Day 25 – Random Thought

As Thanksgiving usually is, yesterday and today have been full of food, friends, games and even a bit of shopping (but just to the more budget friendly local thrift store). I arrived midday yesterday into Chicago and have been enjoying the chance to catch up with a plethora of friends, many of whom are back in town for the holidays and my friend Kate’s wedding tomorrow! This weekend is making me thankful for the following things:
-sleeping in
-Becca’s crazy good pies!
-homemade stuffing
-blue skies
-playtime with 6 gorgeous kittens
-conversation after conversation with my much missed girlfriends
-the 5th Game of Thrones book to make plane rides go quickly
-the way walking up the steps of my old house makes me feel like I never left
-finding ridiculous faux fur coats in thrift stores
-getting hugs from and trading head rubs with Becca and Jess
-not being at work
-knowing that instead of heading home to Seattle, I get to head on to Goshen to see my wonderful family!

I hope you all are having great times with family and friends!

Day 22 – Cooking with Abby

Tonight I decided to disregard the two solid days of rain and the overwhelming sense that it was time to hibernate and made myself an elaborate dinner just for me.  Now to re-create this recipe, you will need to a long list of ingredients as demonstrated in this photo:

Then carefully prepare the ingredients, don’t worry about how many dishes and cutting boards this will take, it will totally be worth it in the end.

Add a few finishing touches and then put your feet up and watch an episode of West Wing while you wait for the meal to cook in the oven.

Then after the perfect amount of time, savor the careful blend of flavors and craft a delicate dip for your dinner. [Fries and Edamame not pictured cause I ate them already]

Day 16 – Baking with Abby (and Becca!)

Next Tuesday we are having a pie bake-off at work and so I figured I should try out a recipe tonight to see if it will work for next week.  And as it would have it I was long overdue for a video chat with Becca so I combined them into one awesome evening!  I used this Alton Brown Classic Pumpkin Pie recipe, but instead of nutmeg I used pumpkin pie spice, I left out the spare egg yolk and generally ignored the whole “eat the filling” idea.  But I was most interested in the Gingersnap cookie crust anyways.  Here is what I did:

Gingersnap cookie crust ready to go into the oven

Pumpkin Pie filling!

Best baking companion ever!

Me: Man, it is so nice to have someone doing dishes WHILE I am baking David: Man, it is annoying to keep having all these dirty dishes keep appearing!

Pumpkin Pie - So it turns out that we don't own a pie pan!

All-baked pumpkin pie!

Day 10 – Guest Post (the return of my dad!)

Well this guest post couldn’t be better timed seeing as I am home sick from work today with my second cold of the season (although this one is less congestion more throat on fire, weee!).  But instead of getting to hear me whine about being sick, here is a super awesome guest post by my Dad.  Enjoy!

Hi everyone.

Last year I thoroughly enjoyed writing my first guest blog here about Abby as an infant and small child. This year when Abby asked me again I thought first of writing about our train trip to Seattle to see her in October but then settled on writing something I was more excited about right now.

I’ve been somewhat obsessed about taking care of my body for a long time. I figure I’m only going to get one body and I’m not going to have it quitting on me over something I have some control over. So I exercise regularly, read about health related stuff and try to eat right. When I learned about 6 or 7 years ago that dark chocolate has some health benefits (when consumed in moderation) I started keeping a stash of Hershey Special Dark Chocolate bars at my desk at work.  Most of the time I successfully limit myself to a square at morning break and a square after lunch.  This takes some discipline because for me eating chocolate is among the top carnal pleasures in life.

My children and sometimes my wife scold me about not buying Fair trade but so help me the stuff is expensive. If I buy Hershey’s bars on sale I can get it at about $.20/ ounce and Fair Trade usually runs about $1.00/ounce.  My daily two squares are about an ounce so I’m talking the difference between a $50.00 per year habit and a 250.00 per year when consumed every working day. Somewhere deep in my psyche there is this notion that times could get hard so I better be careful with my money.  I don’t know if that comes from being raised by depression era parents or if it’s something in my Germanic DNA or a combination.

However the idea that I might be enjoying my chocolate on the backs of poverty stricken oppressed workers continued to bother me.  A couple weeks ago we visited Abby in Seattle and she arranged a tour of Theo’s chocolate for my wife and me.

