So, tomorrow (Sunday) is the marathon. Here's the deal: a while back, I hurt my foot. It's better now but not 100%. I've not been able to do long runs or much any real marathon training, which is a bit of a problem. (Understatement.) I really debated whether to pull out of the marathon, but ultimately decided to go ahead with it anyway.
I'll be mostly walking, not so much running, and I'm probably not going to be able to finish, but I'll be there at the start. My plan is to go for as long as my foot holds out. (Pete says this is not a plan, but hey, it's all I've got.) I have no idea what my pace will be or how far I'm going to go. I could limp off the course at mile 1 or still be trudging along 6 hours later. Who knows! Won't this be fun...
Anyway, to celebrate the fact that, injury aside, this year I'm actually healthy enough to be at the start -- which, for those of you who remember my health debacle from last year, is indeed something to celebrate -- we're going to be at Lucky's in Mendota post-marathon. I reckon we'll be there by 4 or so. If you're so inclined, stop on out! Have a beer, munch on some onion rings, and help us celebrate my DNF. Because in this case, it's not remotely about the journey, destination, or the finish. It's all about the start, baby. Yeah.
Saturday, October 03, 2009
Thursday, October 01, 2009
How times have changed
A writer whose blog I follow recently wrote about how a question came up: would people's kids recognize an ashtray? She showed a picture of an ashtray to her 9-year-old daughter. Lo, the kid didn't know what it was.
So of course, I had to try this on my two. I asked the girls to look at this image, and asked them if they knew what it was. "Uh," Emma said blankly. "Is it a bowl?"
Morgan stared at it for a bit longer. "Oh, I know," she exclaimed. "It's a hot dog cooker!"
I almost spewed my coffee all over the laptop. "A hot dog cooker?" I said when I had recovered. "Why do you think it's a hot dog cooker?"
She explained how the notches along the sides are clearly for the sticks to rest on (duh, Mom), and you put the fire in the middle, and voila! Hot dog cooker. (That's pretty ingenious, now that I think about it. Maybe we should market this.) She wasn't quite sure how it would work lugging this thing to and from a campground, though, as it would be messy, heavy, and big. When she said that, I finally realized she thought it was much bigger its actual size, like campfire ring size. I explained that it's actually about the size of my palm. "Well, then, I don't know what it is," she said, and she and Emma said together: "What is it?"
I told them that it was an ashtray. They boggled over that much as you would boggle over any relic from the olden days , then went off to eat their breakfasts.
When I was a kid back in the dark ages of the 1970s, it seemed like everybody smoked. My parents didn't smoke, but they had ashtrays on hand because most of their friends smoked. Most of my extended family smoked. My grandfather smoked (and it killed him). It was everywhere. People's houses, restaurants, offices, airplanes. Today, things are different. I know a few smokers but they're the exception, not the norm, and they're not smoking in their houses. Restaurants and everywhere else are smoke free. And until this morning, my 10 year olds had no idea what an ashtray was. (Hot dog cooker. HEE.) It's cool how much things have shifted in a generation, but it's also a little bizarre. Or maybe that's just me turning into an old foogy. Back in my day...
So of course, I had to try this on my two. I asked the girls to look at this image, and asked them if they knew what it was. "Uh," Emma said blankly. "Is it a bowl?"
Morgan stared at it for a bit longer. "Oh, I know," she exclaimed. "It's a hot dog cooker!"
I almost spewed my coffee all over the laptop. "A hot dog cooker?" I said when I had recovered. "Why do you think it's a hot dog cooker?"
She explained how the notches along the sides are clearly for the sticks to rest on (duh, Mom), and you put the fire in the middle, and voila! Hot dog cooker. (That's pretty ingenious, now that I think about it. Maybe we should market this.) She wasn't quite sure how it would work lugging this thing to and from a campground, though, as it would be messy, heavy, and big. When she said that, I finally realized she thought it was much bigger its actual size, like campfire ring size. I explained that it's actually about the size of my palm. "Well, then, I don't know what it is," she said, and she and Emma said together: "What is it?"
I told them that it was an ashtray. They boggled over that much as you would boggle over any relic from the olden days , then went off to eat their breakfasts.
