Squash and crockpots

Snow days have me yearning for comfort food (not to mention hot chocolate or a soy chai latte).  The Rogan Josh somewhat falls into that category, a sensory delight, hot and delicious-but the lamb left both Mike and I a little queasy and foggy.  We are wondering if it was the fat content in the lamb.  I found some crockpot recipes for this week knowing I would be tired of cooking and that I had busy days (I cooked early last week to get through those days).  I needed marinara sauce for one so I made that Monday to put on spaghetti squash for us/noodles for the boys.  Great recipe!  I did use proscuitto (still getting through that big pack I bought at BJ's) instead of saltpork and left it in the marinara.  Leave it out for vegetarians.

The butternut squash lasagna was heavenly!  My definition of a comfort food.  I couldn't find Whole30 hot Italian sausage so I used 90% lean ground beef, red pepper flakes and fennel to simulate it.  And I added about 5 cloves of garlic to the tomato sauce in the blender.  I'm a garlic freak, what can I say?

Day8-Monday
Bfast-fritatta/onion, mushroom,garlic with guac + 1 strawberry
Lunch-leftover rogan josh
Dinner-marinara over spaghetti squash, mesclun salad with tomatoes and cucumbers and olive oil/ raspberry balsamic, mustard vinaigrette

Day9-Tuesday
Bfast-fritatta crammed with onions, mushrooms, garlic and tons of spinach, 3 strawberries
Hardboiled egg after MTB
Lunch-chipotle
Dinner-Butternut squash lasagna casserole, chicken "wings" (see below), and mesclun salad. A small handful of dried cherries for dessert

Kaveh made these awesome chicken wings with wing drummettes and legs at Deep Creek.  I throw in thighs too to feed hungry boys (and meateaters like me).  This time I just used the legs and thighs.

Chicken "Wings"
(preheat oven to 375, I did 400 last time and it worked well)

legs and thighs, with skin removed (about 3 lbs)
6 cloves garlic, minced
avocado or olive oil
red pepper flakes
salt/pepper

sauce

8 oz Frank's Red Hot sauce
2+ TBSP ghee
2 TBSP apple cider vinegar

Put wing in large bowl.  Toss with oil, garlic, a couple of dashes of red pepper flakes and salt and pepper, seasoned to your liking.  Put in 13x9 pan or cookie sheet covered by foil (for easy clean-up) and place in oven for 25 mins.
Mix sauce by melting ghee in large pyrex or the like in microwave.  Add hot sauce and vinegar and whisk together.  Preheat grill to med/med-high heat, depending on how closely you will watch it.
Take chicken out of the oven, and completely douse in sauce.  Place on grill and baste with leftover sauce, making sure to do this only 2x as you need to thoroughly cook the sauce if the chicken was in it.
I typically leave the chicken on the grill for 2 mins per side and do each side 3 times.

YUM!

We had Josh Brogen for dinner

For the main dish, we made Paleo Rogan Josh.  It smelled amazing while cooking, so I decided to add a side of faux rice pilaf.  

Day 6 Whole30

Day6-Saturday

Mike gave me a break and made breakfast this morning, as I've been cooking all week (and chopping, and shopping, and reading-how does a person with a full-time job outside the home do this??).  So, without further ado...

Breakfast-fritatta with mushrooms, onions, garlic and proscuitto topped with homemade guac (avacado, onions, tomatoes, jalopenos, and lime), banana
Lunch-raw pad thai (I made a ton knowing we'd all be tired of thinking about what to eat today)
Snack-sweet potato with ghee and cinnamon, a few almonds and 2 dried cherries
Dinner-Fuddruckers elk burger, just the patty, with avocado, sandwiched in lettuce leaves, tomato and pico de gallo.

We read what Fuddrucker's seasons their burgers with and we believe it may have had a little brown sugar in the seasoning.  We both are feeling foggy for lack of a better word with a slight headache, but boy did the burger taste good.

Earlier today, I was noticing how clear-headed I felt and it's been easier for me to remember things, like passwords that I normally forget. And my energy levels are very good.  Interesting...

Whole30 for the record, first blog attempt, yada yada

We started Whole30 on Monday Jan 19 at noon.  For now, this a record of the meals we've eaten and hopefully a link to some recipes, for posterity, or maybe to help someone else. The first post is going to be a spew as it's been 5 days. 1/6 done!!

Day1-Monday
Lunch-Chipotle-for Mike and I, this will always be a salad, carnitas, all 3 salsas and we split the guacamole.
Dinner-chili with ground beef and veggies for us.  Casey can have beans, no meat in hers.  Lots of chili.

