It just started snowing...

and I finally got around to starting some holiday yum-yums.
First up - pretzels.
Lots of pretzels.

I sort of didn't realize how many pretzels would be covered with a reasonably small amount of chocolate...
good thing I love these and D doesn't :)
Now the fun part.
Adding the tiniest amount of peppermint extract.
And food coloring...
patent-pending pastry bag in a glass, filling technique.
Gone to town.
Muahahahaha.
And a sneak preview of the top of our non-denominational, Victorian-inspired, there-aren't-enough-hours-of-sunlight-in-the-day-and-therefore-I-hate-the-world-and-everyone-in-it, seasonal, holiday tree.

Quote of the Day.

D - "Come out of there for a minute so I can throw something at you."

Quote of the Day.

From my LSAT study book -

"Before we start this game, remember our old friend the contrapositive."


(Yes, I'm retaking the LSAT in one month. Though technically my four year old score is still valid for like, eight months or so, I've decided I will be in the small percentage of test takers who do noticeably better upon repetition, and therefore I'm going for it... oh, I also thought I'd do some substantial studying this time... seemed like a good idea).

Umm... wow.

Quote of the Day. Grand Canyon Rescue style.

When asked what they would have done without the SPOT device, the leader stated, “We would have never attempted this hike.”

Classic Morning Report.

P.S. D did this hike.

Hello... anyone there???

Some Peppers from the garden that is now dead.
The top of Mount Timanogos in Utah, from some time ago.
Getting to the top.
Mount from the trail below.
My view of D and K starting their trek where I dropped them off just over a week ago.

So said the Presbyterian.

Quote of the Day. (From the NYTimes).

On Evangelicals -
“They aren’t burdened with liturgy or a tradition that demands intellectual engagement,” he
said.'
(Photo of the day is Felipe in Theodore Roosevelt National Park).

Light and color.

Dave and I combined our photos from the hike, and he even let me edit the Ken Burns effect!!!

The last few weeks.

(In photos).
Start with homemade Pad Thai. Safeway doesn't have Thai rice noodles, only Chinese rice noodles... they're thinner and cook faster without getting sticky, so I guess I'm taking inauthentic shortcuts, but oh well.
Add an exceedingly large Dahlia...
and purple potatoes from the farmer's market. (There will be soup.)
Russian teacakes or Mexican wedding cookies??? Who knows, but if you're only rolling them in powdered sugar once, you're doing it wrong. Two rolls, baby.
I made scale drawings. D made the bookshelf.
(Side note: continued thanks to my eldest sissy for framing a poster from the first professional dance performance I was in as a gift way back in the day.)

And the second of the three really exciting bits of wall hanging we brought back from our most recent foray to the Midwest - Charley Harper's Canyon Country poster done for the National Park Service.
Item number three is my great grandmother's 8th grade diploma from the Algona school district in 1908. I'll post a photo of it as well as a better close up of the Charley Harper later.

Suffice to say our little house keeps getting to be more and more home. Now we start the 10 month countdown to departure... again.

Hard Crack.

How NOT to turn cherry juice into syrup...

Utah.

The lastest Harry Potter (number 6) is really quite good. Quite enjoyable... the best one yet, as a film. D and I have been discussing whether that's because it's just a good book so it's naturally a better film, or if it was just constructed and executed better.

Anyway - yesterday we hiked up Mount Timpanogos. No one told me the elevation change is almost that of the Grand Canyon... until we were already three miles into the hike.

Did see around 30 mountain goats. The hopped around on ledges and then went running down snow fields and otherwise were really interesting to watch when they weren't knocking rocks down, directly above us.

I'm sore.

Plans to canyoneer is Zion today have been put on hold. We'll definitely spend Monday in Zion, but today we'll do who knows what and come back to A's house to help her with a BBQ tonight. Girls on crutches should probably think twice before offering to host BBQs :)

Utah is still nice. But hot.

Denial.

I have a thing with bears. Really, I have a thing with thinking. I think about things... all sorts of things... constantly. I think about possibilities and eventualities, and when I'm in bear country my mind just naturally wanders to all the possibilities and eventualities that might happen if I were to run smack into a bear and it started to eat me.

