Sweet Yet Sour

The Best Airport Visit Ever!

Monday, August 31st, 2009 | The Daily Special | 3 Comments

On August 21st, I (and part of my family) experienced the best airport visit ever.  I know it’s a little late to blog about it, but now that I have a cold I can finally excuse myself from sitting on my butt and blogging while there is laundry to be done.

There is a small airport about 15 miles away from where I live that caters to small corporate jets and well-to-doers.  The airport has a restaurant that looks out on the runways that offers those of us not in that income grade a view of the high life.  It’s a great place to take kids, as long as you take your own booster seat for kids Anna’s size, since they don’t provide high chairs.

On the 21st I thought it would be nice if Anna, my sister Rhiannon, my nephew Brendan, and I all trooped out to the airport for a mid-morning snack and some plane viewing.

When we were seated, having learned from watching Anna wrench her neck the last time we were at the airport, I turned her to face the runway:

Anna facing out

Just after we ordered our French fries and fruit plate, a pair of pilots sat down at the table behind where we were seated.  One of the pilots was a very friendly woman who waved at the kids.  It was then that I heard her say to her co-pilot, “Should I take them on their tour now or wait until after breakfast?”

Long story short, our new friend Marita the pilot took us past security, out onto the tarmac and on a tour of the plane she was piloting that day.  It was a small private jet, with four huge leather seats, wood interior, a plate of chocolate covered fruit in the kitchen area and a pair of champagne glasses waiting for the passengers.

Here’s a view of the interior seating (with Anna and Rhiannon):

In the cabin

Brendan was invited to sit in the cockpit (Anna was too, but said “No” very firmly):

Brendan in the cockpit with Marita

I also got a great picture of Rhiannon and Brendan in front of the jet (Marita said it was a “Hawker”):

In front of the jet

Needless to say, this was by far the best airport visit ever!  Cold fries? Who cares! We got to go into a private jet!  Thank you Marita!

Concave Carrot Cake

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 | Cooking | 3 Comments

Baking at high altitude is challenging; cakes fall randomly, cookies can be extremely dry and things like brownies, that should be pretty easy, can sometimes turn into giant hockey pucks.  But for my Have the Cake challenge this month, I didn’t think that altitude was challenging enough.

Instead, I thought it would be even more challenging to make this month’s carrot cake challenge wheat and gluten-free.  Several years ago my sister was diagnosed with a wheat allergy and the world of baked items, as well as most foods, changed dramatically for her.  Wheat is in amazing amount of things where you wouldn’t think it would be: soy sauce, pudding, hard candies, etc.  Anything that says it contains “modified food starch” has wheat as an ingredient.

So as a treat to my sister I thought I would make this month’s carrot cake for her, using my “Gluten-free Baking Classics” cookbook, by Annalise Roberts.

The recipe, which I’ll spare you, involves a few key ingredients, which turn out to be real pain-in-the-butt to procure.  The flour replacement in the recipe involves mixing three ingredients: extra finely ground brown rice flour, potato starch (which is different than potato flour) and tapioca flour.  Plus, the recipe also requires Xanthum Gum, also a pain to find.

None of these ingredients were available at my local grocery store, so I hiked off to a local natural grocers to find them. Fortunately, they had all the weird ingredients, plus organic carrots and an organic lemon that was so green I almost mistook it for a lime.  As a side note, I found it incredibly amusing that upon exiting the natural grocers I was bombarded with the mouth-watering smell of cooking bacon – there’s an IHOP across the parking lot – if I were a vegetarian I would have to reconsider after smelling that bacon!

Here is a picture of my main wheat-free ingredients:

The few, the expensive...the ingredients

After the flour substitutes and the Xanthum gum (which is described on the package as “the outer layer of an inactive bacterium…” yummy!), the rest of the ingredients are the usual ones for a carrot cake.  The cookbook does not include any high altitude instructions and I figured I should just follow the recipe and see what happens. After a lifetime of baking at this altitude I did feel a little squeamish adding 1 1/2 cups of canola oil and four eggs since this seems like a bit too much moisture for 6000 feet, but I pushed forward.

