rachel@home

Random Weekly Wrapup

Notable Events of the Week:

I got a bicycle! I have been stalking one on eBay for a few days. I really hate buying things on eBay, unless I can do the 'buy it now' option, because I mostly lose at the last minute, or I mean to bid, but then forget at the crucial time. I did that on another item this week, where I was going to bid at the last minute, but was then actually working at the right time, so I lost. But the bicycle is mine! It's a local sale, so I get to pick it up on Tuesday after work. Then I can go on all kinds of wonderful bike rides.

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My microwave died. This happened, of course, the very same day that I finished the careful preparation of foods to be heated in the microwave. Sigh. So this week was an adventure in heating food without a microwave. It went fairly well. Almost well enough to consider living microwave-free and reclaiming all that counter space, but not quite that good. So instead I'm trying to find the tiniest microwave I can find. The one I'm looking at right now is positively itsy-bitsy for a microwave. It looks like this:

And it measures about 14 inches square. My current one is over 20 inches wide, so that would be some significant savings. I'm not sure if my dinner plates would fit in it, though. It says it takes a 10" dinner plate, and I think mine are 10.5". Decisions, decisions.

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Camping preparations are coming along nicely. We have a huge pile of stuff by the door. I was thinking, hey, no problem, until I realized that I also had a coolor, maybe two as well. We may have some fun fitting everything in tomorrow! We will be leaving as early as we can tomorrow afternoon, in hopes of beating traffic. That is probably just a pipe dream, though, and I am expecting to spend a lot of time looking at brake lights. We still need to grocery shop too. But the list is all made, and the master list of everything that needs to go in the car is completed as well.

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I have watched two tv shows in the last two days where cooking lamb is a central feature of the show. It grosses me out. I'm really way too picky about the kinds of meat I'll eat, I've decided. But it's hard to be rational about it. No venison, lamb, buffalo, or ostrich for me. Also, hot dogs. Although those are on the menu for this weekend. I'm going to get them at Trader Joe's and hope that I will feel that they are organic enough to eat them.

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I started reading an interesting book the other night. It's called From Hardtack to Home Fries, and is a history of American food. I was very excited to discover this book, as it exposed me to a whole new genre of books -- food history books!

Other books in this category that sound interesting include: Grandma's Wartime Kitchen: World War II and the Way We Cooked, The Old-Time Brand Name Cookbook, Whistleberries Stirabout Depression Cake: Food Customs and Concoctions of the Frontier West, and Stories and Recipes of the Great Depression of the 1930's and More from Your Kitchen Today.

One thing I had heard before I bought the book is that it discusses the origins of the 'Mock Apple Pie' -- the pie made with Ritz crackers that does not actually contain any apples! The book says (supposedly, as I have not read that far yet) that it could have its origins in the Civil War, when they had hardtack crackers to eat, and not much else. It will be interesting to get to that part.

So far, though, there have been no happy stories of bread or anything else baking. We launch right into the Irish Potato Famine, complete with entire families starving to death in their collapsed cabins, and Irish being unable to cook the food that other countries sent them as aid -- either because they had no fuel, or because they just didn't know how.

I am hoping it gets cheerier as it progresses, although probably stories of not having any fresh fruit and making do with nasty crackers because you're miles away from your family and busy fighting your fellow countrymen aren't going to be too cheerful either.

Adventures in Cooking

Or, this entry could be called 'The Effects of Television'.

I redid my TiVo lineup the other day, got rid of reruns of That 70s Show (as I've seen every episode in the last couple of months, and find myself all too quick to use something from the show as a reference in everyday life -- kind of like Eric on That 70s Show is always making Star Wars references in every possible situation) and added a couple of FoodTV shows.

One of those shows is $40 a day, which I used to watch, but then FoodTV changed its call letters or something and confused my poor TiVo. The other one I added is 30 Minute Meals. They are both hosted by the same person, Rachael Ray, whom I like even though she spells her name wrong.

So over the last few days, I have watched no less than 5 episodes of 30 Minute Meals. I decided that I would cook up some stuff today that I could have for dinners and lunches this week. A fine plan, indeed.

Freshly under the influence of Rachael, I rush out and buy all sorts of delicious sounding things. Ginger root to grate, fresh cilantro, limes, couscous. Also kool-aid, which I don't think she recommends.