When I was a kid back in the dark ages of the 1970s, it seemed like everybody smoked. My parents didn't smoke, but they had ashtrays on hand because most of their friends smoked. Most of my extended family smoked. My grandfather smoked (and it killed him). It was everywhere. People's houses, restaurants, offices, airplanes. Today, things are different. I know a few smokers but they're the exception, not the norm, and they're not smoking in their houses. Restaurants and everywhere else are smoke free. And until this morning, my 10 year olds had no idea what an ashtray was. (Hot dog cooker. HEE.) It's cool how much things have shifted in a generation, but it's also a little bizarre. Or maybe that's just me turning into an old foogy. Back in my day...
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Dinner: soup
This is one of the kids' all-time favorites: homemade chicken noodle soup.
No squinchy faces for this one. Emma approves!
(Sides not pictured: homemade bread with butter, and milk from the cows at Cedar Summit Farm.)
The girls say I should sell my soup secrets to a soup company. I think not! But I will tell you what's in my soup:
water
onion
garlic
oregano
thyme
pepper
carrots
celery
chicken
noodles
salt to taste
Pretty simple. Pretty good.
No squinchy faces for this one. Emma approves!
(Sides not pictured: homemade bread with butter, and milk from the cows at Cedar Summit Farm.)
The girls say I should sell my soup secrets to a soup company. I think not! But I will tell you what's in my soup:
water
onion
garlic
oregano
thyme
pepper
carrots
celery
chicken
noodles
salt to taste
Pretty simple. Pretty good.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Hodge podge post
There were a bunch o' images hanging out on the memory card...time to get them processed and filed away. Here are some of the highlights.
Here's Morgan snuggling with Bailey, our beagle-basset Humane Society refugee. [Insert "Awwwww!" here.] Oh, how the girls love that dog. Oh, does that dog ever have it good. Sleep, eat, cuddle. Soak up the love of two adoring little girls. Repeat. Can we say that this dog totally landed on her feet when she came to live with us?
Saturday, the four of us plus the Felschkins took part in the Plymouth Firefighters 5K. Eric ran the 5K and did quite well, finishing in 26:something. Val, Pete, and I are all coming back from various injuries and other woes, and so we did a walk/run combo. All of our girls did the 1 mile fun run and had a blast doing it. Great fun! I forgot the camera in the car and so didn't get any pictures of the actual events, but here's a close-up of the shirt.
(For the record: since November 2008 I've run 6 5Ks and walked/run 1 5K, completed 2 half-marathons and 2 triathlons, and I have 5 days to go until the Twin Cities Marathon. Which I'll be starting but probably not finishing, and I'll be mostly walking, not so much running. More on that in a later post.)
There were frost warnings all over the place for last night, so after dinner I went out and harvested what I could from the garden.
Bye bye, summer.
Here's Morgan snuggling with Bailey, our beagle-basset Humane Society refugee. [Insert "Awwwww!" here.] Oh, how the girls love that dog. Oh, does that dog ever have it good. Sleep, eat, cuddle. Soak up the love of two adoring little girls. Repeat. Can we say that this dog totally landed on her feet when she came to live with us?
Saturday, the four of us plus the Felschkins took part in the Plymouth Firefighters 5K. Eric ran the 5K and did quite well, finishing in 26:something. Val, Pete, and I are all coming back from various injuries and other woes, and so we did a walk/run combo. All of our girls did the 1 mile fun run and had a blast doing it. Great fun! I forgot the camera in the car and so didn't get any pictures of the actual events, but here's a close-up of the shirt.
(For the record: since November 2008 I've run 6 5Ks and walked/run 1 5K, completed 2 half-marathons and 2 triathlons, and I have 5 days to go until the Twin Cities Marathon. Which I'll be starting but probably not finishing, and I'll be mostly walking, not so much running. More on that in a later post.)
There were frost warnings all over the place for last night, so after dinner I went out and harvested what I could from the garden.
Bye bye, summer.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Breakfast: Doughnuts by Morgan
I helped. Just a little.
Raw doughnuts.
Into the oil. Morgan was scared of the hot oil (I don't blame her -- it scares me too sometimes!), so I was in charge of sliding them in and lifting them out.
The doughnut maker and her doughnuts.
Mmm, fresh doughnuts. (They tasted even better than they looked.)
