camping, a recap

So our first camping trip with the baby was a huge success. He enjoyed it immensely and we had a lot of fun. Here he is, overjoyed with the great outdoors:


We actually came away learning a bunch of cool stuff from this trip. For example, I felt bad about feeding Fenix cold cereal and cold fruit puree for breakfast. Well we had some peaches that we brought for a snack and I thought it would be smart to wrap the peach in foil and throw it in the fire to roast.

After the peach got really hot and mushy we took it out of the fire and scooped out the flesh and what do you have? Warm fruit puree (aka baby food)! You could do it with an apple or a plum or a banana... whatever you've got. So easy, so yummy.

Speaking of fruit in the fire, what got me down the road of roasting the peach was our dessert from the previous night. I had read a recipe for inside out caramel apples as a camp dessert so we whipped some up. You just core an apple and stuff several caramels down in the hole where the core was. Wrap the whole thing in foil and throw it in the fire. Cook until it's mushy and eat it up with a spoon. I can confirm that this was a delicious and easy recipe and it is now a permanent fixture on our camp menu.

A much more important discovery of this trip was this incredible invention called the "rocket". A rocket is a small pouch of biscuit that you roast over the campfire and fill with delicious things. Here's how it works:

First you have the rocket apparatus which is basically one short piece of a very wide dowel with a very long piece of narrow dowel attached to it.

You take a biscuit (from one of those cans of horribly processed premade biscuits) and you mush the uncooked dough evenly over the end of the rocket. After the dough is on their good you roast it over the fire, turning it slowly being sure to cook the part closest to you first and working your way down towards the 'butt' (the end of the rocket).
When the biscuit is cooked it should slide right off of the rocket apparatus leaving a deep pocket that is ready to accept the filling of your choice. In this case it was scrambled eggs with mushrooms and chorizo.

So on our way home from this trip I got to thinking how I could really expand on this and create an entire arsenal of rocket ideas. First of all, that processed biscuit dough is not the greatest but a homemade dough is often too short to work with in this application. I will need to experiment with some recipes to figure out what would work. And better still, what if instead of biscuit dough we used pizza dough and filled the pocket with cheese, tomato sauce and sausage or grilled veggies? You see where I'm going with this?? I am even having thoughts of dessert rockets filled with warm apple compote. The possibilities are endless.

So I bet you want to go camping now don't you?

seattle mass transit is such a tit twister

Sorry for the foul language but honestly I'm sick to death of the b.s. that a person has to put up with to commute in this god forsaken city. I know what you're thinking... "move if you don't like it". And I say to that... don't worry, I will.

Anyway mass transit in Seattle is a well documented problem. Besides driving or riding your bike (which is never fun in the winter since it RAINS ALL THE TIME HERE ;-)) there is only one option for most people commuting into downtown or other Seattle metro areas and that is the bus.

Seattle has 3 main bus systems - Sound Transit, Metro and Community Transit. Metro buses service anything within city limits and some outlying areas. Sound Transit services south Seattle suburbs and Community Transit handles the north end suburbs. There's some overlap between the services areas of all three systems but it is negligible.

So here's the thing.... there is a Community Transit bus stop very close to our house. I usually walk to and from there on the days when I go in to work. The Community Transit buses are very clean and comfortable, always have seats available and have wifi. Nothing to complain about there... EXCEPT (!) they do not run frequently unless it is rush hour and even then it's 30-45 mins from one bus to the next. Picture it if you will... me, 7 months pregnant, winter weather and I'm making my way to catch the 5:15 bus. I've left myself plenty of time but as I reach the top of the hill I watch it drive right past me. But it's only 5pm, I say angrily in my head. And I can't run because, well, I'm pretty slow on my feet at this point. So it's another hour of waiting (outside in the cold!) for the next bus. Christ, I just want to go home.

Now take that story and imagine that it happens over and over and over again. How freakin' early do I have to be to catch this bus?! There are also times where the bus just. never. shows. up. By the time a bus actually does roll up it's time for the next scheduled stop (or worse, the one after that). I am positive that you can see the smoke pouring out of my ears on those days.

Moving on, there is the Metro bus. Well it's certainly got more frequent instances than the Comm Trans bus. And for that matter there are many more places to catch these buses as well. But much like any other *free* city bus it wreaks of urine and is usually heavily populated with mentally unstable people. There were times when I was on this bus where I was positive that I would never make it to work because the person sitting in front of me was ranting to himself and rocking so wildly in his seat that I was sure he was going to kill us all.

That leaves Sound Transit - I can't tell you jack shit about that because we don't live in the south end but I hear that it's on par with Comm Trans - posh and clean but you better get to your stop extra early.

