berries and whipped cream

What happens when you take Straus Family Creamery whipping cream, toss in a tiny bit of confectioner's sugar and vanilla extract, and use a little bit of elbow grease to whip it with a whisk?

Pure yumminess.

Top some raspberries (Medina Berry Farms @ Menlo Park farmers market) and blueberries (Hidden Star Orchards @ California Ave farmers market) with aforementioned yumminess, and it's satisfied any craving I might have had for a sweet, creamy dessert, but with very little added sugar. Fresh and healthy!

The Straus cream comes in a cute little bottle that you can return to the store to get a refund for the bottle deposit. The cream is sweet, thick, and smooth, topped in the bottle by a layer of butterfat that I had to break up before pouring into a mixing bowl. All I added was a dash of sugar and vanilla extract, but the cream was sweet enough that I'll probably skip the sugar next time.

I thought it would be fun to whip it by hand with a whisk. So I whisked. And whisked. And whisked some more, until it formed stiff peaks, my very own DIY whipped cream. The downside of doing it by hand, no whippets (ha ha, bummer), and it took a quite a while. The upside, it was a great arm workout. Hello, deltoids!

Tomorrow, the whipped cream will go on top of the Spring Snow peaches I picked up from the Kashiwase Farm stand at the California Ave. farmers market... peaches & cream, mmm!

oops (or how I accidentally found a new iPhone 3GS in my possession)

Crappy day, dealing with house stuff. Don't ask. Anyway, afterwards, we met up with Eric and Vanessa to have lunch near California Ave, and on our way home, Bryan suggested I could get frozen yogurt at Fraiche. I passed, and so we were on our way home.

Or so I thought.

There was construction traffic on Oregon Expressway, so we ended up taking Alma through downtown Palo Alto. As long as we were in the neighborhood, I decided, I may as well get some frozen yogurt. After that small detour, we thought "Hey, let's drive by the Apple store on the way home and laugh at the geeks in line!"

As the fates would have it, the line was short, and we were just going to drive home when a parking spot opened up just around the corner. It's like my new iPhone was meant to be. Before we knew it, we were the geeks in line. In roughly 20 minutes, I had a brand new iPhone in my hands.

It just activated, and I am in the process of syncing over from the old phone. Yay.

So the funny thing is, we had both decided that it wasn't really worth the upgrade, but then Bryan did some research and found we could sell our old ones for about $300. And we probably wouldn't have upgraded had we not had a crappy day and wanted to avoid traffic. Impulse purchase? Maybe. A little.

what to do with random chicken bits

After making the khao mun gai, we were left with a pile of chicken bones, skin, and other unidentifiable bits. What to do with it? Broth, of course!

Ingredients:
- Leftover chicken bits (aka, carcass)
- 6 cups water
- 1 large onion, quartered
- 5 medium-sized unpeeled carrots, cut in half
- 4 stalks of celery without leaves, cut in roughly 4" sections
- 10 sprigs fresh parsley
- 2 bay leaves
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- a dozen or so peppercorns
- a sprinkle of thyme

We left it in the slow cooker on low overnight. We let it cool down a bit, then strained using a fine-mesh sieve. We let it cool down some more, then put it into containers to freeze... but only because there's no more room in the fridge!

I don't know if this is because of the slow cooking or because of the quality of the chicken, but there was no scum or frothy grossness to skim off the top of the broth. Amazing!

the great chicken experiment, part 2: SUCCESS!

Click to read Part 1 of The Great Chicken Experiment...

Now that we had a 6 quart slow cooker and a defrosted chicken, we were ready to get our cooking on.

Step 1: Cook the chicken.
Most of the recipes I've seen call for boiling the chicken in water for 30-60 minutes. Of course, most recipes likely assume you're starting with a conventionally-raised chicken, fed corn and raised in cages, with their higher fat content and mushier meat. But here I was with a chicken that spent its days running around on a pasture and developing some muscles. So instead of following the cooking recommendations from the recipes, I followed the instructions from the rancher.



