Marshmallow Goodness

The second turkey deep fry in a little over a month…  who knew my life would take this deep frying trajectory?  I’m off to celebrate winter with friends and turkey and was contemplating what little fun something or other to bring and last night it hit me:  Marshmallows.  I forgot how fun they are to whip up.  If you haven’t made them, dust that mixer off and treat yourself.  It is like magic.

The first time I really ever remember being inspired to make marshmallows was a few years ago after reading an article in Bon Appetit (http://www.bonappetit.com/magazine/2008/07/cooking_life_fluff_piece).  Soon after the magazine arrived at my door, my very best friend called me up and was so excited that she and her husband had just made these great fluffy and delicious sweets after reading the same article.  I trekked on over and wow… those pillowy clouds of goodness were amazing.  I’m not a huge marshmallow fan, but these were not your average Jet-Puffeds.  I had to try.

There are several recipes out there, but they are all basically the same  - sugar, water, gelatin.  Wikipedia tells me that they used to be made with the gummy extract of Althaea officinalis  (a Marsh Mallow flower indigenous to Africa and similar to the Marsh Mallow we can see here in the states), but these days, gelatin does the trick quite nicely.  They may no longer have the medicinal properties they once had when made with the herb, but take a moment to consider the placebo effect; really, how can such a grand smile-inducer not be good for you?

 I’ve been tempted to kick them up a notch with liquors, but haven’t quite got there yet (I have read that gin instead of the water makes for excellent marshmallows, but something in me just can’t quite do it yet – the originals are just so good all by themselves…  maybe for my next Christmas party).  When you start whipping the hot sugar into the softened gelatin, prepare to be amazed.  The mixture goes from what looks like a mess to a wonderfully satiny soft glossy creaminess.  The whole cooking process, start to finish, takes less than 20 minutes.   Let that mixture stand for a few hours to set up, and voila.  The best marshmallows you will ever have are right there in your own kitchen. 

Recipe:

Ingredients

• 3 packages unflavored gelatin
• 1 cup water, divided
• ¾ C sugar
• 1 cup light corn syrup
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup confectioners' sugar
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• Nonstick spray or enough veg/conola oil to coat the pan

Directions  

Place the gelatin into the bowl of a stand mixer along with 1/2 cup of warm water.  In a small suacepan combine the remaining 1/2 cup water, granulated sugar, corn syrup, and salt. Place over medium high heat, clip a candy thermometer onto the side of the pan, and continue to cook without stirring until the mixture reaches 240 degrees F (This doesn't take long, so keep an eye on it!). Once the mixture reaches this temperature, immediately remove from the heat. 

Turn the mixer on low speed and, while running, slowly pour the hot sugar down the side of the bowl into the gelatin mixture. Once you have added all of the syrup, increase the speed to high. Continue to whip until the mixture becomes very thick- approximately 12 to 15 minutes. Add the vanilla during the last minute of whipping. While the mixture is whipping, combine the confectioners' sugar and cornstarch in a small bowl. Coat a 13 x 9  dish with oil – or better yet – oil and then coat with oiled parchment paper because they are hard to get out of the dish even with oil. 

When the mixture is ready, pour the yummy goodness into the oiled pan.  Allow the marshmallows to sit uncovered until they don’t stick to your finger when touched (a good 4 hours (maybe less) would do).

Turn the marshmallows out onto a corn starch/powdered sugar mixture coated cutting board and cut into 1-inch squares using a pizza wheel dusted with the confectioners' sugar mixture (or an oiled pizza wheel works nicely too - or simply use a sharp knife oiled or dusted). Once cut, lightly dust all sides of each marshmallow with the remaining mixture, using additional dusting powder if necessary.  Store in an airtight container for up to 3 weeks or freeze for a few months.  Really, just eat them immediately and you'll be happy.

Enjoy.

Go for the Food

Snow is falling here just outside of Boston.  Looking at the potential for lots of snow between here and home and so instead of leaving today as planned, I have postponed my departure.   Driving home in blizzard conditions does not sound like fun.  It is snowing with purpose now and so now that I’ve embraced my belated departure, I’m looking forward to the accumulation.   Tea in hand, I’m all cozied up and ready for it.  Not sure what the fridge has in store for us for food for the next 2 days or so, but I have my San Francisco food memories to keep me somewhat sated.

Busy with the conference, we were happy to punctuate our meetings in SF with forays into the foodie world.  For breakfast, I particularly enjoyed the Creperie at Saint Germain on 222 Second Street – a cute blue and white moveable truck on an intersection close to both our hotel and the conference center.  The people were cheerful and made an awesome crepe – I had three of them over the course of the week…   cheese and egg; cheese, egg, and ham; and cheese, egg, and mushrooms.  So tender and perfect for breakfast – lunch was often not even necessary.  They are big and delicious and made for an excellent start to the day.  Mel’s Diner was frequented by others in our group for breakfast and apparently has the best corned beef hash anywhere and I can vouch for the potatoes and eggs being great.  Fresh juice complimented the meals there. 

