walk walk walk

We originally had plans to catch a ride up with Trey to go snowboarding, but at the last minute plans fell through. We didn't feel like driving up ourselves because it can be quite the drive, so we just slept in! When I woke up, I felt like walking to Starbucks and treating myself to a coffee. Tim wasn't waking up so I lazed around with the dog until he woke, and then we set off! We wandered down several pathways to Solano and got some coffee. The weather was absolutely splendid so we decided to continue meandering and go to the fish store to take a look around. After we roamed around the fish store, we decided to walk to REI and check out some bike panniers. While we were at it, it would be insane not to stop by Performance Bike, too. Then lunch at Chipotle. Oh hell, why not walk the dog to the marina and wander along the water to the beach? A pause to let the dog swim. Another stop at the fish store and several hours later, we were home with a very tired dog and three puffers for our fish tank. Turns out we walked about 10 miles.

dead phones

Tim and I broke our phones a day apart from each other. He got snow in his pocket while snowboarding, and his phone thus died. I got mine wet at a rainy soccer game, and now it madly scrolls through all the menus and half the keys don't work. The rest of the keys don't work how they're supposed to, and there are no workarounds. Now I'm contemplating never buying a phone again.

Today was really fun, though! Tim came one last time to help me out at work, and squeeze a little more money out of Aurora. After work, I decided that Tim needed new polo shirts, because I am tired of seeing him wear polo shirts that are so old they are covered in holes. They are all at least 7 or 8 years old. So when we got home, we hopped on our bikes and pedaled over to Emeryville and went to Old Navy. We got him a bunch of nice polo shirts, and I am very happy about it. When we were at the cash register, he told the cashier that it was his biannual shopping trip. I thought he meant every 6 months, he meant every 2 years, and then I scoffed and said, as if! Try every 10 years.

We also stopped at williams sonoma so I could pick up some odd measuring cups. Those 2/3 cup, 3/4 cup, and 1 1/2 cups no longer require multiple measuring cups! Hooray!!

Tim also got distracted by a watch shop. I saw this watch with a purple face, and I really liked it. I moved on, and then Tim called me over and said, "I think you should get this watch" and pointed to the exact watch that I had liked. I tried it on, and liked it a lot. Then we were mesmerized by an awesome men's watch, so I bought both watches. Tim's watch is his birthday present, because he turns 24 years old on March 2nd!

We decided to eat dinner, and we found a little noodle bar called Zaos. We got some orange chicken, and a thai green curry chicken. Both were delicious, and we will probably head back someday! Yum, yum, yum. Then I pedaled home and took the dog for a long walk, and Tim went to music night to play trombone!

rain rain rain

It's a rainy day. I woke up and made some banana pancakes with a caramel banana sauce that Tim really likes. I watched an episode of a tv show called pushing daisies that I got from Netflix. Then I annoyed Tim out of boredom, and after that I went and read a book for a while. Now some tea is seeping, and I went to play with Navi but she won't play with me! The silver lining is that Adam is picking me up at 1:20, which is less than an hour away, for a soccer game. Adam is on my ultimate frisbee team and his soccer team is apparently in sore need of female players. He asked me to play and here I am, waiting for my first soccer game in a long time. I don't even mind that it is going to be a rainy game. Rainy games are fun. You slip and slide all over the place without hurting yourself and then when you get home, the hot steamy shower you take feels like a slice of heaven.

Navi is really annoyed with me today. She does not want to play. I've covered her with all of her toys, and boy does she have a lot. She stares at me with the saddest face instead of taking the bait to play! I spent some time amusing myself by blowing on her, to her great annoyance, until she started yawning every time I came near in an attempt to say, "LOOK AT MY TEETH. I want to EAT you but I'm far too sweet." After turning her into a toy mountain, I grew bored of her and now here I am with lots of stories to tell.

snowboarding!

