Saturday, June 19, 2010
"Runway NOTAM: Turf closed except AIRSHIP operations effective from June 19th, 2010 at 08:00 AM EDT (1006191200) to June 29th, 2010 at 08:00 AM EDT (1006291200)." Yay! The blimp is back!! We were wondering yesterday when it would arrive!
Posted at 1:06:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
We're going on our first hounding of the year, to Nantucket!
Posted at 12:56:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Friday, June 18, 2010
As is traditional, we played rock/paper/scissors to determine who would go get our ice cream at Kimball Farm, and I wiped the floor with Dean, but then I volunteered to get it anyway. I'm such a r/p/s champ! The first three rounds were stalemates, and then I won the next three in a row.
Posted at 11:33:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Laura: "I'd like a kiddie-sized peppermint stick ice cream in a cup, with an upside down cone on top."
Guy behind the ice cream window at Kimball Farm: "Do you want a cake cone, or a sugar cone?"
Laura: "Uh... I want a pointy cone."
Guy: "They're both pointy."
The water seemed less cold at the pool today, and it was much more enjoyable. I did lots of bottom-of-the-lane swimming, reallyreallyreally fast. I couldn't make it all the way across on crossing No. 6, but it was easy on Nos. 12, 18, 24, 30 and 36. Now every muscle in my body hurts again, though. Aaaaaaaaaaagh. And my neck is still driving me nuts. Evil neck. Guess what, I could go to bed, and I bet it would be fun!
We have been watching a new show on DVD: Freaks and Geeks (on the 4th episode now). I want to know if Jeff Barnes (from Chuck) was a freak or a geek in the 80s. Because he's both. I am kind of privately obsessed with Jeff and Lester right now, since I listened to the two-part Jeffster! special on Chuck vs. the Podcast last week. This prompted someone to say to me (online) "You are a strange one deary" after I made some enthusiastic comments about her Jeffster story. My response, "Aw, thanks. :)" It's pretty bad when an author thinks you are weird for liking her own story! She's the one who wrote it. Of course, she did also say "I kind of mentally scarred myself while writing," and I wrote back, "That's probably why it appealed to me so much--because it's depraved and deranged." Heh. What can I say?
Coming soon to the (ex?)skeevy plaza: CIGARS AND TOBACCO! Hmmmmm.
Posted at 3:26:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Posted at 12:18:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
Another Fish of the Week! Well, it was awfully close, but the Celtics lost. However, this fish is dark blue and gold, not purple and gold, I swear. (Not that I care one wit about, or know anything about, current basketball. But, as an 80s Celtics fan, I've got to hate the Lakers just out of principle.)
The spotted boxfish is Hawaii's most common boxfish (there are five others, but only four are likely to be seen by divers or snorkelers). This guy is a male; females are allover blackish brown with spots; they don't have the blue or yellow elements. Reasons boxfishes are cool: 1) they are completely encased in a rigid carapace which is composed of fused polygonal plates derived from scales; only their eyes, fins, and mouths are moveable. 2) They are usually square in cross-section, but can be triangular, pentagonal, hexagonal, or even round. 3) They can secrete a toxic slime from the thin layer of skin covering their carapace. (It doesn't affect humans, but if you keep a boxfish in an aquarium it will poison other fish and even itself.) 4) They are part of the order Tetraodontiformes, which includes porcupine fishes, pufferfishes, filefishes, and triggerfishes (all favs of mine and Dean's), plus the bizarre Ocean Sunfish, aka Mola mola, the largest bony fish in the world! 5) Their Hawaiian name is pahu (meaning "box" or "drum"), as in pahu i`a! 6) They are not known to be Lakers fans.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Oh no! I'm watching the Celtics-Lakers championship game on Sling (sort of; I'm not really paying attention) on my computer, and at the same time I'm working on another Fish of the Week. But I just realized with horror that the fish I'm drawing is Lakers-colored. Aaaaak!!! Is it all my fault that the Celtics lost their 13-point lead and are now only ahead by two???