David, Dad and Mom all ready for the Theo Chocolate Factory tour!

After a great tour by an expert in all things surrounding the harvesting, manufacturing and history of chocolate we were allowed unrestricted sampling of all kinds of exotic and delicious chocolates. I thought I was in heaven. I also learned that most chocolate is processed using alkali. It says so right on the ingredients on the Hershey bars. This supposedly (yes, it might be part of Theo’s sales pitch) removes some of the health benefits. I also learned since that Hershey dark chocolate is only 45% cocao.  You have to do some research to find that – they don’t advertise it.  I enjoy dark chocolate right up to about 85% cocao and feel the flavor peaks between 75 and 80%.

So I started to search on the internet for some reasonably priced Fair trade chocolate. Most Fair Trade seems to also be organic. That might add some to it’s cost and probably is a good idea as well.  I couldn’t find any significant volume discounts on any of the bars.  But I did find Fair trade 65% cocao chocolate chips at Amazon for $.62/ ounce but you had to buy 25 pounds! I capitulated to the pressure and bought a box.  That comes out to almost $250.00 but they should last me 400 work days.  Unfortunately in my dithering about it I missed them on sale at just under $200.00.

We’ve already had a discussion at our house about what these chocolate chips will get used for. They are not to be used in baking – these are medicinal.   I’m going to keep them in the cold cellar to preserve their freshness and make it less likely that I will be tempted to consume a half a pound every evening.

One last problem to solve was how to divvy out one ounce a day.  I found out on the internet that 1 ounce of chocolate chips is about 3 tablespoons.  Here’s what an ounce looks like. I’ll take one day’s serving at a time in my lunch. I’m going to try very hard to eat them mindfully one chip at a time.

Day 1: Tuesday Cooking Show

Welcome to the NaBloPoMo madness my dears, lets dive right in.

So last night, I had this idea of something I wanted to make. Based in part on this recipe called Pasta with Butternut Parmesan Sauce, I decided I wanted to sub in Pumpkin, cause I had some on hand, add in some sausage, mushrooms and switch out the cream for the slightly lighter coconut milk.  So this is the recipe I ended up with

Pumpkin Mushroom Sausage Pasta (it tastes so much better than it looks!)

1 pkg pasta (I used rigatoni, but vaguely round-shape of pasta would work)
1/2 to 3/4 lbs of mushrooms, roughly sliced (I used the cheapest kind I could find at the grocery store and they were yummy)
1/2 onion, diced
3-5 cloves of garlic, minced
4 links of chicken sausage (I used Trader Joe’s Garlic & Herb, but feel free to use whatever, or skip if you are going meatless)
1 can of pumpkin puree (28oz or the big one)
1 can of coconut milk
1/4 c parmesan cheese, grated (with more for serving)
salt and pepper to taste
And SECRET INGREDIENT (1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice)

1. Chop the mushrooms, onion and garlic and saute.
2. Slice sausage and add to mixture and don’t forget to start your water for the pasta and once it boils add the pasta.
3. After the mushrooms and sausage are cooked, add the pumpkin and saute for 1 minute.
4. Add the coconut milk and stir well.
5. Add parmesan cheese, salt, pepper and SECRET INGREDIENT (pumpkin pie spice).
6. After pasta has cooked to al dente, drain it and then add to the pumpkin sauce. Stir well. Serve with parmesan cheese as garnish.

While my “cooking by the seat of my pants” aren’t always this successful, I have to say this one hit it out of the park.  I liked how the coconut milk and pumpkin play so nicely together.  The pumpkin pie spice adds just a bit of interesting flavor and seeing as I love mushrooms and sausage in almost any combination, I think they make this dish just smashing!

Also for those of you who love leftovers for lunch, be assured this tastes even better then next day, yum!

Birthday season!

