Meteor Shower Tonight

 "PERSEID METEOR SHOWER:  The annual Perseid meteor shower is underway. Earth is passing through a wide stream of debris from Comet Swift-Tuttle, and each time a fleck of comet dust hits Earth's atmosphere--flash!--there is a meteor.  Forecasters say the shower will peak on Thursday, August 12th, and Friday, August 13th.  You can see Perseids flitting across the sky at any time between about 10 pm on Thursday evening and sunrise on Friday morning. Observers who get away from city lights can expect to count dozens of meteors per hour, especially during the dark hours before dawn.

Last night, Brian A. Klimowski caught this Perseid streaking over the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff, Arizona.

BONUS:  If you go outside a little early on Thursday evening, around sunset, you'll see a beautiful gathering of planets in the sunset sky--Venus, Mars, Saturn and the crescent Moon.  It's a nice way to start a meteor watch.  Sky maps may be found at http://spaceweather.com."  -Spaceweather.com

It's always fun getting these e-mails!  Hopefully there are few clouds and the insane amount of light pollution where all of us live is at a minimum. 

Sorry for the unpersonalized post.  Dave just returned from a trip to Telluride (think I can get him to write a guest post telling us about his trip?) and I'm in hard core class-prep mode. 

And no, a meteorologist does not study meteors, but you'd be surprised how many people ask me that!

Back to School

All I want to do is take a trip to Target and pretend that I have back to school supplies to buy, just to be a part of the chaos that is a university town filled with new freshman and their parents during dorm move in.  Yes, we have little kids in this town too, so I'm sure I could enjoy the glue-buying crowd as well.  I really have zero things I need from Target, so I will just stay home and work on my own back to school stuff. 

The week in between my vacations I had a meeting with my fellow professors where I had an "Oh yeah, I have a real job that starts up soon" moment.  The moment lasted no more than an hour and I skipped off to vacation #2 and didn't crack a textbook the whole trip.  Really, this is very unlike me.  During the school year I was working 14 hour days and almost all weekends.  It definitely all caught up with me and slacker/vacation mode suited me better than I ever could have known.  Having a month off was something I don't think I've ever had, ever.  Although I could have been working diligently to make my life that much easier in the future, I really did not do much work in July.

I returned home this weekend and spent the first two days doing everything I could think of that didn't involve actually cracking a book (unpacking, cleaning, figuring out my bus schedule for the fall).  Well, yesterday I finally took a hard look at my calendar and had a little flip-flop in my stomach.  Apparently this is what it takes to force me to get down to business.  I have very few work days left before classes start and for my new, very upper level class, I have only prepped about 1/20th of the semester, and not well.  Luckily, my other three classes I have taught before and spent the beginning half of the summer perfecting my materials for those.  I guess I'm down to the wire and today will be spent not surfing the internet for fun blogs, but actually creating some hard-core lectures. 

Life is good, I feel refreshed, I'm stoked about my new job, but it's time to get down to business so my stress levels don't go through the roof once school starts!

I'll leave you with my last picture taken on my trip to New Jersey.  I'll call it, "Vacation's over."  As we got through security at Newark, we looked out the window and saw the sun rise over NYC.  And now, back to reality.

Soft Pretzels and Doughnuts!!!

Dave and I ventured to a gluten-free food fair in Denver one Saturday last summer where we were treated to gobs of cakes, breads, crackers, and other such gluten-free goodies. One of the ideas that really sold to me was Jules Gluten-Free flour. Rather than buying a $6.00 chocolate cake mix any time I want to make a cake, why not use my grandma's chocolate cake recipe and just substitute the typical all purpose flour for gluten-free flour? Well, normally this is a no-no because you can't just throw in rice flour and expect your cake to actually have the texture of cake, but with the Jules Gluten-Free flour, you can use it in any recipe you want because it is formulated to act like regular all purpose flour!

The next weekend I started experimenting with my new (and pricey) flour after Jules e-mailed me a recipe for soft pretzels. AMAZING!  Try it here: Jules Gluten Free Soft Pretzel Recipe.

