Tag Archives: travel

holiday cheese! i mean, cheer!

{09 January 2009}

happy new year, internets!

it’s time for the catch-up post, photoblog style.


orphan thanksgiving

thanksgiving is pretty much my favorite holiday. orphan thanksgiving, as hosted by the gracious Keenans is a wonderful, four-day turkey extravaganza, where guests and friends are welcome (and do) return for leftovers throughout the weekend. which is good, considering the quantity of food that we created this year. it included two turkeys (one smoked, one brined and then roasted), salads and green beans and Palmer Cheesy Beans (don’t ask) and i think three kinds of stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and rolls, and of course booze of all kinds. my contribution is a vat of turkey gravy (why is the quasi-veggie in charge of making the meat sauce? i have no idea. but i’m good at it). oh, and don’t forget the Ice Cream Freezer and the Pie Triumvirate. i heart my chicago family.


holy cheese tower, batman!

in december, my roommate, anne, and threw our annual holiday party, Fondukkah! the party in which we celebrate all things christmas, hanukkah, swedish, and cheese. why those four? it’s the ideal recipe for the pan-cultural holiday party, something for everyone. we have a tree and gifts and cookies set out under the stockings (hung over the radiator with care) and the usual trappings of christmas, we have latkas and dreidels and hanukkah traditions, we make a swedish smorgasbord of glogg, meatballs, crepes with lingonberries, cured salmon, and, to top it all off, several pots of fondue. culturally, if not in practice, anne is jewish, i’m catholic, we’re both from swedish families, and in case none of that resonates for ya, everyone likes cheese. admittedly, this was not a party where a vegan could nosh with abandon.


sweet, sweet procrastination

in my gradual quest to become a competent baker*, i have recently moved from cookies and quick breads into the realm of pastries. on christmas eve i made my second attempt at making pie crust (and an apple pie) from scratch, and was pretty pleased with the results. the process took about three hours, at least three hours, but, really, what else does one want to do on christmas eve morning than watch the snow fall and bake an apple pie? i’ve still got a ways to go when it comes to a blemish-free appearance, but the crust was delicious, light, flaky, fully cooked on the bottom and not at all chewy or tough (these are all improvements over my previous attempt). the recipe (thanks cyn!) came from Cook’s Illustrated, and the secret ingredient is…vodka. for real. what’s up, food science?** aside from vodka, the key to pastries is to keep your fat (butter or crisco (shudder) or whathaveyou) COLD at all times. it needs to be chilled between every step, or the room temp and your warm palms will emulsify the grease and then you don’t get the desired flaky texture.


kitty terrorizes gingerbread town

continuing on the theme of holiday sweets was our the modern art gingerbread house. the kit provided the pieces and instructions for making a gingerbread train, but how boring it is to just follow the directions. carrie, the art major in the family, deserves most of the design credit. i mostly just functioned as a backseat designer/peanut gallery. oh, the cat helped, too.


there was snow, and lots of it. and skiing! (though not nearly enough of that). but i got to finally break in my new birthday skis and boots. this is the first time i’ve had new gear since i was in high school, and the technology has definitely changed. up until last week i was still skiing on my pair of 185cm K2s, long skinny skis that were so cool when i bought them in, oh, 1994. while i’ve loved those skis and they’ve served me very well, i’m pretty happy to change my allegiance to my new nordicas. shaped skis, what a concept! the epiphany i had about shaped skis was realizing that half of what i need to do is simply get out of the way and let the skis do the work. if i just relax and stop working them so hard, they practically turn themselves. i can’t say that about the old K2s.

and finally, some gems from travel, including the ipod vending machine (las vegas has everything), the handmade-quilts and guns store, and the some other things you only see in idaho:

oh, yeah, i’m writing this on january 9 and our christmas tree? still up. still lit. i feel a little guilty about it, but it’s not still up out of pure laziness, but a combination of laziness and my continuing love for having a bright, shiny ornament in the living room. i’ve been taking special note of how many other apartments on my street have trees still glowing in their windows. apparently, i am not alone in my love for holiday decor lighting the dark days of january. it’s better than the store windows full of spring fashion, yo. it isn’t nice to taunt chicagoans with displays of sundresses and tank tops when there are 10″ of fresh snow on the ground and the lake is frozen over for the foreseeable future.

how were your holidays, comment box?

*actually, it’s really just that my favorite way to procrastinate is by baking.
**gluten, which forms when water and flour combine, can’t form in the presence of ethanol. so the point of using vodka is that you can have liquid that makes the dough pliable and workable, but it doesn’t count as water. clever, no?

on the road again

{24 November 2008}

i’ve been traveling a lot this fall. first it was idaho, and the bay area, then minneapolis, then southern california. so, here are some pictures of pretty things.

minneapolis. mpls, as it turns out, is a great city. i’d never been there and didn’t know much about it, but architecturally i found it to be this incredibly aesthetically appealing combination of new and old, industrial and modern. i was there for a couple of nice, mild fall days: i went for runs along the river and walked around the city quite a bit. however, the architecture of the human habitrails make it clear that winter in MN is no joke.

long beach. what does long beach have going for it? well, as near as i can tell, it’s not orange county. forgive me, my beloved OC’ers, but i had a pretty visceral reaction to the OC last weekend*. anyway, about the last thing i saw on the beach here was this shot, immediately afterward this weird mid-afternoon coastal fog rolled in and obscured everything. and made my hair curly. it was a lovely, 65 degree day, which meant that midwestern tourists like me went to the beach and the locals stayed home and wore polar fleece.

the gypsey den. so as not to totally malign the OC, i did get the opportunity to have a big hippy breakfast and the best chai i’ve ever had and what is probably the lovliest independent coffee house on the planet. i claim no credit for discovering it; it’s a childhood haunt of lau‘s. and it is a goodly place.

