp contrast and to the complete bewilderment of my parents for many years, Christine and Tim are vegetarians, who don't like onions or mushrooms.

And so, each year, there's a mini scramble to try to find fun, interesting new foods. This year, we've been further requested to try for healthy foods--we can't supplement every meal with cheese curds, french fries, chips and other fried foods.

My mom made her first trip to Trader Joe's last weekend and came home with quite a variety of tofu meat products; I volunteered to help her find some extra recipes to add a little bit of variety. Growing up in the family I did, I still had a hard time finding recipes completely without onions and mushrooms--however, like any other recipe, I firmly believe in cutting out any food you really dislike. For the benefit of all you out there who have any interest in vegetarian food or even just fast, healthy food, here's a few of the more interesting sounding recipes I found. Each one of these is from Paulette Mitchell's The 15 Minute Gourmet, which is one of the most indispensable cookbooks in my library.

Smoky Chipotle, Mango and Avacado Wraps

Ingredients:
For the mango sauce:
2 cups coarsely chopped jarred mango
1/2 cup fresh orange juice

For the chipotle spread:
1- 8 oz. package cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh chives
2 T fresh orange juice
1 T chipotle chili powder

To complete the recipe:
4- 10 inch flour tortillas, sun-dried tomato or spinach flavor
1/2 cup fresh cilantro leaves
1 cup jarred mango in 1/2 inch strips
1 avacado, cut into 1/4 inch slices
1/2 cup jarred roasted red bell peppers, drained and cut into 1/4 inch slices

Directions:
Combine all the sauce ingredients in a blender; puree until smooth.

Stir together all the spread ingredients in a small bowl until smooth.

To assemble each wrap, spread a tortilla with a generous 1/4 cup of the spread. Sprinkle with cilantro leaves. Starting about 1 inch up from the bottom of the tortilla, arrange 1 horizontal row of the mango strips, another row of the avacado slices and another of the red pepper slices, keeping the ingredients in the bottom third of the tortilla. Fold 1 inch of the sides of the tortilla over the filling, fold the bottom of the tortilla over the filling and then firmly roll it away from you.

To serve, cut diagonally in half. Serve with mango sauce.

Vegetables in Herbed Tomato Sauce on Polenta

Ingredients:
For the polenta:
1- 16 oz. package cooked polenta, cut into 12- 1/2 inch slices
1/4 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese

For the vegetables and sauce:
3 T olive oil
1- 8 oz. package sliced cremini mushrooms (optional)
1 medium zucchini, cut into 2 x 1/4 inch strips
1 cup finely chopped onion (optional)
1 1/2 t minced garlic
1- 14 oz. can crushed tomatoes
2 t finely chopped fresh oregano or 1/2 t dried oregano
2 t chopped fresh thyme or 1/2 t dried thyme
1/8 t red pepper flakes, or to taste
2 T coarsely chopped fresh basil
1/4 t salt, or to taste
1/4 t pepper, or to taste
Toasted pine nuts for garnish

Directions:
Arrange the polenta on a foil-lined baking sheet. Spring each slice with 1 T parmesan cheese. Bake for 12 minutes or until the cheese is melted and the polenta is heated through.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large saute pan over medium high heat. Add the mushrooms, zucchini, onion and garlic; cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes or until tender.

Stir in the crushed tomatoes, oregano, thyme and red pepper flakes. Reduce the heat to medium; cover and cook, stirring occasiojnally, for 5 minutes to allow the flavors to blend. Stir in the basil and season with salt and pepper.

For each serving, place 3 polenta slices on a plate. Top with the tomato-vegetable sauce and garnish with pine nuts

Taking up an old hobby: Making Jewelry

2009-12-15T19:35:00.004-06:00

From the time I was in late elementary school until I went to college, I spent a lot of my time making jewelry. I did a lot of work with just basic beads on a string, eventually moved up to lampworking my own beads and occasionally tried my hand at metalsmithing classes. When I moved to college, that stopped--there wasn't room for most of my supplies, and besides--most places frown on you setting up a blowtorch on their premises, even for art's sake.

I've been thinking about taking up jewelry again on and off since I graduated, but never really taken a step towards it untgil last Saturday. When I was on a hunt for a present for my secret santa at work, I stumbled across the bead shop that I used to love when I was a kid, and decided to stop in with the last 5 minutes I had of shopping time.

Forety-five minutes and $25 later, I left with a bunch of beads, silver findings and a plan to make both my secret santa present and a few presents for myself. Yep. What a great, no-pressure way to get back into an old hobby--making a gift for someone that needs to be finished in less than a week, with a box of tools and supplies that I haven't even seen for 6 years.

Poor decisions.

And today (2 days before I need to have a nicely wrapped secret santa present), I finally decided to sit down and put something together. I forgot how hard it was to wrap coils and make perfect wire circles. I also forgot that I only used to buy terrible quality wire, sticky clasps and funny-looking chains. My earrings, luckily for me, were simple enough to turn out beautifully:

Her present....well, we'll just leave that for your imagination and make an emergency trip to the craft store tomorrow. And just in case, I'll make sure to look up how late the liquor store is open!

A cold experiment?

2009-12-14T19:08:00.003-06:00

I love Minnesota. I can genuinely say that from about April until October, and for the rest of the year I keep repeating it like a mantra, hoping eventually it will be true in the winter, too. Since I grew a little too old to spend all my afternoons in the sun sledding or making snowmen, it's become a lot less true. There are plenty of adult sports that you need to be outside for, but I'm absolutely terrified of downhill skiing or snowboarding (I would give myself T-30 seconds before I landed in a tree--probably the top branches where they couldn't figure out how to get me down) and I can't skate more than a foot or so before I fall down. For all that, I would still love to find something that would get me outside during the winter and make me hate the snow less.

Enter my next idea for a project--cross country skiing? I haven't tried it since the 2 week unit we had in the middle school, and I can't remember if I was good at it or not. I don't remember it being particularly hard...but we were just going in circles around a perfectly flat track. We'll see if this manages to be one of my ideas that sticks around for more than a week, but I've found a few places within an hour drive or so that offer classes and equipment rental. That and my mother said she's always thought about cross country skiing but never done it, so maybe I can hold myself to it by making it a mother-daughter outing.

Right now this seems like a fabulously fun idea for tolerating winter, getting a little bit of exercise that I actually enjoy, and learning something new (FINALLY!). Cross my fingers it's an experiment that works!

Undertaking an Adventure

2009-12-07T19:17:00.003-06:00

When I graduated college, one of my professors told me that the hardest part about adapting to life after college was learning how to live with a life that wasn't divided into semesters. At that point, I was thinking about how I was going to miss summer vacation, winter break and spring break. Since then, I've figured out the real problem; my life is no longer automatically refreshed with new interests, people and schedules every four months. I spend eight hours of the day doing the same thing and, while I do learn new things most days, there's almost never a complete shift in focus.

I'm bored.

Through the first twenty three years of my life, everything was focused towards the single goal of learning more, doing more and becoming more. When I graduated, everything I had lived my life for so far was achieved, and I'm still floundering around, trying to find something new with as much meaning, interest and change. In short, I'm looking for the adventure that's going to be my life. Whether it's through achieving the goals on my "bucket list," trying new experiments or just chasing change, I'm here to write my adventure book. I hope for the sake of everyone involved that it's a great story!