Farewell tree of leaves and shade
Who buckled under a snowy cascade
Tree that housed my tire swing
And sheltered birds that tire-lessly sing
Many great memories! I'm going to miss this beautiful tree! But what a spectacular and dramatic end.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Ode to a Pittsburgh tree
Ode to a (fallen) pittsburgh tree
Farewell tree of leaves and shade
Who buckled under a snowy cascade
Tree that housed my tire swing
And sheltered birds that tire-lessly sing
Many great memories! I'm going to miss this beautiful tree! But what a spectacular and dramatic end.
Farewell tree of leaves and shade
Who buckled under a snowy cascade
Tree that housed my tire swing
And sheltered birds that tire-lessly sing
Many great memories! I'm going to miss this beautiful tree! But what a spectacular and dramatic end.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Attention: Non law school book purchase
After trading in a small fortune for this semester's textbooks, I decided to spend just a little more a book that had absolutely NOTHING to do with the law or law school. This is my new book: "Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, a Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese" by Brad Kessler. I'm going to learn all about goats and goat cheese! The book is about a guy and his wife who went from NYC life to raising goats. So, as a warning, be prepared for lots of fun critter facts and possibly some rambling musings about how much I love goat cheese.
In other food news, I've become a dedicated follower of the great and powerful butternut squash. It's so amazing! I was really close to trying to make butternut squash ravioli last night, but I kind of wimped out remembering the great pierogi attempt of '09. (See infra). I'll just have to put it on my life list of goals- right in between 'win the nobel peace prize' and 'see Wayne's World dubbed into German.' ;)
Random thought of the day: Life is a dead end.
In other food news, I've become a dedicated follower of the great and powerful butternut squash. It's so amazing! I was really close to trying to make butternut squash ravioli last night, but I kind of wimped out remembering the great pierogi attempt of '09. (See infra). I'll just have to put it on my life list of goals- right in between 'win the nobel peace prize' and 'see Wayne's World dubbed into German.' ;)
Random thought of the day: Life is a dead end.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
People and places
Back to school! Last semester! (this calls for many exclamation marks) (!!!!!)
So I'm back in Virginia and two of my favorite people are responding to distant calls to travel across the globe. It's times like these I wish we still thought the Earth was flat. Certainly if the threat of a hippo or kangaroo attack isn't drastic enough to keep them here, a fear of falling of the edge of the world might just do the trick. New Years Resolution: Donate lots of money to the Flat Earth Society.
http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/Flatearthsociety.htm
I spent my break in Pittsburgh, where the weather seemed to know just how much I missed snow down here in Virginia. If only driving conditions weren't a contentious issue, I couldn't have been happier. Also, I think my back muscles are super strong from lots of shivering. I'm increasingly looking forward to going back to Pittsburgh after school ends. I don't like the idea of "settling down," but I can't think of anywhere I've liked even close to as much as Pittsburgh, so I'm trying to take that for what it is and not worry. And aside from being a great place, Pittsburgh is full of awesome people that I love coming home to and am always reluctant to leave.
Hunger calls! More updates later.
So I'm back in Virginia and two of my favorite people are responding to distant calls to travel across the globe. It's times like these I wish we still thought the Earth was flat. Certainly if the threat of a hippo or kangaroo attack isn't drastic enough to keep them here, a fear of falling of the edge of the world might just do the trick. New Years Resolution: Donate lots of money to the Flat Earth Society.
http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/Flatearthsociety.htm
I spent my break in Pittsburgh, where the weather seemed to know just how much I missed snow down here in Virginia. If only driving conditions weren't a contentious issue, I couldn't have been happier. Also, I think my back muscles are super strong from lots of shivering. I'm increasingly looking forward to going back to Pittsburgh after school ends. I don't like the idea of "settling down," but I can't think of anywhere I've liked even close to as much as Pittsburgh, so I'm trying to take that for what it is and not worry. And aside from being a great place, Pittsburgh is full of awesome people that I love coming home to and am always reluctant to leave.
Hunger calls! More updates later.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
Adventures in Cooking, or... Potatoes Potatoes all around the room
Sleepless nights always get me into trouble. I always end up either concocting some grand ambition or a hopeless fantasy to try to lull myself into sleep. Last night it was the former of the two. Sometime around 2:30 a.m., wide-eyed and frustrated, I became fixated on idea of becoming a better cook. Probably because it was 2:30 a.m., my idea quickly went from practical and responsible to ambitiously unrealistic. I- the horrible and mistake-prone cook- decided to take on making pierogies from scratch. (wikipedia tells me the plural is pierogi? But that sounds weird to me. So I decline.)
So, today was pierogi day! In retrospect, also known as an utterly exhausting day! After class I made a trip to Target and the grocery store-- still very excited-- to gather all my supplies.