*contemplating a move there for work. more details when i’m able to process them/share them/know them myself. tantalizing, i know!

come here/go away to wrap up 2007

{31 December 2007}

so there were a lot of half-finished posts that fell by the wayside, and treading water backwards is not worth the effort. so we’ll summarized the busy past couple of weeks with an installment of come here/go away and then move on to thoughts of 2008.

come here: dr. atomic. H and i caught this at the lyric the week before christmas. i have almost no experience with opera, so the whole process was impressive – the grandiose opera house, the scale on which everything is done. however, sitting still for a three hour anything is not really my specialty, and i found myself getting antsy during the first act (okay, i get it: it’s the night before you test the first a-bomb and you don’t know if you’ve invented something that will ignited the atmosphere and kill us all. an intriguing question but not really three hours’ worth of plot, and i’ve seen the same material treated much better by the excellent Carson Kreitzer). that is, until i reminded myself that plot isn’t the point of opera. the audience is meant to sit back, listen to the music, look at the big pretty stage pictures and just be. as a sometimes-play-goer, full-time-play-maker, i’m used to being very actively engaged in a production. it took me a while to realize that i needed to actually disengage a bit in order to fully appreciate the experience, but once i did, it was lovely. still, it’s sad that my total lack of musical talent/education means that there were probably many levels on which i failed to fully appreciate the work. it did look pretty, tho.

go away: aimee mann holiday spectacular. it pains me to have to give aimee mann a “go away” because i totally dig her, and her band sounded really great live. a “holiday spectacular” however, is not a concert. there was too much standup riffing with guests who are probably people i’d know if i had cable or ever watched tv but who really weren’t that funny, and guest spots for off-beat musician friends who were quirky but totally NOT AIMEE MANN. also: aimee mann fans are OLD. and suburban. when did aimee mann stop being hip? maybe i was just feeling curmudgeonly that night. still, the ticket was free, courtesy of my roommate who works at the concert house, so i should really shut up and stop complaining now.

come here: sweeney todd. i’m pretty emphatically not into musical theatre and so i didn’t know sweeny todd particularly well. the sondheim purists i saw the movie with objected to some of the changes (songs deleted/rearranged, mr. todd’s part transposed from a baritone to a tenor for the tender vocal cords of johnny depp), but i totally dug it. the production design was so excellent, tim burton just keeps getting better.

come here: christmas with the family. it snowed and snowed and snowed, and provided for skiing and snowshoeing in the meadow, and there was a cute baby (my brother’s wife’s sister’s baby, which we decided still makes him my nephew, for simplicity’s sake). i cooked christmas dinner (turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, sweet potatoes, salad, and chocolate chip oatmeal cookies – everything from scratch) without any major disasters (with the help of a rotating cadre of sous chefs, it must be noted, some of them more helpful than others).

go away: food poisoning i got from the denver airport. for two days, i wasn’t sure what my own name was. on the upside, by the time i recovered, i’d lost those pesky holiday pounds and started the whole eating-well-in-the-new-year with a fast. food poisoning and breakups are the most effective weight-loss tools i know.

come here: visits with old friends. had the nicest visit with A’s parents when i was in boise last week, the odd circumstances of our relationship notwithstanding. i hadn’t heard news of any of his siblings in more than a year, so catching up with the doings of the family was nice, and they are such gracious, lovely people that we navigated around the obvious social land mines without trouble. why do i bother to keep up with my former in-laws? i’m honestly not sure. i don’t do it out of a desire to maintain any sort of connection between me and my ex. if anything, it’s because in the past year i’ve learned to appreciate the myriad of forms that interpersonal relationships can inhabit, the blurred distinction between family and friends. there’s no substitute for having good people in my life, and cutting people off out of a sense of injured pride brings a hollow sort of satisfaction.

when i got back home a number of college friends passed through the windy city, including the lovely wabes and entourage, also p & j, and db. (ha! nicknames and initials for everyone!). catching up was good.

come here: good jobs & engagements & baby news. lots of friends with news this holiday season. it’s all happening to the right people and i couldn’t be happier for all of them.

go away: cold cold cold! as i write this, the windchill is -6. this is the cold when homeless people freeze and poor people can’t heat drafty apartments. it’s no good. also, where do the wild bunny rabbits of chicago go when it gets this cold? wikipedia informed us that rabbits don’t really hibernate but they sort of hibernate, but it didn’t really answer the question, where do they go in the winter?

come here: chicago smoking ban! hooray! as of jan 1, the smoking ban finally goes into effect for bars. i intend to invest more time holding up a barstool at my local now that i can do it without stinking like an ashtray. i should be more sympathetic to the smokers shivering in their boots out in front of the bar, trying to hold a cigarette in mitten-clad fingers, but i’m really not. now’s the time to quit! then you have more money for the other vices! our own cold turkey wonder woman inspires many.

come here: the ginger people’s ginger chews. my tongue is on fire and i’ve eaten about half the bag while writing this. mmm, ginger candy.