So if I'm in bear country for say... three nights, two in campgrounds, one in the backcountry, including 40 miles worth of hiking, where there is nothing for my mind to focus on outside of what's all around me... including bears... I find that after awhile of not paying attention, my stomach is tense, I've not been eating or drinking as much as I should (because you never eat or drink as much as your should when your stomach is tense from nervousness) and then I start feeling sort of out of it, because I haven't been eating or drinking as much as I should...

it's bad. And it's all inadvertent... it's not like I'm walking around totally sure that a bear is going to pop out of the undergrowth and eat me at that very second, I just hike along, thinking about all the plants around me, and all the animals around me, and what a pretty day it is, and the next thing I know my mind is running through where on the surrounding hillsides a helicopter could land for the ensuing rescue operations... just running through possibilities...

anyway - we drove down Tuesday after we got new tires for Josey. Camped in a campground north of West Yellowstone that night. Got breakfast at Old Faithful Inn, then drove around the park trying to find a campground and tring to get a backcountry camping permit for Thursday night, till we said the heck with traffic, hiked up Mount Washburn, and camped at this totally awesome campside just north of Gardiner. Thursday we hiked 17 miles along Hellroaring Creek and then The Yellowstone River. Camped right next to some small rapids in the river. Friday, woke up, hiked out the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone to Gardiner, ate breakfast, hiked back into the park and to our car by 2pm (14 miles). Drove home. Stopped by the Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site on our way down, and Anaconda on our way home. Both were really pretty and of general historic interest. D doesn't usually let us make stops, so it was fun to not drive straight through, even if it is a relatively short drive by out standards at 5 hours each way.

Now - photos.

We saw lots of Bison on Wednesday, driving around the park. Also saw a fat and happy coyote, a fox, elk, deer, an invisible bear (which was very exciting, especially the traffic jam it caused) and lots of smaller wildlife during our trip.

Storms rolled in each night, as well as Thursday morning, and Friday around noon. It meant there were always crazy big clouds moving around the sky, concentrating then dissapating... good times.
Yay! Clouds!
Streaks of sunlight between clouds!
Marmot on the Mount Washburn trail...

Nibble, nibble...
yummy - grass!
Views from Mount Washburn trail are nice.
Storm clouds always add to the ambiance.
Someone had built a snowman.
It was gown when we came back down so we build our own.
At the beginning of our two-day backpack. Yellowstone River below.
I like going down hill. I also like the wide open views. No accidently running into a bear here!
D coming down the hillside behind me.
Bridge over the Yellowstone. Taking us from the road on the south side to the trail that follows the north side.
Wild mountain lilies... there were all over the place, but D's picture didn't turn out well.
Montana's state flower - The Bitterroot.
I'd never seen them in the wild before... there were a good number of them.
It's fun to wonder how many decades ago someone slid an antler into the slot where the two tree branches divided... now the tree is all grown up and has surrounded the antler.
The wild rose garden next to our backcountry campsite.
There is a black bear in the photo below. (The photo has already been zoomed and cropped for ease of spotting :)
There is a blond colored black bear in the photo below.
The end.

P.S. This trip, instead of letting my mind wander around to bear attacks, I just spent the entire time, hiking, eating, trying to go to sleep, re-telling myself stories, from novels, from movies, from whatever, I trained my mind to wander onto things intentionally, and it sort of worked... still didn't get much sleep the night we camped out... but ya know... denial works sometimes.

The secret to homemade ice cream without an ice cream maker.

So -

I whip the cream first.

Usually you make a custard base, add the flavorings, stir in the whipping cream, cool in the freezer for just a bit and then put into the ice cream maker. An ice cream maker has two parts, the part that works to freeze the ice cream, and the part that stirs it. The stirring serves two functions, by continually moving the ice cream mixture it allow it to chill evenly, not freezing the edges solid while the middle is still liquid... and it adds air, whipping the cream... both functions make the ice cream smoother and creamier. My method uses a regular metal mixing bowl, which doesn't retain cold well, which means every moment it's out of the freezer is a moment it's getting warmer. I have to limit the amount of time it's out of the freezer, which means (since I don't fit inside my freezer) I have to limit the amount of time it's getting stirred. It doesn't take a huge amount of stirring to effect the first function of redistributing the ice cream in the bowl so that it freezes evenly, it does take a lot of stirring to whip the cream. So I whip the cream before I add it to the custard mixture and start the freezing process.

Here's my recipe and specific method.

For basic ice cream (ice cream flavored with powdered spices, or liquid extract).
1 part milk
1 part cream
1/2 part sugar
1 egg for each 1/4 cup of milk

Put as many teaspoons of flavoring as you did cups of sugar.

