Oh, how I love fall! I’ve been sick so much this summer . . . I’m sick of it! To celebrate feeling better, and to use some of the delicious groceries my dad bought me, I did some serious cooking this week.

Sloppy Joes: Fast easy, and tasty.

I made Beef Stew for friends on Friday. This stew was hearty:
Sear pieces of round top in a hot skillet with minimal oil.
Add large pieces of shallot, once they start to brown deglaze the pan with a red wine.
Add to shallots, meat, and wine to slow cooker +
beef broth
quartered red potatoes
carrots
celery
parsnips
whole mushrooms
garlic
salt, pepper, and a couple splashes of Worcestershire sauce.
Let cook on low for several hours. Add fresh chopped parsley just before serving with crusty bread.

Pumpkin Pie for dessert, of course!

I also created a dish without any recipe:

Combine ricotta cheese with sun-dried tomatoes, fresh parsley and sage, garlic, salt and pepper.

Take a chicken breast and pound it flat, spread the filling, and roll up. Wrap in a piece of bacon.

Roast at 350 until done (I think it was about 40 minutes, I’m bad at keeping track). Baste with white wine 2 or 3 times while roasting. Add a slice of mozzarella and a sage leaf on top and bake till melted. Let the chicken rest while you make the sauce: Put the pan on a burner and scrape all the browned bits up. Add a tablespoon of flour and stir vigorously. Add chicken broth and stir to thicken.

Serve with a mixed green salad and French bread. This is not a very healthy dish, but it tasted really good.

Pumpkin spice cookies with cream cheese frosting.

Tonight I’m adding the leftover chicken and sauce to pasta. Should be good. I’m still working on the leftover pie 🙂

There’s quite a few blogs I like to waste time by reading (blogs are the new magazines!) and I usually don’t post the great stuff bloggers find, but this one is too perfect. From TV Squad, a top five list of sitcoms tackling serious issues. This guy is right on! I, and apparently many of my generation, had #4 Punky Brewster episode burned in my memory. Stay out of abandoned appliances! And #2 Saved by the Bell was shocking when it aired. Jesse was so smart, she of all people had a drug problem?!

Seems like it’s been a long time since I had a free weekend. I’m still working out the kinks on this new template, I don’t like how it displays pictures and I can’t remember how to fix it.

I’m been really busy with work lately, and I’ve been filling all my free time with crafts, food, and friends. Today I skipped a barbeque so I could catch up on my cleaning and enjoy some time to myself. Let’s see, I slept in, got my last batch of free bagels (thanks so much, Mom and Dad, it’s been a GREAT year of bagels) touched up my purple streaks, finished the cabinet (more about that below), thoroughly cleaned the house, restocked groceries, knit, baked, and watched another great Studio Ghibli film, The Cat Returns. Ben is working late tonight in Glenwood Springs, so I might have to tuck myself in tonight. Until then, I’m uploading some recent pictures and listening to Rent (can’t wait to see it this November!).

Some recent meals I’ve cooked:

Mmm, my first roasted pork loin was delicious! Most of it is in my freezer waiting to be reincarnated.

Strange it never occured to me before to use my laundry rack as a pasta rack.

An old favorite, Kale soup. Ben started a recipe database for me, and this was the first one I wanted to enter.

Tonight’s treat: Rolo cookies: chocolate cookies with a gooey caramel center. I got this recipe from a link on my new favorite blog: slashfood. It’s part of the Weblogs, Inc Network of which I also like to read Cinematical. This recipe was featured as one of their “food porn” images, and I think my picture would totally fit in with the other food porn shots.

My biggest project the last week has been refinishing a dresser Ben and I pulled out of our local dumpster. It was originally a badly painted puke teal green with brass hardware.

With the help of Ben and his boss Eric’s tools/muscle, we stripped the paint and sanded it smooth last weekend.

Wednesday I primed, Thursday I painted, and today I bought and affixed the hardware.

It looks a thousand times better! This was a bigger project than I anticipated, but with a lot of help, I got it done and I’m quite pleased with it.

What else have we been doing? Guess:

(By the way, although butt-ugly, this particular bean bag is heavenly. It has a special stretchy part that conforms to your body perfectly. I saw some still at Target today if anyone is in the market for a video game chair.)

Got tired of the old look, wanted to try a new template. Unfortunately, it lost all my tweaks, so the photo and other little details are gone. In time I’ll update that. Is this better/easier to read than my old one?

Funny thing is, I’ve actually been thinking lately about discovering the men who do all voiceovers for movie trailers. Sounds like the same guys over and over. It is. And here they are. (unfortunately the sound quality isn’t great on the file, but you get the idea)

Check out their awesome Flash site. Avoid if you have slow internet. Link.