My first soft pretzel in years

Okay, so if I can use her flour for one of her recipes and make something that tastes guiltily glutenous, the next test was to see if I could use the flour for a random recipe. Somehow doughnuts came up. Back in the hay-day of eating whatever I pleased, I could easily put back a bag of powder sugar doughnuts or enjoy a Krispy Kreme or two when I was in Milwaukee. I've definitely gone without this treat since being diagnosed with Celiac Disease and I thought I should give it a try with my new flour.

I made doughnuts and doughnut holes and glazed, rather than frosted them.

I found a copy cat recipe for Krispy Kreme-style doughnuts. I cut the recipe in half (something you should always do with caution when baking) and still had enough for about two cookie sheets full of doughnuts. Check out the recipe here:  Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Copy Cat.  Just sub the Jules Gluten Free flour for the flour!  Believe it or not, I don't have doughnut cookie-cutters lying around, so I just used a wide glass and a large shot glass for the doughnut shape.  Also, make sure your yeast is not old!  I tried this at my parents' house and had no success with some yeast I found in the fridge.  This recipe is time consuming, so give yourself a few hours for the whole process while letting the pastry rise a few times.  I started at about 8:00pm and finished just before midnight with this project, so I'm sporting my PJs.  These were delicious!  My mouth is watering just thinking about them!   

Atomic Buffalo Turds (ABTs)

ABTs, atomic buffalo turds, are the ultimate summer hors d'oeuvre.  These are smoked jalapeno peppers stuffed with chorizo and cream cheese then wrapped in bacon.  ABTs are classic party food at Dave’s old roommates’ house.  These friends are the ultimate do-it-yourselfers and boy can they cook!  ABTs are commonly consumed with homebrewed beer (hard cider for me!) before dinner.  Here’s my take on ABTs.

Ingredients:
1 package cream cheese
6 jalapenos
3 chorizo sausages, raw
6 slices of bacon

Directions:
Clean the jalapenos and cut each of them in half.  Get out all of the inner membrane and seeds to avoid overly spicy ABTs.  Wear rubber gloves when working with mass quantities of jalapenos!  Otherwise, the oils get on your skin and your hands can burn for days.  Also, if you touch your eyes, nose, or other sensitive body parts (think about this for a minute), you may regret it.  Trust me on this one.

Chorizo is a sort of Mexican pork sausage.  You want to find raw chorizo for this recipe.  You can sometimes find it in sausage link form, sometimes in a tube of meat, sometimes just set out in a container ground-beef-style.  You won’t need a huge amount of this, so you may want to just freeze half for your next batch.  On the stove, put chorizo in a frying pan and cook.  If your chorizo was in sausage link form, remove the casing and use the meat only.  Drain the grease.  Remove from heat and stir in the cream cheese until smooth. 

Stuff jalapenos with the chorizo and cream cheese mixture.

Put a half-piece of bacon around the jalapeno it bind it together with a toothpick. 

Smoke on low heat until bacon is cooked.  Dave’s old roommates used an actual home-made smoker for this purpose and let them cook for ~2 hours.  I have cooked these on the grill on low heat (watch out for grease fires!) and also broiled them in the oven on a cookie sheet, which works in a pinch, but to really get a true ABT, smoking over low heat is the way to go!  One of the projects on our to-do list is to make a smoker out of terracotta pots and an old stove we got from Dave’s Grandad.  I’ll let you know if we are successful. 

The longer you cook the jalapeno the less spicy they are, so keep this in mind if you have sensitive guests.  If you get a spicy batch, cut the spice by serving some mild queso with chips, glasses of milk, or spoonfuls of sour cream, depending on your degree of desperation.  I have read that vodka cuts the spice, but this has never actually worked for me.  Do you have any secrets to sooth a burning mouth?  