We went snowboarding again today! Two of our friends had originally planned to go along with us, but they bailed at the last minute because they got drunk and didn't want to wake up. Lame. Anyhow, we decided to take the dog up so that she could play in the snow! We thought that chain control would be bad, so we left early...and even though we had to put chains on for about 15 miles, we ended up arriving an hour before the lifts opened. Time for a doggy walk in the snow! We rolled around with Navi and threw lots of snowballs at her for a while, and then we went back to the car, made her a little nest to snuggle up in, and then went snowboarding! We snowboarded for a while, and then Tim got a call that a few kids from his lab had just gotten to the mountain. We met up with them and hung out with them for a while. Eventually, the whole group split into two; the people who wanted to stay on the greens, and the people who wanted to go on more advanced trials. Tim, Trey, and I went over to the backside and snowboarded there for a while. When our stomachs told us we were hungry, Tim and I split off and went to the car to walk the dog and eat lunch. The doggy really likes the snow. She will roll around in it, dash around happily, and then look at you to throw snowballs for her to catch. We played with her for a very long time, then went to get some more snowboarding in. At this point, snow had started falling, and it was really windy. The wind was driving the snow and it would smack you in the face and our cheeks were very red. When we walked back to the lifts, we decided to take the lift up to the wall. This lift is plastered all over with signs of skulls and crossbones and the words "EXPERTS ONLY" underneath. It is a little intimidating, but Tim and I can pretty much get down any terrain. We may have to slide sideways and be ungraceful, but we can do it. I really like this particular lift because the metal on the lift is irridescent, which isn't the case with any of the other lifts. Its also kind of funny because the Wall is very aptly named. When you approach the summit, it really turns into, er, a wall of mountain. The chairlift goes from approaching at an angle to almost rising vertically. It was kind of crazy because at the very summit, visibility was somewhat low and you were getting pelted in the face by snow. It was worth it though because once you descended a bit, the wind wasn't as intense and the snow and terrain were wonderful.

vacation!

Sometimes when I leave the kitchen door to the garden open, Navi sits outside and waits for Tim to come home. She sits where she can see me at all times, and switches between watching me, trying to lure me out to play, and staring at the gate that Tim will walk through when he gets home.

Since Tim and I worked this weekend at Aurora building a false bottom in my pond, I didn't have to work today or yesterday (Thursday and Friday) of this week to make up for it: a 4 day weekend! I was so excited because I haven't had a break from work in a long time, and work is kind of getting old. Yesterday, I got to wake up whenever I wanted, and lounge in bed for a few minutes before getting up. I decided that I was going to take Navi for a long walk, and then grocery shop in the morning before the parking lots became so swarmed with people that the whole experience becomes terrible. The dog and I went for a walk with Tim, and then I spent a few minutes coming up with my arsenal of dinners for a week or so, wrote up a grocery list, shooed Navi into the car, and off we went! When we got to the plaza, I took Navi to sniff around Petco for a while, and then I put her back in the car and went grocery shopping. I got everything I needed except pork tenderloin and basil, which is really annoying. There were about 15 different pork tenderloins laying there, but they were all pre-marinated. Please. Is this what the world is coming to? We're so lazy and rushed that we can't spend 5 minutes putting our own freshly made marinade on a fresh pork tenderloin? I couldn't find any good basil; it is always brown. I read in a book recently that basil doesn't do well with moisture and refrigeration, so why doesn't the grocery store produce manager figure out some way to keep basil better? Anyway, minor irritations aside, the shopping trip was much less crowded than usual, and Navi and I were soon driving home, with one of our heads hanging out the window with ears flapping in the wind.

When I got home, I saw that two of my bananas were brown so I opened up the williams sonoma muffins cookbook from the library, and whipped up a batch of fantastic banana muffins. They are the perfect moisture content and so light and fluffy they make me twirl around in delight. While twirling and eating muffins, I worked on cleaning out the old stuff in the fridge to make room for the new arrivals. While doing so, I noticed that I had much more heavy cream than I'd thought! Next thing on the sechedule? Vanilla bean ice cream! I got out the eggs, lightly beat them in a large bowl. Then I brought heavy cream, milk, sugar, and vanilla beans almost to a boil. I slowly whipped this into the eggs so that they didn't scramble, and then poured this back into the pan, bringing the entire mixture to 170 degrees F. Then I poured this through a sieve into another bowl, and let it chill for a while.