When I got home, I made two different dishes. The first is pretty boring. Just brown rice, black beans, and corn, to be served with plenty of super-spicy salsa. This is a tried and true quick dinner that I eat often.

The other dish was my masterpiece. I whipped together a marinade of olive oil, lime juice, grated ginger, crushed garlic, cilantro, smashed mango, and of course some cayenne pepper. I let the chicken soak in it for a while, and in the meantime I cooked up the couscous (which I must use more -- it took 5 minutes to cook, and is quite tasty) and began chopping up stuff to add to it.

To the couscous I added: minced red pepper, green onions, chopped cilantro, diced mango, and half of a chopped up lime. (I added the other half to the cherry koolaid -- gourmet koolaid, whee!) Then I grilled the chicken on my George Foreman grill (as silly as the thing sounds, it does work superbly for this sort of thing) and sort of pulled it apart with forks when it was done, then added it to the couscous mixture.

I added a bit more olive oil, some salt, and a bit more cayenne pepper, then added up the pulled-apart chicken. (I use the 'breast tenders' so the pieces are pretty little to start with.) Then I had a bowl for dinner. I was SO impressed with it. It turned out very good. I think that next time I'll use more couscous, because it sort of got lost with everything else. That was the only downside, though.

I also spent way too much time tonight messing around looking up geneaology stuff. I found a list of Snoddy researchers that has been active for about seven years, and I think I found some hookups, but there is a crucial missing link where there's no information. But if it does hook up like I think it does, (and it almost has to, there are so many maiden names of the women in question that are middle names of the men that I know I'm related to) then I've found information back into the 1700s.

The girls are home for a while tomorrow. We shall spend our time in a whirlwind of washing clothes and watching all (well, maybe just some, there are 10 hours' worth) of the 'I Love the 70s' episodes from VH1 that I've been recording for Abby.

Serene Saturday

I was up late last night, but was not allowed to sleep in this morning, as the phone started ringing before 9am. What's up with that?

I actually got out of bed at 9:30, and it was a full 90 minutes before I was prepared to do anything at all, and noon before I left the house for my planned walk to the mall for coffee and exercise.

I hadn't been walking very long, when I got company. The parents of Abby's friend and softball teammate Kelsey had seen me walking while they were driving by, and stopped to say hi. It was nice to see them, as I hadn't seen them all summer, and I discovered that they live quite close to us now! Or, perhaps I should say, we live quite close to them now.

I got to the mall, wandered through the farmer's market, and then got my coffee and drank it outside while I read my book and people-watched. It looked like there was lots of back-to-school shopping going on, as I saw many moms with teenaged kids walk by.

The book I started reading is called Life of Pi, which I succumbed to after seeing it on the top-10 list every day at work. I didn't get too far into it, but the writing style is very beautiful, and I'm really enjoying it so far.

On my way back home, I walked back through the farmer's market and got a bouquet of flowers. They are so pretty, and were so cheap!

I couldn't resist using the closeup feature of my camera to take some more shots of them. Those are here, and the pictures are bigger than usual, because having them larger really shows them off!

On my way back home, I got passed by approximately 40,000 tiny little kids on tiny little bicycles, and decided that I really did need to get a bike. By bike, I think I'm only about 5-10 minutes away from Marymoor and the lovely Sammamish River Trail, and I could even do minor grocery shopping and other errands and get exercise at the same time. I almost bought a bike last week in a fit of consumerism, but now I am even more determined.

My unpacking is coming along, although not terribly quickly. I do have my kitchen counter pretty much cleaned off:

I keep saying I am going to work on the girls' room, but they will be here tomorrow, and if I face reality, I am not going to even darken the door of their room before tomorrow.

Family Tree

In a moment of late-night inspiration (really, is there any other kind?) I decided that I must use my half-formed wiki software to create a source of family information.

This was after I was playing around on the Ellis Island website, and realized that I had forgotten, once again, the names of my great-grandparents. For shame.

Then I realized how perfect the wiki software would be for this problem. Wiki is a way of creating collaborative writing and easily linking from one node to another. In the context of the family tree, this makes it very easy to link from parent to child to grandparent to siblings -- just list the parents, children and siblings of each person in their node, and then it's easy to follow up, down, or sideways.

I've entered some names in already, and hope that more family members will add in more information, as well!

The page for all of this is here.

Leavenworth/Monroe Pictures

Yes, these are two weeks old, but they are still doing better than my Texas pictures, which are languishing somewhere on my hard drive.