Into the slow cooker went the chicken, along with 6 cups of water, an onion, and some ginger. I let that cook all day Saturday on high, before moving the pot into the fridge that night. I brought it back out Sunday morning, and put the slow cooker on high while I went about my business.

Step 2: Make the rice.
Later that afternoon, it was time to get the rice ready.

Ingredients:
  - 3 cups rice
  - enough broth from the chicken to cook the rice
  - 5 cloves garlic, finely chopped

The first thing I did was toast the garlic in a pan with a little bit of olive oil until it was golden brown. Then add the garlic and the rice to a rice cooker (yes, I'm lazy), along with enough broth to cook the rice per the rice cooker's instructions.

That's as much detail as you'll be getting from me on cooking the rice since I have no idea how to cook it without a rice cooker. :)

Step 3: Make the ginger garlic sauce.
My recipe for the ginger garlic sauce is adapted from the Ginger Sauce (Nam Jim King) recipe in Thai Home-Cooking From Kamolmal's Kitchen.

Ingredients:
  - 2 tablespoons garlic, finely chopped
  - 1/4 cup (2 ounces) ginger, finely chopped
  - 2 Thai chili peppers, finely chopped
  - 5 sprigs cilantro stems and leaves, finely chopped
  - 1 tablespoon Sucanat or granulated sugar
  - 2 tablespoons brown bean paste
  - 1 tablespoon black soy sauce
  - 2 tablespoons white vinegar

If you're really lazy like me, you can simply toss the garlic, ginger, and pepper into a food processor and let that do the chopping. Of course, I didn't think of that until I had most of those ingredients already chopped...

Combine the ingredients in a bowl and mix thoroughly.



Step 4: Get the meat off the chicken.
With the chicken cooked according to the directions listed above, the meat should just fall right off the bones without any effort. I saved the skin, bones, and other unidentifiable bits to make a broth later.





Mmm, doesn't that look tasty?

Step 5: Eat!
Put some rice and chicken on the plate, and top with broth and ginger garlic sauce to you heart's content. We also garnished with chopped green onions and cilantro for a little bit extra yum.

Wait for your wife to finish photographing the food. This is optional.



Enjoy!

the great chicken experiment, part 1

About a month or so ago, I found out that you could buy pastured whole chickens at the Holding Ranch at the San Mateo farmers market. They had run out that day, but it raised my curiosity, so I asked about the chicken. I was worried that I wouldn't know what to do with a whole chicken, but the gentleman working the stand assured me that slow cooking the chicken in a crock pot was the simplest, as well as most delicious, way to prepare the chicken. I left the market that day with no chicken, but with an ever increasing level of intrigue about it.

Fast forward to last weekend, at the San Mateo market. When I left the house that morning, Bryan joked that I shouldn't come home with a chicken. I walked by the stand, and in a momentary lapse of reason, stopped and asked if they had chicken. It wasn't super early, so I figured that chances were good they'd be sold out. It was my luck that they had two left. I chose the smaller of the chickens, and went on my merry way... until I got home and realized that I had a 5 pound whole chicken, and no idea what to do with it!

I figured the best source of information for cooking this chicken would be the rancher, so I went to their website, where they have posted very simple instructions for defrosting and cooking their chicken. The short version:

- Defrost for at least 2 days.
- Cook in slow cooker with water and onion on high for one day. Move pot to refrigerator overnight. Cook in slow cooker on high one more day.
- Eat.

The thought of cooking it in the slow cooker reminded me of some Thai comfort food my mom used to make, khao mun gai. Or in English, boiled chicken with rice cooked in chicken broth served with a spicy ginger garlic sauce.

One small problem was that we didn't own a slow cooker, so we had to order one. We ended up ordering a 6 quart programmable one from Amazon. We planned to defrost the chicken based on the arrival date of the slow cooker, and pushed it out of our minds for a few days while the chicken thawed in the fridge.

so much for going grain-free

Homemade granola, made using the recipe for Toasted Grain and Nut Cereal from Bill Granger's Sydney Food cookbook. I made the mistake of spending some time leafing through this cookbook while I was looking up the recipe for the ricotta hotcakes. I had been trying to go grain-free, but as you can see, I've had a minor failure. OK, between the hotcakes and the granolia, it was a massive failure of the deliciously irresistible kind.

