So little time!

Im desperately trying to organise and get ready to leave again!

I spent an hour tonight scrubbing the outdoor cushions as they are rather dirty; seems you need a cover over them. hmmmm. I only got finished with two cushions. We have eight chairs. I had hoped to finish this, and many other jobs, before Danny got back. I think its safe to say, it ain't gonna happen.

Made some bread though, so thats good. The bread is for this lovely old guy at work who brings me an entire bag of butternut squash every autumn as he knows how much I love them! Thanks John Milam! In fact, I received the bag today and already ate one for dinner, thats how much I love butternut squash! I peeled it (the wormies love butternut squash for some reason!) and cut it into small pieces, just under a centimeter, then tossed it in oil, lime juice and honey and baked it on 400F for about 40 minutes, adding chopped red onions with 20 minutes to go. Meanwhile boiling the speckled butter beans and green beans from my garden and adding in some chopped garden fresh tomatoes. Tossed it all with olive oil and brown rice; a most delicious dinner!

Im never going to do all the stuff on my list, its almost bed time and I only have two more nights to go!!! Meanwhile Danny is helicoptering to Mount St Helens to look for survey pins all day. I dont know! Not a very equal distribution of responsibility here is there! At least Im still at home!

I went to visit my good friend Megan and her 3 week old daughter, Harper. Squirmy little things, babies, but pretty cute! We shall be having lunch again together tomorrow, infact Megan, we will be eating left over dinner, if thats alright with you! Harper can have milk again, gosh, what a boring diet!

11 days 'til we leave for New Zealand!

Home at last!

After three weeks on the road, we are home at last! Gosh, I cannot describe to you how good it feels to be in your own space. Surprisingly, my home feels quite alien to me, but Im sure a little dusting here and vacuuming there and it will feel like home again in no time.

A cursory glance at the vegetable garden brings mixed news. The tomatoes took the brunt of the mixed part of the news, Im afraid. For the most part they look good, but any part of the vines that protruded out beyond the safety of the temporary fence were munched by bambi. Even though people came by to pick during our stint away, there were still many rotten tomatoes on the ground and I still managed to pick myself a bushel this morning of lemon plums, cherokee purples and better boys. There are many green tomatoes on the vine still to come, so hopefully they will ripen before I leave again in two weeks. Exciting news is that out of nowhere we have a single squash that looks beautiful. Im not totally sure of the variety but I think it may be French, the first inch of the neck is yellow and the rest light green. The cucumber vines have died off for the most part with these giant orange cucumbers swelling until they burst. Other exciting news is that unexpectedly the soy bean bushes are covered in soy beans!!! They are a little small right now, but we will probably be harvesting our first crop of edamame next week! Oh and more great news, the green bean vines went crazy! I have an entire colander of green beans! Some of them are a little large and might have to be boiled but still, very excited about the prospect of fresh green beans all week. Oh, and another handful of speckled butter beans, so perhaps Ill have to make a soup of some kind.

Things to change next year regarding my vegetable garden: Do not have a bean trellis made of chicken wire as I did this year, as I cannot get underneath it to see what is down there; I love having the marigolds along the edge, its pretty and shades the base of the tomatoes and prevents weeds (they are about 2 ft tall!); dont grow the kind of cucumbers I grew this year, no body seems to like being given an orange cucumber, I wonder why! Shade all the base of the tomato vine, especially when it is young. Most definitely get the cherokee purples again next year, they are not only huge and beautiful but full of delicious deep purple flesh! If you learnt anything new from your garden this year, please pass it along...

While we were gone, we made new plans for the back yard. I know we decided not to start any new projects, but it sometimes feel like we started something in the back that we didnt finish and believe it or not, this was not my idea. So we are extending the deck out to the first terrace, getting rid of all of the grass to the side of the house and putting in raised raised beds for raspberries, blackberries and vegetables. The patch that I usually keep for vegetables to the other side of the house will be leveled again and raised and we will put blueberry bushes in there. My new effort is to get chickens in the woods, but if we are going to spend tons of money making gravel paths around our new raised beds, I guess I will have to wait for a chicken pen, as its going to be huge. I cant have truly free-range eggs because of the packs of ranging dogs in our neighbourhood but if I can give them a 20 m square pen, they should be happy! Danny is onboard already, so now we just have to save up and have time at home to get a pen built!

The most saddest news in the garden is that my potted wisteria that Danny bought me for my birthday 3 years ago, the one that bloomed for the first time this year... it looks like it may have died of thirst. So sad, we will just have to see if it comes back next year. One of my back yard hydrangeas seems to have taken a turn for the worst but everything else out back seems to have survived the three week drought well.

