19 posts tagged “2009”
For lunch last week, I gathered some pasta salad ideas, and then changed them completely.
I bought:
- 1 pound of pasta
- 2 cans of black beans
- 1 can of fire-roasted diced peppers & chiles
- 1 red pepper
- 1 lime
- 1 bunch of cilantro
- 1 ear corn
I dirtied extra dishes for this picture, but I didn't care. If I were not Documenting for Posterity, I would just dump all the bits and pieces into one large bowl.
2. drain beans
3. cut red pepper into ribbons
4. cut corn off of cob
5. open can of tomatoes; mix in some plain yogurt (enough to temper the spice of the chiles); chop up lots of cilantro and stir it in. squeeze in some lime juice.
6. combine & enjoy either room temp or chilled.
Wow, am I a good cook.
Cream scones, which were so amazing out of the oven I wanted to marry myself:
Cream Scones from Cook's Illustrated: The Quick Recipe
I doubled the recipe. Makes 8 good-sized scones for each batch, and of course they could be made smaller. Original recipe:
2 c unbleached all purpose flour
1 T baking powder
3 T sugar
1/2 tsp salt
5 T unsalted butter, chilled, cut into cubes
1/2 cup currants
1 cup heavy cream
My mods:
- omitted the currants.
- when I made the double batch, I used 5 T sugar total, so maybe 2 1/2 T for a single batch
- added zest & juice of one lemon
- added some recently-dried rosemary. maybe 1/8 or 1/4 tsp total - made for a very (maybe TOO) subtle effect
- for next time, I will not use heavy cream. maybe whole milk?
To make: sift together the dry ingredients (incl the rosemary & zest)
Cut in the butter - it will still be very dry
Pour on the cream and stir til just mixed
Put onto a floured surface, gather into a cohesive lump, knead for just a few seconds to get it all together, flatten out a bit, and cut into ~8 scones (or even more! they're quite big!)
Bake in a 425 oven for 12-15 minutes
Then I made a strawberry-basil topping to smear on the scones. I knew I wanted some sort of basil topping to go with strawberries, and some Google searching led me to this recipe:
http://chocolateandzucchini.com/archives/2006/06/strawberry_basil_pesto.php
Here are the original instructions:
Pesto Fraise Basilic
35 grams (1/3 cup) freshly grated Parmesan
35 grams (1/3 cup) whole blanched almonds, toasted
A small handful (about 1/3 cup) fresh basil leaves
5 small strawberries (or 3 large), hulled [be sure to use fragrant and
full-flavored strawberries: if they're a bit bland, I'm quite sure
they'll get lost in the battle]
2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
Salt, freshly ground pepper
Makes about 1/2 cup (the recipe can be doubled).
Blend the Parmesan, almonds, and basil (I have a mini chopper, so I doubled the recipe, but did one batch at a time.)
Add strawberries and blend some more. Then add olive oil, salt & pepper to taste. I never got it perfectly smooth, but I liked it kinda chunky-looking.
- I made a double batch. After tasting, I then doubled the strawberries again - I wanted a big strawberry taste
- I added a splash of balsamic vinegar (2 tsp total, maybe - definitely to taste)
- I then stirred this into some mascarpone cheese - maybe half of a little 8-oz package
Finally, I made a strawberry topping: I sliced enough strawberries to fill a pint
jar. Added 2 T sugar and 1 T balsamic vinegar, and let it stew in its
juices.
Here's the yumminess ready to go:
And here's my breakfast this morning:
Insert self-satisfied belly rub here!
Hey blog-friends, long time. It's been a busy month since last we spoke. I spent a very fun weekend in New Orleans with my parents, sister, and younger brother, just hanging out before said younger brother ships out to Afghanistan for six months. He's going to miss Christmas, making 2009 the very first one where we're not all together, so that will be really weird. Of course we will get together upon his return, and will probably even press him into service in the kitchen! but it won't be quite the same.
In other news, it really feels like summer at the moment. It's a rare day in the Bay Area that sees me leaving home without a jacket, but I did it twice this week - woo! Also, I biked to work yesterday and finally found a really fully enjoyable, low-traffic commute. It adds a little bit of time to the ride, but round trip was 8.8 miles, so it was really a piddling little lovely ride.
Still knitting: I just did my first felting project! I used bulky, all-wool yarn, big needles, and then purposely shrunk the sucker. It's amazing.