I didn't actually get out my camera on our weekend trip to see Oliver until we were checked out of the motel and on our way home. I still managed to take almost 70 pictures, though!

On a trail somewhere along highway 2.

Look Mom, no hands!

All the rest of the Leavenworth pictures.

Great-grandma Thompson's house in downtown Monroe. (I was apparently 'very determined' to find this. And we did!)

Great-grandpa Gerber's house outside of Monroe.

We got the full tour of the inside of this house, which was so fabulous. I took lots of pictures, and they are all available here.

The weekend was very fun. We saw Oliver in Leavenworth at an outdoor theater, which was really good. I remembered all the songs, and they were all very well done. We also got to walk around downtown Leavenworth, buy chocolate, and swim in the motel swimming pool, which felt great, as it was SO hot!

The drive over and back was nice too, with lots of trees, and cute little shops that we stopped in. My favorite was the rock store near Shelton (???). They had so much cool stuff there. I'm not a huge fan of the stores in Leavenworth, as they are mostly filled with generic touristy stuff. The rock store, however, had very neat bowls, especially. I almost bought a couple, but then remembered that I was still neck-high in boxes at home.

My other almost-purchase was the 5-volume set of Washington history that was published around 1909, and was for sale at the fruit stand for $12 a volume. I so wanted it, but managed (just barely!) to pass it up. I probably would have bought it if the lady I was asking about it would have been more helpful and encouraging, but she sort of brushed me off, so that made it easier to take my apricots and head for home!

Milestones

There are all sorts of small milestones when moving. The early milestones include packing the first box, taking possession of the new place, moving the first things in.

Middle milestones include turning in keys at the old place, unpacking the first box, and even having a room mostly finished.

Then come the later milestones. These are the sorts of things that make you feel like you have really been living there for a while. Running the first load in the dishwasher, doing the first load of laundry are included in this list.

Today, I accomplished another item from the later milestones -- vacuuming. This is a significant later milestone, because it means, first of all, that enough of the floor is uncovered that vacuuming is both necessary and possible.

It also means that the franticness of daily survival is winding down, and there are fewer panicked moments about the necessity of getting to work before noon, fully dressed, which leaves more time to consider the stuff on the floor.

It means that the vacuum is in a known location, that it's possible to move the vacuum from where it is to the spot that needs to be vacuumed, and that enough stuff has been moved away from the walls that a plug is available.

Unfortunately, even though I've vacuumed the living room, the kitchen is still in need of much attention. Hopefully in the next week or so I'll reach the milestone of having cooked something more substantial than melted cheese sandwiches.

Finding Mars

Last night I decided we should go see if we could see Mars. I really had no idea what we were looking for, or where we should go to get a good view. My initial thought was somewhere away from the lights and up high. Where that might be, I was much less certain. At about 9pm, in spite of Katrina saying she was tired, (I'm so mean, dragging the children out when they want to go to bed!) we hopped in the car and took off.

We tried the baseball field where Abby played first. It has plenty of open sky, and is up on Education Hill, but when we arrived, there was a game going on in the field nearby, and all the lights were on, so it was too bright to really see anything.

Then I had a brainstorm. Carnation! A while back we went on a girl scout event to a park in Carnation, and it seems like it is kind of on a hill there. So we went out to Carnation. The girls seemed impressed at being out late, and made many comments wondering what people in other cars were doing out so late, too. We got to the park, and I didn't even get lost getting there, which impressed me, as it was dark, and I'd only been there once before.

We parked and got out, but almost right away, the park ranger showed up and said she was locking up the gate, so if we weren't camping, we'd have to leave. I asked where a good place might be to go, and she said we could just park outside the gate if we wanted to, and walk back in. The gate was close, so that was all good.

Once we were settled in the big field, Abby spotted Mars almost right away. It was low in the sky, and definitely had a reddish glow to it. We saw one falling star -- me only out of the corner of my eye. The moon wasn't up yet, so the stars were fully visible. We looked for falling stars for a while, but didn't see any more. As we drove out of town, the moon started to come up.

In spite of Katrina saying she was tired earlier, she didn't fall asleep on the way home, and she wanted to stay up to watch the last half of Stargate, which I suppose was an appropriate ending to the evening.

I still have pictures to post from the weekend in Leavenworth and Monroe, but haven't even looked at them yet. Maybe tonight!