While this was chilling, I took the dog for another walk. We ran around the park for a while, and I tried my hand at monkey bars. Unfortunately, since the cement slide that I thought was my best friend took a bite out of one of my knuckles a week or so back, there is a scab on my knuckles and it made trying to swing around on monkey bars painful. So we headed home, where I decided that the bathroom needed to be cleaned. I don't know where I read or heard this, but someone said or wrote that they liked to clean the bathroom with a paste made of dishwashing soap and baking soda. I hate having to clean the shower with bleach because it takes a long time and smells terrible. Our bathroom isn't well ventilated, so its even worse. I figured that I'd give this new paste a try with an old toothbrush and another hand scrubber that I have. It worked really well because its soap, with little scrubbies mixed in. So now I will use that mixture to clean more often, and thus only be reduced to battling with bleach for the most insistent, nasty bouts of mildew! Success! After scrubbing the shower, I noticed that the dog had wandered in and out of the bathroom with very muddy feet...so I scrubbed the bathroom floor and I went into a cleaning frenzy mopping up muddy footprints made by myself, Yoko, and Navi. In case you don't know, Yoko is the landlord's family dog and she likes to sneak into our apartment every once in a while when I leave the door open so Navi can go into the garden. She is a nice enough dog, but very timid and yappy. Luckily, Navi's not picking up on her annoying barking habits. Speaking of her barking habits, the landlords threw a party a week or so back, and they put Yoko on an upstairs balcony. She was barking herself into a tizzy like she does sometimes, and Tim and I had just gotten back from Pam's house. We saw the neighbors across the street stomp out onto their balcony and scream, "SHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT UUUUUUPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!" at Yoko. It didn't work.

Anyways, after everything except Navi's paws was nice and clean, the dog and I puttered around the house together for a while. After a while, I started setting out all the ingredients for mullagatawny soup out for Tim to chop up with his favorite knife. Once he got home I whipped dinner together with my snazzy immersion blender. I somehow forgot the onion, so it wasn't as flavorful as usual, but it was still delicious. I will have to remake it with onion, silly me, but there are worse things to screw up. It was much more successful than my last time trying to make it back when I was at RIT. That was a disaster that included blenders with ill-fitting lids, no flavor whatsoever, and lots of burns. No matter how many spices I added, it didn't taste good. I think it's because I really like the curry powder I use now; I got it from Vik's, which is a combination indian grocery store and restaurant near Pam's house and it is fabulous. Before, I was using cheap curry powder...and I think you should learn from my mistake.

Friday was equally wonderful. I dragged Navi's doggy trailer out once again, and attached it to my mountain bike. I locked out all the shocks, and then Navi and I set off to a trail. She sits in her doggy trailer with her jaw relaxed, tongue hanging out, and ears flapping! I think she really likes it. She doesn't have any problem with getting in and out of the trailer; I think if she hated it she would just refuse to get in. I pedaled and pedaled and finally we got to the trail where I let her out, unhooked the trailer, and locked it to a tree. I then unlocked all the shocks and we went mountain biking! She stampeded around after me, and got to meet lots of doggies including three very big weimeraners. There was a jack russel terrior who wouldn't listen to his owners because he wanted to follow Navi and I instead. After we'd biked the loop, I got the trailer all set and I pedaled the doggy home.

Friday's dinner was unusual; I made chicken and avocado in a cream sauce over curried rice. It is on page 30 of Pierre Freney's 60 minute gourmet. It was surprisingly yummy, even though it sounds like such an odd combination; cream, avocado, and curry? Yet it was good, and so simple that I will probably make it again when I have a single avocado nearing the end of life.

sugar cookies!

Today I decided to make and decorate sugar cookies! I stopped at Sur La Table on the way home to pick up gel food coloring. When I got home, I whipped out my martha stewart cookies cookbook, and found a sugar cookie recipe to try. It needed lemon zest...but I had an orange, and I like oranges...so I figured I'd use orange zest instead! I also used vanilla sugar that I made a while back by grinding vanilla beans and sugar together. They came out of the oven looking pretty, and you could see a million little flecks from the vanilla beans. I think they tasted pretty good, but I've never been the biggest sugar cookie fan.