Before:
And after:
Pretty cool, huh? I was delighted with how speedily the project went, as well, after several things done with small needles and thin yarn.
This is the weekend of barbecues: work, friend, and friend events. I've spent a week mulling over the dessert I'm bringing to the third event: I want to do some kind of twist on the traditional strawberry shortcake. I'm thinking basil & strawberry. I'm thinking balsamic vinegar. I'm thinking rosemary and maybe some lemon.
Stay tuned! I'll get pics, I promise. I'll even be timely!
If Ireland was the drinking component of the trip (and, yes, it was!), then Scotland was the eating part! I'm working on my pictures and am remembering some of the foods I got to try:
The hog roast roll at Oink - every day the roast a locally-raised pig, put the recognizable body in the window, and serve hog roast rolls until they run out.
Oatcakes at the Taste of Scotland event (handily across from our hotel in Glasgow.. we had free lunch that day!). Oatcakes are a mild near-biscuit that are served with cheese & pickle, or with jam. I actually made some when I got home (I find I really want to cook SOMETHING when I've been away for a while) but the results from this recipe
are too sweet. I'll try again, though, as I brought home some Branston pickle as this trip's food tourism. (I had it in a couple of cheese & pickle ploughman's sandwiches.)
Cranachan - this is a Scottish dessert that's basically whipped cream and raspberry, with some ground oats (I think) mixed in. It was only okay. It was fun getting the waitress to pronounce Cranachan for me. It's more like Crrrrran-a-hhgghan. I can't figure out how to spell the throaty swallowed gghh sound.
Mince & tatties = minced meat and potatoes. Yummy and basic (and salty!).
Salmon, and some other fish at a fancy restaurant, but I can't remember what type it was. It was red-something.
That's how many pictures I took! 748! Don't worry, I'm a ruthless editor and will cull them a lot, and I'll also split them up into smaller groupings, because I don't expect ANYone to hang through that many pictures at once!
I'm back from my trip and it was great. I can't believe it's over, of course, and am a little sad about it, but I'm also ready to be home. I'll pull together a few blog posts as I go over my pictures - here's what's on my mind at 5 am (I just can't sleep in any further - my body thinks it's 1pm).
Both parts of my trip were great. Ireland was nothing short of epic, traveling with up to six people, driving over 1,000 km, and keeping the Guinness flowing in the evenings. My mom broke her collarbone 2 weeks before the Scotland leg, but she came anyway and got along fine. The people we met were quite helpful, though the weather was not at all good for much of our time in Scotland. Ireland's weather was a bit nicer - kinda crappy for the first few days, and nicer toward the end of the ten days. Still, all the books say that spring in that part of the world = big rain, and I can testify to it!
Food
The food was almost universally excellent. I got a couple of only-ok fish & chips, and I stuck to a tradition I started in Italy where the first meal in-country is just bad (in this case, I got some meat in between two slices of white bread.. not very inspired). I had the best seafood chowder of my life, truly, at O'Dowd's in Roundstone, Ireland. I had an amazing melon & rocket (arugula) salad in Glasgow. All the fish I had was crazy fresh and well-prepared. I will, however, say that I'm fully over the full Irish/Scottish breakfast, which is meat + meat + meat + meat + egg + toast + a tiny girlled-to-death tomato. And beans if you're lucky. And no.. that's not an exaggeration!
Drink
The Guinness really was yummy, though I don't know that it tasted very different to me from the US Guinness - I guess I'll have to go have one here and see if I notice a difference! I kind of hope it tastes the same, since what we have is what I get. However, my favorite discovery is Hot Whisky, which is a bar drink that seems pretty widely available in Ireland. Now that I think about it, we may only have ordered it in smaller towns, I'm not sure, so maybe it's more old-school. Anyway it's some whisky, super-hot water, and a thin half-slice of lemon with three cloves studded into it. It's dreamy. I asked one bartender/waiter guy in Scotland if he was familiar with it and he wasn't, so I suppose it could be an Irish-only thing.
As far as non-alcohol goes, I stuck with tea almost exclusively. Everywhere you go, when you ask for tea, you get a little pot, and a little side container of milk, and a proper cup and saucer and little spoon. It's so damn civilized - I can only imagine the horror of people who've grown up with that coming here and being served a little thing of hot water and a basket of tea bags... not the same at all! I did have coffee one time, but that was the morning after the wedding, at the official breakfast, when I was running on under 5 hours of sleep and probably still had a lot of alcohol in my system! At that point I was desperate for Hot Caffeine and happened upon coffee first.