After mixing all of the flour and liquid ingredients I folded in the grated carrots, coconut and chopped pecans (I substituted pecans for walnuts since both my sister and I are allergic to walnuts).  It looks like normal cake batter, doesn’t it?:

Folding in the good stuff

After that I threw it into two of my very special cake pans:

Cake Pan

If you ever see these and you bake a lot, buy them!  They have a lovely sliding cutter that circles around the pan making it so easy to get the cake out…

And just so Ellebee doesn’t think that she’s the only one who can make a mess of a kitchen, here’s my proof that I can do it too:

Messy Kitchen

At the end of the allotted baking time, I retrieved the cake layers from the oven to find, well, this:

The Sunken Cakes

Those cakes sunk like the Titanic, and honestly, it’s my own fault for not cutting down on the oil and eggs. I hate that when I’m wrong!

I thought maybe the cream cheese frosting would help, but I was wrong again:

Frosted Cake

And then I thought that I would see a difference once I added the toasted coconut:

Frosted with Toasted Coconut

Don’t worry, no need to adjust your monitor; I didn’t see a difference either.  It’s still an ugly, concave carrot cake…

It didn’t look much better sliced and on a plate either:

Monster on a plate

Instead, it reminds me of those weird monsters in the desert scene in Beetle Juice.

Despite it’s fearsome looks however, it tasted quite good and I think could easily fool a non-wheat allergic person that they were eating normal carrot cake.

I took the whole ugly thing over to my sister’s, and while she refused to let me take a picture of her enjoying her first carrot cake in 10 years, she did love the cake.  My nephew Brendan liked the frosting and consented to a picture:

Brendan and the Cake

All in all, I had fun making the cake, my sister really enjoyed eating the cake and it tasted like real carrot cake, without any wheat in sight.  Next time though, I’ll cut down on the eggs and the oil and hope that I can make a pretty cake, instead of the concave monster that came out of my oven…

This Week in Pictures

Sunday, August 16th, 2009 | Anna, Updates | 2 Comments

It’s been a busy week, and while I haven’t gotten pictures of it all, I do have some photos to share.

We went to Belleview Park twice in the past week. It’s pretty awesome; there’s a train, petting farm and a place to wade in a shallow stream.  Anna really liked the wading part:

Wading with Daddy

Of course the one time that Mike gets a decent picture of me, while we were all on the train, Anna wasn’t looking at the camera.  That is always how that works out!

Pretty Good

Sunday we went to visit Piper Joy and her proud parents.  Here is Nate with the recently fed and generally sleepy Piper:

Nate and Piper

While we visited with the new family, Anna hung out in Piper’s swing, which she is way too big for:

In Piper's Swing

This week Mike’s best friend Alex, his wife Dana and their daughter Nadia came to visit.  Dana got a good picture of the boys and their little girls while they watched Sesame Street:

Daddies' Girls

Alex discovered the joys of hanging out on our deck with his coffee:

Coffee on the deck

And Anna discovered one of Nadia’s bears, which was way too big for her:

Anna and the bear

Saturday morning Mike and Anna hung out the computer eating cereal, while Anna drew up plans for something:

At the computer

The highlight of the week has been Anna’s teething.  She has been “bonus fussy” (that’s what her doctor called it) – waking up several times a night, crying at the drop of a hat, not napping, not eating and just in general showing us that teething is no fun at all.  She’s tired, which is why I was able to get this lovely picture of her, which I plan on using to bribe her with when she’s 14…

Toasted

Family Update – The old people

Friday, August 7th, 2009 | Updates | 3 Comments

Seriously, I feel old. How sad is it that at 35 my back aches when I get up in the morning some days?