What's in it? All kinds of yum, including:

- Rolled oats
- Rye flakes
- Sunflower seeds
- Slivered almonds
- Pumpkin seeds
- Butter
- Vanilla extract
- Honey

Now if only there were a twelve step program for granola addiction...

filling a hankering for bills ricotta hotcakes

It has been quite a while since our last trip to Australia, and I had a stray craving for bills ricotta hotcakes with honeycomb butter. I blame it on the low carbiness of last week -- sometimes a girl just gets cravings, and they need to be fulfilled! I grabbed my copy of Sydney Food and started leafing through it. Oh yes, those ricotta hotcakes looked good! Now I was a woman with a mission.

So I set off in search of some unique local ingredients for both recipes. You see, I've been doing lots of shopping at the farmers markets lately, and lots of cooking. I'm intrigued by the SOLE food movement (sustainable, organic, local, ethical), and thought it would be fun to try to get as many local and/or organic ingredients as possible.

The main ingredients:

- Milk and butter from Straus Creamery (Marshall) at Whole Foods
- Eggs from Old Creek Ranch (Cayucos) at the California Ave farmers market in Palo Alto
- Sonora wheat flour from Fifth Crow Farm (Pescadero), at the San Mateo farmers market
- Honey gathered in Los Altos Hills, which was part of a gift basket we received
- Honeycomb from San Martin, bought at Whole Foods

The fruit toppings:
- Albion strawberries from Coke Farm (San Benito County) at the Menlo Park farmers market
- Raspberries from Medina Berry Farms (Watsonville) at the Menlo Park farmers market
- Blueberries grown in Santa Maria from the San Mateo farmers market
- Brooks cherries from Hamada Farms (Kingsburg) at the San Mateo farmers market

The extremely tasty results:





You'll have to forgive the fact that these photos are not of the quality you'd find in the Williams Sonoma catalog... I was hungry, and wanted to eat my hotcakes while they were still hot!

dear texas

Dear Texas,

If you secede from the United States, and build an impenetrable fence around your borders to keep us brown-skinned arugula-eating latte-sipping Prius-driving godless liberals out, does that mean my friends and family will have to come out to California to see me?

By the way, can you leave out Hueco Tanks? I hear there's awesome bouldering there.

Sincerely,
Me

happy springtime pagan rabbit fertility day!

The Easter Bryan left these out for me this morning... pastured Easter eggs, yum!

today's haul from the san mateo farmer's market

Blueberries from Santa Maria


Strawberries from Medina Berry Farms


Sugar snap peas from JM Ibarra


Shiitake mushrooms from JM Ibarra


Broccoli and cauliflower from Happy Boy


Pineapple from My Family Farm

california ave farmers market, 3/22/09

A couple of weekends ago, I made a visit to the California Avenue farmers market in Palo Alto with my camera. Click here for see the rest of the photos.

Below are some highlights from the day...

climbing pictures

A few climbing photo updates since I've been so sporadic about blogging lately... click the links to go to the photo sets.

Climbing with Bryan and Stacey at PG Belmont, 2/16/09

Climbing with Bill, Mirta, and Bryan at PG Belmont, 3/1/09

Climbing with Martha, Stacey, and Bryan at Lime Disease Rock in Sanborn-Skyline County Park, 3/14/09

Climbing at Pinnacles with a whole bunch of people, 3/15/09

making irrelevant Facebook app updates go away (really, I don't care what your Smurf name is)

I finally figured out how to make the annoying spammy quiz results and app updates disappear from the redesigned Facebook home page. It's annoying they make this more intuitive, but whatever, here's how:

On the home page, under News Feed, click on the More link. That will display a listing of your friend lists and networks, as well as some applications at the bottom of the list. For example, LivingSocial, Movie Quotes, and Name Generators were some of the applications that showed up for me.