Driving
Well - driving on the wrong side of the road is very exciting! And tiring, too, as it takes some crazy concentration at first. I was really happy that in Ireland we had an automatic transmission, so that was one less thing to focus on. Also, it felt like a team effort as the navigator would always talk the driver through the (terrifying, at first!) roundabouts. By the time I got to Scotland I was much more used to it - not flinching at all at oncoming traffic! - and added in a manual transmission for fun. Finding 3rd gear remained challenging, but I didn't hit anyone and no one hit me, so I'm chalking that firmly into the Win column.
Lodging
A lot of our lodging was arranged in advance, but even the times we/I were booking last minute, we didn't have any real problems. I borrowed an unlocked cell phone from a friend, and got an Irish SIM card for it, and I really recommend having a phone. We were able to have a three-person meeting of the minds in a parking lot with our guide books, and then book lodging in a TINY town at the end of the world (Kilcar, Ireland). That night there were 6 of us, three rooms, and I wouldn't have been comfortable just showing up in such tiny towns without reservations (ha! as if I'd EVER be comfortable without reservations!). How small was Kilcar? Well, there weren't any restaurants open so we had to drive 20 minutes back to the only one in the area that was open so early in the season. However, it did have at least three bars that were open, if not busy.
Harry Potter
I love the Harry Potter books, and it was really cool to be in the UK and see that some of the things in the book were actually modified from real-life things, but as Americans, we have no idea. An example I've known for a long time is that in the UK, they don't use Scotch tape (which is, after all, a brand name) - instead they use cello tape (as in cellophane). Turning that into Spell-o tape to mend wands is a stroke of genius that I missed entirely for a long time. So, I found other examples of this while traveling.
While in Derry (aka Londonderry), my friends and I went to a bar and stumbled upon a football match being aired: Manchester United v. Arsenal - and even *I* have heard of those teams! Seeing the packed stadium and hearing the non-stop full-throated singing and chanting helped me see what quidditch is supposed to be like. Also, when I arrived in Edinburgh, I passed a town nearby that has a massive stadium and was hosting something like ten rugby matches that day - the streets were filled with people in team jerseys streaming toward the event.
I was walking through the Queen St. train station in Glasgow and saw signs for Platform 9, Platform 8, then an arrow saying something could be purchased on platforms 3/4 - not a big leap to get to Platform 9 3/4!
When you're waiting for the bus in Scotland, you are supposed to stick out your hand to indicate to the approaching driver that you want his bus. I was walking past a map of bus routes in Edinburgh, and noted that they have a Night Bus route map and schedule - clearly J. K. used those two bits together!
Luggage
I was in a larger-than-carry-on sized suitcase, and although it was necessary, I was never happy about the size of the bag. Ironically, I even jettisoned some free books at one point, only to purchase books later in the trip when I was traveling solo! Towards the end of my trip, I checked the big suitcase into long term storage ("Left Luggage") at the train station, and carried only a small little backpack, and that was a HUGE relief. Especially when I got to the place I was staying in solo for my last two nights in Glasgow - it was a guest house that was created by knocking out the walls between three buildings, so I had to go through some very windy corridors and up a lot of stairs to get to my room. I'd have hated that with my big suitcase! However the really big excitement was when I reclaimed the suitcase - the combination lock on it refused to UNlock. I fiddled with it like mad, but in the end had to get it cut off, by a very helpful hotel maintenance guy.
Traveling solo
I had the last three days to myself, and at first it was nice to get to recharge my introverted batteries, but I think the fact is, I'm not a great solo traveler. It's not in my nature to strke up conversation and make friends with random people. I can entertain myself REALLY well during the day, and am happy as a clam hiking about and looking at things, but mealtime & evening companionship really improves a trip a lot! I'd had a romantic notion about traveling all over Scotland alone, and I'm really glad that's not how it wound up.
Expenses
I haven't crunched the numbers, but I did manage to average $45/night for my lodging, by sharing rooms, looking for deals, getting two FREE nights in a friend's cousin's country cottage in Liscannor, Ireland, and by staying in a super-shabby guesthouse when I was solo in Glasgow. That's about half what I guesstimated, so I'm really really happy about that.
What I'd do differently
1. I bought an 8-day train pass and only used half of it. Next time I might get a better idea of my itinerary and THEN buy the train ticket.