Posted at 11:05:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Posted at 3:37:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
I am soooooooo sleepy today. It's really weird, but actually kind of nice. Drinking a really good Kona coffee now, so maybe I'll wake up, but hopefully not too much. I'm so relaxed, it's almost like I'm drugged. When I first woke up, my neck hurt a lot again (it was pretty good yesterday!), but it feels quite a bit better now (not better, better--but better). I also just wolfed down my new favorite yogurt discovery: Simmons Family Farm yogurt, made in Farmington, Connecticut! I found it at Stew Leonard's last week and bought one container of vanilla to try, which was so good that I went back yesterday and bought vanilla, plain and peach. They are all good, even the peach. It tastes so real and fresh! And it doesn't have yucky fruit on the bottom; the whole thing is just peach flavored, but not too-sweet and fakey peach flavored like most fruit yogurt. It also comes in blueberry and strawberry, but I didn't try those. Anyway, this yogurt is really really tasty, nice and simple and real. It's supposedly low fat and 125 calories (but it doesn't give any nutritional information other than that) and contains five different yogurt cultures. I find the 125 calories claim a little hard to believe because it tastes so great and it has a thin layer of cream on the top (YUM!!!!) but I guess it's plausible, since the creamline is very thin. (The plain flavor is called "plain creamline"--how cool is that?) I was really surprised when I saw it at Stew's, since they bill themselves as "the world's largest diary store," and make their own brand of yogurt, but I think it's great! "Support local farmers!" Yeah! It's not as good/amazing/special/unique/perfect as True Yogurt (sniff! sniff! I still miss True!), but it's definitely pretty darned good.
Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!! Best clafoutis ever!
Posted at 12:40:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
I'm making another clafoutis, and it's the yummiest smelling clafoutis ever. Just took it out of the oven, and now I'm waiting for it to cool enough to EAT. It's strawberry-rhubarb, with lots of rhu and lots of straw (the best, tiny ones) all mixed together. As an experiment, I used organic whole wheat pastry flour instead of normal white flour, and used organic vanilla sugar instead of normal sugar. I think it's the vanilla sugar that smells so heavenly. I used plain yogurt as the milk, and sprinkled a kind of chunky mix of vanilla sugar, Greed citrus sugar, and dried orange peel on top. I actually forgot the sprinkly part and had to open up the oven and add it, so it's a little uneven! But, the best part of all is that I'm using my brand new pie plate (pie pan? pie dish?) that I bought today at Anthropologie! It says CHERRY BERRY PLUM RHUBARB around the inside edge! And the inside bottom is really pretty. The clafoutis fit perfectly in it, and didn't even get all puffy or crazy-looking this time. Along with being my yummiest smelling clafoutis ever, it's also definitely my prettiest clafoutis ever. It is really quite gorgeous. I hope it tastes as good as it looks.
Posted at 12:23:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
Wednesday, June 15, 2010
Posted at 11:51:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Fish of the Week! My favorite part about this fish of the week, by far, is his great scales. Hahahaha. He reminds me of a fish from Four Fur Feet. If you can't tell, I hand drew every one! Um, yes. Bonefish and ladyfish, although seemingly kind of boring looking, are actually extremely cool fish because they are related to eels and are considered among the most primitive of the bony (as opposed to cartiligeous) fishes. How cool is that? Very, very cool. I have no idea if I have ever seen this fish or not, but probably not since the book says they are not common in Hawaii. Like shad, they are known for being full of small bones (hence the name). There are three fish in the the "Bonefishes and Ladyfishes" chapter (shortjaw bonefish, longjaw bonefish, and ladyfish) and this is the most common. It's actually not quite as looooong bodied as I made it... I got a little carried away with the pencil. I think it is my best fish so far! Be sure to click and see the big version to truly appreciate all his "prominent scales"! I like how the top row starts off pretty tame, and they get progressively crazier. ♥ I sharpened my pencil often while doing the scales.
Posted at 5:30:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Eek, I need to get up really early tomorrow because I made an appointment to see the doctor about my neck. (Not that I think he/she will actually tell me anything useful, but I might get more Flexerils, which do seem to help a little.) It's driving me crazy, but at least my wonky arm feels fine. It's NICE out today, and I went to West Hartford and walked around (ouch) and even went to a coffeeshop I've never visited before, It's a Grind. The cappuccino was just okay, but it was a cool place and they gave me a spoon without my asking. I liked my table. (The cap. wasn't as bad as it looks in the picture... I ordered a small, and it was served in a giant cup, so that's why it's only half filled.) I also bought more strawberries. Heh. The other Whole Foods had nice looking ones from another local farm, Pell Farms in Somers, CT (I have no idea where that is). They are smaller than the big ones from South Glas, but bigger than the little Whatley, MA ones, so I had to compare. After I got home, I sorted through my South Glas berries and got rid of all the long in the tooth ones. Local strawberries are so ephemeral!
