If you’re a horse person, or perhaps someone who fantasizes about horses all the time, this blog by Equitours is fun to read. The links along side the blog entries are chock full of information about travel destinations, activities, and the philosophy of the owner and founder of Equitours. He points out that many people are afraid to travel because they perceive it as dangerous, yet our own country has the highest murder rate, outside of an active war zone. Statistically we’re much safer abroad than we are at home.
Month: June 2005
Some of my favorite blog posts often describe what was on the menu for dinner, especially if dinner was homemade. I miss the Julie/Julia Project blog, where a 30-something woman in New York blogged about preparing each one of Julia Child’s recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year. Her writing and project was compelling enough to land her a book deal at the end of the project and the book is forthcoming.
While I do not intend to turn this blog into a food blog, food is one of my favorite subjects. I enjoy cooking good meals and own several cookbooks,which I only resort to if I’ve run out of ideas. I subscribe to a few magazines (Gourmet, Sunset, and Prevention) which provide interesting recipe ideas each month. Often the recipes are surprisingly quick and delicious. The Los Angeles Times has a weekly food section and I subscribe to the Seattle Post Intelligencer online, which also has a food section.
Last week’s LA Times food section featured mackerel, which before yesterday was unfamiliar to me as a dinner item. I’d seen it in a marine biology course I taught last summer. Whole Foods has an excellent seafood department so I went there first. The manager told me that they don’t stock it because it’s a kind of fishy fish and your average white person, who apparently Whole Foods caters to, doesn’t buy it. He recommended that I try an Asian store and gave me a few addresses.
Yesterday Dave and I ventured into an Asian supermarket on Devonshire and Reseda. I had always pictured Asian markets as kind of hole-in-the wall shops in the San Fernando Valley, mostly because the non-white population seemed to be Hispanic, but our trip to the Galleria, which is sort of an Asian sub-mall with a large grocery store, proved that my observations about the demographics around here weren’t entirely correct. We found the seafood department easily enough and found all kinds of frozen and iced specimens not found at Whole Foods. For instance, catfish that easily weighed 3 pounds, large squid, whole tilapia, and mackerel. In an Asian market you have the choice of cleaning the fish yourself or the nice people behind the counter will do it for you. I’m not squeamish about cleaning fish but I don’t use the entrails or head or tail for anything so when the cleaning was offered I accepted. Not only was my fish expertly cleaned, it was the cheapest 1.5 pounds of fish I’ve purchased anywhere at just over $3.00. I never get out of Whole Foods for less than $10 for ordinary fish for one meal. When we were checking out, I noticed the produce section and wondered if they stocked anything more interesting than what we can buy at Von’s or Whole Foods. Next trip we’ll investigate that section.
Here’s what I did with the mackerel as advised by the LA Times last Wednesday. I put parchment down in a baking pan, sliced an onion, then prepared a charmoula. The LA Times recipe is slightly tamer (the quantities of spices are halved and cayenne pepper is left out) than the recipe I’ve linked here. The fish gets slathered with this green sauce inside and out then covered with foil and baked in a 400F oven for 30 minutes if the fish is whole. If you use filets, bake for 20 minutes. The corn on the cob had already been in the oven for about 20 minutes. After the fish baked for 20 minutes, the foil comes off so the skin can brown, which takes about 15 to 20 minutes. In the meantime, I peeled more cooked beets for the beet salad I described the other day. When I first made this salad, I used more onions than necessary and we both went to bed with onions on the belly. At least for me, a few Tums were required to temper the onions in the middle of the night. The addition of another pound or so of beets mellowed it nicely. Next time I will use at least 2 bunches of beets to 1/2 of an onion, even a sweet onion like a Vidalia or Walla Walla. When dinner was served, it was rather colorful and very flavorful with the green sauced fish, red beet salad on a bed of lettuce, and yellow corn on the cob.
This blog will by no means be anything like another Julie/Julia Project but food is hobby with me and now that I have a lot of time on my hands, I may be posting about it more frequently.
