12 July 2009
Liver & Onions
12/07/09 17:48
This week I went down to Victoria for another few days of work on the Big Parkside Resort project. You know the one that absolutely will be open in May. Really we mean it - June 15th. No question, definitely open by July 1. Well when we said July 1, we really meant no later than July 10. Or maybe the 20th, at least partially open, I mean it might be, but really this time we're serious. All kidding aside the place is beautiful. Once it is done it will have all the usual resort things, Spa, pool, gym, restaurants. The rooms are like efficiency apartments complete with a full kitchen and laundry, granite counters, hardwood floors, top of the line fixtures all the way around. They had some trouble finding me a place to stay (it is peak tourist season and Victoria is full right now) and I suggested they just let me camp out in one of the rooms. I would have loved to even if it were with a sleeping bag and air mattress. Unfortunately they haven't quite got it finished enough to be legally habitable. Maybe next trip. And there will be a next trip. Even if they do complete Tower A this month we haven't even looked at Tower B yet.
This week I made a liver. Not made liver as in liver and onions, I made a pretty good faux liver. A vegetarian liver as it were. Here's what happened. When I go down to Victoria I always take along some food. It's too expensive to eat out three meals a day. So along with cookies, and fruit, and water, I took some trail mix. This time I decided to do something different and mix my own. I put chocolate covered peanuts, almonds, and raisins along with macadamia nuts in a bag. It was a really great mix. I packed it in the car with the rest of my stuff and headed off down the road. I worked all day at Parkside and at the end of the day went to the hotel. In the room I pulled out my food. Everything was fine except for my mix. Eight hours in the car in the sun had melted all the chocolate so it was a rather lumpy fondue. I just sealed the bag back up and didn't worry about it. But the next day it hadn't hardened. In fact it was still goo when I got home on Friday so I just chucked the bag into the freezer. By Saturday it was hard and I pealed the plastic bag off of it. The result was a brown rounded mass that looked disturbingly like a lumpy, nodular, cirrhotic liver. Somehow it really wasn't terribly appealing any more. Now I understand why commercial trail mixes use M&Ms. They hold up better under heat.
We're getting the farm deliveries each week. The first couple of weeks we got lettuce, carrots, and green onions. I was just reaching my limit for salads, when the next wave came in. Zucchini, English Peas, Sugar Peas, and such. Now we're packing most of each weeks delivery into the freezer. I'm even chopping the green onions and garlic scape and freezing them together. It's a fantastic addition to pizzas, omelets, and salads. Last week the green onions were replaced with pearl onions. Or maybe the green onions had a glandular thing going on. I don't know. All I know was that at the bottom of the green onions was a perfect little onion one to one and a half inches in diameter. I snipped them off and put them in the oven to roast. Marsha was doing a big pork roast and so I let the onions cook in the smell from the pork. (It's OK, they didn't touch so I'm still legally vegetarian.) They came out absolutely wonderful. They were creamy and rich inside, done perfectly with just a hint of savory from the nearby, (but strictly segregated), pork roast. Marsha is not a fan of cooked onions so I got them all to myself. Yum.
In case you're wondering
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-garlic-scape.htm
We're in the final stages of packing for the trip. Those of you who have travelled with us know that we're always ready early. We had the main suitcase packed last weekend. This week we've been putting together the carry-on luggage, getting fresh batteries in the cameras, loading the iPods, and all of that. One issue has been reading material. Marsha has no problem with this. She's picked up a pile of novels from used book stores, rummage sales, garage sales, bazaars, and such. She reads them and leaves them behind as we go. I have a different taste in reading material. I find that long airline flights and on the ship is the only place I can concentrate on reading paleontology, something I dearly love to do. In the past I would pick up a big textbook and read it. Books with names like Fossils of the Burgess Shale, Gaining Ground, Terrestrial Ecosystems Trough Time and such. The trouble is that these books cost in the $30-$75 dollar range and I don't want to drop them as I go. I bring them back with me and they get added to my library. I've tried magazines but frankly I ended up spending nearly as much and they are half advertisements. This time I'm doing something different. I hunted around and found a dozen or so journal articles on the web. These are serious articles with names like The Permian Greenhouse Crisis, The Cambrian Fossil Record and Origin of the Phyla, or Exceptionally Preserved Non Trilobite Arthropods and Anomalocarids from the Middle Cambrian of Utah. This is some great stuff (if you're a palio-geek like me) and the cost for printing around 120 pages (60 sheets, double sided) of this was around $10. Plus I can leave the reprints behind to make room for souvenirs.
