Never ending home improvement project February 18, 2009

Owning a home is a blessing and a curse.  Its a blessing, because its pretty fun to not have loud neighbors and play around with the yard and paint any color you feel like, but its also a curse in that when the HVAC goes out you can’t just call the landlord.

That being said,  we are in the final throes (I hope) of a project.  Chris and I have done a lot to our house, a late 1950’s ranch, and with the exception of the pool removal project this one wins at 7 weeks so far.  Though, I do think its going to look great now that it is done!  And, the things we changed we had always wanted to change (does anyone love popcorn ceilings?  I didn’t think so).

Last fall we had a leak (note: when your ceiling randomly buckles, that means you have a problem).  Now, we new that a new roof was going to have to happen in 2009 or 10, but we didn’t know it was going to be 2008.  So yeah, first of all, replace the roof.  We had professionals do this.   But, we still had a cracked ceiling and a bucked parquet floor.  Finally by January we had enough cash on hand to start this.  We finished this past weekend.

Step one, empty room of furniture.

Step 2: remove ceiling

ceiling removal

Ceiling removal

Step 2:  Remove floor

floor removal

Step 3 put up new ceiling, which is quite a long process, over two weeks with a lot of help from in laws and co workers (thanks everyone)!

we bought ribs and beer after this!

Next, swap old light fixture for new light fixture

old ugly light

here ’tis!

Next, install cool new cork flooring

cork flooring from Lumber Liquidators

Now for the hard part: crown molding (baseboards = easier)

Crown molding installation

Finally, touch up paint and then you are done.

Chris painting trim!

Thanks so much to those who helped us:  Shawn, Paul, Ben, and especially Chris’s dad!

Finished product

YAY!

Other view

Lookin' Good

Final BBQ tour post January 31, 2009

….so then we arrived in Austin.

Austin is just as cool as everyone has ever told you, if not more so.   Julia and I made multiple jokes about how every indie looking person we saw was thinking about or working on their screenplay.   The city has  gotten to be quite large, but the fact remains that you can do lots of neat stuff there and eat a bunch off good food and it has not lost its small city feel.

We went out drinking twice, once to a bar called the Ginger Man, which is mostly outdoors.  I had a great local brew there (well, Houston) called St. Arnold.  Most bars and restaurants  in Austin are outdoors, or have large patios, and did I mention it was 75 degrees nearly every day? The second time we went out was Saturday, when we saw some good local bands:  Built by Snow and Hollywood Gossip at Club De ville, which is a neat outside venue built into a cliff face (so, the backdrop to the band is…a cliff face, its very nifty).

We went birding with a nice retired teacher name Marilyn who I found through a great website called birdingpal.  You type in where you are going and it gives you a list of locals willing to take you birdwatching.  She took us to some neat local parks (one great thing about Austin is you go about 15 minutes out of the city and you are in the middle of nowhere).  One of the parks, Hamilton Pool, features a large grotto that you can swim in!  I bet its nice in summer. I saw some birds I had not seen in 10 years, Lesser Goldfinch and Golden-fronted Woodpecker, and also a lifer, the Ladder-backed Woodpecker.

The food in Austin is fantastic,, and we branched out from the Barbecue.  Some of the culinary highlights include:  El Chile (the Chile Relleno is a work of art!), Kerbey Lane Cafe, and the amazing Uchi, which has to be the most interesting Japanese restaurant I have ever been too.  We had rice with amber jack sashimi, Benito flakes, and an egg yolk served in a 400 degree bowl.  You stir it and it all gets cooked and is amazing.  I think if I lived in Austin I would eat there every day.

Austin has about a zillion miles of green way, and we spent my last full day hiking around.  I think we went about 6 miles in the city.  And we did some shopping and eating, too!

One thing I have to tell you is that if you find yourself in the Austin Airport, get a brisket sandwich from the Salt Lick!  Best Brisket Sandwich ever!

Port in a storm, or at any time December 29, 2008

Lucky for me, Chris cleaned up at Christmas in terms of gifts of Port.   For about the last year and a half, we have been getting “into” Port wine.  Which is sort of odd just because we know very little about table wine and don’t seem inclined to learn about it (though we do certainly quaff the stuff by the gallon).  Anyway, Port.  Oh so tasty: dark, rich, sometimes sweet, complex.  We drink it after a meal, or as a nightcap (yes I have some right now) or whenever the mood strikes us.