Now came the fun(ner) part: decorating! I grabbed my immersion blender and its snazzy whisk attachment, and beat some powdered sugar and egg whites up and a third ingredient that escapes me right now until I had a big batch of royal icing! I thus had white icing, and with it I made four other colors: green, blue,yellow, and purple! I piped borders, let it dry, and then used a technique called flooding where you fill in between the piped borders haphazardly, then smooth it into place inside the borders. It worked pretty well!

It was my first time decorating sugar cookies and I had a lot of fun. I also made snowflakes, which I covered with some turbindo sugar for a cool finish.

By the way, I think it's best not to ask how many cookie cutters I own.

picnic!

Since Timmy and I were working all weekend, we kept eating out for lunch. I was really tired of eating out, so when Timmy said he had music night at 7p today, I asked when he was going to eat dinner. He said that I should meet him and we'd eat out but the idea made me want to throw up. I decided to do something better! Meet somewhere and have a picnic!

Having the idea in place, I pondered what food to make for the picnic. I originally thought something simple like pb&j or ham and cheese sandwiches...but it just wasn't good enough! I settled on making homemade pesto with basil, pine nuts, parmesan cheese, olive oil, and a few other things. Then I made pesto, chicken, and mozzarella panini's with an awesome sourdough round for the bread! It ended up being rather hectic whipping this all together before I had to leave to meet Tim. I also decided I wanted to take the doggy, so I had to set her trailer up and attach it to my bike! Even though I was convinced I'd never get everything done in time, I did! I packed the sandwiches (warm and toasty!) up in a tupperware, and added some nice brie, crackers, strawberry soda, cream soda, and got the dog in her trailer! Off we went, and we met Tim at the rose garden. We sat on a bench and feasted, while Navi imploringly nosed us for some food. The sandwiches ended up being awesome, and after we finished we decided to lock the bikes and trailer up and go for a walk in the rose garden so that Tim didn't have much time to waste before going over to music night at 7. It was really nice! Then I got a great workout lugging the dog back up the mountain.

valentines!

Sometimes I hate valentines day. It is so stupid - it is a day where you are forced to give each other gifts. Wouldn't you rather just surprise the person you love on a random day? Anyhow, we decided that we should go out for dinner, and that we should invite Pam along! Why not include more than one person you love? We decided that we should get pizza, just like last year, except eat at Zacharies. It's a deep dish pizza parlor on Solano that is pretty popular. We decided to go early so that we could avoid crazy crowds! It ended up being really fun, and I still laugh when I think about some of the conversation we had. It's crazy the way conversations morph and change when you are with good friends.

sigh

I hope you're not expecting me to clean that up.

Muffins!

I've really been on a muffin spree lately. I went to the library and found a muffin cookbook, and so many recipes looked delicious! I tried some applesauce muffins (because we have a huge glass jar of applesauce to use up!) that I really liked. They had a nice flavor - not overwhelming, but very delicious! Then I tried sweet potato cinnamon crunch muffins. Those weren't bad, but I think they would have been a lot better if I had used yams instead of sweet potatos. Maybe I'll try them again! Today I made orange cranberry muffins. And let me tell you something...it took all the determination in the world to not make the next muffins on my list - cinnamon buttermilk! I'll have to make those tomorrow!!

Doggy Walk!

When I got home from work today, I was in the mood to go for a long walk with the dog. Navi chomped down her dinner in a jiffy and off we went!

