Vail!

This holiday weekend, Mike and I went in different directions. I’ll let him share what he did (hopefully with pictures!) later, but for now, it’s all me . . . .

Friday evening I took off for Denver, meeting my relatives from San Francisco for a 2-hour drive to Vail, where we’d all rendezvous with my Cheyenne relatives and their son, who is at CSU. Perfect plan, no?

Enter Mother Nature. A massive snowstorm/blizzard/windgust/white-out/avalanche warning situation turned what should have been a short drive into a six hour drive! We spent at least two of those hours in a traffic jam, creeping along at a pace that wouldn’t even shame the slowest snail. We moved so slowly that people’s (front-wheel drive) cars actually got stuck in the middle of the freeway while “driving.” I totally thought we’d be spending the night SQUISHED in the car (five of us plus ski gear = one tight fit) out there on the interstate. When we finally did get to the head of things, there were several cars just sitting perpendicular to the line of traffic, plus an RV (like, really, why would you even *think* you could drive your RV through this??? As if.). Big props to my uncle who drove fearlessly through all that! Also, a big thanks to my brother and Mike who both answered my panicked cell phone calls regarding road conditions.

So, we arrived at Vail around 4am. Only one of us was hearty enough to get up and hit the slopes at 8am. It was not, uh, me. I skied the half day that day, and then a full day Sunday. Despite the mess on Friday night, by Saturday morning the weather was perfect: not too cold, and really sunny.

And Vail is sooooo beautiful. Just amazing. Tons of big bowls, jagged peaks, and green trees (also some silvery aspens for contrast).

And it was so fun to ski with my cousins and aunt and uncle. My cousin Jesse is a serious shredder, but sometimes he deigned to ski with us. So it was fun to take the whole mountain as a group.

I even brought the new camera out one day to shoot some action shots:

I also used the old camera to take some video of cousin Jesse, cousin Skye, cousin Emilia, Aunt Polly, and Uncle Mitchell. Here’s more video, shot from a slightly different angle. Just kidding - the video is coming just as soon as I get the technical help uploading it.

My last day, I didn’t want to shell out the big bucks for full-day lift ticket since I needed to leave Vail around 1pm to catch my flight home, so I hung with Pru and Tom instead. Tom and I went snowshoeing while Pru cross country skied. The trails crisscrossed each other, so we got to see plenty of Pru!

I had a wonderful time – the company was good, the weather was good (after the initial woes), and the mountain was just amazing. What a great little getaway!

Love in the time of Kisses

I’ve been a bit busy lately and didn’t have the time to go all-out for Valentine’s Day (or, as we sometimes call it, Boo-al-en-tine’s Day).

But I wanted to make Mike a little something special. And I know how much he likes peanut butter. Peanut butter was actually pretty hard to find in Japan – there was something that was like peanut foam or peanut fluff (it had the right pictures on the container, but totally the wrong density/weight). Anyway, so Mike’s been a bit peanut-deprived. Add to that the fact that I rarely make peanut butter cookies because I am just not super-wild about nuts.

So, I decided to give from the heart – especially in the sense that I would be less interested in eating the dough – and make him some of those peanut butter Hershey kiss cookies. (Okay, no pun intended with that heart comment, really).

I thought that this would be a totally simple recipe to get. But, like all (or most?) simple things, the internets greatly complicated my search. It turns out that a) you can make these cookies using Bisquick mixed with peanut butter and sweetened condensed milk (gross!), and b) there’s a raging controversy about whether you put this Hershey kiss in mid-baking or during the cooling process. Who knew?

So I gave up and went to the source: my good friend Miso’s mother. Now that I think about it, her peanut butter kiss cookies were actually the first ones of the kind that I ever ate. In college (see, I wasn’t kidding about that whole not-eating-very-many-nuts thing).

Her recipe is actually pretty cool – it works off a cookie starter base, and then you add the peanut butter to that. You can scale the starter and additional peanut butter part up or down, depending on the quantity desired. And, for the record, you put the kiss in after baking as the cookies are cooling.