My first garden

After 5 years in a small apartment with no personal outdoor space of my own, I'm spending my first summer at my new digs, complete with community garden!  This is something I've been looking forward to for years!  We managed to get a very small plot and after doing some research (okay, I looked at probably two webpages), I found out that it's best to wait until Memorial Day weekend to plant in Colorado if you want to avoid frost.  I weeded and turned over dirt for an entire day, laid down some organic compost (organic only or the old garden ladies will murder me), and the next day, planted my first garden.  I planted tomato, pepper, and strawberry plants, then used seeds for oregano, basil, dill, beans, peas, broccoli, carrots, beats, and a butternut squash.  This all fit in a plot perhaps slightly larger than a twin bed.  I didn't really know what I was doing, so I just went for it. 

The view isn't too shabby from our garden plot.

Long before finding out we made it to the top of the garden-plot waiting list, we started an indoor garden in tubs and slowly moved them outside as the weather warmed up.  These tubs included cherry tomato bush-types, peas, beans, and tons of herbs.  

And then it hailed the day after I finished putting in all of my plants outside.  The problem was, we weren't home when it happened.  If we were, we could have stood outside with umbrellas over our plants or dragged our tub garden under the overhang.  Unfortunately, we returned home shortly after it finished to find random piles of hail resembling snow covered the area.  I was very upset and somewhat frantically removing chunks of ice from the bases of our tub plants when Dave saved the day with some xmas lights and a plastic tarp.


The next day we surveyed the damage to the garden plot and the tubs.  This hail storm took most of the leaves off of my plants and the leaves that were left were scarred and yellowed.  So, I wandered back to the store and got three more tomato plants, two more pepper plants, and one more strawberry plant.  Assuming the hail-damaged plants would soon die, I planted the new plants in very close proximity to the half-dead ones.  In the case of the tomatoes, all of the plants survived, so now I have six HUGE tomato plants within about a 2 by 2 foot area.  Oops!

We got hail several times after this and one time Dave was able to collect a few hail specimens and save them in our freezer.  Only in a house with two meteorologists would hail in a freezer be considered a romantic gesture!

Anyway, on Friday we took a walk to the garden plot and discovered our first rewards, four ripe tomatoes!  I left for the airport minutes later, and took one for the road.  Not knowing if it would be allowed through security, I sat there at DIA and enjoyed my tomato.   

Vacation #2: Wisconsin

As if 10 days in New Jersey wasn't enough, now I'm on family vacation #2, only this time it's MY family!  I got back to Colorado early Monday morning and flew to Wisconsin Friday evening, leaving Dave to fend for himself back home.  Saturday my parents, brother, and I drove north until we finally reached our destination, a collection of condos conveniently located in the middle of nowhere.  Here we have our annual extended family vacation consisting of somewhere on the order of 40-50 cousins, aunts, uncles, and Grandma.  We spend the week hanging out at the lake, enjoying water sports, swimming in the pool, eating lots of horribly unhealthy food in Wisconsin-sized portions, relaxing, and enjoying the company of family.  We have been coming here for more than 20 years!  

Oddly enough, I can't get a cell phone signal, but I do have wireless internet!  

Here's an old picture of the lake we're staying on.  It really is a beautiful place to relax for a week!

RIP Dave's ipod

After our camping trip Dave couldn't find his ipod.  The day we left for New Jersey he mentioned this to me over breakfast.  He mentioned that it could be anywhere, maybe in a jacket or his pants pockets.  His camping cargo pants happened to be drying on the back of my chair from laundry day the day before.  I put my hands into all of the cargo pockets and found nothing, then checked the top pockets.  I put my hand in and wrapped my fingers around his ipod nano.  He looked at me with a smirk thinking I was joking, but then realized I'm not good at being funny.  I took the ipod out of his recently washed pants, tried turning it on, and got nothing.  I immediately felt awful for washing his ipod and ruining it the day we left for a trip with long bus, train, and plane rides, and started to cry.  I was so sorry that I didn't think to check his pockets!  Were his pants actually IN the laundry basket or just next to it?  If it was next to it, this meant he hadn't gone through the pockets because he had deemed the pants not dirty enough to deserve to be washed just yet (like when I wear jeans for a week without washing them) so I should have either not washed them or at least gone through the pockets.  This was definitely my fault.

