Constant state of flux

First off sorry to any of you that I have been ignoring as of late, my time has been all school in the past couple of weeks. That said this is going to be quick.

I added up all the reading from all my classes for this week, totaled just a touch over 600 pages! Part of me wants to go talk to the respective professors and point out where in the course guide the weekly reading to be expected was far under what we get now. I should be at about 350 pages max that I am responsible to have read a week, which still isn't something I would consider easy (at least for me). Just as an example, in one of my Anthro classes, the expected reading was said to be 50 pages a week, this week we are sitting right around 150! Hopefully as the semester chugs along the reading will lessen, though I have the feeling it will just be more.

Popine is not dead, I thought she could have been, just from other people's experience, but she is just fine, perky as ever. Maybe I didn't quite teach people the best way to use her, another popine class in the works? Perhaps. I would have taken pictures but alas my camera is still dead (mostly).

Oh, and my birthday doppelganger doesn't like the idea of bicycle jousting or those blow up bouncing castles or mud wrestling. She wants to rent a bus, take everyone to a deserted rural area where unknown to them the party members will act out scenes from Lord of the Rings. She already has the sound track CD, so I guess that means we are one step closer and at least being the birthday people we get to pick the roles we want to play. I call tall beardless gimli!

The only thing we can both agree on is the call for fire eaters, which so happens I know a couple!

Enough blogging, off to school.

Pictures of food is what I post when I really have nothing important to say...

The first couple were tonight's dinner, basically French Lentils with sweet potatoes, caramelized onions, arugula (love that shit), shit-tons of garlic and coriander-fennel-black peppercorn all smashed in my mortar and pestle, I probably tossed in a little curry powder and chili flakes but really who cares? It was good and that is all I really was worried about, I had two heaping bowls for dinner.





The other is just saffron cauliflower risotto with pecorino and spinach. Using of course the Cadillac of risotto rices, none other than Carnaroli of course.

SHIT! I just remembered I was going planning on tossing mushrooms into the lentils tonight, that was the entire reason I was cooking them in the first place, just to get rid of the souring shroomage! I guess they are going into tomorrow's salad and or breakfast eggs.

I also am going to be taking a little break from bread baking... Well at least for myself, I still may bake a loaf or two for a random (post cleansing?) gift.

Normally I wouldn't be the kind of person to post something this time of day, but I have a little over an hour and a half to kill before my night class. I realized that perhaps freshman comp wouldn't provide me with more than busy work, not the fine tuning of my academic writing which I was hoping for. Any class the begins with the instructor saying "Now I know many of you have written research papers in high school" just isn't for me. I should be able to test out of the requirement, study up on my grammar and that should be enough. Dropping that class left me just one credit shy of a full time load, meaning I needed something to fill the void. The only class that fit into my schedule (and that hadn't started yet) was an art history class focusing specifically on the films of Alfred Hitchcock. I know little about the guy except his name, so the class should teach me something. So now my Mondays consist of school/work/school, longer days than I would like, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do right?

Work was really quick and easy, I think I was there for just over two and a half hours. I bummed around a little bit after finishing up, killing time until family meal. Today's FM was a little different than normal, it was a soup, but not like any soup I have tried before, namely because there was a whole raw egg on top of a crostini IN the broth. I think the idea was that the boiling hot broth cook the egg a touch, which didn't quite happen, instead there were large noticeable slimy egg shards throughout the soup. I still ate the entire bowl, but it wasn't the most pleasant of dining experiences. At least the salad was totally kick ass, I wont say much except state that bacon was a key component.

Finally (before I go walk around or something) I found out today that one of the cooks at the restaurant shares the same birthday with me, although she is quite a few years younger. It got the wheels turning in my head that I should start planning for another joint party soon, last year it was with J.Pond, this year at least we wont have to worry about getting kicked out by the upstairs neighbor. I still need to convince her that we should just have a kegger at my place, especially considering that she still isn't going to be of age.

OK I am really going now.

I am fairly certain that the majority of my small readership gets bored after the first sentence or two, so I had better break out the good news first, just so you know. I don't know if it matters that much, but I somehow managed to get on the Dean's List for last semester, how that happened I couldn't tell you. I don't remember ever being on a Dean's List, so, like I said I have no clue what if anything it means.

I have some more bread porn picks.





The first one is a wheat sourdough, but I have to admit that I threw in a touch of yeast just to get the ball rolling, namely because I didn't feel like waiting 24+ hours to let the bread finish. The popine bread wasn't quite as good as I would have hoped, but that was my own damn fault, I didn't let the loaf rise enough, something that I constantly have a problem with. I just get impatient waiting around and want the butter-melting, saliva inducing fresh bread right away, my impatience just leaves me a little broken hearted as the finished product of my labor is sub-par. If I don't learn my lesson soon I may just have to give up making bread altogether!

The second loaf was much better, I was playing around with rye bread again, just trying to get the perfect mixture of rye to white flour. This recipe is using conventional yeast, anyone can throw in their 2 cents. if they have any suggestions.