Yes this really is the type of crap I read when I'm on vacation.
http://www.amazon.com/Fossils-Burgess-Shale-Derek-Briggs/dp/1560983647
http://www.amazon.com/Gaining-Ground-Origin-Evolution-Tetrapods/dp/0253340543/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247374560&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Terrestrial-Ecosystems-Through-Time-Evolutionary/dp/0226041557/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247374704&sr=1-1
Speaking of the trip. Tuesday Geiger and Momiji go to "Kitty Spa", the kennel, or as I call it the "Catitentury" much to Marsha's annoyance. That should be traumatic. We leave on our big Asian adventure on Wednesday. The first leg is on a small single engine float plane, a DeHavilland Beaver, out of Nanaimo Harbor, then onto Air Canada in Vancouver. We will try to post a note or two on the way but you may not hear from us until we get back. When we do return there will be lots of great pictures for the letters and to post on the web site. See you on the other side.
Not the actual plane we will be flying on out of Nanaimo but similar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTPSEsE0ugY
This one is even closer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsuWl5FBMuA
Oh and here are the questions and answers to the Canadian quiz.
True or False
1. Canada is on the continent of South America.
2. Canada is the second largest country in the world. (Russian Federation is the largest.)
3. Canada has 9 provinces and 2 territories.
4. The Capital city of Canada is Ottawa.
5. The current leader of Canada is Sir Wilfrid Laurier.
6. The current Governor General of Canada is Michaelle Jean.
7. The Canadian emblem is the maple leaf.
8. The Canadian flag is red, white and blue with a white maple leaf.
9. Canada's birthday is on the first of July.
10. The national anthem is "O Canada".
11. There are two time zones in Canada.
12. The Canadian population in 2009 is 12,275,324.
13. The two main languages are English and French.
14. The name "Canada" comes from the Huron Iroquoi word 'kanata' meaning 'village'.
15. Canada became a country on July 1, 1998.
Answers:
1. False - North America is the correct continent.
2. True
3. False, there are 10 provinces and 3 territories.
Provinces
British Columbia
Alberta
Saskatchewan
Ontario
Nova Scotia
Newfoundland and Labrador
Manitoba
Prince Edward Island
Quebec
Territories:
Northwest Territories
Nunavut
Yukon
4. True
5. False - current PM is Steven Harper. Sir Wilfrid was the seven PM of Canada from 1896-1911.
6. True
7. True
8. False - The flag is red and white (no blue) with a maple leaf.
9. True
10. True
11. False - HEre are the time zones found in Canada.
Pacific Standard Time
Mountain Standard TIme
Central Standard TIme
Eastern Standard TIme
Atlantic Standard TIme
Newfound Standard Time
12. False - 33,696,000
13. True
14. True
15. False
This week I made a liver. Not made liver as in liver and onions, I made a pretty good faux liver. A vegetarian liver as it were. Here's what happened. When I go down to Victoria I always take along some food. It's too expensive to eat out three meals a day. So along with cookies, and fruit, and water, I took some trail mix. This time I decided to do something different and mix my own. I put chocolate covered peanuts, almonds, and raisins along with macadamia nuts in a bag. It was a really great mix. I packed it in the car with the rest of my stuff and headed off down the road. I worked all day at Parkside and at the end of the day went to the hotel. In the room I pulled out my food. Everything was fine except for my mix. Eight hours in the car in the sun had melted all the chocolate so it was a rather lumpy fondue. I just sealed the bag back up and didn't worry about it. But the next day it hadn't hardened. In fact it was still goo when I got home on Friday so I just chucked the bag into the freezer. By Saturday it was hard and I pealed the plastic bag off of it. The result was a brown rounded mass that looked disturbingly like a lumpy, nodular, cirrhotic liver. Somehow it really wasn't terribly appealing any more. Now I understand why commercial trail mixes use M&Ms. They hold up better under heat.
We're getting the farm deliveries each week. The first couple of weeks we got lettuce, carrots, and green onions. I was just reaching my limit for salads, when the next wave came in. Zucchini, English Peas, Sugar Peas, and such. Now we're packing most of each weeks delivery into the freezer. I'm even chopping the green onions and garlic scape and freezing them together. It's a fantastic addition to pizzas, omelets, and salads. Last week the green onions were replaced with pearl onions. Or maybe the green onions had a glandular thing going on. I don't know. All I know was that at the bottom of the green onions was a perfect little onion one to one and a half inches in diameter. I snipped them off and put them in the oven to roast. Marsha was doing a big pork roast and so I let the onions cook in the smell from the pork. (It's OK, they didn't touch so I'm still legally vegetarian.) They came out absolutely wonderful. They were creamy and rich inside, done perfectly with just a hint of savory from the nearby, (but strictly segregated), pork roast. Marsha is not a fan of cooked onions so I got them all to myself. Yum.