2. If I'm going to have a two-part trip like I did this time, I'll try to book in some solo travel time between the two main events, so I get a chance to restore my energy!
3. I would bring a smaller bag. I did use everything I brought, but I felt oppressed by it. I could not have packed smaller this time, given that I was going to a wedding and so brought a dress, wrap, shoes, purse, makeup, etc. - but for my future reference, I prefer to travel light!
Gear that worked well
1. I was super happy with my wool clothing. The shirts were light but warm, the one I washed in my room dried very fast, and they didn't get stinky at all. I had two lightweight long-sleeve wool shirts, one black, one brown. One was from Royal Robbins, one was from Icebreaker. I also had a zip-up wool/polysomething lightweight sweater which was a workhorse. I also had an Icebreaker pull-over heavier item, and I did use it earlier in the trip, but not so much later. I preferred the zip-up layer when possible, since it was easier to negotiate.
2. I was also really happy with my Keen shoes. I had a second pair of shoes that I rarely wore - they're old, and I intended to jettison them if I needed luggage room (but I didn't).
3. My Eddie Bauer rain jacket was a trooper. It was put to the test many a day and I never got wet underneath it.
4. My Timbuk2 mini messenger bag was perfect for day-to-day usage. It held pens and my passport and wallet and notebook securely, and I had enough room for a tour book, map, glasses, and bottle of water - all I really needed, without schlepping along a lot of extra crap. I like that it closes with velcro AND a clip, so I was never worried about stuff falling out, or persons getting into it without my knowledge.
*sigh* I can't believe it's over! I also can't believe it's only 6:15 in the morning!
Hmmm it's been quite a while since I updated! I'm socially busy as usual, knitting up a storm (am working on the first of two arms for my sweater.. no, not making a three-armed sweater!), and am really excited about my pending trip.
I'm thrilled at the itinerary - roughly thus:
Friday: get rental car, drive to my friend's cousin's country cottage in County Clare
Sunday: drive to Galway
Tuesday-Friday: work our way around northeast Ireland, and Northern Ireland, ending in Newry in time for the wedding that is the main cause of this trip.
Saturday: head to Belfast, Sunday fly out of Belfast to Scotland
Which looks like this:
Tuesday: take the train to Inverness, pick up rental car
Tuesday-Thursday: drive around, mostly west, to the Isle of Skye and wherever else we feel like going.
Friday: train to Glasgow
Sunday: small-town Highland Games west of Glasgow, then back to Edinburgh
Monday: mom leaves
Then I have three days to do whatever I want, as I leave from Dublin on Thursday the 14th. I currently have a 50-dollar plane ticket from Glasgow to Dublin on Wednesday. I'm not sure what I'll do in the meantime. I could go to Aberdeen, I could go to other-random-place-in-Scotland. I'm also thinking I could hop a plane to London for a couple of days, and just scrap the $50 ticket I've already booked. I wonder how late I can make that decision? I'd kind of like to see how I'm feeling - will I want Big City, or Small Town, or Quaint Seaside, or what? I spent two weeks in London in 1999, I think, so I don't feel like I *have* to go.
If I had it all to do over (it seems early for hindsight for something that hasn't happened!) I might not buy the rail ticket I have, since I'm going to have a rental car or will be in a city most of the time. That's one vote in favor of taking the train to Someplace, Scotland on Monday/Tuesday.
I'm trying to figure out luggage options. I think that I'll be a LOT happier if I travel with a small carry-on size. My one friend can view lots of options as abundance, but I think I get oppressed by too many options to sift through (probably why I prefer to Just Decide, now that I think about it), and that applies very much to clothing - especially since I'll be packing up at least every other morning.
Costs:
So far this is coming in under my wildly made up budget. I'm sure whatever I wind up not spending on lodging will be spent on food and drink, but that's okay. I've been saving for this trip since October, I think.
Transportation:
Airfare, train pass, and two shared rental cars = $1280. Add in gas and I should have all three weeks covered for $1400
Lodging:
I'm doing really well with this so far. I guesstimated $75/night and I'm averaging $45/night instead (woo!) That's not counting the two free nights, either! A couple of nights are in fancy places and several nights are in more low key spots That leaves me with ten nights that are unbooked, so I do have a lot of opportunities to blow the budget all to hell, but so far I'm feeling pretty good about this aspect of the trip.