1 pkg yeast
1 cup water (lukewarm)
1 cup buttermilk
1 T Maple Syrup (real shit yo!)
1.5c Rye Flour
About 3 cups bread flour unbleached and unbromated.
1/2 C Oats
1/4 C Toasted Millet
1 T salt (I don't ever measure this so I might be off)
2-3T of caraway seeds (again I didn't measure exactly)
1/4 C golden flax seed

If you know how to make bread you can probably figure out what I did. I held off on all the bread flour until the dough ball was mostly formed, the bread is dense enough as is! I put the flax seed in, just thinking that it would be nice to get some of those Omega 3 whatever into my diet. Turns out that (according to a co-worker) the body doesn't process flax unless it is partially ground first, which sucks but at least I know for next time to use my mortar and pestle a bit... This loaf rose just splendidly and the flavor was off the hook, made up for the crappy ass first loaf (ok it wasn't "that" bad, just not as good as I would have liked).

And finally since I am fairly certain nobody is going to be reading at this point, I may have mono.. Can you believe that shit? I have had this sore throat for the last month or so, but didn't get it checked out until I got health insurance through the U, most anything could wait a month. After getting checked out today, the doctor told me there was a good chance that I had some sort of viral infection, probably mono. I still have to go back in for a blood test to be certain, but either way she told me there isn't much that I can do but wait... If so it makes sense as to why I have been getting so tired riding my bike lately (my way of justifying not being in shape!).

This is getting a little sick, I have been making bread like nobody's business.

I am guessing that is what happens to me when I have nothing else to do right? I mean my house is clean (clean enough at least), and I can't really afford to go out to eat all the time. Part of me wishes I would have stolen one of the 25# bags of flour from my pops back in Montana, so far this month I have used 10#s!




Anything else going on? Well not really, it is cold outside, anyone in the area can tell you that. My bike commutes have been OK though, one thing I have learned over the years is how to gear myself for the elements. I could use some better gloves, not that mine are bad, but they could be better, I just wish I could find the little thin wool gloves I used to have to go as a base layer.

Oh and tonight I am planing on hitting up my first SNR in over a month, wish me luck!

First off, I didn't wake up today until 1:45, no joke! The buzz I carried over after spending time with friends at the rock-rock-rock might have aided my slumber, but I believe it more to do with the lack of anything important to get done today. Less than 10 minutes after I pulled my lazy butt off of the couch, I was greeted by a knock at my back door, L. my neighbor was inviting me to a movie at the Riverview, how possibly could I turn that down? The movie was Mary Antoinette, and I must admit it was better than I had expected, especially the costumes and food, visually stunning.

Starving (I opted not for the popcorn, first time ever?) I threw the wok on the stove and started going to town, cooking some of the left over rice from breakfast up with sausage, scallions, jalapeños and egg. The fried rice hit the spot like nobodies business, I now am blessed with a full belly.

What did I do? Well I cracked open a bottle of cheap red wine and went to work organizing my cupboards, boring but satisfying.



Somehow some cans of food have migrated with me from old place to new place, I guess I was just too busy to actually look at the sell by date.

The little sis and I spent a good chunk of yesterday trying to get her new SS bike in full working order, a task that we didn't quite finish. I tried my best to allow Pinkzilla to do all the work herself, and she did a good job. Whipping off lock-rings and cogs like nobodies business! I mostly provided guidance and a little technical expertise (if you want to call it that) when things went awry. Right now all we have left to do is install the brake cables and housing, fill up the tires and make minor adjustments. The bike isn't exactly what I would call pretty, and is heavy as hell. Heavy as it may be, it will roll through the winter, and hopefully lessen the amount of damage the pink machine would receive from the wet salty conditions Minnesota roads offer. We were planning at first to build up a fixed gear bike, but I am always hesitant to do so using the ghetto BB lockring method, I think if you wanna ride fixed, buy a hub made for it, or else you are just asking for trouble.

I also taught K how to make bread, or at least how to make the dough. The bread wasn't awesome, but that is my fault for baking it before it was properly leavened. As sub-par as it may have been, there was still a hungry group of girls that devoured it at 1 am post crane folding party (don't ask, I don't know). Right now I am sitting on little chunks of 3 different batches of bread, all different, two good and one just OK. Part of me wants to make another batch of bread this morning, but really? What in the hell for?

On that note I am going to make some sour dough toast...

I hit up my local LBS today (local bike shop to those not in the know) and used the gift certificate graciously given me by my brother for the holiday a couple of weeks back. One reason he chose this particular LBS you ask? Although it may be one of the biggest around, there honestly has not been a time in the past year that I have had to pay full price for anything, sometime I get the employee discount, today I got the "with a new bike" discount for "being awesome" (not my words I swear). It wasn't even anyone I knew ringing me up this afternoon either, I just was lucky enough to have one of my friends right there to tell the new guy about my "awesomeness".

