Riding Casper and Avoiding Biting Lady Bugs

No, not the ghost. Although I can see how you might be tempted to think that given it's that time of the year. I got to ride a pretty horse name Casper today on the trail ride right on the Fox River resort property. The weather was great for it too. It's probably 75 out, and there's a nice breeze along all the time. I got on the 2:30 PM ride so it wasn't in the dead heat of high noon. I will definitely do it again tomorrow, and the day after, and possibly even the day after that if I can get away with it.

So the one weird thing is the lady bugs here bite. That's right, you read that right. They BITE. Those things are mean and they swarm! I'll find out later just how many chunks they took out of me.

The embarrassing thing is I wore a v-neck tank top today, and they kept going down my chest. I had to reach into my shirt more than once to get the bug out of my tank. Good thing the other riders were mostly women or girls. If I can stand the heat, I am definitely wearing a long sleeve tee tomorrow.

In the mean time, I'm going to go enjoy my jacuzzi after I figure out what to do for dinner. :)

Chicago

The primary reason for coming out this way was for Bill and Yelena's wedding. They held it in the Architectural Artifacts building, which is a very cool venue. It was great to see lots of familiar faces from our days back in the dorm, even though we're in all parts of the country now. I'll get around to uploading all the photos later when I have a better internet connection.

It was actually rainy on Saturday, the day of the wedding. I managed to get myself up to the John Hancock Observatory. It was worth it because the wind was blowing hard enough that the rain was going side ways up there (94 floors up). I almost thought it was snow given the way it was floating, but it was only rain. Crazy physics!

Of course Chicago is known for all the great architecture. I have a ton of pics, but it'll be too much to show here. This is the Cloud Gate in Millennium Park. Everyone here calls it the Silver Bean. I'm on the left side of the photo, wrapped up in a hat and scarf because it was actually kinda cold.

Visions of Eternity by Salvador Dai

One of the coolest things was going to the Art Institute of Chicago. True to all my friends' and colleagues' recommendations, it has the largest amount of Impressionist art I have ever encountered in one place. I took many photos (totally allowed) of many great works by Monet, Renoir, and Degas. Additionally there were a lot of great Dali work like the one at right. The "Melted Clock" wasn't here, but it was still great. I also bought myself a very expensive canvas tote, but it had The Gashly Tinycrumbs by Edward Gorey on it and I couldn't pass it up.

I went to the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum as well. It was really cool to see one of the most complete T-Rex fossils in the world (Sue). It looks so real! I was definitely in a Jurassic Park moment here.

I learned a bunch about the world on this trip to the Field Museum. I learned that there were actually 5 major mass extinctions, not just the one 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs were wiped out. I'm still wondering how they figured those other ones out given the first one occurred something like 430 million years ago (there abouts). It's amazing what we can learn these days through science and technology.

I got to do a little comparison between my own feet and that of a dinosaur. I think I would have been road kill within 30 seconds if I lived in that era. That's just ridiculous!

All in all, it was awesome to see the city. I finally got a sense of where East was by the end of my 3 day stint there, and then it's off back to Norway (boonies) for some R&R before heading to Indiana.

In Norway...... Illinois! :-)

Arrived without getting lost just before midnight. I've forgotten how the lodges are set up and am glad to see the jacuzzi in the room. My turtle is wearing his new gift from Slava in front of the nicely folded 4 leaf clover towels. I'm ready for a good night's sleep!

One Whole Farm Share in 3 Nights

There was this one crazy week where I decided I was going to be able to use up  the entire CSA (farm share) that Iris has for the week. Mind you this normal share is meant for 4 people to eat. I managed to cook it all in 3 nights of crazy cooking.

The share of the week consisted of 4 lbs of tomatoes, a dozen ears of corn (of which we only took 10), about 8 cubanelle peppers, 2 zucchini, 2 lbs of potatoes, and 2 egg plants.

On Wednesday night, I made my tomato and corn soup, a giant pot of it. This time I cored the tomatoes first. But I still missed one step - boiling them first to get the skin off. Otherwise it would have been a smoother texture.

Tahini substitute - peanut butter

On Thursday night, I made baba ganoush from the egg plants (double batch), and the recipe called for tahini. But I didn't have any, and after a brief search of the great Tubes that is the Internet I found that I could substitute peanut butter - so in it goes into the lemon juice! :-)

For the egg plant, you needed to roast it first, then let it "drain". I stuck it in a salad spinner to expedite.

Also on that night I made potato and zucchini pancakes (effectively latkes). I didn't quite realize when the recipe says it will serve 8 people, that it meant it would be the entire meal for 8 people with nothing else. So I was frying batter for about 3 hrs. That was a long night of cooking.

