Granola

Combining a few different recipes, but here's what I'm trying:

4 cups rolled oats
1 cup whole pecans
1/2 cup sliced almonds
3/4 tsp cinnamon
2 dashes salt
1/2 cup shredded sweetened coconut
3-4 tbl? wheatgerm
mix. whisk together 1/2 cup vegetable oil and 1/2 cup honey, pour over dry stuff, mix, spread on baking sheet and bake at 375 for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

makes 10 cups?

um, try not to burn it while listening to the DNC.

Red Beans and Rice, Here I Come

I've gotten the OK to sign up for the weekend 'course' on malaria eradication at the Tropical Medicine & Hygiene meeting in New Orleans in December. So now I'm there for almost a full week, starting Friday night the 5th!

On the list:
Spotted Cat(above)
Tipitina's
Dick & Jenny's
Cochon
Cochon
Donna's
Cochon
as many po'boys as I can eat.

More delicious and musical pics here from the New York Times.

Kerry Speech

I liked Biden's speech last night, but thought the way he attacked McCain was kind of confusing and could have been a lot more pointed (honestly, the highlight for me was his adorable mother). The "McCain was wrong, and Barack Obama was right" just sounded playground-y to me. Unfortunately for most of the viewers, Kerry's speech was cut away from for punditry, but it is Much Better at outlining the vast differences in Candidate McCain vs Senator McCain (which is also a much more elegant rhetorical device).

Kerry also weighs in on patriotism in language that I think everyone should hear. Here's the speech (only 13 minutes).

Banksy in New Orleans

Julia, merci mille fois-o for the heads up on the Banksy in New Orleans, and the Gray Ghost grafitti war.

Love!

Shorpy, the 100 year old photo blog:

Bummer

More people are leaving work for the grass on the other side.

Very soon, I'll be the longest-serving program officer in our whole organization. Institutional memory? It's me and one part time person, and of course our admin support staff, who have also been finding better opportunities. How is this level of human resource planning ineptitude possible? How have we not replaced the five people who've left in the past year? How do we expect to staff and backstop the 20 projects we're currently bidding on?

WTF?? It's not like we don't have project budgets to cover staff. These aren't cuts dictated by the university because of poor/contentious accounting of discretionary funds, or projects that haven't been renewed.

Seriously, it will be the malaria team only pretty soon here. That ain't right.

You Lucky Dogs, You

It is as delicious as it looks. I'm not sure if the secret ingredient is the farmer's market stuff or the fancy cyclist olive oil, though.

Pesto Recipe

2 cups basil leaves
2 tbl pine nuts
1 tsp salt
1/2 c olive oil
2 cloves (crushed) garlic

Blend in cuisinart. Freeze. Repeat.

Hazan Tomato Sauce I

This, I make tonight:

Marcella Hazan Tomato Sauce I
(modified for anti-celery)
for 6 servings
2 lbs fresh ripe plum tomatoes
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup finely chopped yellow onion
1/2 cup finely chopped carrot
2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp granulated sugar

1. Wash tomatoes in cold water. Cut them in half, lengthwise. Cook in covered saucepan at a steady simmer for 10 minutes. Uncover and simmer gently for
1.5 hours or more (until each tomato is cooked).
2. Puree the tomatoes through a food mill into a bowl. Discard the seeds and skin.
3. Rinse and dry the saucepan. Put in the olive oil, then add the chopped onion, and lightly sautee over medium heat until just translucent, not browned. Add the carrot and saute for another minute. Add the pureed tomatoes, the salt and sugar, and cook at gentle simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes (until thickened to taste). Stir from time to time when cooking.

Sesame Street Raps

This one's for Nick and J:



Thanks to Very Short List for the tip!

Art Bikes

These in particular were awesome, but we didn't have a good camera.

Why hello

Are we there yet?

Huzzah, Picasa

A very clever person was using Picasa this weekend, and I noticed that it seemed to be able to solve the problems I've been having with iPhoto, namely, it is a pain in the butt to upload photos from iPhoto to blogger.

Unfortunately Picasa is meant mainly for PCs, but there's a plug in that works fine with iPhoto. So now uploading pictures will be, like, so easy dude.

Fer example:
Fun things in Ghana! A lovely bed of bagged water is the best way to travel when in the back of a pickup truck.