Sometimes I consider my freezer hoarding of food a little obsessive, however it is really nice to be able to come home from three weeks away and not have to go to the supermarket if you dont want to. We can have a fresh summer vegetable pasta for dinner, and even have frozen fruit crumble for dessert if we want and know that the only thing that ever originated in the supermarket is the pasta, black pepper and olive oil. We had cinnamon rolls from the freezer for breakfast and could have zucchini bread as a snack and tomato sandwiches for lunch if we so chose, although considering its already lunchtime and we just ate, I doubt we will eat again before tonight! It takes a lot of up front work, but I love being prepared!

Ive been inside too long now, back to tidying up that vegetable patch so that I can move onto another flower bed!

Part-way home, sort of!

Where have I been, I hear you cry! Middle of bloody nowhere is the answer, for the most part at least! There are still parts of the civilised world where the hotels have no internet, you have to sleep in a single bed (first time since 2001) and its freezing cold in August.

I flew to Edinburgh, Scotland, Saturday August 15th, arriving the following morning. I was unable to check in to my hotel until the afternoon, but they did fortunately store my luggage. I changed into some clean clothes and wandered around Edinburgh for several hours, walking briskly and with purpose, so as not to appear as a tourist. The best part of my day was spent in the Botanical Gardens, which should be missed by none! Great great gardens.

I undertook some semblance of work for the next week, although since I didnt get to chose the sites, I didnt actually do that much work; the sites were mostly inappropriate. I spent the weekend with my parents strolling along the beach, taking afternoon tea and cake and hiking through the rolling hills of Northern England. The best thing about the entire trip was meeting Mrs Goudie and spending a peaceful afternoon alone with her talking the talk and looking at pictures of her family when it was young. We then spent a lovely evening at a wonderful fish restaurant called The Ship on the Shore, where David was so very kind as to buy us all dinner. Wonderful wonderful evening, probably helped by the fact that Dave and I polished of a bottle of delicious Rioja between the two of us, oh and the Clams appetiser, Haddock over stir-fry veggies and apple and rhubarb crumble with custard that I consumed, not to mention the amazing company! The only good meal that I ate in the U.K. was an out-standing one!

I left Edinburgh Thursday August 27th, departing my hotel room at 830am and arriving at a Sheraton in downtown Sacremento, California, twenty two hours later, exhausted yet unable to sleep more than a few hours. Thankfully the field chief was rather lenient on me as I was incapable of anything resembling work friday and he didnt even seem to mind that much that I woke him up at 530am in the morning. I mean, come on, I had laid there waiting to get him up for about 2 hours already!

This trip would be inconceivable should I not have been meeting my love, but here we are together in California, and they call this work! My trips are usually excruciatingly painful on the body, even a young one like mine! The hours tend to be over the 12 mark and I constantly long for my love; but here we are, together, sitting on a boat for 8 hours a day armed with nothing more than paper, pencil and a GPS, then strolling down to Paesanoes for a revitalising Sangria in the early evening. So usually I would be complaining like a trooper in my third week away from home, but Im sitting back (in my life jacket, of course) and enjoying the hot Californian sun on my face.

I do miss my boys, but I hear they are behaving themselves so much that even I would be proud of them! So to you my lovelies, Ill be home Saturday and I promise you a walk Monday morning!

Exercise-less

ugh, so my three weeks at home were my chance to drop those recently gained pounds and get my fitness back to where I wasn't ashamed of it. I had got my journey to Coon Town from 17 mph average up to 18.5 mph and was really enjoying my rides. Then out of the blue my knee started hurting on my ride monday and that was my week shot. So now I have had no exercise in my life since monday and I leave town saturday for three weeks. So I feel horrid. Again.

I don't just cook!

A little insight into other aspects of my life today.

Im not just a cooking, exercising, eating machine you know.

When I'm not travelling the country playing with mud, or the world for that matter, I spend eight ours a day sitting at my desk in front of my dual screen, very powerful computer. Don't ask me specs on the pooter, I just need it to work!

Believe it or not, this is the part of my job I enjoy! For the most part at least! I love organising things, even it is hundreds of thousands of numbers! And yes, colours are usually involved in the organisation process, particularly pink.

It you promise not to steal my idea, Ill tell you what I am currently spending my time on. Although it is not technically solely my idea, I have to give my boss credit here too.

The Conterminous United States is divided into Ecoregions by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). There are different levels of details, but I tend to work with Level III Ecoregions.