Well if you throw in Alex’s birthday from last week and the two recent birthdays of friends Clayton and Bryan and David’s birthday today and my mom and I’s birthdays next week, there has been a lot of cake.  I made my traditional Chocolate Wacky Cake with Instant Fudge Frosting and Raspberries for David’s birthday.  While it was good, I think the combination of new cake recipe (I left my good one back in Evanston), using a mixer instead of the food processor and using fresh raspberries instead of raspberry sauce, meant that it tasted just a little bit different.  But by far the best part of the evening has been playing round after round of David’s birthday pressent from Alex and I – Dominion.  While I know I dragged my feet quite a bit on this game and have kind of refused several invitations from my brothers to play it, I ended up finding it really fun!  Maybe it helped that it was almost entirely a group of newbies to the game, or what exactly it was, but now I like it.

And the exciting part is that my parents left on their epic Empire Builder train trip from Chicago to Seattle today and are probably currently making their way through the Twin Cities of Minnesota.  They arrive on Sunday and will be here for 2 weeks, which I am super excited about.  Now all I have to do is clean my room, check about bus tickets, pump the tires on my mom’s loaner bike, go to the library and possibly go bike shopping.  But seeing as it has somehow advanced past midnight, I should probably get to bed.

Have a good weekend, ya’ll.

[Insert obligatory statement about not posting for a while]

So life has continued at a rather quick pace since I last posted anything here.  Routines have been created – wake up around 7am, shower, breakfast, run to catch the 7:53 bus, transfer, get into the office somewhere between 8:30 and 8:40, drink coffee or tea, desk time, meetings, chatting, planning, lunch, desk time, desk time leave work around 5pm (or sometimes earlier, since I make it in half an hour early), catch the bus, wait in exasperation for my second bus (and if the weather is nice give up and walk home), get home around 6:15 or so, make dinner/eat dinner, get sleepy, chat with Alex, read the internets, read my books, hang out with housemates, sleep.

As for the work itself, I am enjoying it for the most part.  I think it helps that I don’t really miss my old job (the people yes, the job not really).  I like the routine of riding buses (I am reading so many more books now, especially with discovering how well it works to read library books on my iPod) and working in an office with adults.  Sometimes it can get frustrating when the end objectives don’t always seem clear, but I really like my fellow VISTAs and I am excited about our goals.

If you check out my Flickr stream from time to time, you can see that I have been up to some fun things including a train ride around Mt. Rainier with Alex’s family, gone to a church related young adult potluck, numerous happy hours with co-workers and new friends, made blackberry jam, granola and a carrot cake for Alex’s birthday, a celebratory after party with co-workers for the United Way Day of Caring, a weekend at Alex’s grandparents’ lake cabin with friends. So in case you missed them, here are some pictures from the past few weeks:

Downtown Seattle from Fremont

Alex and his birthday carrot cake

Taken from the back deck at Captain Blacks on Capital Hill

Dance party

Stephen, Elissa (my fellow VISTAS) and Mandi (co-worker) at the after party for the Day of Caring

Beautiful Seattle

Alex and his friends from high school at the lake cabin

Alex and I standing in front of a train

Alex, his father and his grandfather - on a train

The High Cost of Botulism

The title of this post is mainly there to serve as both an example of the kind of conversations that happen when I spend time around my brothers and also as my attempt to claim the phrase for when I finally start that emo ska punk band (in which I would obviously play the viola).

Anyways, while it already feels like a quite a long time ago (thanks in part to two early morning trips to O’Hare aiport and a fun time hosting an old friend from high school), I figured I should talk a little bit about the awesomeness that was this past weekend.

Brought about Charletta’s long anticipated graduation with a Masters in Marriage and Family Counseling, this weekend included both a full complement of my immediate family and the presence of Charletta’s parents.  In other words, it was a grand ole time.  Highlights include hanging out with Jonathan for most of the day on Friday, during which we bought (and ate) fancy cheese, walked around downtown, and finally got drinks at the Signature Lounge.

Jonathan shows off his angelic side

Chicago summer haze, at it's best

Other really fun times included a celebratory pizza dinner hosted by the Charletta’s parents at a local Italian restaurant and getting to can 8qts of strawberry jam with my Mom.

Charletta's parents are the ones in the middle

Not only is this jam yummy, but it actually set, instead of just forming yummy strawberry sauce

But of course the highlight was getting to see Charletta finish a long (and arduous) life stage called grad school.  Congrats Charletta, welcome to the Masters side of the family!