Excitement Meter:
Pinging hard
Man, this news of the recession is getting old. I don't have as much empathy as I ought for people in bad real estate situations - one of the reasons I was willing to leave Portland was that I was bitter that I was priced out of the housing market, so I'm not feeling it for people who were part of the great bubble that cut me out. (I guess maybe I should be grateful to them.)
But the recession is a bummer, nonetheless. My job is intact and my life hasn't changed, but I've noticed that all is not well around me. My favorite little pen/stationery store went out of business. A cute little French restaurant down the street went away. And my very favorite second-run movie theater (that sold beer!) closes tomorrow.
The loss of the Parkway Theater hits me the most. I admit I didn't go often, but I was proud that it was an option, and often made a note that I'd like to see a certain movie there. It was certainly my preferred option when I DID go to see movies in the theater. Should I now feel guilt that I'm not a good enough consumer to keep these places in business? My focus has been on getting out of debt - my car is paid off and my credit card balance has been paid off almost every single month since August 2007 (with a couple of little lapses in the interim.. just keeping me on my toes!).
Even better, I've been saving consistently so I can pay for my big trip to the UK without incurring any debt. Of course now I've got an unanticipated trip to New Orleans throwing a small wrench into the paid-for vacations scheme, but I'll pay it off quickly after I return.
I do keep eyeing the real estate market here, which is dumb. Although I have no plans to leave, I also don't know that I'll be here for the 5-10 years it really takes to make a mortgage make sense. And since I'm stubbornly insisting on keeping my housing expenses at 31% of my gross, and that includes insurance, taxes, and maintenance, I can really only afford about a 200k mortgage. And guess what, my friends? In this part of the world that doesn't go very far at all.
Plus, ironically, I love my apartment! The neighborhood is great, I have the top floor so no one walks on my head, and the view out my windows is of a green hillside.
Still, I keep watching to see things go down in price. I dunno, it may happen, but realistically I am going to go on my trip and keep saving money. I'm sorry for the pen shops, French restaurants, and Parkway Theaters of the world. I'll spend a bit, but I don't think I can save them all.
Here is the maple-walnut chiffon cake - it was a really light texture, the frosting was a bit too sweet for me, and my apartment smelled like maple for days. I want to do a chocolate-hazelnut one next. What's not to love about that?!
Here are the Nutella ravioli cookies. Basically you make sugar cookie dough, cut out circles, blip in a bit of the yummy, fold, pinch shut, and bake. They weren't bad.
Last weekend I made a chiffon cake that came out pretty damn awesome. I also made Nutella ravioli cookies: take some sugar cookie dough, cut out a disk, put in a bit of Nutella, fold over and bake. Drizzle with chocolate. Eat. Swoon. I took pics but they are still on my camera, so perhaps they'll get up this weekend.
Today for lunch group I took a recipe for couscous with preserved lemons and expanded it to include wheat berries, green lentils, and black lentils. It was YUM.
Last night I cast on some two-at-a-time, toe-up socks. I'm partially improvising and partially using a pattern. I am using yarn that will be stripy (blue & white) so I don't know if I'm going to bother with a stitch pattern. I can only imagine that ripping out two socks at once would be a nightmare, so I'm going to do what I can to avoid that fate! I have one stitch pattern in mind that I can test out pretty well on a small bit of sock, I think. we shall see.
Is it just me, or does it seem like personal blog culture is fading? I read lots of blogs that are focused on personal finance, and cooking, but I don't read personal blogs very much. And thanks to stupid vox's stupid policy to not allow anonymous comments, the few readers I do have don't comment. Which makes this seem a lot like talking to myself! Only less obviously nutty.
Apparently, this is a real sentence: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. Even better, I have -for the moment!- wrapped my head around the explanation
This comic is doing a series this week on fiber - the yarn-type of fiber, that is!
I am seeing Coraline tonight and am very excited!
This week for lunch group, I'm revisiting a recipe of my own invention. It consists of mixed grains (last time was quinoa, wheat berries, and barley; this time it's barley, brown rice, and Israeli cous cous), beets (last time roasted, this time boiled), greens (arugula), and cheese (parmesan). You combine the grains & beets and heat them, then stir in arugula, and sprinkle on the cheese. It's beautiful, and needs a name. Here's a picture from the last time I ate it - that time the beets were stored with the grains, resulting in more pinkness than we'll see tomorrow.
As a side note, peeling raw beets? WAY more hand-staining than peeling already-cooked-in-water beets. I'm pretty much back to normal now, thanks.