Day2-Tuesday
Breakfast-Frittata with onion, garlic, spinach and broccoli.
Lunch-out to lunch at Great Sage, roast potatoes with 2 sauces, buffalo broccoli salad with lime dill vinagrette, shared a smoothie with Casey-banana, peach, mango and spirulina.
Dinner-roast chicken/an orange (so I didn't get too full before going back to class then I bonked at cycling class as I didn't have enough fuel after cross-training)
After class snack-microwaved sweet potato with ghee and cinnamon and something else, lots of water

Day3-Wednesday
Breakfast-Proscuitto cups, strawberries, banana
Lunch-Potato soup, roast chicken  ( I basically use this recipe, use leeks instead of onions and and a whole30 approved oil, don't use escarole, use whole30 veggie broth or chicken broth and add chopped green chilis as the pototoes are cooking, can also add carrots)
Dinner-More potato soup, chicken, fruit, salad

Day4-Thursday
Breakfast-Frittata with onion, mushroom, garlic, spinach and broccoli topped with salsa.  orange, strawberries
Lunch-potato soup with crispy proscuitto
Dinner-Raw Pad Thai, modified dressing for whole30 (use almond butter and coconut aminos instead of soy sauce and don't put in maple syrup) with chicken (cubed, sauteed in coconut oil, salt and pepper, ginger and garlic)

Day5-Friday
Breakfast-Scrambled eggs with mushroom, onion and proscuitto, banana
Snack-small potato soup, almonds
Lunch-sweet potato mash with ghee and cinnamon, orange
Dinner-Raw Pad Thai (so yummy and I need more veggies), oven cooked chicken wings, drums, thighs

After dinner snack- another bowl of pad thai veggies with dressing

Snacks have been small amounts of dried fruit, a handful of almonds, an apple here and there, oranges and strawberries.  And I made sweet potato chews, roasted then sliced and roasted again sweet potatos coconut oil and cinnamon.  YUM!


Lots of water, and 2 cups of black coffee every day.  I love my coffee.  Oh, and when I say eggs in the morning, it's always 2 or 3 for one of us.

I had a headache Tuesday morning from overdoing it on the weekend, too much wine and sugar, probably knowing we were going into this.  But I have felt mostly good ever since, except for the lack of energy Tuesday when I sorely miscalculated the fuel needed for my 2 workouts.

We feel like we've been eating more decadently than ever, the fat makes up for the usual fillers.  Bread, pasta, beans, chickpeas, cheese etc. are replaced with avacados, proscuitto, eggs (with yolks), ghee and sweet potatoes.  What's not to like?

We've seemed to avoid the normal timeline of headaches and wanting to kill all the things.  We think it's because we eat fairly healthy normally, we don't rely on grains and sugars.  But I've also had lots of energy to cook and shop this week. Talk to me in a week or 2.  Speaking of shopping, this is really hard on the budget.  Very expensive to buy organic foods and the oils needed to do this.  Not for the budget-conscious in our opinion, but most likely very worth it for 30 days.  TBD.

the boring room

My other blog, 'the boring room'

Broken Hammer Forge

My son has had an interest in swords and metallurgy for a few years now.  I've been looking for a class we could take together, but every guild I could find had a 16-or-older requirement.  It makes sense of course - steal doesn't like to bend below 1500F or so.  Happily, Dave Collier at Broken Hammer Forge agreed to let my son and I take his beginner course as a team. The result was a wonderful weekend and enough skills and confidence to move ahead in our at-home workshop.

The first day involves plenty of basics and practice time.  You also start to understand the dichotomy between the simple concepts and specific tool designs.  Our home forge includes an anvil (aka 2' section railroad track), simple forge, a buck of water and a couple hammers.  We learned how to use various parts of actual anvils as well as a variety of hammers and a few critical tools.

By far, the most enjoyable part was building our own pair of tongs for the final project.  In retrospect, it makes total sense, but prior to a weekend in Dave's shop, it hadn't occurred to me that I might need something with which to pick up the glowing orange pieces of steel.  It took about 3 hours, and probably don't look like much, but these tongs will get some use in the near future.

In addition to the tongs, we ended up with a variety of practice pieces.  At the top right are a couple practice nails we made.  Next to them is a piece on which we practiced rounding (square stock), shoulders (moving mass), and twisting.  I turned the bottom piece in a ginormous fish hook, and the last piece is actually a usable hook. We used bees wax and brass to protect a couple of the pieces.

I hope we can make it back for an intermediate course next year.

Android build on Ubuntu 64

After fiddling with what should have been a trivial matter (i.e., following directions on android.com) I kept running into:
user@AndroidBuilder:~/android_src/out/host/linux-x86/bin$ ANDROID_SWT=/home/user/android_src/prebuilts/tools/linux-x86_64/swt ./android avd
using /home/user/android_src/out/host/linux-x86/framework/sdkmanager.jar:/home/user/android_src/out/host/linux-x86/framework/swtmenubar.jar:/home/user/android_src/prebuilts/tools/linux-x86_64/swt/swt.jar
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: Cannot load 32-bit SWT libraries on 64-bit JVM
at org.eclipse.swt.internal.Library.loadLibrary(Unknown Source)
at org.eclipse.swt.internal.Library.loadLibrary(Unknown Source)
at org.eclipse.swt.internal.C.(Unknown Source)
at org.eclipse.swt.internal.Converter.wcsToMbcs(Unknown Source)
at org.eclipse.swt.internal.Converter.wcsToMbcs(Unknown Source)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Display.(Unknown Source)
at com.android.sdkmanager.Main.showAvdManagerWindow(Main.java:354)
at com.android.sdkmanager.Main.doAction(Main.java:307)
at com.android.sdkmanager.Main.run(Main.java:118)
at com.android.sdkmanager.Main.main(Main.java:101)

I searched high and low, and finally decided to edit the out/host/linux-x86/bin/android script, swapping the classpath order to -classpath "$swtpath/swt.jar:$jarpath" \ (i.e, put the swtpath first).  Note from my invocation of the android script that ANDROID_SWT (and therefor $swtpath) is pointing to prebuilts/tools/linux-x86_64/swt.  However, if I let the jarpath come first, java wants to use the wrong swt.  With this tweak, instead of a stack trace, I get:

It's also annoying to install jdk6 on Ubuntu 12.04.  I blame Oracle...