Charletta and her rockin' robes

*Bonus Shots* A side by side analysis of two champion nappers:

Coffee in Seattle

Well I successfully arrived in Seattle late last night (or on my internal clock, very early this morning). Friday was quite a long day due to it being the last day for seniors at the high school, but other than a request for a last period dance party in the library (sorry, but no, seeing as 3/4 of the school still has work to do) and some firecrackers set off outside the library, it was actually a pretty calm day. Then of course I hurried home and did last minute packing and caught a ride to the downtown Evanston bus depot where I took the bus to the airport. There I had some mild anxiety because a) the bus took 80 minutes as opposed to the 60 that I was expecting b) I hadn’t realized that one still had to take a tram in from the drop off spot to the actual terminal c) I didn’t know which terminal to go to because United serves two separate ones. But thankfully I wasn’t checking bags, so after a brisk walk/run between terminals I got my boarding pass, got through security and got to my gate with 1/2 hour to spare. The flight went well and I had a window seat, which always makes me happy. I also noticed that we never actually moved beyond at least a faint sunset (at least not until we began the descent into Seattle) in the far west. Now, I don’t know exactly why this is, seeing as we landed around 11pm Seattle time, but perhaps we were so high up that we could see significantly further west? Either way it was beautiful and oddly comforting. Plus I was rewarded with a gorgeous view of the lights of downtown Seattle as we banked south towards the airport. Such a beautiful city!
Now of course I am sitting in a coffee shop (suitable Saturday morning activity anywhere, but especially here in the city of coffee) with David. Alex is off volunteering at his ESL class and I tagged along with David to his favorite local Top Pot, which features rather incredible “hand-forged” donuts. I have been to others of this local chain on previous trips.

From my Seattle trip last August: Although not pictured, David is off to the left and that is Becca sitting across from me waiting for the deliciousness!

But this time I got a raspberry bismark, which was both delicious and full of powdery explosions.  Well now I am probably going to go test my geographic knowledge on Sporcle (thanks to Alex and Becca, this is my new obsession) or some such other random internet-y thing.  Unfortunately I still haven’t heard back from THE JOB, but seeing as a three day weekend has now commenced, I am going to do my best to forget about until Tuesday morning at the earliest.

Good things

1. Spring Break was so lovely – I could probably write more, but right now I will just say it was a solidly good time as evidenced by these pictures.

Visits with good friends!

Being goofy on sunny afternoons

Baking super sugary butter filled rolls of yum

Catching up with old friends in new apartments

Ferry rides at sunset

And last but not least spending time with this handsome fellow!

2. I have a cat again – Well, not a particularly new cat, but I am once again living with Lina (formerly known as biscuit/kitty/thumps/cleo/etc) who couldn’t move right away with Jess into her new digs.  So far it is kind of fun to have a cat to snuggle with again, however as I learned last night it is less fun with said snuggle beast decides to noisily investigate one’s closet at midnight.

This also means a chance to re-introduce the "pissed kitty" category on this blog.

3. I am talking to Alex tonight – Yay for Skype (or more specifically Google Video Chat)

4. My job interview went well – I know I am going up against at least 20 candidates and have absolutely no idea how the interviewer felt about me (at least in comparison to others), so I am keeping my expectations very very low.  But on the good side, I should know one way or another by next week.

5. Downton Abbey is my new favorite thing – My favorite character is a tie between the dowager countess (Maggie Smith, of course) and the valet with a limp. If you have Netflix or Amazon Prime, you should be able to view this BBC mini-series online. If not rent it, you won’t be disappointed.

Basic plot line is the dual story of an rich aristocracy family and the servants who care for them living in Britain during the early 1900s. The season opens with the sinking of the Titanic and closes with the start of World War I, unfortunately season 2 isn't showing for at least another year.

6. Spring, or at least the sun seems to be here – There is something down right giddifying (and yes I just made that word up) about fresh green shoots.  I always forget how much I love spring, right up until it turns every thing green and all of a sudden my mood improves by at least 50 aesthetic points.

7. Anticipating baking chocolate raspberry birthday cake – Conveniently my housemates have birthdays every once in while, which I tend to see as excuse to whip up butter, flour and sugar into cake form.  So fun!

I won't be baking a cake this size (and I won't have Becca to help ) but I am going to use this same amazing instant fudge frosting.