Dave calmed me down by assuring me that it wasn't the end of the world.  I later went to take a shower and he asked me if I wanted to listen to music in the shower, handing me the squeaky clean ipod.  Always the jokester!  I let him use my ipod touch on the plane while I watched really bad movies that Continental deemed worthy of showing to a mixed audience ("The Last Song" is possibly the dumbest movie I have ever seen.)

We let the ipod dry out over vacation in hopes that it hadn't been entirely ruined.  I tried plugging it in upon our return Monday and got nothing.  Now it's time to replace it, but it brings up too many decisions to be made:  should he get the updated nano?  the ipod touch?  wait to find out if the rumors of the iphone switching to verizon service are true?  This dilemma is an apple-geek's dream, so much research must be done before he decides which upgrade he will go with. 

RIP Dave's ipod. You were green, rounded, could play movies, helped Dave train for his 10k with your Nike + ipod capabilities, and were filled with Manu Chao, Phish, and Toubab Krewe.  You will be sadly missed.  I may make you into a Christmas ornament since you are green and now worthless.

A slick deal: our new espresso machine!

Dave rushed through the door before we left for vacation and said, "I'm going to Broomfield, there's a slick deal on an espresso machine!"  There is a "slick deals" webpage where people with a lot of time on their hands post slick deals that they find in order to help out their fellow cheapskates.  A slick deal has to be an extreme savings in order to be a true slick deal.  We check this webpage every now and again, particularly around xmas time, and have gotten maybe two or three good deals in the past from it.  This particular deal was for a $1299 espresso machine marked down to $299.  I convinced him to let me call William Sonoma before he drove a half an hour out of his way for something that could be sold out.  The first rule of slick dealing is never to call because as soon as the employee realizes the deal, he or she may take it for themselves.  I called.  The helpful woman on the phone informed me that a man just called and put their last one on hold.  Okay, that was enough for Dave, we were too late.  I, on the other hand, was not about to give up.  I've been wanting a good machine for years and have been checking Craigslist for a good one since Christmas.  I called the William Sonoma at Mayfair in Milwaukee and they had one left!  I had them hold it for me.  My generous dad agreed to pick it up for me on his way home from work, then ship it to me here.  I felt pretty silly for having my dad do this for me all for an espresso machine, but here was my reasoning:

I like lattes.  Grande soy white mochas, to be precise.

One of these runs me about $4.55 at Starbucks, my coffee house of choice due to its proximity to my work(s) and, well, everywhere.  This past spring semester I drank two of these a week when I walked by Starbucks on the way to my early morning class after my bus ride.  Now, this is a very conservative estimate of my coffee drinking.  Sometimes I wanted a drink in the afternoon to get me through my night class, this only adds onto my Starbucks fund from there.  This fall I will have four early morning classes, meaning I might be tempted to spend $4.55 four times a week!  Let's use the twice a week estimate.

2 X $4.55 = $9.10 per week X 52 weeks per year = $473.20 on coffee at Starbucks per year. 

This is a lot of money!  A few years ago I drank one a day!  That's $1660.75 per year.  (I think that translated to about 7% of my graduate student salary at the time.  Smart.)

When I don't drink lattes I make drip coffee at home or bialetti coffee or plunger coffee (don't ask) or even french press coffee.  While these are all great ways to save money, they just don't taste as good as properly made espresso, meaning I am tempted to get my Starbucks fix too often.  (I sound ridiculous in my reasoning here, sorry.)

Of course by having my own machine I'm not making coffee for free.  There's the initial cost of the machine ($299+shipping), the cost of coffee beans, and the cost of silk vanilla soy milk (Costco!).  Still, in the end, I think this machine will pay for itself off in the first year if I avoid Starbucks 100%.  Plus, I'll get to enjoy tasty coffee every day of the week!