Click on the offending application, and the page will display a list of updates from that app. For example, clicking on LivingSocial might display a list of your friends' 5 favorite whatevers.

Hover your mouse over one of the updates, and you'll see a Hide menu option appear on the right side of that update.

Click on Hide, then it will give you the option to hide the user, or hide the app.

Click to hide the app, and that's it. No more so-and-so's Smurf name, or 5 video games, etc. Hurray!

My guess is you'll have to revisit this for each latest spammy application of the day, but it's a start.

i love basketball commentary, part 2

More out-of-context gems from the commentators during this weekend's NCAA Men's Elite Eight basketball games... Enjoy!

---

TV does not do his body justice. What a specimen!
High-steppin' it to the hole
He got caught in between
You fella, I know you want to throw it down with authority, but just gently bring it home
Good ball pressure
Guys capable of distributing and making sure everybody gets a touch
Almost impossible to get a hand in there. And he's so strong. You've got to go through his barrel chest and his low center of gravity.
I'd like a ball in my hands
The Missouri team has to do a better job of controlling dribble penetration
The foul wasn't on the reach in, it was just two guys going after the ball
He's a very skilled left hander
Good ball movement, and good ball fakes and good shot fakes
Everybody at UConn bending over at the waist right now
Ability to dribble and get into cracks
He's using all of the rim, isn't he? Soft, though.
He got banged a few times in the tournament
Both players went down and were down for a bit. Fortunately, they both got back in.
He uses that derriere, clears you out
He's been tremendous inside
Both guys are entitled to the loose ball
Clark has been successful penetrating and he gets one in right away
Blake has to be careful not to get casual with the ball, understanding there's going to be a double team. He needs to keep two hands on it until he's ready to make a pass or a shot move.
You're in the home run celebration trot, and they come right back down your throat

i love basketball commentary

Four days of watching college hoops can be exhausting. However, if you're like me (i.e., either you're a 12 year old boy, or you think like a 12 year old boy), you might find yourself rolling on the floor in laughter after taking some of the commentary out of context. And here is the collection from this weekend... terrible, I know! And to think, we even fast-forwarded through all the Viagra ads.

---

Better not back off kid, he can really drill it.
It's not the elevation, it's the girth, the width, the impact.
Anything around the rim, it's mine, I'm taking over.
Look at the big guy, give it to me.
If something feels good, take it.
Wonderful deep shooter.
They got the big guy running to the box.
The big fellow giving it to the freshman.
They are bumping and grinding with each other.
Looks like a lot of holes in this zone for penetration.
This guy at 5'6" can really drill it from deep.
He rushes the shot and that's because he hasn't touched it in a while.
Those shorts are hanging mighty low.
You've gotta move as the ball moves and adjust your position on the sides.
If you take the ball to the rack, you're going to make some contact.
Villanova's ball movement has been magnificent.
Just mishandled the ball a little bit.
You've got to play the ball and see your man.
You've got to be able to secure the ball before you head down the other end.
That's big all the way around.
Where did that ball go? It just came squirting out of his hands.
He gets those shots down there and generally finishes them off.
The floater goes down.
Did he take a shot to the right side of his face?
He couldn't get it off clean.
That's a violation on the entry pass.
Take your chances and go aggressively to the hole.
He was banged by Fields from the rear.
Called for too much bangin' down low.

Trapped under a cat and testing Shozu

25 random things (a Facebook meme)

I got tagged in this Facebook meme... but thought it would be fun to post on the blog as well.

----

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)

1. I usually find Internet memes like this silly. I'll play along with this one because it seems kind of fun... and I have nothing better to do at the moment. ;-)

2. I block most Facebook apps. Sorry, peeps, but I won't be throwing a hottie pimp snowball at your zombie mafia dope war cupcake flower.

3. Bryan and I have been together almost 15 years. Yep, we're old. How we got together is a long, complicated tale that is best told over drinks. He's the best thing since sliced bread. :)

4. I've run 5 marathons -- Big Sur four times, and Victoria (BC, Canada) once. My long-distance running days are likely behind me now, since I lack the discipline and motivation to regularly wake up at 6am on a weekend morning and run for 4 hours.