Example.
1-1/2 cups milk
1-1/2 cups cream
3/4 cup sugar
6 eggs
3/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract, or cinnemon


First, I put the cream in my stand-mixer bowl and let it go to work. You could also whip the cream with a hand mixer, either way, when it forms stiff peaks, and I mean very stiff peaks, throw the mixing bowl full of whipped cream into the freezer.

For the custard - Warm milk in sauce pan to 165-185 degrees. In a medium sized bowl, mix eggs, sugar and flavoring. When milk is warm, slowly add the milk to the egg mixture while stirring. Once all combined, pour this back into the sauce pan, and heat on stove back up to 165 F, stirring CONSTANTLY, to ensure little flecks of cooked egg don't form on the bottom of the pan. I then cool the mixture in a water bath... usually a slightly larger sauce pan filled with the coldest water my tap will run, but you could also just fill the sink with cold water and ice cubes. I re-run cold water two or three times, then put the custard mixture in the freezer.

I put them both in the freezer seperately at first, because the two smaller masses cool quicker than if they were mixed together. Leave them both for half hour to fourty five minutes. I then put the whipped cream filled mixing bowl back into the mixer with the paddle attachment and turn it on low, as I pour the custard mixture into it. I let them blend thoroughly, then pull it off the mixture, pulling the paddle attachment off as well, and I just leave the attachment in the mixing bowl when it all goes back into the freezer. It's easier to not clean it off every time you mix. I wipe a spatula around the sides of the bowl, because otherwise the thin film of ice cream mixture will freeze quickly and get icy.

The first time I put the completed mixture into the freezer it gets left alone for 1-1/2 to 2 hours. If you've made a smaller quantity with less than 1 cup of milk, I'd check on it after 1 hour. Usually the sides are just starting to get colder, so I use a spatula to turn the ice cream on the sides into the middle, run it along the bottom of the bowl to do the same there, and put it back in the freezer for another hour.

The next time it comes out of the freezer it gets put back on the mixer and stirred at medium speed for 3-5 minutes, the harder it seems the longer it should be mixed... rinse and repeat this step every 30-45 minutes as it hardens. Probably 3 or 4 rounds. Once the ice cream seems to strongly resist the mixer, you can stop and transfer it to an airtight container and leave in the freezer overnight. The custard will set up and it will freeze hard.

Now - if you're the sort that likes particularly light and airy ice cream, you might want to pull it out of the freezer more often, stirring it for longer. This technique yeild just slightly denser, but very creamy ice cream... not gelato by any means, but not quite as light as some store bought brands... but I consider this to be a good thing.


Using the above recipe I made cardemom ice cream. When I made D's banana I used two pureed bananas for 1 cup of milk and the texture wasn't as good... so I'll have to create an altered recipe for when using a flavoring of more quantity than above... I'll work on that...


my next missions include Peanut Butter Banana, Coffee and Lemoncello.

Getting Nerdy.

Out of a lack of anywhere else to store this information, which I've decided will be very important at some time in the future -

I've decided it would be a perfect idea to have an Independence Day Ice Cream Social (not this year, some year in the future, which is why I need this somewhere that can be looked up in the future).

And to make it that much more Martha Stewart-esque, there would need to be homemade ice cream in 13 different flavors to represent the 13 original colonies... (this was decided because 50 different flavors for the states is getting a bit out there, and there were 56 individual signers, so that's also too many).

This whole project was conceived last week, when I learned that the Library of Congress, in their American Treasures collection, has a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe hand written by Thomas Jefferson (which made Virginia's flavor really easy to pick).

My list follows -

Vanilla
Chocolate Fudge
Maple
Toffee Pecan
Nutmeg
Gingerbread
Strawberry
Blueberry
Apple
Peach
Coffee
Tea
Beer

By state - with alternatives (and explanations).
Virginia - Vanilla (Thomas Jefferson)

Massachusetts - Tea (Boston Tea Party) or Cranberry (state fruit) or Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough (state cookie)

New Hampshire - Maple (2nd largest syrup producer) or Pumpkin (state veggie)

Maryland - Chocolate Fudge (after the icing from Smith Island Cake, the state dessert)

Connecticut - Nutmeg (state nickname)

Rhode Island - Coffee (after the local favorite "Coffee Cabinets", a coffee & ice cream mixed dessert)

Delaware - Beer (Dogfish Head Brewery's 90 minute IPA ranked Best Beer in America - they have, seriously, no other foods of note, unless you consider Chicken an ice cream flavor. A last resort could be stealing Peach from Georgia, as Peach Blossom is the state flower.)