Every meal was an adventure… from Kate O’Brien’s pub that had great fish tacos (though I must admit, the chicken pot-pie had mixed reviews) to the high-end La Mar on Pier 1 ½ where they served the most excellent Peruvian civiche (or cebiche as they would say) and fabulous pomegranate lemon mint coctails….   Eating out in SF was a delight.  Beer was $3-$5 and we all had lots of them at many different places.  Even random holes in the walls were inviting and friendly.  Fantastic samosas and curries were served at Mehfil Indian Cuisine on Folsom St, and Spanish tapas were abundant and tasty at the noisy Thirsty Bull.  We splurged for homemade fried pork rinds there and they were mmm so good.  Some of the beers here were a bit of a disappointment, but the Sangria was very satisfying.

We spent a day in Sonoma and didn’t have too much time to explore, but we did eat at The Girl and the Fig and had excellent cheese plates and pork shanks.  We also ate at the Harvest Moon Café which had the best atmosphere and some really awesome fresh and local food. The menu changes daily based on what is available, the waitstaff is excellent, and I highly recommend it.  We had a lunch there at the Sunflower Caffe where I had incredibly complicated and intense coffee to accompany my rich curried squash soup which was all served with fresh bread and butter.   Food everywhere all week was outstanding.

Here with a kitchen not fully stocked, all this talk of food is making me hungry.  I know there are Raman Noodles in there because it is my Brother’s Kitchen, but I’m not sure I’m up for it.  We also have leftover Moroccan from our Christmas dinner last night…   might be right up my alley.  It is amazing what one can do with chickpeas.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and are hunkered down for the snowstorm or are enjoying the weather wherever you are.  I’m looking forward to seeing 1-2 feet of snow even if I wasn’t quite prepared for it….    

Happy and un-hungry holidays to one and all.

DELTA Rant

Delta Rant. 

I am Finally in an exit row of a Boeing 737 looking out the window down at clouds, clouds, and more clouds from my 20,000-feet-up vantage point:  a mere 700 or so miles from my final destination.  This San Francisco trip is now indelibly emblazoned on my psyche.  An ill-fated venture from the inception, the AGU conference, was surely not the highlight of this adventure.  I doubt I will ever attend another AGU gig – at least not one in San Francisco a week before Christmas.  I’m woefully behind on everything and now my beleaguered flight back has me increasingly in the hole.  Focus for Posting:   Delta Sucks Big Piles of Monkey Dung.  Side note:  I do concede the weather and random customer crap had much to do with my crappy trips, but still…. I keep the Delta Rant title for this post.  Noted.

I am almost at a loss for where to even take my musings.  There is so much…  I will spare you the flight out there for the most part only because it would fill a volume if I went into the crazy details of it ALL, but I suppose the story starts there.  When things were still fresh last Monday, I vented a great deal about it to and with my friends and colleagues, and so my vehement agitation has mostly dissipated in its specificity…   the overall ugly purple aura remains, however, like toxic fumes left over from burning trash in a barrel and only intensifies with this follow-up trip back home.

My first flight last week was cancelled and so instead of having a lovely seat, I got stuck one row from the back in the noisy treachery of the unwashed masses.  And by unwashed masses, I mean Diana.  I will not divulge her full name or where she lives or the names of everyone around me (as by the end of the flight, Diana had pulled every little bit of information out about everyone ad nauseum), but suffice it to say, Diana will live on in infamy.   I made my way to the window seat, irritating this woman on the aisle who wanted me to step over her as she babbled on about being scared to fly and what was my name and oh great to have a seat mate sort of talk.  I cringed.  Probably visibly.  This is not the plane partner I seek.  My reaction was guttural and appropriate.  I’m the kind of person who hunkers down on the plane, pops the headphones in, and opens a good book.  Dive Dive!!!  This was not to my liking at all.  And it only got worse.  Her fake fur coat and all of her skeletal belongings reeked of smoke and alcohol.  She was drunk and grievously unhealthily coughing and complaining of lung cancer or pneumonia depending on the hour.  Thankfully, the 7AM crew only gave her 3 vodkas before they cut her off….   I cannot put into words how awful that flight was.  The incessant inappropriate blather and offensive probing had us all exhausted, unhappy, and in need of spa services.   We were on the plane with her for 6 hours (stuck on tarmac for 1.5 on overbooked flight to SLC).     This was the start of my trip.  I smelled like a smoke-filled bar by the time I got off that flight and desperately needed a shower.  Step one.  Diana done.  The second leg of that trip was a delight in comparison… I think I was so traumatized that I don’t remember much after that until arriving in SF.  