Western Doughnuts
from King Arthur Flour: Whole Grain Baking
p. 535
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup oat flour
2 cups unbleached bread flour
1 tbsp baking powder
2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
2 large eggs
2 tbsp butter, melted and cooled
1 cup sugar
1 cup milk
5-6 cups vegetable oil for frying*
To make the dough: Whisk together the flours with the baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg in a medium bowl. Lightly beat the eggs in a large bowl. Beat in the melted butter and sugar. Add about 1 cup of the flour mixture, and beat until the mixture comes together. Stir in one-third of the milk. Add 1 cup of the flour mixture and half the remaining milk, then repeat the process once more until all the ingredients are combined. Cover the dough and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
To cut the doughnuts: Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper.** Remove the dough from the refrigerator and cut it in half.*** Place one half on a lightly floured surface. Sprinkle the dough with flour and roll it out until it's 1/2 inch thick. Using a 2 & 3/4-inch doughnut cutter^, cut out as many doughnuts as you can, and transfer them to the prepared baking sheets with a spatula. Use a 1-inch round cutter^^ to make small doughnuts from the scraps; don't reroll, or the doughnuts will be tough. Refrigerate the doughnuts while the oil heats.
To fry: Heat 2-3 inches of vegetable oil in a deep, heavy skillet until it reaches a temperature of 375F. Deep-fry the doughnuts, 3 or 4 at a time, turning them over after about 3 minutes.^^^ Remove the doughnuts from the oil and drain on paper towels. Repeat with the other half of the dough.
*We used canola oil.
**I didn't have any parchment paper, but greasing the baking sheets instead worked quite nicely.
***I don't know what happened -- recipe fail? cook error? -- but that dough was not dough but liquid glop, even after a half hour in the frig. There was no way we were cutting that in half. Pouring it, maybe, but cutting, no. We had to add a lot more flour (I'm not sure how much -- 2-3 cups?) than the recipe called for to make it work.
^A regular round cookie cutter did the job just as well as a doughnut cutter.
^^We used a shot glass.
^^^We didn't time them, but waited until they floated to the top, then turned them, let them fry until Morgan pronounced them "Just Right!" and lifted them out.
Raw doughnuts.
Into the oil. Morgan was scared of the hot oil (I don't blame her -- it scares me too sometimes!), so I was in charge of sliding them in and lifting them out.
The doughnut maker and her doughnuts.
Mmm, fresh doughnuts. (They tasted even better than they looked.)
Western Doughnuts
from King Arthur Flour: Whole Grain Baking
p. 535
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup oat flour
2 cups unbleached bread flour
1 tbsp baking powder
2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
2 large eggs
2 tbsp butter, melted and cooled
1 cup sugar
1 cup milk
5-6 cups vegetable oil for frying*
To make the dough: Whisk together the flours with the baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg in a medium bowl. Lightly beat the eggs in a large bowl. Beat in the melted butter and sugar. Add about 1 cup of the flour mixture, and beat until the mixture comes together. Stir in one-third of the milk. Add 1 cup of the flour mixture and half the remaining milk, then repeat the process once more until all the ingredients are combined. Cover the dough and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
To cut the doughnuts: Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper.** Remove the dough from the refrigerator and cut it in half.*** Place one half on a lightly floured surface. Sprinkle the dough with flour and roll it out until it's 1/2 inch thick. Using a 2 & 3/4-inch doughnut cutter^, cut out as many doughnuts as you can, and transfer them to the prepared baking sheets with a spatula. Use a 1-inch round cutter^^ to make small doughnuts from the scraps; don't reroll, or the doughnuts will be tough. Refrigerate the doughnuts while the oil heats.
To fry: Heat 2-3 inches of vegetable oil in a deep, heavy skillet until it reaches a temperature of 375F. Deep-fry the doughnuts, 3 or 4 at a time, turning them over after about 3 minutes.^^^ Remove the doughnuts from the oil and drain on paper towels. Repeat with the other half of the dough.
*We used canola oil.
**I didn't have any parchment paper, but greasing the baking sheets instead worked quite nicely.
***I don't know what happened -- recipe fail? cook error? -- but that dough was not dough but liquid glop, even after a half hour in the frig. There was no way we were cutting that in half. Pouring it, maybe, but cutting, no. We had to add a lot more flour (I'm not sure how much -- 2-3 cups?) than the recipe called for to make it work.
^A regular round cookie cutter did the job just as well as a doughnut cutter.
^^We used a shot glass.
^^^We didn't time them, but waited until they floated to the top, then turned them, let them fry until Morgan pronounced them "Just Right!" and lifted them out.
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