In case you're wondering
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-garlic-scape.htm
We're in the final stages of packing for the trip. Those of you who have travelled with us know that we're always ready early. We had the main suitcase packed last weekend. This week we've been putting together the carry-on luggage, getting fresh batteries in the cameras, loading the iPods, and all of that. One issue has been reading material. Marsha has no problem with this. She's picked up a pile of novels from used book stores, rummage sales, garage sales, bazaars, and such. She reads them and leaves them behind as we go. I have a different taste in reading material. I find that long airline flights and on the ship is the only place I can concentrate on reading paleontology, something I dearly love to do. In the past I would pick up a big textbook and read it. Books with names like Fossils of the Burgess Shale, Gaining Ground, Terrestrial Ecosystems Trough Time and such. The trouble is that these books cost in the $30-$75 dollar range and I don't want to drop them as I go. I bring them back with me and they get added to my library. I've tried magazines but frankly I ended up spending nearly as much and they are half advertisements. This time I'm doing something different. I hunted around and found a dozen or so journal articles on the web. These are serious articles with names like The Permian Greenhouse Crisis, The Cambrian Fossil Record and Origin of the Phyla, or Exceptionally Preserved Non Trilobite Arthropods and Anomalocarids from the Middle Cambrian of Utah. This is some great stuff (if you're a palio-geek like me) and the cost for printing around 120 pages (60 sheets, double sided) of this was around $10. Plus I can leave the reprints behind to make room for souvenirs.
Yes this really is the type of crap I read when I'm on vacation.
http://www.amazon.com/Fossils-Burgess-Shale-Derek-Briggs/dp/1560983647
http://www.amazon.com/Gaining-Ground-Origin-Evolution-Tetrapods/dp/0253340543/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247374560&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/Terrestrial-Ecosystems-Through-Time-Evolutionary/dp/0226041557/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247374704&sr=1-1
Speaking of the trip. Tuesday Geiger and Momiji go to "Kitty Spa", the kennel, or as I call it the "Catitentury" much to Marsha's annoyance. That should be traumatic. We leave on our big Asian adventure on Wednesday. The first leg is on a small single engine float plane, a DeHavilland Beaver, out of Nanaimo Harbor, then onto Air Canada in Vancouver. We will try to post a note or two on the way but you may not hear from us until we get back. When we do return there will be lots of great pictures for the letters and to post on the web site. See you on the other side.
Not the actual plane we will be flying on out of Nanaimo but similar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTPSEsE0ugY
This one is even closer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsuWl5FBMuA
Oh and here are the questions and answers to the Canadian quiz.
True or False
1. Canada is on the continent of South America.
2. Canada is the second largest country in the world. (Russian Federation is the largest.)
3. Canada has 9 provinces and 2 territories.
4. The Capital city of Canada is Ottawa.
5. The current leader of Canada is Sir Wilfrid Laurier.
6. The current Governor General of Canada is Michaelle Jean.
7. The Canadian emblem is the maple leaf.
8. The Canadian flag is red, white and blue with a white maple leaf.
9. Canada's birthday is on the first of July.
10. The national anthem is "O Canada".
11. There are two time zones in Canada.
12. The Canadian population in 2009 is 12,275,324.
13. The two main languages are English and French.
14. The name "Canada" comes from the Huron Iroquoi word 'kanata' meaning 'village'.
15. Canada became a country on July 1, 1998.
Answers:
1. False - North America is the correct continent.
2. True
3. False, there are 10 provinces and 3 territories.
Provinces
British Columbia
Alberta
Saskatchewan
Ontario
Nova Scotia
Newfoundland and Labrador
Manitoba
Prince Edward Island
Quebec
Territories:
Northwest Territories
Nunavut
Yukon
4. True
5. False - current PM is Steven Harper. Sir Wilfrid was the seven PM of Canada from 1896-1911.
6. True
7. True
8. False - The flag is red and white (no blue) with a maple leaf.
9. True
10. True
11. False - HEre are the time zones found in Canada.
Pacific Standard Time
Mountain Standard TIme
Central Standard TIme
Eastern Standard TIme
Atlantic Standard TIme
Newfound Standard Time
12. False - 33,696,000
13. True
14. True
15. False