So what is the problem, Seattle? Why is there no subway? And don't you dare mention that light rail or that lame ass monorail! How can such an educated, forward thinking community continue to limp along like this? It really feels like I'm missing something. I don't like this car culture. It's partly my fault for not researching this before we moved here but you don't know what you've got til it's gone, right? In NJ I would leave my car sitting parked for weeks. God, I really miss that.

the popcorn popper!

hate to rain on your parade or whatever, but it's not a single-use item! :-D

we can use it over and over and over and over. so long as we wash it.

it's like this, but better:

we're going camping kids!

We are not the backpacking/wilderness/hike to the campsite sort of people so traveling ultra-lite is not a goal of ours. We basically just car camp but we have so much other crap (dog gear, baby gear, etc...) that we do try to minimize the amount of extras.

We're headed out to the Olympic peninsula for a bit of car camping with a couple of other families. This will be our first time camping with Fenix but my confidence in our ability to pull this off is growing as I talk to people who have done it before and realize that if all goes to hell, we'll just pack up and leave. I have a feeling though that Fee will love it - it's in his blood after all since his dad lived outside for a bunch of time. He'll have to tell you all about that some day. It's a pretty great series of stories that I don't mind hearing over and over again. Aaanyway....

As far as tools/utensils go, we bring:
camp stove and fuel
a bit of firewood for the campfire
compact cutting board and knife

1 small pot
1 cast iron skillet
cheap flatware that we bought from the bins at goodwill (who cares if it gets lost!)
wooden spoon, wooden spatula
scissors
french press (after a fitful night of sleep in a stuffy tent, I must have the kind of viscous coffee that only a french press can provide)
*cast iron popcorn popper for making popcorn over the campfire
enamel coated dishes and cups
Several big jugs of filtered water - just sterilize some jugs that we have and dump in Brita water (I do not want h. pylori, no, I really do not)

For meals we like to make things that can go in one pot:
Southwest skillet ragu
or
Braised chicken thighs with pinto beans (I'll post the recipe later)

It's also good to have some sort of charcuterie plate for snacking before the meal is done because salted cured meats are awesome and of course we throw some cheese, fig jam and crudites on there too. You could always just do chips and salsa but I think a meat and cheese plate with delicious olives and fresh raw vegetables and fruit brings an air of elegance (if that is even possible on a campground).

There is always wine - white because red makes you groggy and headache-y and you want to stay bright and fresh for as long as possible or at least until the neighboring campers tell you to pipe down.

What about breakfast? A granola bar is the easy way out but that isn't very exciting, now is it?
Have you ever had the pleasure of being lured from your tent by the smell of bacon frying?

Up round these parts we get beautiful morels that grow in wooded areas and if your trip included a little mushroom hunting you could make a wonderful scramble with a sautee of minced shallot and chopped mushrooms in butter - fold that into some scrambled eggs - and serve with a side of bacon of course. For bread we just do english muffins because they hold up better than sliced loaf bread.

Lunch is usually pretty spare, just a piece of fresh fruit and snacky things like the aforementioned granola bars and maybe some jerky or a piece of cheese if you want some protein.

For Mr. Fenix who eats his fair share of solid foods now, we are going to go the easy route to avoid an accidental case of baby botulism and buy some of the organic jarred stuff and supplement it with bits of mild cheese and freeze dried fruit (which he LOVES).

We'll take lots of pictures so that you can see how it goes. I'm off to find my headlamp.....


*now honestly we would not even have this thing had it not been for the fact that we discovered it for some insanely low price at the goodwill. i'm not a big fan of single use kitchen tools but it's for popcorn (!) over the campfire (!), how could we have left it in the store?

my new favorite pizza

Forget cheese being the only ingredient in a stuffed-crust pizza, Pizza Hut’s new Double Roll sticks hot dog sausages in there too.

"please create a 'smiths, the' channel on pandora. thank you." -reese

regarding slate, discussed yesterday, there's more groovy iphone articles. here's the link. and here's the bush o' the day: "The economy is growing, productivity is high, trade is up, people are working. It's not as good as we'd like, but—and to the extent that we find weakness, we'll move."—Washington, D.C., July 15, 2008

oh, and also, it's food month... weds night for dinner reese took some pork and roasted it over low heat for an hour, plus wood chips on the grill to smoke it out. she handmade a carolina-style barbecue sauce and we had pork sammies with cole slaw.

besides all that... do you ever get somewhere and it's empty there and you have to decide where the best place to sit is, like, on the fly? every time I get on the bus, for sure... at least until I have a groove. a strategy. I used to have a subway strategy when I was back east. another story.

we sold our second car and my wife needs the car today so I'm riding the bus. so i get on and switch seats later, whatever, right? anyway, we sold the second car because, well... because of the fucking gas crisis, where every fucking thing costs more because nobody planned ahead. i'm not blaming the bush administration, either, this not planning ahead shite has been going on for decades! this bullshit "crisis" is of our own doing. the goddamn model-t got 25 miles per gallon! for real. edison had an electric car in 1899 for fucks sake!

riding the bus ain't that bad. i'm writing this while on it. so far, a good first day.

