Secret Garden

Sherwood Gardens is an ex-private park taken over by a neighborhood society up the road from my house (quite a bit up the road, a good jogging route actually). It's planted full of flowerbeds and is in bloom spring through summer - a great place for picnics!

Easy white bean salad

I made this in about 10 seconds last night after a run, when I was starving. It's from the new Splendid Kitchen supper book. This made supper and lunch for me, but I would definitely double it if a hungry boy (or girl) is joining you for supper.

one piece or half a piece of whole-grain bread
2 oz parmesan/romano
pepper/salt

1 can white/cannelini beans
2 cloves garlic, crushed and chopped roughly
a small handful of rosemary leaves (about 10?), chopped up
1/8 c olive oil
handful of greens
salt

Food process your bread into breadcrumbs. Toast it at med-high heat in a skillet or saute pan till it's toasty. Set aside in a small bowl and when cool, add the grated parm and some pepper and salt. While it's cooling, put your olive oil in the skillet and set at low heat, let the olive oil calm down a bit before adding your garlic, otherwise it might burn (since your skillet was just med-high). Slowly cook the garlic for a few minutes till it softens, then add your rosemary for a minute, then your beans. Fold in gently so as not to smash them. Heat beans for three minutes, then add a handful of greens and wilt to your liking (if using lettuce, may not be necessary, but it was nice to throw it around in there to get the oil/garlic).

Serve up the beans/greens and top with the breadcrumb/parm, add more salt if you like and some pepper.

The book warns you to only use white beans for this, not tougher kidney/black beans, since the flavors won't be absorbed through their thick skins. Fine by me! This was great.

Cellphone-based microscopy

A new article in PLOS describes setting up a cameraphone with a magnifier in order to read slides, enabling those with cellphones but without microscopes to read say, malaria or sickle-cell slides. It can also be used with fluorescent stains and lighting for diseases like TB.



The slides - you can see some blood cells with gametocytes in A and B, and some sickle cells in C:


Seems pretty neat, if the system can be done cheaply, and the clinic has access to a 3.2 megapixel cameraphone.

UberNerd

Not only did I put a stem riser on my bike this weekend (which totally dumbfounded the Joe's Bike Shop kids yesterday when I took it in for a tiny problem), but I spent a long time playing with/setting up Sente yesterday! Did not know it was possible to have a crush on bibliographic software. I imported all the malaria journal articles and other gray lit I'd been saving all these years. Awesome!

Fallingwater

The check engine light came on during our trip home, somewhere along the PA turnpike, so we turned off the road to check things out. There was a sign that said "Fallingwater, 20 miles", and so upon determining our problem was probably not serious, we headed down the road. Byways are pretty and this was a good one. Once there, we squeezed into the last shady parking space, left Kima in the car, and headed down for a tour of the house. No photos allowed inside, unfortunately, but I was particularly taken with the beveled edge windows, which formed a clear corner, and in one part of the house, a three story corner column of windows each opened up. Joshua liked the Japanese prints, including a few by the guy who did the Big Wave print. Throughout you heard the waterfall the house was built on, and boulders jutted in near the fireplace and the walkway to the servants' house and guest house. The detour really added time to our journey that day, but it was well worth it!

 

 

 

Kima Kills

Poor little squirrelio.

 

 

Farm Dinner

Mom and Dad took us to a Whole Hog dinner at the Prairie Fruits Farm outside of Urbana last Saturday. Chicago suburban chef of Vie, Somebody Somebody, did the menu, which had pork all the way through until the cheese and dessert courses. We started with a headcheese torte, basically slow-cooked meat from the cheeks and head of the pig with some aromatics, wrapped up in a puff pastry dough that I could have eaten all night, and some mortadella (from the shoulder), and some red iced sugary tea which tasted like hibiscus/dableni/oseille from my Peace Corps days (but in fact probably was more berry-based, as they have lots of berry bushes).

 

Here's the smoker/oven they used for the porchetta and the roasted tomatoes:

 

And the barn where we ate inside, as it was threatening rain (we didn't end up getting any).

 

The farm has fruit trees and goats. Here's the goat milking operation, including Farmboy. They sell their cheeses at the local farmer's market but also to fancypants Chicago restaurants.

 

Their lovely herb garden:

From Farm Dinner

The porchetta. I was disappointed in my fellow eaters as most of them left the pork fat on the plate. The kale, beans n ham and tomatoes were pretty good, but the pork fat was the best part. I really wanted to ask my neighbor if I could have the fat she wasn't going to eat.

From Farm Dinner

Mom and Pop.

From Farm Dinner

Cheese Plate - including homemade preserves (one each strawberry and gooseberry), and their newest first harvest of honey(comb).

From Farm Dinner

And a nice sunset, too:

From Farm Dinner

Canoeing!

On Friday we went canoeing on the Middle Fork, in Kickapoo State Park. Water level was low, but the meandering river was still full of dead tree obstacles, patches of swiftly moving current, and many bottom-scraping rocks. Not to mention the blue herons that led us downstream, who, in the quiet of the woods, seemed more like apparitions from beyond the grave, guiding us a little further along the river of time.

Tonight - piggy dinner at a local goatcheese farm, and I will post pictures of Kima's latest best trick - nabbing squirrels in the backyard. Yes, dear readers, my dog is a patient and focused killer.

 

 

More Chicago

Still getting the hang of this Picasa thing. More pics from Millenium Park, including the really super Gehry stage, where we heard Breuckner's Fourth being rehearsed, and the Lurie Gardens, and a Chinese statue.

 

 

 

In Chicago

 

 

 

 

Of course we got no pics of Eleanor and Ofer, soon to be parents. Shoot! But here's Millenium Park, and the Bean.