While my cookies were good (from the half of one I ate), I don’t think they were as good as Miso’s mother’s. Really, this could be due to a few reasons – 1) I made a math error in scaling down the recipe, 2) I used all butter, instead of a butter-Crisco mix, 3) I used the super-natural peanut butter that has only peanuts and salt as ingredients, and/or 4) I either over- or under-cooked them, because, really, how can you tell when a cookie that starts out as a golden brown is done? I felt like my cookies were too crumbly – they didn’t form easily into balls, and they tended to fall apart when I pushed the kiss into them. I solved that last problem by letting them cool a little more than suggested before putting the kiss in. And, this morning, the cookies are perfectly fine and don’t really seem all that crumblySo, anyway, that’s what I did last night. I would definitely recommend this gift/strategy to others for Valentine’s Day.

Two of my favorite things!

Baby Emma and Daisy (the best dog ever).

First, baby Emma. Here she is, sporting her new sweater. I have no idea why the sleeves look so short - I hope that's not really the case.Second, Daisy. Her owners are still teaching her to balance things on her head. Here, she balances a frozen banana waffle from Trader Joe's.

Snow and Salads

We've had a few snowy days here - nothing like other places in the country, but pretty exceptional for Seattle.

On another note, Mike made a great salad last night. Recipe from one of our new favorite cookbooks.

I resolve . . .

To never do this again. Until next year.

the final part of the courseshivering BEFORE the race

The race and trip n' dip were great fun, even if they did leave me chilled for the rest of the day.

San Diego

Last weekend we took a quick trip down to San Diego to visit my family. This was quite a whirlwind trip, but we did manage to squeeze in two beach walks and a calm afternoon at a very nice café (with free wifi, no less). Here are the obligatory beach pics:Friday night we cooked a nice dinner for my grandparents, including Mike’s famous bruschetta.Saturday day, I spent a little time photographing some of my grandmother's prize-winning plants.Saturday night, we headed to Carlsbad to visit with good family friends - and eat the best pizza and lemon bars [those were home-made, but I do have the recipe] on earth!

The Great Sweater update

Baby Emma’s sweater is finally done! It took a little bit of a push during the second week of break, but I did it! Hopefully, soon, I'll be able to share a picture of baby Emma in her sweater.

This means that in the time it has taken me to knit a baby sweater, Amy has knit her amazing shawl, PLUS this coat (plus a zillion other things as well, I’m sure):

That’s right, the woman knit herself a coat! And I thought a baby sweater was an accomplishment. . . .

My next project is a heather gray professorial sweater-vest for the soon-to-be professor in my life.

Cakes galore!

Just before New Year’s I bought this cupcake cookbook. The book has wonderful decorating ideas (it’s actually written by a design professor in California), but I’m not so sure about the recipes.

For example, for New Year’s I made the champagne cupcake recipe. I made it as a cake, though (using the champagne cupcakes recipe, but putting it in two round pans), which shouldn't really change anything. But, it tasted, in all honesty, like white bread. Which is to say: nothing. Not that it was bad, but it was a bit heavy and lacking in taste (other than "sweet"). The icing, on the other hand, was awesome: what’s not to like about home-made buttercream with 6 tablespoons of champagne mixed in?

The next day, I decided to just focus on the decorating. I made the snickerdoodle cake from the Cake Mix Doctor and then decorated it. Originally, I wanted a teddy bear design, then I thought of a lion, or an alien. But I ended up stealing an idea from a parenting magazine for a critter like this.

This cake was for Scott’s birthday. Can you tell which one is Scott?

Kate's fancy new camera

Kate has been taking some really beautiful pictures with her fancy new camera. If you want to see her newest creations, you can always look on the right side of our blog, right under the phrase "recent cool picture." You can also click here, and look to the right (you can click on the picture to enlarge it).

The whole "photo of the day" album can be found here.

Good eats

We have really been eating well recently. Earlier this week Kate made scones au gouda vieux et poires séchées, which were amazing.


Also, on Wednesday I got to visit one of my favorite stores in the whole world, Pacific Food Importers (PFI). This store sells olives, cheeses, and dried foods in bulk, and they also carry many interesting foods from all over the world.

On Wednesday night I used dried porcini mushrooms that I picked up at PFI to make fresh egg pasta with a garlic/olive oil/mushroom sauce (this was the second time I used my new pasta maker).