5. I was a guard/forward on my high school's girl's JV basketball team one year. I'm pretty certain they took all the tall people and put them on the varsity team, since our tallest JV player wasn't that much taller than me... and I'm only 5'2".

6. OK, I'm 5'2 1/4". That quarter inch is a huge percentage of my height. My ape index is +3/4", so I have a valid point when I complain about not being able to reach things.

7. I spent many years as a couch potato. Then I noticed when I was around 25 that my clothes were getting way too small. I started working out, not for reasons of health and well-being, but for vanity.

8. I have wide feet with freaky long second toes, to which I refer as my prehensile toes. I once met a guy who was enamored of my feet, and got a great foot massage out of it. I'm not sure what he got out of it, nor do I really want to know. ;-)

9. When I work out at the gym, I like to lift heavy. Right now, I squat 3 sets of 10 at 115, Romanian deadlift 3x10 at 105, and have a personal best of 8 pullups. I think snatches are the bee's knees, and pistol squats are tons of fun. I hope to be able to do handstand pushups, planches, and front levers one day. Am I worried about getting too muscular? Nope, I'm way too dainty. :)

10. I can do the splits, but only with my right leg in front. I'm just a few inches from doing splits with my left leg in front.

11. My favorite classes in college were environmental chemistry and engineering management. I have lots of classes that fall into the "OMG, I hate this class so freakin' much, but I have to take it as a requirement" category.

12. I've been certified to teach Pilates mat and advanced mat classes.

13. I took a weekend outdoor photography workshop with Galen Rowell sometime around 1999-2000. I'm kind of sad that I wasn't a climber at the time, because now I would love to get some insight on combining the technical aspects of rock climbing and photography.

14. I'm addicted to frozen yogurt from Fraiche in Palo Alto. I always get the large natural, with strawberries, almonds, and shaved chocolate. And when I'm feeling decadent, I'll get a chocolate chip cookie, too.

15. I was vegan for about 3 months, but I couldn't give up cheese and ice cream. Then I was vegetarian for a while, but I couldn't give up sushi and other seafood. Then I was flexatarian until I discovered grass-fed beef. Mmm, cheeseburgers and fajitas! I won't eat any other meat, though.

16. My other food addiction is the 80% cacao Venezuelan dark chocolate from Barlovento Chocolates, which I buy at the California Ave, farmers market in Palo Alto.

17. I am a total anatomy geek, and I have a habit of self-diagnosing my injuries. On the other hand, having that knowledge is great for figuring out how to train.

18. I've learned a few programming languages back in the day. BASIC in middle school, FORTRAN in college, and Smalltalk, Objective-C, and Java at work. I know what you mean when you talk about use cases, encapsulation, design patterns, GridBagLayout (shout out to Doug!), polymorphism, and inheritance, among other things.

19. You can blame me for the current financial crisis, because helped write software for derivatives traders. OK, where's my multi-million dollar bonus?

20. I was a mathlete in high school. Kinda. I was a member of my high school's math club (geek alert!), and we'd go to comps in the area. I pretty much sucked at the math thing, but I did really well in the biology comps, even placing 2nd (maybe 3rd?) in a statewide Junior Engineering Technical Society comp one year.

21. I have the sense of humor of a 12 year old boy. I believe the big word to describe it is "puerile." I never lost my appreciation for Ren & Stimpy, Beavis & Butthead, or South Park. My beloved ice cream bar, how I love to lick your creamy center. I am Cornholio... I need TP for my bunghole!!! I said what what in the butt?

22. I still own a pair of shorts from high school. They're size 5, and are smaller than the size 0 skirt I bought a few months ago from Banana Republic. Shockingly, the shorts fit.