I will miss going to Starbucks though.  I actually enjoyed the interaction of getting my morning coffee, and if I had time, sitting down on the Starbucks couch to grade any last-minute papers before rushing off to class on a cold morning.  It made me feel classy, which is what they want, I'm sure.

Well, the espresso machine just arrived and in the last 24 hours I've tried it three times.  Yum, yum, and yum!!!  All I have to do is turn it on, put my cup under the spout, push a button, and my perfect espresso comes out.  I can then froth my milk if I so desire.  It's a Delonghi Perfecta.

Thus far I am very hyper happy about the purchase!

Phish Tacos

Having five couples on vacation together meant each of us got one night to show off our cooking skills to the 14 person crowd.  This could have been a nightmare for a gluten free gal, but somehow, through some thoughtful menu making on the part of Dave's family, I was able to eat every meal and they were all delicious!  A few desserts I had to avoid, but it just gave me a great excuse to walk down the road for ice cream instead (I ODed on lactose one night for sure, oops!)

As it turns out, New Jersey has a large supply of seafood due to its close proximity to the ocean.  Clearly we don't get much fresh seafood here in Boulder where most of the fish I buy has been previously frozen.  Therefore, for our meal, Dave suggested we make fish tacos.  I reminded him that my fish tacos normally taste like nothing, but we decided to go for it anyway.  My first fish taco experience was at the Denver Aquarium last summer where we ate in a restaurant surrounded by schools of fish swimming by.  I've been trying to match that flavor ever since, and I think we got it this time! We went down to the fish market in Sea Isle City, grabbed three pounds of fresh mahi-mahi, and made some pretty successful fish tacos that had some great flavor to them.   See fish taco recipe below. 

My phish-head enjoying the Denver Aquarium in summer 2009.

The next night we had a "Country Boil" which featured fresh jumbo shrimp.  This involved boiling potatoes, onions, kielbasa (ring bologna for us Midwestern folk), corn on the cob halves, and jumbo shrimp in water seasoned with Old Bay.  This was something completely new to me and I really enjoyed it! 

Other fabulous meals included fajitas, pulled pork, and grilled chicken and veggies.  It was a great week for my tastebuds!

Phish Taco Recipe (I'm scaling portions down to a 2-4 person meal rather than the 14 person meal)

Ingredients
1 lb Mahi-mahi
Fish marinade (recipe from Bobby Flay of the Food Network):
  1/4 c. oil (olive or canola)
  1 Tbsp chili powder
  1 lime juiced
  1 jalopeno finely chopped (set small amount aside for pico de gallo)
  1/4 c. cilantro finely chopped
Jicama slaw
  1/2 jicama grated
  1 lime juiced
  Kosher salt
Pico de gallo
  1 large tomato or a few small ones finely diced
  1 Tbsp cilantro finely diced
  1 Tbsp red onion finely diced
  1 Tsp jalopeno finely chopped
  1/2 lime juiced
  pinch salt
Drizzle
  3 Tbsp sour cream
  1 Tbsp mayo (olive oil mayo just came out-- make the switch, people)
  1 Tsp cider vinegar
  1 Tsp lime juice
  Dash of paprika
Avocado
Corn tortillas
  oil

Directions
Make the fish marinade by whisking ingredients together.  Marinate fish for 20 minutes then grill the fish, skin side down (if there is a skin side) for 8 minutes over medium high heat, then flip over for another 8 minutes.
 

Grilled mahi-mahi

 Make the jicama slaw by pealing the jicama with a knife or carrot peeler.  Cut it in half and grate it on a cheese grater (the biggest holes).  In a bowl, stir together the lime juice, pinch of kosher salt, and jicama.  Jicama is found near the weird vegetables in my grocery store, like mushrooms and fingerling potatoes.  If you can't find it, substitute white cabbage dressed with cider vinegar and a pinch of salt (Don't want to cut up smelly cabbage?  Grab a bag of prepackaged coleslaw that hasn't been dressed yet.) 