The first challenge was making the dough. The recipe told me to knead it until most of the stickiness was gone, but not to overdo it. How exactly do you know when most of the stickiness is gone? I basically punched at it like a cat for a long time. Then I'd think -- this is probably done? Then I'd think... but wait! Maybe there is more stickiness to tackle? The end result was what I'm pretty sure the recipe meant by "don't overdo it." But, it was in dough form! So I claimed it as a victory. Check!
Next step: Make a mashed potatoes type substance for the insides while the dough is chilling. Easy, right? Peel & cut the potatoes, simmer some onions, throw some cheese in there, mix it all up with a mixer... creamy, delightful potatoes will ensue. True. Except when you forget the whole boil the potatoes step. As it turns out when you put a mixer to hard potatoes, all you get is potato bits flying like food casualties around the room.
Potatoes, potatoes everywhere.
Potatoes on the walls, potatoes in my hair.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that I might have done something not quite right. A gchat question later to the helpful Miss JK resulted in me learning the secret ingredient to making mashed potatoes-- boiling them first! (And by secret, I mean cleverly hidden in the recipe.) About an hour later after redoing all of the previous steps, however, victory on step 2! Cheesy potatoes! Check!
I did make up for the idiocy of step 2 with some genius, however. Because I didn't have a rolling pin, I decided to use my bottle of wine. Which basically meant I got to drink the rest of the contents before this next step-- yay!
So.... still cooking. This was beginning to take forever. I switched from Joni Mitchell to Kanye West's "Stronger." Then I rolled out the dough with my wine bottle (now mourning the fact that my wine was gone and there was still a ton left to do). I was supposed to cut little circles out and fill them with cheesy potatoes, then close 'em up, boil them, and sautee them with onions. It turns out you can do about 4 at a time with the pans/pots I have, and most of the little fellows didn't seem to make it through the end of the journey. While some of them came out, others tragically lost their potato insides in the water. It was kind of sad. I had sort of bonded with them by this point.
Anyway, 4 hours = about 7 pierogies. I'm hungry because I couldn't stand to eat them all in one sitting. Not after all that. Though they ended up pretty tasty after all.
In the end, I learned a valuable lesson- sometimes there's a reason people never make these things from scratch.
So, today was pierogi day! In retrospect, also known as an utterly exhausting day! After class I made a trip to Target and the grocery store-- still very excited-- to gather all my supplies.
The first challenge was making the dough. The recipe told me to knead it until most of the stickiness was gone, but not to overdo it. How exactly do you know when most of the stickiness is gone? I basically punched at it like a cat for a long time. Then I'd think -- this is probably done? Then I'd think... but wait! Maybe there is more stickiness to tackle? The end result was what I'm pretty sure the recipe meant by "don't overdo it." But, it was in dough form! So I claimed it as a victory. Check!
Next step: Make a mashed potatoes type substance for the insides while the dough is chilling. Easy, right? Peel & cut the potatoes, simmer some onions, throw some cheese in there, mix it all up with a mixer... creamy, delightful potatoes will ensue. True. Except when you forget the whole boil the potatoes step. As it turns out when you put a mixer to hard potatoes, all you get is potato bits flying like food casualties around the room.
Potatoes, potatoes everywhere.
Potatoes on the walls, potatoes in my hair.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that I might have done something not quite right. A gchat question later to the helpful Miss JK resulted in me learning the secret ingredient to making mashed potatoes-- boiling them first! (And by secret, I mean cleverly hidden in the recipe.) About an hour later after redoing all of the previous steps, however, victory on step 2! Cheesy potatoes! Check!
I did make up for the idiocy of step 2 with some genius, however. Because I didn't have a rolling pin, I decided to use my bottle of wine. Which basically meant I got to drink the rest of the contents before this next step-- yay!
So.... still cooking. This was beginning to take forever. I switched from Joni Mitchell to Kanye West's "Stronger." Then I rolled out the dough with my wine bottle (now mourning the fact that my wine was gone and there was still a ton left to do). I was supposed to cut little circles out and fill them with cheesy potatoes, then close 'em up, boil them, and sautee them with onions. It turns out you can do about 4 at a time with the pans/pots I have, and most of the little fellows didn't seem to make it through the end of the journey. While some of them came out, others tragically lost their potato insides in the water. It was kind of sad. I had sort of bonded with them by this point.
Anyway, 4 hours = about 7 pierogies. I'm hungry because I couldn't stand to eat them all in one sitting. Not after all that. Though they ended up pretty tasty after all.
In the end, I learned a valuable lesson- sometimes there's a reason people never make these things from scratch.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Law school .... and zoology
I'm having trouble giving up my critter fascination after all. Here is another parking lot friend. I think he sort of looks like Fred Thompson, actually. Yeah?
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