Monday, June 14, 2010
Posted at 10:15:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Strawberry-rhubarb clafoutis is gooooooood. And, it pains me to admit it, but the strawberry-rhubarb half is even tastier than the pure rhubarb half. The juxtapositioning of the sweet and the tart is amaaaaaazing. Unlike with straw-rhubarb jam and stuff like that, the straw chunks and rhu chunks are entirely separate entities, so the straw doesn't overpower the rhu. But when you get a mouthful with one of each, you can taste each one equally and the combination makes sparks! I got Dean to try a bite, and I had to pull him back from gobbling down my whole straw-rhu half! Total THUMBS UP! I used the little strawberries from Chamutka, and left most of them whole.
I'm making my rhubarb clafoutis! It's half rhubarb, half strawberry-rhubarb. :-) For the batter, I used a mixture of milk, 0% grogurt, and this local-made vanilla yogurt I got at Stew's. (More about that later--it's really good!). Also, I mixed orange peel into the batter (from Penzey's; I'm too lazy to make it myself!), and used cinnamon and sugar as the topper. I'm not sure how the orange peel will be, but some of the recipes for rhubarb clafoutis that I looked at online used it, and I had the jar from Penzey's (I bought it because it smells wonderful, but haven't had an opportunity to use it until now), so I thought I'd try it. It's weird how much variety there is in clafoutis recipes! Not just in ingredients (type of fruit, etc.) but also in proportions. The amount of eggs, milk, sugar, etc. varies drastically! And some have cream, but I use skim milk (the kind that has extra calcium and is made to have a thicker texture and taste like 2% milk). And some have a billion more fancy steps, instead of just mixing everything together. I don't think it needs to be that complicated.
Posted at 9:24:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
The pool was super cold today! I even told the front desk, and they said they'd try to turn it up. They also said no one else had said anything, so I said, "They must just all complain about it in the locker room but not make the effort to tell you." (This is so true. 90% of conversation in the swim locker room centers around the topic of how cold the pool is that day. The lady who was leaving when I was coming said she was going to say something about it to the front desk, but apparently she didn't.) I was cold the whole time I was swimming. :-( I almost quit after 30 x across but made myself do the last six. It seemed really hard today... not sure if it was because it was cold, or because I was tired, or because my neck hurt, or because of the buoyancy of the neoprene in my new swim socks. Maybe a combo of all of the above (although possibly the last one is my imagination?) I like the socks, in any case: they fit really well and are really comfortable. I wish my neck would stop hurting, though. It's exhausting. I am getting my Massage Of The Month Club massage on Wednesday, so that's good!
Posted at 8:09:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
I got TONS of strawberries today! Two boxes at Berruti's (plus spargle and some nice red rhubarb) and one at Whole Foods. The Berruti's ones are big, and the Whole ones (from Chamutka Farm in Whatley, Massachusetts) are little, so when I saw those, I had them too, to compare. Verdict: they're both good, but the little ones are sweeter! I think the South Glastonbury ones are getting a little long in the tooth, too. They were better last week. I'm going to use the rhubarb to make my rhubarb clafoutis!!! But I don't know if I should make pure rhubarb or strawberry-rhubarb. I'm not sure I even approve of strawberry-rhubarb, as a concept (rhubarb does not need strawberry to be edible!), but I might do it anyway just to see what it's like. I was thinking: is strawberry-rhubarb a thing because the tastes go together or because they are both in season at the same time? (Or both reasons.) I bet it started because they're in season at the same time, and rhubarb ended up forever associated with strawberries.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
The sky was so beautiful flying home: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Posted at 11:59:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Having dinner in Provincetown at the Crowne Pointe! I can see the Pilgrim Monument out the window from our table, but the fog is slowly erasing it from the top down, like a Cheshire cat grin.
Posted at 6:03:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Ek! The Greek restaurant is CLOSED today. We're going to try Provincetown (20 min away)... hopefully the clouds will be high enough to let us land and get a taxi into town!
Posted at 4:07:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
It's so snoozy and restful up here swallowed in clouds, surrounded by soft white on every side, mmurrrrrrrrrrring along.
Posted at 3:10:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Okay, what about rhubarb clafoutis??? Yes? Yes!
Posted at 3:22:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
I modded another Uptown skirt and I really like it! It was way too long originally, and a little too big, but now it's perfect. It's another knit, so it's insanely soft and comfortable, too. Dean says it "looks like a you skirt." Yeah, it does. This one is black with a pattern of little white squares and diamonds and triangles. I'll try to take a picture soon...
Posted at 2:26:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
I'm hungry and I keep thinking about my clafoutis. But I guess I should go to bed soon. BTW, I have no idea how to pronounce clafoutis.
I cannot believe I am finally all caught up on ALB. (Well, other than the fact that I never finished writing about our Tango trips to Chicago trip last August and Long Island, Bahamas in November, that is. Those are next on my list, I suppose.)