Jicama slaw

 Make the pico de gallo by combining all ingredients in a bowl and seasoning with salt to taste.  (When I made this at the shore, I used 10 tomatoes for a huge batch and put out chips so that people could munch on the pico while the fish was grilling, which kept me from feeling too rushed by the hungry masses.  By the end of dinner it was 100% gone.) 

Pico de gallo

 Corn tortillas are gluten free, but they fall apart if not properly prepped.  After months of thinking that microwaving would suffice and having my taco insides end up plopped on my plate, I have decided that corn tortillas must be fried in order to properly hold food.  Throw a Tbsp of oil into a hot frying pan and throw in a tortilla or two.  Coat in oil by flopping them around in the pan and wait for them to puff up a bit.  Keep them warm until you're ready to serve them. 

With a fork, combine the drizzle ingredients.  Taste the drizzle and add more acid (lime or vinegar) to taste.  It should be tangy!  

Lastly, if avocados are affordable and ripe, slice one up into small pieces for taco filling.


Serve the fish, jicama slaw, pico de gallo, avocado, and drizzle in corn tortillas.  I just took all of these items and put them in order on the bar so people could make their own tacos with what they liked.  Plan on each person having 2-3 of these tacos.  Rice or a lettuce salad with lime vinaigrette dressing make great sides for this dish. 
 

Enjoy!

I Was Told There'd be Cake and Eiger Dreams

My trip to the shore was going to involve several firsts:  my first time flying into Newark, my first time swimming in the Atlantic Ocean that I can remember, my first time to New Jersey-- home of my live-in-bf, first time meeting two of Dave's three brothers, his grandma, his two nieces and his nephew, his sister-in-law, and his brothers' girlfriends.  I wouldn't say I was nervous, but I also didn't really know what to expect spending 10 days with them in a house that didn't have enough beds or rooms for any sort of privacy. 

Before I left I had a catch-up lunch with a few of my girlfriends where Melissa, being the thoughtful person that she is and knowing that I needed something fun to read on my trip after sensing my nervousness, brought me two books of hers to read on the beach.  One of the books, Eiger Dreams, is by one of my favorite authors, Jon Krakauer, author of Into the Wild, now a major motion picture, and Into Thin Air, the story of the Mt. Everest tragedy of 1996 that he was a part of (one of my all time favorite books).  Eiger Dreams is a collection of essays about his various mountaineering expeditions.  I had a hard time concentrating on the technical stories in this book while on the beach, but when in a quiet room by myself, I really enjoyed reading it. 

The other book was, I Was Told There'd be Cake, essays by Sloane Crosely.  This book is hilarious and great for beach reading when there are occasional interruptions from 2- to 5-year-olds needing someone to hold their hand while jumping over waves.  The essays are a collection of random stories from her life told in comedic fashion.  I particularly loved the essay called "You on a Stick," which documents the story of Sloane being asked to be the maid of honor in one of her high school friend's weddings, a friend she hadn't spoken to since high school.

"Weddings are like the triathlon of female friendship:  the Shower, the Bachlorette Party, and the Main Event.  It's the Iron Woman and most people never make it through.  They fall off their bikes or choke on ocean water.  I figured if I valued my life, I'd stay away from weddings and they'd stay away from me."

"In the movies, brides cry of joy on their wedding day, sashaying down petal-covered aisles in six-thousand-dollar dresses.  In real life the crying comes way earler, usually in the confines of a bridal suite bathroom, and results from the stress of a bouffant gone awry or a missing mother-in-law."

"The bride on her wedding day is like a giant eggshell of emotional turmoil ready to crack and turn this whole feast of love into a trauma scramble.  ... The five-alarm freak-out comes not from cold feet or anything having to do with something silly like the actual prospect of sleeping with the same person for the rest of your life.  It comes from not wanting to look puffy in posterity." 

I highly recommend bringing this book on your next vacation to the beach!

As it turns out, my fear of the unknown quickly dissipated when I realized that Dave's family was just like Dave:  fun and easy to get along with.  What better way to get to know someone's family than spending an entire week sharing close quarters with them?  Still, I'm glad I had some great books to read on the beach!