North Carolina - Strawberry (state fruit)

South Carolina - Toffee Pecan (technically native to the Mississippi valley, Alabama's state fruit and Texas' state tree, with Georgia the largest producer and South Carolina not even in the top 5, however their state fruit is peach... and Georgia has 1st claim, and Delaware 2nd so since it's South Carolina's second largest crop we're giving them Pecans.)

New Jersey - Blueberry (Highbush blueberry state fruit)

New York - Apple (State fruit and muffin) or Cheesecake (state dessert)

Pennsylvania - Gingerbread (Pennsylvania "Dutch" heritage)

Georgia - Peach (state fruit, largest US producer) or Sweet Vidalia Onion (state veggie - if you want to hand over Peach to South Carolina or Delaware, Vidalia Onions should be able to make a semi-sweet & savory ice cream)

Yea!

P.S. I made banana bread ice cream yesterday that D says is good, strong banana flavor, creamy enough (better than a lot of store bought ice cream, but not better than all :), it's been doing it's final freeze in the last 20 hours, so we'll see how it ranks tonight. Meanwhile I've started a Cardamom flavor today.

If all turns out well I'll write my recipe for making ice cream without an ice cream maker... hint: it takes a lot longer :)

Quote of the Day.

"You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose."

-Leo McGarry The West Wing

Recipe. For Referrence.

I don't have any photos, maybe I'll take some later, as there's a lot left over...

but in the middle of the day, yesterday, it struck me that I wanted to go out with D for Thai food that night (if being his first day at his new job), and then decided instead of going out, why didn't I just make Pad Thai, as that's what I wanted. Then I talked to D (who was between training and meetings) and he told me he'd had it arranged for a week that he was having dinner with a classmate, but that dinner could certainly be my homemade Pad Thai - so I had three. Then, at D's urging, I called two other classmates, and one brought her boy (who we never seem to see, and had yet to be over to our place) so then I had six! (I'm pretty sure Emily Post and Irma Rombauer always said to never serve company a dish you've never made before, but what do they know???) And I scurried off to the Good Food Store to find Tamarind!

I read a couple different sites' recipes for Pad Thai and then made a totally huge quantity and we have heaping gobs left over, but I'm going to try to approximate a recipe for two (generous portions), so I'll have it for future reference.

First the sauce -

1 tablespoon honey
1/4 cup Thai Palm Sugar (I used Zulka unrefined cane sugar, as I guessed it the most similar, easy to find replacement, I would think the lighter brown sugar would work too)
2 tablespoons Fish Sauce
1-1/4 teaspoons Tamarind Concentrate
1-1/4 teaspoons dried chili powder (I made two kinds, one with Chipotle powder, one with mild chili powder, use whatever chili powder you like best)

Dissolve the sugar into an equal part water in a saucepan, then add the other ingredients... taste... expect it to be on the saltier side, but add more chili powder if you like it spicier.

Now you can set it aside. You can make it ahead and stick it in the fridge, or do all the other prep first and then make the sauce, either way, warm up the sauce slightly right before you use it, so it goes in the wok warm and not cold.

The Rest -

1/2 package Thai rice noodles (approx 7-8oz), soaked in slightly-warm water for 10-15 minutes (save the rest, dry, for another day)
1/2 cup dry roasted peanuts, finely chopped
1 cup or more of bean sprouts
1/2 bulb garlic, minced
1 bunch green onions, bottoms sliced thin, green tops cut in 1-2" lengths
1/2 bunch cilantro, roughly chopped
1 lime (only 1/3-1/2 will be used - I recommend the rest for garnishing cocktails)
2 eggs
2 servings of "meat" (I used pre-cooked shrimp, but seared tofu or cooked chicken or any combination thereof would work)
Peanut Oil

So you've got your sauce ready and warmed, your noodles soaked, and your ingredients prepped and within arm's reach of the stove. We'll be dividing all the ingredients in half and cooking in two separate portions. The smaller quantity of noodles in the wok allow them to cook all the way, quickly, without getting sticky, clumpy or mushy.

