A lazy weekend, recipe and a book project

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

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

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

1. 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).
2. 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.)
3. 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

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

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...

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!

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

1. 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!

2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Pit the plums and chop them coarsely. You don't need to peel them.
5. 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.
   
6. 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.
7. 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.)
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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).
11. 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.

12. 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.
13. 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!
14. Enjoy your success!