23. I think pets are awesome. As a kid I had gerbils, and learned that when you put a boy gerbil with a girl gerbil, you get lots of baby gerbils, very quickly! I won a goldfish in 4th grade from my elementary school's Halloween carnival, and my parents ended up adding 4 other fish and 2 water snails to keep Fishie company. I grew up with a beagle named Boo Boo, and then we had cats named Fred and Attila (aka Annie). A stray cockatiel named Petie also found his/her way to us. In college, I had 2 ferrets named Sneaky and Nori. After I moved to Des Moines for my first job, I adopted a calico cat named Camara. Sneaky, Nori, Camara and I moved to West Palm Beach, where they were joined by 2 more ferrets, Simmi and Luz. And then the 6 of us (me, 4 ferrets, and a cat) moved out to California. After the ferrets went to ferret heaven, Camara was joined by our cats Oreo, and then Greyscale. Oreo is black and white, and most people who've visited us have never seen him because his favorite pastime is hiding. Greyscale was a defective Persian cat who had no teeth and drooled when he purred, but also had kidney disease to which he succumbed. So right now, it's just Camara and Oreo.

24. Eating too much wheat makes me really sneezy. That sucks because I love a good artisanal bread with cheese. But I guess that's OK, because I don't really need all the processed carbs anyway. I have to watch my girlish figure, you know?

25. Luxurious yarn makes me happy. I wish I could spend more time knitting, but it destroys the PIP joint of my left middle finger, which I'd rather destroy climbing.

christmas day hike at purisima creek

Christmas was good, as you can see. Bryan took this picture of me with my new toy (the EOS 5D Mark II) with his new (hand-me-down) toy (the EOS 5D) late Christmas Eve.

We spent part of Christmas day on a hike at Purisima Creek. We caught a nice break in between storms, and did a 3 mile out-and-back. I was feeling a bit sick, so we turned it around pretty early. The hike back up to the car nearly did me in, but I managed to get a few pictures that day.

Click here to see the entire set of pictures, but for now, here's a sneaky peak.



As you can see, it was cold that day, about 40 degrees. Bryan is sporting a new insulated jacket I got him, as well as a hat to keep his ears warm.



The trees were green and mossy. One might even describe the scene as "verdant," if one were to use a word from the list of 1000 SAT words that one might have had to memorize in one's tenth grade English class.



You can see the waters of Half Moon Bay beyond the hills in the distance, along with some incoming clouds.



And there's just a hint of blue sky on the way back to the car.

san mateo farmers market, 12/27/2008

Santa Claus left an awesome present under my tiny papercraft tree this year... the new Canon EOS5D MarkII digital SLR. Hurray for Christmas!

I dragged it out to the San Mateo farmers market yesterday and shot a few pictures. You can click here to see all of them at flickr.com.

Here's a preview:

updated house pictures

I've finally caught up on uploading the latest pictures from our ongoing house project. Things are progressing, slowly but surely. We decided on quarter-sawn walnut as our flooring for the first and second floors. Three coats of stucco are now on the house, and finish work is proceeding in earnest inside. The douglas fir ceiling panels have been completed over the bridge, landing, and spiral staircase, and will be installed soon in the office and living room. Gypcrete got poured for the basement floor; however, the basement floor will be tiled (except the media room, which will be carpeted) for durability reasons. Tiling has started in the bathrooms, and kitchen cabinetry has been delivered. Hopefully it will be installed in a few weeks, but we're having some issues with getting the granite for the kitchen. We may have to go to Plan B for that.

Here are a few pictures, but you can see the complete set by clicking here.

oh snows!!!

We had a winter storm blow through this past weekend, and it dumped some snow at higher elevations in the Bay Area. Bryan and I decided to go see if we could find some snow to play in, so we decided to head up into the Santa Cruz Mountains, not too far west of us. These pictures are from Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve, in the hills above Palo Alto (elevation 2445').

Here are a few pictures from our snow day:









There are more pictures...

funny things heard when talking about construction

"Straight lay" -- This apparently refers to tile layout, and not to what my mind instantly went.

"Let me go grab my wood" -- Hee.

Yes, I giggle about these things. And yes, on the inside, I'm a 12 year old boy.