About half our backyard is taken up by pool and patio so the patch of grass isn’t big enough to support a vegetable garden. The solution? Plant a patio garden in containers. There’s even a great book on the subject. In SoCal I can have a patio garden year round. I planted tomatoes over the winter and just harvested the last of them yesterday. This afternoon I harvested beets for an interesting beet salad recipe I got from Dr. Weil’s website. Here are my beets and greens, all cleaned and ready to go in the pot of salted, boiling water:
The beets (in the bowl) are for the salad. I’ll stir fry the greens in a little olive oil with some garlic and squeeze a little lemon after they’re cooked for another dinner. Not everyone likes beets but I do and I wonder what’s not to like? They don’t have a strong taste — not like cabbage, turnips, or even broccoli, which is my personal non-favorite. Beets contain excellent anti-oxidants, similar to those in blueberries, pomegranites, and red wine. There are a number of ways to prepare them besides boiling or pickling. Roasting in oven is one of my favorite ways but I’ve learned not to roast them with lighter colored vegetables like potatoes, onions, and turnips, because beets turn all the vegetables red. I prefer my potatoes to retain their natural color, although roasting beets with purple Peruvian potatoes (say that 3 times fast) might be a good choice.
Here’s the rest of my garden. I’m not growing as many containers as usual because intend to move this summer but here’s what I have:
These contain melons on the left and lettuce on the right. The melons will have to be transplanted somewhere, maybe in with the poppies and peach tree after they get bigger. I start them in containers so I don’t forget to water them when they’re young and vulnerable like this. The lettuce can stay in the containers. The weather is getting a little warm for lettuce but I keep them well watered and I can move them to the shade. That’s another benefit of container gardening: mobility!
And finally here is the remainder of my garden. At the top is kohlrabi, which is excellent raw. The middle container used to house beets. I may attempt more lettuce in that one and some herbs. I just hate paying grocery store prices for herbs! They’re so easy to grow and expensive to buy if you use them frequently. The bottom container is growing a potato, which accidently planted itself some time ago. I’m not entirely sure how that happened but this container used to have carrots which went to seed and planted themselves. It is also growing sunflowers. I tried to grow sunflowers directly in the ground but the birds got the seeds even before they sprouted. If it cools down this weekend I may transplant these into a flowerbed near the pool.
Granted growing beets in a container may not be particularly economical since I can buy a bunch of beets for $1 at the farmer’s market. My beets certainly took more than $1 worth of water to grow, but they’re my beets and they’ll have that very fresh, just harvested taste.
Yesterday I filed my thesis and walked away from UCLA with a certificate of completion, which states that I’ve met all the requirements for a Master’s of Arts in Biology and will receive a diploma dated September 16, 2005 (the end of summer term). My degree is an MA, even though I did original research and wrote a thesis, because that’s what the department offers. They’re not all that interested in master’s students and prefer to allocate the bulk of resources to PhD students. If I need to, for job purposes, I can explain that my MA is as good as an MS. It has worked already since I have been accepted into the lecturer vacancy pool at my alma mater and they require an MS.
While I’m officially done with the university, I still have to meet with my advisor on Thursday to go over my committee’s comments on my thesis, mostly to figure out how to expedite publishing it as an article in a peer-reviewed journal. I don’t feel very much stress about that. That process can take as long as it takes because I’m done! And today is my birthday 🙂
Here is a fun writing exercise that comes from Kathleen Adams’ Journal to the Self. The idea is to imagine where you are a year from today and write about it. Here’s mine:
One year from today it’ll be June 17, 2006. My friend Debbie is turning 40 and I’ll be right behind her in a few days. My job as a microbiologist for the county is beginning to get busy again because school is out and people will be spending more time at the beaches. It’s my job to collect water samples from all the public beaches and measure bacterial and toxin levels. However, it’s been raining a lot, which is typical for June around here, so only dedicated (crazy) fisherman are out there. Maybe I have a few more weeks of respite. I’m grateful for that because our daughter is just a month old and keeps us very busy.