The approach used to compule this Ecoregion map is based on the premise that ecological regions can be identified through the analysis of the patterns and the composition of biotic and abiotic phenomena or relect differences in ecosystem quality and integrity (Wiken 1986, Omernik 1987, 1995). These phenomena include geology, physiography, vegetation, climate, soils, land use, wildlife, and hydrology (USEPA, 2007).

My home and the surrounding areas lie within Ecoregions 65, The Southeastern Plains, and 74, The Mississippi Valley Loess Plains.

On and off for the past few years, I have been organising precipitation (rainfall and snowfall) and discharge (flow of water through channels) data for the 84 ecoreigons of the US. Sad I know, but I do actually find this really interesting!

The rate of change in precipitation (calculated over the period of record) for Ecoregions 65 and 74 are 1.15 and 1.10 mm per year, respectively (I tried to put the graphs in as they are beautiful, but I cound't manage it for some reason, sorry). That means that this area gets approximately 11 cm more precipitation per year now than during the 1900s. Because I ahve also broken this data out by season (using NOAA seasonal definitions; DJF, MAM, JA, SON), I can tell you that we actually have a decrease in summer rainfall and that most of our increase in rainfall in this area has been occurring during autumn months; September, October and November. Cool, eh!?

Quick weeknight dinner (and its vegan)

I haven't really felt like cooking much this week, but we still need to eat. Im also trying to get our food stock down to nothing by Saturday when I leave, so Im all about throwing stuff together.

Whenever we have rice for dinner, I always make sure I cook way too much for one meal. So I decided to use it up last night! These are the veggies I used because its what I have to use up, but you can use whatever you have in your fridge or freezer; peas, carrots, corn, cabbage, whatever you want, just make it colourful! I often also use fresh ginger and garlic, but didn't have any and couldn't be bothered to chop, respectively!


Fast Fried Rice

Ingredients:
a good lug of vegetable oil
1-2 c pre-cooked brown rice (seriously, whole grain products are so much better for you!)
1/4 onion, chopped into small pieces
1 small zucchini/courgette, chopped into small pieces
1 small red bell pepper
two handfuls of green beans, chopped into small pieces
one handful of cashews or your favourite cooking nuts
Lemon juice
Your favourite Asian stir-fry sauce, just a few lugs as you have other liquids in here also
Soy Sauce
Rice Vinegar
Sesame seeds to serve


1. Microwave rice for 3 or 4 minutes.

2. Heat oil in pain on almost the highest setting. Stir fry onions until translucent, about 2 minutes.

3. Add other veggies and stir fry another minute. Add all liquids and stir fry another minute.

4. Add rice and stir around until everything is mixed together. Add nuts. Adjust sauce levels so that everything gets covered well. Might want to take off heat at this point so that rice doesn't stick to pan.

5. Sprinkle with sesame seeds once in bowls.


Dinner in 15 minutes, start to finish!

Sunday slow-down

Today seemed much more relaxed than yesterday, though I still seemed to achieve a lot, oh and Im quitting early!

I did not feel like cycling, so I did skip that, which gave me an extra two hours. Oh and I didnt sleep in since Danny and Timmy came home at 830am, so I got up and talked to them before they went to sleep!

Mostly spent the day weeding in the back, though I did manage to make 2 zucchini bread loaves and two rosemary garlic focaccia, which look irresistible! Im quitting now, at 4pm, to chill with my book for an hour or so. I would work some more in the garden, but I split a chili with my finger nails earlier to put in the bread for some kick and now my fingers are really sore! Wimp, I know.

Zucchini Bread

2 tea loaves or reduce baking time and use mini-loaf pans and give as gifts

Ingredients:

2-2 1/2 c shredded zucchini, 2 medium zucs

3 c flour

1 3/4 c sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp each cinnamon, nutmeg and powdered ginger

3/4 c apple sauce

2-3 eggs, depending on size

2 tbs ground flax

1/3 c vegetable oil

1 tbs vanilla

1 c raisins

1 c walnuts

1 c multi-grain cereal (oats, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, flax seeds etc)

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Spray two loaf pans with oil.

2. Combine egg, oil, apple sauce, vanilla and flax and whisk.

3. Gradually add spices and sugar, continually whisking. Fold in flour and multi-grain cereal.

4. Mix in zucchini, raisins and nuts.

5. Distribute mixture evenly between loaf pans. Bake 1 hr 5 mins.

Cool in pans

This is a great breakfast when smeared with cream cheese! It freezes fantastically; I usually chose to slice then freeze. Enjoy!