I got some parts for K's bike that we hopefully will have built up in the next couple of days, as well as a couple of tubes and a new bontrager racelite tire for myself. Just in case anyone randomly does a google blog search and stumbles upon this blog, I would like to express my personal opinion about the aforementioned tires. While I know that the Racelites are not the lightest tires around, the slight added weight is made up for in sheer hard-core-ness, Racelites are the tires I have had the least amount of flats with, by a big margin. I don't know if it is the "triple puncture protection hardcase" or what, I just know that I usually don't have to worry about flats. Riding through all conditions, I have had a total of two flats over the years, this is riding through all conditions year round, sometimes off-road (damn SNR!). The tire body is so stiff that on one occasion, I didn't even notice I had a flat until I got home, though I think the sub-zero temps that day might have added a little stiffness to the tire body. It is not just I that is in love with the RLs either, everyone I know that has owned them supports them with equal ferocity. One girl I used to work with has only had one flat for the life of her bike (a flat which I actually changed for her), this is again year round riding for a couple of years, not just in Minny but also in San Fran and Seattle, the tires have treated her well. Finally, they tend to be really quick to change, the new tire (new tire-stiffer bead) took me 10 minutes to put on, that was not even really trying that hard. In my newly created rating system, I give them a 10/10, best damn tires I have EVER had.




Most of the time at work we get this Caledonian blue prawns, pretty much a staple on the menu; changes to the menu that occur with 6 week regularity always have included the prawns in same capacity. The blue prawns are the sweetest and firmest shrimp that I can remember eating, and they come head-on meaning that we can make equally delicious stock from the heads and shells. That being said, I was surprised today when the Coastal order did not include the blue prawns, like I would normally expect. Instead of the prawns, I found boxes of previously frozen Langoustines (no not "crustiness's" MR. firefox spell check), a creature of the ocean that I knew about and have eaten, but never had to deal with myself. Think mini-lobsters, or better yet salt water crayfish, that would aptly describe the langoustine. The only reason I bring this up (aside from the argument I got into with a co-worker that ended when she said "If you had a super power for an hour you would make yourself a langoustine so you could make out with one!") is that the yield was TERRIBLE. Five 2.5# boxes and we ended up with just one quart worth of cleaned usable meat! Contrast that to over 2 gallons of bodies and shells, doesn't really seem worth it. The meat was really hard to get out of the shell anyway, stuck to the sides, required cutting both sides of the shell, etc. Supposedly the bodies make better stock than lobster bodies, but lobster bodies are cheap, langoustines aren't. The girl I was arguing with was calling them poser-lobsters, walking around pretending to be all bad ass while really being just one step up from a shrimp, she incidentally wants to make out with a king crab... I SWEAR!

Oh and I know I need to shave, I am just trying my bi-yearly not shaving thing...

Honestly, I have been feeling a little useless since we got back from Montana. Without school I find myself with far more free time than I am accustomed to, considering I am working the 20 or so hours a week I was before. I may even end up working less than 20, just due to a new menu change from duck to pheasant, the former taking 3 times the amount of time per bird. Ducks require saving every little scrap of far for rendering and more trimming of the breast and legs. Not to mention that duck tends to be more popular than pheasant, even though both are pretty dang awesome if you ask me.

The roads have been craptacular enough to where I have not wanted to really go for a ride anywhere, so I have been just going on walks around the awesome neighborhood I live in. In one day I managed to see both the sunrise and sunset along side the Mississippi, as well as make a trek down to the grocery store.

I must say I am getting a little antsy waiting for school to start, a sense of anticipation that is bound to wane when I am bogged down with piles of reading and papers to turn in. This next semester I am signed up for 17 credits, just to ensure my graduation in just 2 more semesters. I think it should be manageable, 14 was no problem whatsoever, aside from personal drama I didn't feel overwhelmed one bit.

To those who don't know, we are all going bowling tonight, by us all I mean anyone who is anyone. If you don't meet up with us you are generally considered to be a bad person, FYI. ;)

Msg me if I haven't already spoken to you in person.



I also made some cornbread last night, I made two of these loaves, and right now I have just 1/2 of one left. I tried my best to encourage friends to come over and eat the black bean sweet potato chili I made in tandem with the bread, but the only takers were the people who live in my building that had to deal with the assault of aromas walking through the door. I still have more... Hint Hint Hint.

If anyone had any doubts, yes myself and my glorious siblings have returned from the land to the west. The trip was aces all around, we were able to do just about everything I had hoped for, with the exception of tracking down my old zoo town friends.

The pop's house was awesome, great to be able to get away from everything and chill out with the mini-squirrels and trees for a while. Who would have known that there are actually more than one species of squirrel? Crazy.



Driving wasn't what I would call fun, being stuck behind the wheel for 16-18 hours at a time and trying to stay awake sometimes may be difficult. Not to mention subsisting entirely on spicy beef jerky and red bull isn't the best way to feel like a healthy human being. The weather wasn't being the most cooperative either, at least 500 miles of the return trip was traversed on snow packed and or icy conditions. It wasn't until we got closer to Minny that the ice was replaced with fog, better? I ended up being the sole driver for the long drives, more due to my fear of retribution from the rental car company than a lack of confidence in my fellow travel companions.

Now I am back, with little to do until the semester starts up in a couple of weeks. There are some things I should probably be doing, like organizing my crap and looking into grad schools, after all if things go OK I only have 2 semesters left ACK!

Last night was NYE, I think I might have rang in the new year kissing a boy.. But really did he have to slip me the tongue?