Not that we’re as cute as Anna, but I have do have updates on Mike and I anyway.

Mike has just returned yesterday from salmon fishing in Canada with my father and uncle.  My uncle has a home on Vancouver Island, British Columbia where he and my aunt stay during the summer.  Every year there is a salmon fishing tournament in the small town near where they live.  For years my father, grandfather and uncle have participated in the tournament and several years ago Mike and my brother-in-law were invited to join in the tradition.  Mike and my dad flew to Victoria on Friday and the tournament ran all weekend.  It apparently involves being out on the ocean by 6 a.m.!  I don’t think they caught too many salmon, but they did see whales (Orcas and Grays) and seem to have had a nice time.  I’m sure Mike will be posting some of the beautiful pictures he took on his website soon.

Mike has recently gotten into the website hosting/writing business.  He’s creating a website for our friend Angie, who teaches violin out of her home and is enjoying using new technologies to do so.  If you know anyone who needs a website hosted, please let him know!

Mike continues to play roller hockey Tuesday nights with his team, “The Mad Hatters”.  They have a pretty small team with few subs, so he comes home pretty tired, especially from those late 9 or 10 p.m. games.

Mike works for a small software company and with the recession they are seeing some hard times.  There were rumors of a competitor buying the company, but the deal fell through.  In order to balance the budget and make themselves profitable there have been some cutbacks.  Several people that we know and liked (it’s a small company of only about 40 employees) were laid off and salaries across the board have been reduced.  Since we’re living on one income this will mean some budget cutting on our part as well, but we’ll make it work somehow.

I have of course been concentrating on Anna and keeping her busy, happy and off the furniture.

I’m still going to my bookclub meetings once a month. We’re reading, “An Artist of the Floating World”, by Kazuo Ishiguro this month.  I’d tell you how it was but my sister has the only copy that the library owns, so I’m waiting for her to finish it before I can check it out.

I am also part of a fledgling effort to start a chapter of the League of Women Voters (LWV) to our county.  The LWV is a non-partisian group that originally sprung from the suffragist movement.  The purpose of the organization now is to encourage participation in goverment.  The LWV never endorses or opposes political candidates but does provide forums for candidate debate as well as issue debate.  My mother was heavily involved in the LWV when I was a child and so it seems only right that I should join in the movement to bring the LWV to the county in which I live.

Although I would love to be working from home, I haven’t had the time or opportunity to do so for several months.  There was a time when I did some work for Mike’s company, but there has been no work from them for several months.  It would be lovely to have the extra income as well as the mental challenge, but Anna keeps me busy enough.

Recently I have been trying to get better about leaving Anna, especially now that she’s getting bigger.  Twice now I have dropped her off at a local “drop-in” daycare place, where my sister often takes my nephew, for an hour at a time just to see how it goes.  And this week while Mike was gone Anna went to our friend’s Steve and Angie’s for a few hours while I got some things done.  It’s hard, Anna cries a lot, but I know that I need to do it for her sake as well as mine.

Otherwise, we’ve just been hanging out, watching Anna grow and change, watching Cash sleep (that’s certainly his favorite activity) and now enjoying our new deck.  Right now I’m dreaming of sitting on the deck with some wine in the evening and watching the humming birds buzz the feeder…

Another Family Update – Anna’s Chapter

Monday, August 3rd, 2009 | Anna, Updates | 2 Comments

It’s time once again for a family update.  I haven’t done one of these in a while, but I like them because I can cram a lot of information about all of us in and then feel pretty satisfied with myself.

As usual, let’s start with the cutie:

Anna will be 16 months on Wednesday.  She’s buzzing around really well with this new walking thing and is scraping up her knees far less than she did a few weeks ago.  I’ve enrolled her in “Tumble Tots” classes at our rec center every Wednesday, which is just what she needs.  It’s basically a padded room where the kids can play, jump on a trampoline, even go on a balance beam.  She loves it and there are plenty of other kids in the class to play with, including three sets of girl twins. Although I did catch her trying to do a somersault like we do in class off of the ottoman the other day!