Yomiuri has the best human interest stories

The title of this story is "Otaria the Sea Lion practices writing new years greetings." As usual, the picture is the key.

The Michigan Report

We’re back from the not-at-all snowy state. Honestly, I found it much less cold than winter visits in previous years – perhaps there really is something to this global climate change whatnot (actually, it really bothers me when people conflate weather and climate as I’ve done above, but, whatever, tolerance is the spirit of the season, right?). Anywaaaaay, here are some photographic highlights from our week.

The latkes

The men

The men-orahs

And the M&Ms

Dr. Farls

Us

Now we’re back in Seattle where we’ll do a little relaxing (and a little work) before school begins next week. Today we took a walk with our friends Scott and Meh.

The 5th Santa Claus Marathon

141 Santa Clauses and 2 dogs run through the Kamogawa district of Kyoto (a story from the Yomiuri Newspaper, with picture).

The Catch-up report

My birthday was really nice – and a bit like a perpetual party.

Last Sunday, we went to Pacific Science Center to see the Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit. The exhibit was pretty cool, but very, very crowded. Buy those tickets in advance, and buy them for a weekday. The scrolls themselves were interesting, and I also enjoyed all the other artifacts (coins, clothes, pottery) that were presented along with the scrolls.

After that bit of culture, we walked around the Science Center. Kris checked out the display on camouflage.Nearly invisible, no? Then we hit the IMAX theater for the Egypt movie. The movie had beautiful scenery, and I’m a total sucker for the IMAX films, but it also had a weird sort of explanation-of-the-curse conceit. And Omar Sharif. And not in a good way, either.

Then we headed to dinner at the fondue restaurant. I love fondue! Seriously. I mean, what’s not to love about melted cheese and melted chocolate? So yummy! Here’s a shot of us and then one of the dessert plate (the lighting was a little weird, but we’ll get to that issue below).On my actual birthday, we just played it low-key with a dinner of fried rice at home. Note the flowers on the table (from my mother) and my holiday decorations in the windows (I’ll try to get a daytime shot of those, too).

Saturday night we had a little party at our house, both to celebrate my birthday and to welcome the nomad scholar home. It was a bit of open house, and lots of people came and brought lots of yummy treats. Mike made our traditional birthday cake from this book.
So that’s been the past week, in words and pictures. And about those pictures . . . for my birthday, folks around me pitched in to give me a brand-spanking-new-fancy-dancy camera. So, hopefully, the pictures around here will get a lot better (that is, except for the bad pictures due to operator error). I’d like to do something like the picture of the day, but I’m not sure how that would work with blogger or that I’d truly be able to post a picture every day. Anyway, I’m super-excited about the new camera, but I think there’ll be quite the learning curve with it. I’m planning to study up over break.

Classic

I have pictures and stories to post about Mike's first few days home as well as about my birthday, but that will all have to wait. Instead of a looking-backward post, this is a looking-forward post.

My grandmother no longer has the energy to bake all her traditional holiday cookies. So her four daughters and assorted grandchildren have taken over, each baking one of the types of cookies and then mailing them out to all concerned parties.

This year I’m in for honig kuchen à la Oma, or something that approximates gingerbread.

This is the recipe I was sent:

Heat together one cup each of molasses and honey. Cool. Beat 3 cups of

sugar with 4 eggs. Combine and add 4 teaspoons cinnamon.( mum wrote tbs. but

we all think that she meant teaspoons), 3 teaspoons( same issue_ cloves,

some salt (/) and assorted spices ("depending upon what you have on had and

how you feel"). Add round tsp.( this time she got it right so we all

wondered if maybe she really meant tablespoons before) soda and 1 tsp. cream

of tartar( "if you have some- I rarely do"). Stir in enough flour till your

arm is dead and the stuff won't budge anymore. Cover and wait a few days

till you've recovered since you need all your strength to quasi roll out,

cut into forms, and bake in moderate oven after you have brushed each cookie

with honey water ( made with honey and water) and pressed a piece of almond

in center of each.

Note_ I wrote down 8 cups flour, 3/16 inch think roll out, 350 degrees for

7 minutes after talking to her.

Good luck.

Um, yeah.

So I am unsure if I should just go with this recipe or make some substitutions to a more standard gingerbread cookie recipe, like this one or this one.