Some port facts:

Port is supposed to be tasted with chocolate, how cool is that?

There are two kinds of port: tawny and ruby.  Tawny means that it was aged in a wood barrel and sometimes turns a brownish color due to oxidation and gets sort of a nutty flavor.  It is our favorite.  Ruby port has been aged in stainless steel barrels to keep its color.  There is lots more info about port over here, which you should read if you want to learn more.

One of the bottles Chris got is fancy.  It came from me: when the guy at the wine store showed me the top shelf stuff (upon which were none of our usual port contenders) I thought we should try something more expensive.   I got us a LBV (Late Bottle Vintage) which means that it was supposed to be a Vintage but  due to the fact the demand was low for this particular year, it was left to age longer than planned.  Then it was bottled and has spent at least 3 years in the bottle.  Just so you know, real Vintage port is  aged a brief time in a wood casket, like, 2 years, and then 10-30 years in the bottle.  (This port is the most expensive and has never been tried by this poor state employee).  Anyway, the LBV.  It was slightly pricey.  And very, very good. In fact, it was so good that we may be ruined on cheaper port now.

Our next step will be to attend a port tasting, which our favorite local wine shop usually does annually in the winter.

Here are a few Ports we have tried that we like.  In no particular order.  They all are under $17 except the LBV. I highly recommend trying a bottle!  It makes a great hostess gift, especially if you are coming to my house…..

Whiskers Blake

Bogle Petit Syrah Port

Warre’s Warrior

1999 Warre’s LBV Porto

next on our list to try is Grahams 10 year aged.  I will keep you posted on how it tastes!!

My favorite week November 24, 2008

Hey all, this is my favorite week of the year.  And this year it is especially awesome.  A few things that make me happy:  I love holiday weeks at work.  Everyone is a little more relaxed, and folks are happy and excited.  Secondly, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  I love having a feast day, where it is all about preparing food and hanging with friends and family.  I prefer it to Christmas, because I like eating better than the pressure of giving gifts.  Third, this week is my birthday.  Yay!  Fourth, my pals Christy and Jud are visiting from Atlanta and that is a lot of fun.  Finally, Friday is the Black Friday Beer festival.

I don’t know what you are doing for Thanksgiving, but you should come to my house.  My favorite local barbecue joint, Holy Smokes (they catered our wedding party for those of you that were there) are going to smoke my turkey for me.  Its going to be great!  No gravy, only barbecue sauce this year!

Happy Thanksgiving!

My Storm-tossed Vacation September 27, 2008

Back from a week of serious sloth at the NC Outer Banks.  The weather was a mixed bag,  frequently  very windy so we couldn’t go on the beach without getting micro-derm abrasion on our ankles.  That’s OK, since we had a hot tub and heated pool to amuse ourselves with in the meantime.  We did have a storm on Wed and Thurs, that “low pressure system” off the NC coast which kept us mostly inside, with the in home theater (seats 12, don’t ya know) and playing massively long card games.  Let it be known for the record that I really am terrible at Spades, though I like playing very much.

Friday was a truly gorgeous day, sunny, no wind, I even went swimming in the ocean!  (The rip current warnings, for once, were not in effect).

So, what birds did I see?  Well, like I said it was a week of sloth.  So not much.   Though, what with the storms and whatnot I had high hopes for maybe some pelagic birds to get pushed to the coast.  I did see a very very sweet Semipalmated Plover, the usual Sanderlings and Willets, a Merlin, and a juvie Parula Warbler.

We had great company in the folks who were with us, ate great food, and drank many tasty drinks, including lots of Mimosas, Old fashioneds and Bloody Cesears (a Bloody Mary with clamato, which is actually quite tasty, not as heavy as the usual Marys).  I can hardly wait until next year!  Thank you Outer Banks!

FYI, Chris and I are now drying out, and there are no plans to drink for at least a week….

My new favorite game August 27, 2008

This past weekend, I met ladder golf.  This is my new favorite game!

Ladder Golf!!

Friday  night we went to a pal’s house to play on his newly built from scratch ladder golf set.  Ladder golf is played with two of the above PVC ladders while opponents throw at them.  The thrown item, as you can see above, is a piece of rope with a golf ball attached at either end.  If you throw and it hits/ties onto the top rung, its 3 points, middle is 2 points, and bottom is 1 point.  The scoring system is cumulative, and each team plays to 21 points.  Best of all, you can play it and a have a beer in one hand.