Anna talks a lot and understands us quite well, but she chooses not to obey a good portion of the time as well; typical toddler!  Favorite phrases include: “walk park” as in, “we’re walking to the park now mama!”, and “more cheese”.  Oh, and “No!” – that’s certainly my favorite as well!

A few weeks ago we took Anna to the small airport not too far away where there is a restaurant that looks out onto the runways.  She did this for all of lunch:

Airplane Viewing

We went to a park nearby a few weekends ago for the neighborhood picnic.  Anna loves to go through the tunnels, but it’s even better when Daddy chases her:

In the tunnel

Oh and can I just say, this outfit that Anna is wearing, was made by my mom for me when I was Anna’s age.  How cool is it that Anna looks good in the 1974 outfit?

70's style

Last week we went to a nearby farming museum where we got to see lots of farm animals.  Like these dirty, smelly sheep:

Smelly Sheep

Granted, the museum was free (whohoo!) and Anna and her friend David had a good time:

Sheep Staring

That is, until David and Anna were sitting on a bench and David tried to kiss Anna.  She was a good girl and took off:

I'm outta here!

Gosh I hope she does that until she’s 21!

Yesterday I took Anna and Cash to the fenced in baseball field at the high school near us so Cash could get a run.  Instead, he just stood and Anna ran around:

Anna runs, Cash stands

After a while I just put the leash back on Cash.  Anna is learning the word “Come”, so she tried to get him to go with her, with little success:

Come Cash

Now that the deck is done I got out the baby pool and let Anna splash around in it for a while.  I didn’t put her in her swimming suit because Anna has no fat and gets cold easily, so I just let her go in the pool in what she was wearing.  She really loved playing in the pool, but in this picture she seems to be making a drink order to the pool boy:

Pina colada please!

The 99% complete deck…

Sunday, August 2nd, 2009 | The Daily Special | 1 Comment

Our new deck is almost done, and honestly, since this odyssey began July 3rd, I am so ready for it to be done.

We knew when we moved in that the deck was in need of repair – it had several wonky boards, screws coming up out of it and it had never been stained or sealed by the previous owners.  It’s our only access to the backyard from the house, so we hoped we could live with it for a while until we had the money to repair or replace it.  But as time went on it became apparent that it was in worse shape than we had originally thought.  One post came completely out of the ground, the balusters had only been stapled on and came off in a light breeze and the deck sort of “shook” when you walked on it.  Not only that but it was giving everyone who walked on it it or touched it splinters.

The ugly before shot coming up:

Deck Before

The deck is huge by the way, 14′ x 30′, and we knew it would cost us a pretty penny to get it repaired.  But our neighbor was getting his deck done and he knew all the right people, so we got a loan and headed in.  The deck was demolished on July 3rd and the carpenter got to work on July 9th.  We left the frame thinking that it was okay, and that the carpenter could just replace a few posts and boards and be done.  Ha! Ha! I think it was the first or second day that he came into the house and said “Everything that could be wrong with this deck, is wrong!”  It took him two weeks just to get the frame to stop, as he said, “being like an ocean wave.”

Anyway, I’ll save you the long story of the many issues, problems with materials, etc.  We chose to replace the deck with Trex, since Mike and I don’t want to ever have to stain or seal this sucker (and it’s recycled!).

We chose to have the decking in “Saddle”, with the railings an artsy mix of “Woodland Brown” and “White’.  Amazing after pictures coming up:

Deck After

We had the carpenter put in a new set of stairs off the west side of the deck and the railings for that are all that remain to be finished. (Of course the lumber yard sent the wrong parts for the stair railings!)  Here’s a picture of the almost done west side of the deck.

Deck West

Once it’s not 90+ degrees outside, we’re really going to enjoy this thing!