Shopping part 2. Happy ending.

48 hours ago, I received a 'final' notice from Amazon stating that my return request had been denied and no further action would be taken. I thought about it a bit, and wrote up my thoughts on the situation.

This morning, an Amazon representative called my cell phone and talk with me. Within 10 minutes a return had been arranged and the representative applied a promotional credit to my Amazon account.

The Internet is an interesting place.

Shopping

This weekend I walked out of Lowes (empty handed) and made my purchase on-line.  Why?  After an hour of looking for cork board, with the 'help' of a few employees, I finally realized they didn't have any.  (At least they didn't add insult to injury by saying 'we can order that for you'...)  The employees weren't able to tell me if they had a product; so I left my cart with the few items I had found and took my money elsewhere.

For me, Amazon has been a model shopping experience for years now. (I was any early 'Prime' customer.)  It's so simple:

1. search for my item
2. press the Prime button
3. pick the result I like
4. click 'Add to Cart'
5. within 1 or 2 days the product shows up (with free shipping)

Instead of spending an hour or more driving and finding out a store doesn't have something, I'm done in a minute or two.  And if any thing is wrong with the product, returns are easy.

A couple weeks ago, however, this process broke down.  It seems that step #2 (above) is happy to yield products not covered by Prime.  The product I ordered (using my trusty work flow) had free shipping, so everything seemed fine.  But it didn't arrive in 1 or 2 days; it arrived 5 days later - after we had left for a trip.  No problem; I presumed I could simply return it for not arriving on time.

I was wrong; my 'Prime' search had yielded a product not covered by Amazon or their 2-day shipping guarantee.  I called Amazon and was unhappy with the tone and message they conveyed.  I was told that pressing the 'Add to Cart' button is not the right method; you need to specifically select a vendor (from a series of smaller, less noticeable buttons) to ensure you get Prime shipping.  You also need to double check the final order.  I told him I've been doing this a long time, and it was them who had changed, not me.  He said 'sorry'. I also received a terse e-mail from Amazon saying there is nothing more to discuss.

Lesson?  With the exception of BestBuy, I don't think I would have received this sort of treatment from any brick-and-mortar store I know.  Maybe there is hope for the old way of doing things.  Maybe I'll give up a bit of convenience to work with local shops a bit more.

Charm City Cross

Thanks to Kevin D for the nice picture. Only problem is, I shouldn't be all alone like that in a cross race. We'll work on that this weekend... Chris and the C3 guys did another great job this year. 600+ racers and plenty of spectators. Add in some tasty pit bbq and Clipper City brews on tap and you have the makings of a great day.

As for the race, the course and the weather were both great. 4 required dismounts per lap (barriers, stairs, sand, and some landscaping timbers...) kept things interesting. I started in the second row, and just slowly faded backwards throughout the race. We'll work on that part next week too. On the last lap, I slipped on one of the timbers and have a nice purple ankle bruise as a memento to my clumsiness. Guess that's three things to work on!

Alec raced U19 and had a great time. I hope CX can maintain this level of chill that permits us non-elites to mix it up with faster folks. It's so cool to see every one giving it their best and getting a little dirty at the same time.

If you want to get an insiders view of the race, check out this video. You might even see me in there somewhere. :)

Best way to start the day

Cub scout geocaching

Smoke What? (non 420 related)

Pat even practices his smack talk.  For the record, he smoked every one for the next 13 hours.  I guess he is a man of his word.

A test

att msging unlimited + twitpic + kevin (not a twit) + samsung impression

Hugin

Stitching photos together on a Mac isn't as easy as you'd think.  iPhoto and Aperture do not support the ability to create panoramas from multiple photos.  Hugin (freeware) does a decent job, however.  I found a set of pics I took while dining in Seattle's Space Needle a few years ago and gave it a go.

Green

Not satisfied with Santa and the Easter Bunny, our house is also plagued by Leprechauns that turn everything green. Even if you close your eyes, green milk still tastes weird.

Grime. We call it toothpaste.

It doesn't taste good either.

Ben's 'tude. This vid shows it.

Someday, some one will have to get a pic of me and my one-handed cycling/video technique, I guess.

Mike

Critical Mass in Columbia? :)

Nah...we're just out riding with Luke!

Powder Sledding

A little bit of snow on the back deck stairway makes a nice sledding ramp...

and the runoff area works out pretty well too - as long as you miss the fish pond.