Fortunately Dave is a big help around the house and everywhere else — not that this is new; he’s always been a big help, even before Babykins was born. This weekend we’re going shopping for a breast pump and practice using it and feeding Babykins with a bottle so I can work two or three days a week. Thankfully Dave’s company finally agreed to let him telecommute so he can stay home with Babykins those days I’m working.
We love our house in Bow. We got the one on 21 acres with a view of Mount Baker. The person who rents the attached apartment is a single mom with a daughter in elementary school. The mom attends my alma mater, Western Washington University, part-time. She wants to get a degree in counseling. We’ve talked about exchanging day care duties when Babykins is a little older. Her daughter is crazy about horses so when Clipper comes home, I may get a companion pony that I’ll let her ride if her mother is agreeable. We still have to build a barn and finish the fencing but there’s no rush since Clipper is in training with Sally. He’s doing very well — probably much better than if I was still riding (confusing) him. I introduced him to Babykins a few days ago. He gave her an affectionate "whuff" in her wispy hair and left a piece of alfalfa on her ear but she didn’t seem to mind.
I hope to start riding again in a few months — just easy stuff to start with: walking at first, then trotting. It’ll be months before I start jumping again but I’m in no hurry. There’s plenty to do with keeping up with Babykins, work, and the garden. I only get to the garden for about 30 minutes a day. Thankfully I drew the plan for it when we were still in SoCal. All winter I spread manure that I collected from Sue’s barn up the road. Then Dave rototilled it early this spring when it wasn’t too mushy. I planted peas and other early season vegetables. I was getting pretty big by then and had to plant without bending over much. Dave was on hand to retrieve seeds that didn’t fall into their holes. Then he planted the rest of the garden a few weeks ago according to my plan while I watched from the sidelines. We also transplanted the tomatoes and bell peppers from the greenhouse. Well, he transplanted while I carried plants one at a time from the greenhouse to the garden. We’re looking forward to the bountiful harvest. For now, all we can do is harvest the few spring vegetables, go on slug hunts in the evening, and pull the few weeds.
Over the winter while I was pregnant I followed the Woodbrook Hunt on foot. They are strictly a drag hunt (laying scent in advance) since we don’t have foxes around here anyway. I’m not sure why they don’t hunt coyote — maybe the territory isn’t good for that. I hope to hunt with them this winter after I get back into riding shape. Dave can follow on foot with Babykins if he’s agreeable. I’m sure he will a few time anyway. I’ve asked around the club for an experienced horse to lease and possibly buy if I like hunting and the horse. One or two members have an older, reliable hunting horse for me to try. I doubt Clipper would be suitable at this stage. He’s still fairly excitable although more confident than he was this time last year. He has very little experience on cross country terrain and jumps — just the little bit that Sally did with him on a nice day behind the stable. I have even less experience, which would be a disastrous combination. Maybe I’ll see how he works out after a get a couple seasons of hunting under my belt. By then I’ll hopefully be pregnant again but maybe one of the hunt members can ridehim. It’s a little premature to be making those kinds of plans since I’m barely recovered from having Babykins but I always have my eye on the future.
Here are some nifty sculptures I walk by on my daily walks:
Bird sculpture with a shovel for the tail/body.
Another view of the bird sculpture.
You may have to click on the image to view it more clearly. The sculpture on the left is a horse and the one on the right is a cowboy with the wagon wheel.
The jacarandas (purple trees) are in blossom now. Perhaps I’ll remember my camera for my next walk.
