Relaxing

Vespa keeps Nick company as he relaxes on the couch, reading about why my bread has been turning out so deliciously crusty and soft lately (the most recent loaf not withstanding).

Plum-licious

Yesterday represented the first time in six years that we harvested the plums in the rain. We picked 65.2 pounds yesterday, and Nick will finish off the job today.

The plums are still a little on the green side this year, owing to the cool summer we had, but we felt that getting them off the trees now would serve us better than letting the squirrels throw half-eaten plums on the ground to rot. Let the plum-processing begin!

Update: Nick finished picking all the plums we could reach. (Some are too hard to get at, so we’ve left them for the squirrels.) Total harvest for 2008 is 73.2 pounds - down a little from years past, but not bad!

Dinner experimentation

It’s been a while since I posted anything about our kitchen exploits. Probably because our culinary adventures have been reduced to whatever we can throw together in 15 minutes when we get home late.

Our veggie box from spud! came yesterday, though, and I felt inspired. Best if all it only took about 20 minutes to prepare. It’s a keeper! We wrapped the sauteed greens in warmed tortillas and gobbled fresh corn muffins on the side. Heaven!

Cheddar Chipotle Chard
modified from a recipe by EatingWell.com

2 teaspoons canola oil
1 small onion, halved and thinly sliced
1 pound chard, stems and leaves separated, chopped
1 medium tomato, chopped
1/4 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth or water
1 canned chipotle pepper, minced
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 can garbanzo beans
2/3 cup shredded sharp Cheddar cheese

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onion and cook, stirring often, until softened, 3 to 5 minutes. Add tomato, broth (or water), chipotle to taste and salt; bring to a simmer. Add chard leaves and garbanzo beans and cook, stirring, until just tender, about 2 minutes. Scatter cheese evenly over the chard and cook, uncovered, until the cheese is melted, 1 to 2 minutes more. Serve immediately.

National PARK(ing) Day

See other pictures of PARK(ing) Day on Flickr

I like to take my camera with me all over the place. It’s inevitable, though, that the day I forget, something like National PARK(ing) Day happens. I was casually riding my bike home from school after a meeting with my mentee when I rode past the scene pictured above. People were hanging out, listening to music, soaking their feet in the wading pool, and generally enjoying the strip of asphalt that would otherwise be used to store someone’s car.

BikeSnob described the event the best: “Basically, what [the event] meant was a bunch of people in different cities took over parking spaces and turned them into little temporary parks. (Or, more accurately, just did weird stuff in them.) The idea as I understand it was to help people imagine all the other things you can do on the side of the road besides just leaving cars there, and how much better the world would be if the streets were lined with freaks instead of Hondas.”

Note to self: Pack camera in bag for capturing more freaks not Hondas. 

Curtis Gilbert

Hot-diggity! As of this weekend, I’m nine for 10 climbs this year. The one climb that I didn’t summit, I actually made it 75% of the way there, but I pooped out. (Turns out I was on the cusp of a two-week illness.)

In the spirit of climbing things I haven’t done before, I picked Curtis Gilbert for last weekend’s adventure. Dave and Glenn hadn’t been to the area either, so it was a triple-first.

Originally, we planned to climb the Conrad Glacier (hoping to help some basic students graduate), but no students signed up and none of us felt a pressing need to climb a glacier. As a result, we ditched the rope, harnesses, pickets, etc. With light packs on our backs we skipped our way up to Warm Lake, where we bivy’d before a speed ascent of the Klipton Ridge to the summit. We got there so much earlier than planned that we napped on the summit for a full hour and a half! Yummy! We even had time for a swim in Warm Lake (which isn’t as warm as you’d think) on the way back down.