I just watched another great Studio Ghibli film, Pom Poko. Although always interested in Myazaki films (such as Spirited Away), I first heard about this one on cinematical. The article was mostly interested in it’s rating, since the raccoons’ balls are clearly visible:

“I thought the reviewer might be a little fixated when he dwelled on every instance of this problem, claiming that in one scene, the raccoon genitalia swelled to unrealistic sizes and were even used as weapons. After I looked around the Web and found stills from Pom Poko like the one on the right, I decided he might not be exaggerating. My goodness, what would Wal-Mart think? I think it’s hilarious, and immediately added the movie to my Netflix queue, but I don’t have any children.”

Gasp! Is this a movie about tanuki? Ben confirmed (he had learned about this children’s film in his Japanese film class) that Pom Poko is about tanuki folk stories.

My first experience with tanuki’s was during Super Mario 3. In addition to the usual mushroom and flower power-ups they added a leaf, which gave you a raccoon tail so you could fly. Hmmm. That never made sense to me as a kid, but hey, how does a flower let you shoot fireballs? Later in the game you can get a full-body raccoon suit and can turn into a statue. Waaaaaa? Fast forward several years to Animal Crossing, another Nintendo game I became enamored with. There’s a store in the game run by a raccoon named “Nook.” All the items he sold were represented by single green leaves. Hey Ben, I said, does tanuki mean raccoon in Japanese? With a little research we learned the full history.

Traditional Japanese folklore includes the belief that raccoons and foxes can changes forms. Raccoons, called tanuki, will put a leaf on their heads to transform. Statues of tanuki are often put in doorways as good luck symbols. They are jolly creatures, who inflate their scrotums and play them like drums as they celebrate. Ah, just one of the myriad of reasons I’m fascinated by this island. Do a google image search, I swear I’m not making this up.

Getting back to Pom Poko, not only is this a jolly movie, ballsacks and all, but it’s good. I think I like these kind of Ghibli films better than their epic, more dramatic films like Mononoke, Nausicaa, and Spirited Away (haven’t seen Howl’s yet). They’re more fun, and the animation is looser, more spirited. Pom Poko has a narrator, a clever format I haven’t seen in any other animated film. I liked the three levels of realistic raccoon images they used to represent the different moods.

It’s been a long time since I went camping, and I don’t think I’ve ever backpacked to a campsite. This trip on Friday was a big accomplishment. Ben has wanted to camp with me since I’ve known him. What better anniversary present for Ben than to suck up my discomfort and head to the mountains?

A long car drive up highway 40, past Winter Park, past Fraser, and we arrived at the trailhead. We’d been hiking for just 10 minutes in the above photos. Ben bought himself a hatchet for the trip. He liked it a lot. He carried most of the gear, I just had some clothes, a mat, and water.

This dog met us at the trailhead and followed us. There’s a spot of private property about an hour in, where we ran into his owner. It was really fun having a dog on the hike. We named him Cody, even though he has four legs.

Hey, where’s the bridge? My hero carried me across.

About two hours into the hike, above.

We were on “Strawberry Trail.” At our campsite I helped myself to a snack and I’m not sick yet!

Our lovely campsite. There’s a creek right behind the camera. We actually hiked about a 1/2 mile beyond this campsite before deciding to turn around and settle. It was flat, had a fire pit, and some lovely log chairs. Ben set up tent quickly and we settled in for the night.

Hey, we built a fire! High five!

Hmm, dinner.

Lovely sunset.

After a rough night trying to sleep (I just can’t sleep outside. It’s uncomfortable and scary) we packed up and hit the trail home by 10 am. These pictures are about halfway back to the trailhead. Boy, were we stiff that morning. We’re still feeling achey a couple days later. But it was worth it. No rain, no injuries, few bugbites, and good memories.

Shopping and snacking in Hallowell (near Augusta).

Flowers grow abundantly in Maine.

Hobbit Woods (named by Betty)

Interesting cuisine in Maine, including the infamous whoopie pie and “fried dough.”

Picturesque Booth Bay.

Wild turkeys right outside Betty’s house! (I was napping, Ben captured the pic)

I had to go on a business trip to Miami a couple weeks ago. Bleh. July is generally not a good time to go. When I arrived in the afternoon the weather was calm. This sandcastle on the hotel’s private beach looked amazing.

I scoped out the beach and planned to spend any time I had outside of lectures on the sand. The hurrricane Dennis came. We were on Key Biscayne, so we weren’t in any serious danger, though the hotel sent out notices to stay away from your windows in case they blow in. The picture below was taken the first evening of my stay, about an hour after the picture above. It got worse each day: incredible wind and warm rain. Meetings and schmoozing were stressful. I was not in the mood to take lots of pictures, so this is all I got of the bad weather. It was a frustrating trip. I could ramble on and on, but let’s just leave it at that.