In Berkeley, there is a law stating that if your dog stays within 6 feet of you, they are considered leashed. I think this is a really cool law because I enjoy walking Navi so much more when I don't have to keep her on a leash. I think it's really fair because if your dog stays within 6 feet of you and is easily controlled verbally, they aren't going to ruin another pedestrian's experience. Your walking stride doesn't get interrupted every time the dog wants to sniff something, and it allows the dog to linger and sniff around a little more. Navi has always been great off-leash, but she didn't know to stay close when walking with us on sidewalks. She never ran away by any means, but we would have to vocally control her and keep her close. She's been learning that when walking on sidewalks, she needs to stay closer. When walking on paths or in the woods, she can run off and do whatever! Now she's really good at walking with us on city streets! She's also learning that she can't meet everyone she wants to meet. She's better at leaving people alone when we tell her to leave them if they are not interested. She also pays more attention to staying close than she did before, which is nice. I think she's mellowing out a little with age and realizing that we'll let her meet the people who want to meet her, so she just has to trust our judgment. She's getting so good with this that I only ever put her on the leash when there is a lot of traffic where we are walking.

Another really cool thing about the Berkeley hills is that there are tons of pathways for pedestrians that cars can't get through. The entire hill is filled with a maze of roads that would make walking to get somewhere a big ordeal if these pathways didn't exist. If you look at google maps and search for directions somewhere and select walking as the transportation, it shows you all the paths you'll need to take to get there fastest! It's really cool. I love how they managed to keep all those paths there! The paths are well used, too - it makes it easier to get home from wherever your bus stop is! I always see people using the paths.

I knew there was a small grocery store about a half mile away, so I found it on google maps, and figured out how to walk there. It seemed like an easy walk, so we meandered over. I didn't need anything at the store, but I wanted to know what kind of a grocery store it was. A general store with nothing useful, or a small useful store? When we got closer, there were lots of people out walking. They all loved Navi, and I had to stop every 5 seconds so they could pet her and coo over how gorgeous she is. I bumped into a man that Tim and I have walked past several times in the past. His dog had really bad cataracts, and it turned out that he was completely blind and deaf. The owner was really surprised that I was deaf, too, and it turns out he could only hear with one ear! So we made an odd pair. After chatting for a few minutes, I walked off to scope out the grocery store, and discovered that it was a very small store but I'm not sure how useful it is. It has a nice butchers counter though, so maybe it's good for fresh meat! I kept walking, and eventually I turned around to wander back home. Once again, I bumped into the man with the blind/deaf dog! He said that he was walking to the Blake House, which was about 4 blocks away. He asked me if I had ever gone there, and I hadn't...so he told me to tag along! It closed at 4:30p, so he said I wouldn't be able to explore for long, but he said I should know where it is to go back and explore sometime. Dogs are allowed! He seemed really pleasant, so we walked around together for a while. Eventually, we got to the Blake House, and it's really pretty! Free, too! I wandered around for about 10 minutes before the property closed, and I got kicked out. So I will have to go again sometime, with a camera to take photos of the property. Then Navi and I came home, where I baked....more muffins! I tried some orange cranberry muffins this time. When I was in Florida, I bought a few different loaves of bread on the last day to say thank you to all the people at Aurora in Florida. They are always so willing to help me out, so I grabbed a banana chocolate chip loaf, a caramel apple loaf, a pumpkin bread loaf, and a loaf of orange cranberry bread. When I gave it to them, they cut it up into slices, and gave me a slice of orange cranberry loaf. Well, I'd never had bread in this flavor before and it blew me away. It was so delicious. So I came home and made orange cranberry bread, and we've had it two or three times since. So today I tried another recipe for orange cranberry muffins. I haven't eaten one yet, but I think I should have left it in the oven another minute or two longer. Who knows! The few nibbles I had tasted pretty darn yummy! Then I decided I wanted to make garlic chicken for dinner. I wanted to make this for dinner on Saturday, but Timmy had a wicked craving for nachos, so we had to make those instead. Then I decided that I'd make the pasta from scratch too, so I found a new pasta recipe to try, and mixed it up! I let my stand mixer do the kneading while I started getting the chicken ready to fry! Then I made pasta, cooked all the chicken up, and made a buttery garlic-y mess of fresh pasta, breaded chicken, and yumminess! Then I realized that the whole dinner was really from scratch, because I had made the breadcrumbs myself out of bread that was about to go bad! Go me! :)