Pour approx. 2 tablespoons oil in the wok and allow to warm. Add half the garlic and white parts of the green onion. Now sprinkle in half the noodles, holding the clump of noodles above the pan and shaking it, so they fall in loosely and not sticking to each other. Run your cooking utensil along the side of the wok, down underneath the noodles and flip so they all get to be in the oil.

Drizzle about 1/3 of the sauce over the noodles and take your time stirring the noodles until the sauce is well distributed.

In the middle of the wok, add half the bean sprouts and green onion stalks, 2 tablespoons of peanuts, and 1 serving of shrimp (and/or tofu/chicken), then drizzle the rest of the first half of the sauce directly onto these items and fold in (you can separate the sauce into two equal quantities before you start cooking, to more easily keep track of how much you're using in the first batch).

Then push the noodles to one side of the wok and crack an egg onto the bottom. Quickly scrap the egg off the bottom of the pan to mix it up a little bit (alternatively, you could crack and scramble the egg in a separate container then pour in). Let it cook a few seconds, then I slide the cooking utensil under the pile of noodles lifting it up and allowing the egg to spread across the bottom of the pan, then I set the noodle mass back down on top of the cooking egg, which breaks it up. Give it a minute to cook most of the way, then stir everything around so the egg is well distributed.

Now pull out a noodle and eat. It will be chewier than Italian pasta noodles, but shouldn't be hard-chewy, if it's hard-chewy keep stirring and cooking till it's soft-chewy :)

When ready, plate it with a generous sprinkle of cilantro on top, and repeat with the second half of ingredients. When you're done cooking, take a spare plate or serving dish and make little piles with the rest of the peanuts and cilantro, along with several lime wedges and serve this along side. If you like things spicy, consider also putting a small amount of chili powder out or, if you're D, just grab the bottle of Sriracha and go to town...

the bad news, is this dish has over 1300 calories per serving, though as I said, these are generous servings, so you may end up saving some for later (if you're me), or just eating it all (if you're D). Good news is that each serving (half the recipe) has 52 grams of protein per 55 grams of fat... so it's freakin' chock full of protein (shrimp and peanuts leading here, with egg and noodles helping). For a healthier dish, leave out the peanuts (reducing the fat almost by half and the protein by 1/5th, for a 1,000 calorie dish with 41 grams of protein per 34 grams fat).

Anyway - this was calculated using The Daily Plate, where I created a custom dish using the exact ingredients and quantity in my recipe, but I can't seem to link directly to the dish's nutritional breakdown, so I'll just give you the rundown...

Calories - 1312
Fat - 55 grams
Cholesterol -463mg
Sodium - 1843 mg
Carbs - 156 grams
Sugar - 46 grams
Fiber - 10 grams
Protein - 52 grams

And everyone seemed pleased with it, though, granted, a lot of alcohol was consumed by some, so their critique might not be creditable...

Quote of the Day.

D gets home from being off at the Uni most of the day, and declares -

"I thought of two great ways we could ruin our marriage...

we could both go to the same law school at the same time,

or we could ride TransIowa together, on a tandem."

The last nine days.

I swear, I may not be employed, for other people, for money, but I do manage to stay busy.

Like yesterday. I made yogurt. (It's like, stunningly easy).

Heat milk to 185 degress F. Cool it to 120 degrees F. Add some yogurt (straight out of the store bought container). Let sit for four hours.
The hardest part is the Letting It Sit, as it needs to maintain a temp around 115F. When I start heating the milk, I turn my oven to pre-heat on it's lowest temp, which is 170. I let it warm up for a few minutes, then turn it off. By the time I've got the milk ready it's just warm enough to help the pot maintain it's temp in the closed oven. Other people do things like put it in a small cooler partly filled with warm water, etc.
It's more liquidy than you'd expect - but it solidifies a bit once it chills in the fridge.
I can't tell you how super-delicious it is, cause I don't eat yogurt... D had most of a jar for breakfast this morning, before he left, well before I woke up... so it can't be That bad. I'll let you know the verdict when he gets home!

P.S. I'm also making self-watering planters out of Rubbermaid bins, I've got over 2 dozen peppers sprouted with tomatoes and eggplant on the way, our backyard neighbors and I are going to be constructing raised beds, the compost pile is starting to really look good, I planted strawberries and rhubarb this last week, and I've got some asperagus that needs some dirt in the next few days... AND the two artichoke plants seem to be really happy... not to mention the watermelon... photos soon.