Final Swamp Dispatch July 21, 2008

Well, its done. Field season is over!  Now I get to work in the office and resume the daily game of trying to find a parking space in Raleigh.  I just lost the space I have been using for the last year, and I haven’t gotten my new bus pass yet.

Not much to say about the swamp last week:  we had lovely weather,  extremely pretty full moon nights, and our boss took us out for a fancy dinner, even.  The bird work was dull (currently our birds are just chilling out, eating and feeding babies before migration) and we spent a lot of time packing gear.  Moving day, and just in time.  I really thought parts of our trailer floor was going to give way from rot at any moment. It sagged like a hammock!

This weekend was a big celebration, a rowdy night of drinking on Friday at Landmark with a lot of pals (thanks, ya’ll for coming!) and Saturday a nice dinner at J. Betskis with Carter and Chris.   It is good to be back.  I really like August because for me its a nice break between the chaos of constant field season travel and the chaos of the school year routine of managing interns, part timers, and students.   August for me is a time to get ready for big fall projects (and I have a lot this year, thanks to the meetings in Oklahoma this spring) and reflect on what I want to accomplish at the museum.   Also on the agenda is cleaning my office, which (and this comes as no surprise to those of you who have seen my house or car) looks like a tornado went through it.

There are also a lot of really fun things to do in Raleigh this summer, and I haven’t gotten to take advantage of most of them yet.  Outdoor movies at the art museum, the Raleigh paddle trail, doing lots of mountain biking which is my new favorite thing, and going to a Bulls or Railhawks game.  Plus, cooking in my own kitchen!  Its going to be a great month.  Y’all should come visit!

Strawberry Bliss June 2, 2008

One of the nice things about living in NC is that we have a very, very long strawberry season. It starts in Late April and goes until June. Consequently, I have been consuming them by the ton, as has my husband. They are one of his favorite foods. However, I haven’t done any baking with them, namely because every time I threaten to Chris looks horrified and asks “why can’t we just eat them plain”?  He has a point, they do taste pretty darn awesome on their own.  The other reason is because I just haven’t found a strawberry cake/tart/pie recipe that is really calling to me.

Recently in my strawberry buying at the farmer’s market I have come across these smaller berries, a different breed than the big ones.  I can’t remember the name, maybe Cavendish?  They are really delicious.  Smaller fruits and very sweet.   I still have not baked with them, but instead made a strawberry milkshake.  You know what?  It rocked!!  Nice strong berry flavor (and these were so sweet, I didn’t add any sugar).   Even Chris was happy.  Well, he would have been but he didn’t try any.  Maybe the strong pink color scared him off?

One thing I have not done is make Strawberry Daiquiris.   You can use frozen strawberries more easily on those and it gives the drink a nice icy texture.

Strawberry Milkshake

1 cup strawberries (if the berries are not sweet, add some sugar to taste)

1 cup vanilla ice cream

1/3 c milk (less if you want it thick)

Throw all that in the blender and puree.  So good!

Strawberry Daiquiri

1 package frozen strawberries (not the enormously sized bag)

1/2 cup powdered sugar

a few ice cubes, maybe 5

rum (as much as you like, I usually eyeball it)

tablespoon or so of lime juice if you want to kick it up.

Throw all this in a blender.  Blend until ice is well crushed….no little pebbles of ice should remain.

Next month….Peaches and Peach Margaritas!

The Best Champagne Punch Ever March 16, 2008

This stuff is so good, but oh my gosh be careful because it will knock you on your bee-hind! They say this recipe serves 12. Maybe 10. Plan to make 2 batches if your pals are a bunch of lushes, like mine are. Thank you Epicurious!

• 1 cup triple sec
• 1 cup brandy
• 1/2 cup chambord (cheap knockoff OK)
• 2 cups unsweet pineapple juice (like the kind that comes in a can)
• 1 quart chilled ginger ale
• 2 chilled 750 ml bottles dry champagne (cheap champagne perfect for this!!)

Take the first 4 ingredients and mix them together, and stick them in the freezer for 4 hours or overnight. When ready to serve, mix the stuff from the freezer with the ginger ale and champagne and serve.

I am never organized enough to make some pretty ice ring mold or something so I usually just let folks put a few cubes of ice in their glass when they serve themselves some punch.