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.