And, every President should have his own line of air fresheners:

$5000 in FCFA

This was less impressive than I was hoping, size-wise. If you had $5000 in twenties it would look the same.

Bla Bla lights

Finally getting around the posting the pics from the last trip to Ghana/Mali. This was the inspiration for the porch lights - they also had a really nice fixture made of empty wine bottles, mostly clear, all busting out from a central point like a glass explosion. But that picture didn't turn out.

Eating Well

Blackberry-peach tart with cornmeal crust (mostly butter - requires lots of chilling and freezing)


A plum that tastes like red.


Roast chicken with braised red cabbage and prunes from Fergus Henderson of St John. (picture taken prior to roasting!)


Mia Ribollita Preferita from Jamie Oliver's Italy cookbook.

Mozzarella

So after reading the Kingsolver book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I wanted to make my own mozzarella. We found citric acid and low-temperature pasturized milk easily at the health food store and then went to my high school physics teacher's world foods store to find the rennet.

The instructions say to heat and then add the rennet, stir for just a minute, and then let it curdle. I wasn't convinced that the curd had actually set (below).


But then I cut it with a knife and lordamercy it had worked!



I was then too occupied with straining the whey off and kneading the mozzarella to take pictures, but here's how it ends up. I recommend NOT forgetting the crucial step of adding salt.



Kingsolver claims this takes 30 minutes but it was more like an hour.

Dad's new obsession

We went to get my Dad a Kryptonite lock at the bike store, where they had not only a complete Surly Cross Check on display, but a Pedersen bicycle (not for sale).

Now Dad is obsessed and really wants to get one with a Shimano internal rear hub. I think they're fugly. Judge for yourself at Pedersen Bicycles.

Kima doesn't seem to realize

that the squirrels will not come back down once she has chased them up the tree.

Happy Dog

Our backyard in Illinois is all fenced in, which is great for Kima. Behind us there is a big Bernese Mountain Sheepdog that she got in a barking match last night with. This evening we were all outside, feeding the fish (which Kima halfheartedly tries to catch), and Theo emerged. After a quick session of barks she actually calmed down a lot, I guess deciding that he posed no threat!

This is sort of amazing to me, and at the same time, makes total sense.

Martha's Vineyard

So I got to go up to the Vineyard with Ede's family this year, and of course it was completely awesome. Her parents and brothers and their girlfriends are hilarious and generous and it was so nice to be in a big family environment.

Not to mention the house and beach and island are bee-yootiful! And that we ate ridiculously fresh food (um, yesterday's harpooned swordfish anyone? Anyone?) and gorged ourselves on Chilmark chocolates. Fried clams, blueberry pie, sole with tomatillo salsa (Jed just whipped that up the first night), local steaks, super delish heirloom tomatoes, pizza bianco, and wine, wine, dark n' stormies, wine and mojitos.

All the houses of course are done in this cedar shingle style which gets gray with age and looks so New England to me. There were lots of options for getting to the beach, including kayaking across the pond, walking, biking, and of course driving 5 minutes. In the pond there was a swan family, a cormorant family, and a school of jumping fish that got serious air - one particularly vigorous little minnow skipped, kid you not, 12 times across the top of the water.


Zeke and Otis chased some quail and an osprey and some herons made recurring appearances in the field behind the house.

Just under 12 hours

I was a little worried about being sleepy on the drive from Baltimore to Urbana, but as long as I didn't wear sunglasses I seemed to be ok. Kima, however, zonked out the entire way.

Farmer's market this morning was like something out of the Kingsolver book, Animal Vegetable Miracle, that I am reading at the moment. Local producers known to my parents, chatting about what's new and fresh and what's the last of the season (blueberries).

Kima's digging the backyard, not literally, and the fish have now learned to stay Out Of Her Reach. The squirrels, of course, already know this.

The coolest thing I saw on the drive, which was on I-70, was a 1930's car (shaped like the car in this picture) which after extensive googling turns out to be more like 1948 or 1950 Chevy Fleetline or similar. It was creamsicle orange and cream and sooooo gorgeous. It passed me on the highway and I raced to catch up with it to see if I could spot any identifying marks - it had none, but no grill (weird) and two pair of horizontally placed tail lights in back.

already smelling chowdah

Vacation

Getting everything done before vacation is really stressful.

But the deferment of my gratification is down to only 3 hours. Focus!

HIV in Mali