I was nervous and pissed that I would have to walk like a million fucking miles uphill on a busy street with no fucking sidewalk, but it didn't work out that way and I only had to go a couple blocks.

it's pretty awesome not to be driving right now, I'll tell you that. I've been getting into this hypermiling thing, which is kinda fun, but i live 22 miles from my job and traffic in my town is stupid bad... not matter how good your gas mileage that still sucks, you know? again, see lack of fucking planning. if you wanted to be a kick-ass big city, why would you NOT build subways? NY said fuckit, tore up the streets, and put in the subways like a hundred fucking years ago.

seattlites will be toiling around on buses for the rest of our fucking days. there will never be comprehensive mass transit in seattle, period.

ah, riding the bus. it's nice leaving the driving to them or whatever, but I want a subaru outback sport and a pontiac vibe and a toyota matrix and ooh i really want a mazda3 protege. that would be sweet! zoomzoom.

nobody sat next to me so that's alright. it's a bummer that reese has to come get me, that i can't walk from the termination point to home. but! it arrived on time and is dropping me off on time and I've had a seat in the sun the whole ride and haven't had to drive. I've been sitting in the sun, writing. I could have been listening to music but I'm so out of practice that there's no headphones in my backpack. I could have been napping! there was some napping going on, for sure.

my wife just pulled up beside the bus next to me and i just saw my son napping in the back. how fucking awesome is that?

and now we're here. bye!

corn and iphones!

corn is in season now and 50 cents an ear in my neck of the woods. has been for a few weeks now. i really love when corn is in season. i'm still perfecting my grilling technique for grilled corn. it's easy to think it's too dark! take it off! and then be bummed that you should have left it on for like, 18 minutes longer.

so it's... soak the corn, cook the corn, butter the corn, season with (salt + pepper + cayenne + whatever? or leave your own suggestion in the comments?), then eat, right? how long does it have to stay on?! argh. how can you tell when it's done to ohshit i burned it?

sooo... besides corn, what else is there to do on a tuesday night? I know! let's surf the tubes!

wait, do you know what surfing the tubes even is? ok, back up backup. do you know who senator ted stevens is? of alaska?

he's this old fart who's almost certainly corrupt (not a little corrupt either, but i'm just saying, whatevs). you may remember him from his frequent clips on the daily show. some old jackass on the senate floor yelling NO!

aaaanyway, there was something that happened awhile ago. stevens was talking to somebody about something and it was being recorded. they started talking about the internet... and he starts trying to explain it or something, which sorta comes off .... just wrong. it's like he's explaining it to himself but the details are just not right; clearly stevens just does. not. get. it. which is sort-of understandable. i mean, the guy is older than alaska. he's probably as old as abe lincoln! imagine trying to explain fucking match-dot-com to abe lincoln, should the opportunity present itself. as smart as we figure that guy was, that'd be a LOT of explaining, right?

so stevens rambles for awile, which is hilarious, and eventually gets to how the internet isn't a truck, it's ... a series of tubes. it's... it's pretty awesome. checkit:



besides ted stevens (no!) what else do we got... ok, time for another recommendation.

you should be checking out slate. they cover a bunch of stuff and mostly are funny... like this iphone review I found titled Can I Resist the iPhone 3G? An Apple obsessive confronts the company's shiny new bauble .

it's fun and worth checking out. my favorite quote:

The first thing I noticed was that even though the iPhone 3G is slightly bigger than the original, it felt a tad lighter. Otherwise, my old iPhone and his new one were all but identical. The first iPhone was a revolution in smartphone design and a dramatic leap forward into an age of ubiquitous connectivity. To match the original in revolutionariness, the 3G version would have to fire lasers, electronically impregnate you with your own clone, or at least be way smaller. But this was … the same thing. I mean, I knew the two phones were to be basically the same, but seeing this with my own eyes made a difference.

there's also a bunch of other stuff. they try to do sports, like Derek Jeter vs. Objective Reality Why baseball researchers are obsessed with denigrating the Yankee captain's defense

the article read more like an analysis than a fun read...
One reason why baseball statisticians didn't get too excited about the study is that Jensen's methods ("for each grounder ball-in-play—g-bip—we have the—x,y—coordinates in the field where the g-bip was fielded" and on and on) are grounded in the familiar language of the sabermetric literature. Mostly, though, the paper didn't provoke much intrigue because Jeter's badness is already an axiom of said literature. In fact, debunking the conventional wisdom about the Yankee captain's fielding prowess has become a standard method of proving the validity of a new fielding statistic.

they have a bushism of the day section. today's is
"Should the Iranian regime—do they have the sovereign right to have civilian nuclear power? So, like, if I were you, that's what I'd ask me. And the answer is, yes, they do."—Speaking to reporters in Washington, D.C., July 2, 2008

so basically... what I'm saying is eat corn if it's in season near you, don't be afraid to blacken the corn, and read slate, because mostly it's fun.