To finish it all off on Friday night, we stuffed the cubanelle peppers with chicken sausage and baked them. It was super easy, just remove the raw sausage portion from the casing by squeezing the meat out onto the hollowed half pepper shells and bake. To finish, top with marinara sauce, which I doctored with some fried garlic and onions.

And voila, the meal is served! Thanks Iris for taking all these awesome pics! It makes my food look so much more appetizing than the fuzzy ones I take with my little flip phone's camera. :-)

The final product - basil chicken sausage stuffed cubanelle peppers with apple sauce drizzled potato and zucchini pancakes. Creamy tomato and corn soup to follow. Tortilla chips and baba ganoush as appetizers.

Dinner is Served

Cod fillets with the salsa I made this morning and store bought guacamole, served with the tomato, corn and basil soup. I like the plating part of dinner best. It's the most visual part of all the preparation. :-)

Sunday Cooking Adventure

So it seems my original hypothesis that "if I have a nicer kitchen then I would cook more" is partially true. Having the space conducive to cooking is only one piece of the puzzle. Having ingredients to cook with is the other major piece, if not the larger of the two.

My roommate has a farm share, and every week many green vegetables that I cannot identify show up in the fridge. I try to help make a few things here and there when I happen to know a recipe that will use those ingredients.

This has partially contributed to me not going grocery shopping in very many weeks. I actually would need to check my credit card bills to find out when it actually was that I had gone grocery shopping last.

Creamy Tomato, Corn and Basil Soup
(without any actual cream)

This is certainly not a bad problem to have. I made a tasty soup that came from a need to use up some tomatoes from this week and corn from 2 weeks ago. I added in some fresh basil from my one and only edible plant on my porch (thanks Alisa!) and voila! Tomato, Corn and Basil Soup. It actually came out so well I wished I had more tomatoes and corn. There's only 2 small servings in that pot.

Though being an inexperienced cook does create some interesting results. It's ok, it's all in the name of science. Ok, maybe not really science, but at least it's always a learning experience. =P

Accidentally Pureed Salsa

So as I said, we have tomatoes this week. We also have banana peppers, which I figured I could use as a bell pepper substitute.

There's no cilantro this week, and I had already used up all my lime juice from the half a dozen batches I made before. So I decided to make do with other ingredients instead. The jar of store bought salsa in the pantry lists sugar, vinegar, and garlic as ingredients, so I added those to my salsa. My tomato dicing techniques were horrid, so the salsa was too chunky. But I don't have a food processor so I thought I would just have to live with the super chunky salsa.

Then I thought, why not use the blender to dice it down more? How much of a difference is there between a blender and a food processor anyway? Well, I tried it and learned what the difference was. The blender/smoothie maker I have is made to completely pulverize ice and fruit chunks, so the salsa ended up being accidentally pureed. Oops.

Properly Chunky Salsa

Unsatisfied with the results I tried again. This time I thought, how about I only pulverize the tomatoes and then throw in my regularly diced unions and banana peppers.

It achieved the desired consistency and I was able to put the properly chunky salsa in a jar. It looks almost professional! =D

And last but not least, we had some leftover pita bread, so for breakfast I made some scrambled eggs, and created breakfast burrito / pockets with eggs, salsa, and some store bought guacamole. The leftover pita bread was cut up and baked into pita chips, and now I can snack on the leftover guac and the ridiculous amount of salsa I have leftover.

8 tomatoes, 5 banana peppers, 6 eggs, 2 onions, 2 stalks of corn later, this Sunday's cooking adventure comes to an end with breakfast burritos/pockets, salsa, pita chips, and soup. No ingredients were wasted and my fridge is ready for another batch of alien greens next week. Not bad for an inexperienced cook. :-)

Tiger, Fish, Crab, Oh My!

So I went to Newport Beach in Rhode Island for the first time with some friends. It was a very relaxing time - the weather was just right and the beach was moderately crowded with other sunbathers. The water was a good temp and I had great company.

We drove in a jeep with the top down around the neighborhood and I got a glimpse at some of those famous mansions Newport is known for. At some point I'll make another trip to go tour those places, but probably not any time soon. I feel poor enough already.

One thing about this trip that stood out from just another beach trip, was this one park where there was so much wind kites could totally fly themselves. A kite vendor had set up shop and the sky was filled with wonders.

I was enamored. I could have spent the whole day just watching all those creatures fly around if there was the time. But we had food to eat and places to be, so we only stopped for short while. But I was glad I snagged a shot of the giant flying crab and the puffer fish. I took several shots of the crab in fact, because I just loved the concept of a flying crab. Where else would I have seen such a sight? See more shots of the kites on flickr.