I rode Sunday instead of Saturday because my good friend Tanya came over so we could celebrate her recent graduation with a BA in business. This means that Clipper had not been out for 2 days. I should’ve turned him Saturday afternoon after Tanya had left but I have come to expect my trainer and her assistants to handle all the details since I pay them an exhorbitant amount every month to handle all the details. Needless to say, Clipper was a little ‘up’ when I got on him. He looked for horse-eating monsters while we walked around the arena so I got off and had the groom longe him for a while. He was quiet for a little while, a very little while, then spooked at all kinds of things he has seen nearly every day that he’s been at this barn, things like one of the dogs the trainer brings every single day. So instead of working on a nice slow canter like we had, we worked on getting past the oh-so-scary geriatric dog who has trouble getting up, even if he wanted to chase anything. Once Clipper would go past the geriatric dog with only a little wrestling on my part, we tried jumping small jumps that he has jumped at least 100 times. On Sunday, however, those harmless little jumps must’ve grown fangs. I pushed him over the jumps when he’d slow to look for fangs. He tried running out on another little jump but I pushed him back and made him approach it then we jumped it back and forth, back and forth, back and forth until he finally gave in and decided it was easier to do what I wanted than to keep arguing with me. We ended on a nice trot in, 6 stride line where he trotted easily in, cantered softly out and landed on the correct lead. I was exhausted after that ride because I had to fight with him almost every step of the way until he decided to cooperate on that last line.
This morning I rode again. This time when we went into the arena he walked around with his head down and looking like he was kind of sleepy. Something, maybe a beetle crawling across the arena, woke him up then he spooked at an empty paddock and one of the stall cleaners. Neither are new to him but he uses them as an excuse to rebel. He trotted over the warm up jumps just fine then we headed to a new trot in line. He trotted in fine but didn’t like the canter out fence so he stopped. I made him go up to it then we went again. He didn’t stop but rushed over the canter fence and tried to run away. Hard stop, back up, walk, trot nicely, approach the first fence in the line, jump, start pulling, whoah, easy boy, then JUMP over that fence. Better this time. We tried it a few more times and he got softer each time, didn’t rush the last fence. He’s being a little rebellious but we work through it and end on a good note, where he’s listening to my instructions and being soft and adjustable again. We build on that.
The word "progress" bothers me because it makes me feel as if I must always be working toward something as opposed to just being. I resent having to do something all the time yet, I am most happy when I am making progress on anything from little chores on my daily to-do list to big dreams, like moving and starting a family. If I’m not making progress on something, I’m probably bored and frustrated at being bored. Yesterday was a perfect example: I rode Clipper in the morning and actually had a great ride. I feel like we’re making progress in our collective training. His canter is slower and more balanced; it’s not as much work for me. We also worked on a trot-in, 6 stride line. I fully expected him to stop at the second jump since we haven’t jumped that one in quite a while but he went right over then softly came back to a trot. We repeated that line several times and only once rushed the line in 5 strides. This easy work gives us both confidence. Progress.
However, for the rest of the day I was bored. I didn’t have much to do. The house was clean, laundry on the line, lawn was mowed, no pressing deadlines. I weeded the rose bed but that didn’t take very long. I certainly had the option to just be and enjoy my surroundings. Instead I chose to get frustrated about our lack of progress toward finding jobs and moving. I went to bed feeling a little dissatisfied, as though I had wasted a day.
Today is better, probably because my whole day is pretty much scheduled. I rode in with Dave and am on campus all day. This morning I revised draft 4 of my thesis then emailed it to my committee members this morning. Progress. My advisor had worked over the drafts quite thoroughly so I hope they have few suggested revisions. I still have to do the table of contents, lists of figures and tables, and all the pretty, formatting stuff. Clear goals. I also intend to file a 6" stack of journal articles, grade papers, and attend a meeting. Dave will pick me up at 4:30 then we’ll go to our favorite Mexican restaurant for dinner. I’ll eat 1 steak enchilada and bring the other home for lunch on another day. I’ll drink a glass of wine then probably read until bedtime. I feel very satisfied on days like these. Would I like every day to be like this? I doubt it but I don’t really like not having clear goals for each day either. Apparently I’m a much better human doing than human being. Do I want to change that. I’m not sure.