{06 April 2007}

there was a blog entry, but then i ignored the “backup battery power” warning on my ibook, and then there was darkness and no more blog post.

we’ll assume it was the wittiest thing i’ve written in ages and mourn the loss.

but to summarize: most of the blogging has been going on over at the training log, which i’m not necessarily recommending as interesting reading for the general public, but it is the reason that i’ve not been blogging here of late. running daily means that i’ve been logging my runs daily, and i tend to wax poetic at the same time about the weather, or nature, or being outside, or whatever i’m thinking about while i’m running, so the urge to write is being satisfied even if i’m not writing much of consequence.

week before last i ran the shamrock shuffle, me and 30,000 other people, on the first beautiful spring day in chicago. much of the race experience was just about learning how to cope with the crowds, the public transit, the start corrals, etc. but i felt pretty good about my time, too. i’m starting to think of myself as a 9-minute miler rather than the standard 10 i’ve used to calculate time/distance for the past year. maybe i’m actually getting stronger/faster? cool.

so this weekend is my birthday trip to new york. i got in late last night and crashed at wabe‘s and josh’s place, where they introduced me to the late night passover snack that is matzo brei, which is sort of like french toast, unleaven style.

this afternoon, while the good people of the world are working toward their easter holiday, joe and i are watching golf. i am learning that one can ascertain a player’s nationality based on the cut of his pants. pleated baggy pants? definitely american. even young fit guys like tiger woods still look frumpy/stuffy in their golf clothes. i always sort of figured that all golf fashion was old-man frumpy, but it turns out it’s going thru a phase sort of like tennis clothes did when the williams sisters arrived on the scene. all the european guys have nicely cut, flat front pants and slim shirts that show off their bodies. i imagine what tiger wood’s closet must look like: rows and rows of pleated dockers, a million shades of drab, followed by a rainbow of sweater vests and knit shirts with the little alligator on the pocket. how is it that tiger woods could be playing the masters and no one told him that a fawn-colored sweater vest does NOT go well over an orange polo?

travel guide to knoxville, TN

{06 January 2007}

comment box says:

if you have any hotel or food recommendations for knoxville, please let me know.

i’m not exactly an expert on knoxville now, but my travel advice would be threefold:

1) get a GOOD map. knoxville is like the bermuda triangle for mapquest, and locals have the charming tendency to give directions like, “go up the road a spell and turn where the old Kroger’s used to be.”

2) the marriott hotel was lovely, if somewhat eclectic in its architectural style. also, a fun factoid is that a Tomato Head, located in the Market Square downtown.

enjoy!

good start to a new year

{04 January 2007}

the big news for the new years weekend was that my older brother, chris, and teresa got married!

the wedding was beautiful, and the reception was about the most fun one i’ve been to. (i was helping plan/coordinate/generally boss people around, so i ended up not taking hardly any pictures, but fortunately the event was well-documented and i’ll have pictures to share before too long).

i want to go to a wedding on new years eve every year. what better way to start out the new year than being filled with love and good will? plus, the occasion provides a perfect theme for the party. teresa’s family and friends are wonderful, and i am thrilled to be getting such an amazing woman for a sister-in-law. also, i was charmed by knoxville.

there was the awkward realization while i was looking at the seating chart that i was basically the only unmarried (and definitely the only single) person at the entire wedding. erg. but in spite of the giant opportunity to be bitter about being single, the whole wedding weekend actually helped renew my faith in love rather than making me more bitter. i don’t yet know how to cope with the idea that andy could just up and walk out on me. i don’t know why this is the third time i’ve had my heart broken, or why i can’t seem to get it right. but seeing chris and teresa together made me believe that they have found a partnership to last forever. and then i saw my parents, and teresa’s parents, and my grandparents, all in turns on the dance floor, dancing cheek to cheek. i don’t know why i can’t seem to find that. but it cheers me to know that it does exist.


on another note, having experienced a decent-sized sample of US airports recently, it’s safe to say that knoxville, TN is by far and away my favorite. empty, even on new year’s day, small, clean, quiet. rows of rocking chairs lined up in front of floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over the rolling tennesee hills. and these huge leather lazy-boy recliners! (those are my own feet in the picture). i was so exquisitely comfortable it was hard to get up in time to board my plane.

homeless in SLO

{24 December 2006}

look closely and you’ll see that there is a person sleeping behind the plant. i spied two more people sleeping behind the christmas tree just beyond the view of this picture. who needs to go home for the holidays when you have the salt lake city airport?