San Francisco itself was DELICIOUS.  Food was awesome.   I will not taint that thought with the craziness of flying vent, and so stay tuned for a much more enjoyable posting after this one.

Flight Back.  Started yesterday.   Arrived at SFO to find big lines and angry people.  At the time of hotel departure, the flight was still on time and all was well.  We got there a little over an hour early only to get to check in line and have a woman trying to get to Paris cut in in a most rude way.  She was cancelled and not getting out for 2 more days (had she seen the news about Europe?? je dis, non).  She had lips that will never decompose.  I took small comfort in that.  We were told we were probably going to miss our connection and that the computer had re-routed us, but that we wouldn’t know for sure that we would miss connection unless we actually flew because everything was delayed.  Sigh.  OK…  so 2.5 hour delay later, we were faced with SFO=>SLC=>PHX=>ATL=>PHL.  We tried desperately to do better… at one point, someone proposed even a connection through Bermuda…  This actually appealed to me.   

Salt Lake City found us working with a few women at the Delta Club who apparently were just as sick of things as we were.  One in particular was woefully rude and not terribly ‘with’ it.  A bad combination, for sure.  I have gold status and my travelling companions thankfully are platinum and so ultimately we got a couple of over-night vouchers out of it, but we had to fight for those and me with my lowly gold status was out of luck.  We stayed in SLC after opting out of the chaos of all night flights through 5 airports and we were lucky enough to procure a few overnight bags from delta with tooth brushes and old spice deodorants and such.  Apparently, only men are expected to need these.   Finally on this flight.  hooray!!

After the scarring of yesterday, I feel lucky the flight left this morning… the pretty bits of snow and the de-icing had me worried, but here I am almost back to Philly over a day later.  Next up:  Rush hour.  Wish me luck.

All in all it has not been a good experience flying the friendly skies this trip…   not one little bit.

Post Script.    Made it home!   And I send send send this little beaut.   Hopefully I will be back soon with the good parts (yum).    My thoughts are with those poor souls still stuck around the country due to the craziness that is our weather…   California is a big soggy mess.  I can vouch for that as I sit on my nice happy rain-free couch with chicken braising in the oven.  I am glad to be out of the state and home safe and sound in mine.   Be well!   More soon.

L.E.S.S.

It seems almost all the people around me are experiencing holiday stress.  Me included.  What happened to those carefree childhood years when the biggest worry was if it would be a white Christmas or how quickly the end of vacation would come?   As we grow older and the responsibilities grow larger, so do the expectations and often the self-imposed challenges.  This year my close family has decided to go back to a ‘stockings-only’ philosophy and I embrace that whole-heartedly.

Even with little stocking stuffers I can show the people I love that I’m thinking of them specifically and can individualize each stocking appropriately.  It doesn’t take a huge drain on my bank account to tell and show people I love them.  I remember one childhood Christmas when only hand-made gifts were allowed.  I don’t want to go that far (I tried one year in a former life and was insanely busy for months before Christmas), but I do support the less is more philosophy.  

I’m not up on all of my psychology research, but I do know that scientists in Britain and Israel have studied the genetic disposition for happiness and have independently concluded that about 50% of your happiness is genetically determined.  And even when something horrible happens or something great happens, we tend to find our own baseline happiness again on average in about 2 years.  I find these figures oddly comforting…   mostly because I think my baseline happy is not too bad.    I also find it comforting that I can control the other 50% and that I can choose to make efforts to improve my contentedness.

I have to admit, I just read The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, and while I think she is completely an over-achiever and has crazy amounts of unrealistic energy, she also has some very good points.   I am constantly in search of a happier me, too.  Not that I’m über unhappy, mind you, because I’m not, but I certainly could use some tweaking.    

As I move into the holiday season with all of its concomitant craziness, it will be good to be mindful of how sometimes less is more and that the nows are just as important as the impending thens.  The smell of cookies wafts from the kitchen.  Music is playing.  Lights are twinkling. Snow is threatening.  Red wine is nosing from my glass.  I think I can at least catch glimpses of the center I’ve been seeking… now if only I can hang onto that through the next couple of weeks I’ll be doing something.

From Turkey to Cookies

 I am officially almost out of stuffing and mashed potatoes – gluttony is approaching hiatus status. I wish the seemingly endless dishes of goodness remained, but I am also glad to encourage diversity in my diet. It is time to dig out the decorations and dust off the garlands and embrace the cookie. Thanksgiving was a welcome reminder of the good things I should keep in mind as the season falls dark and sparkly around me. Snow also fell on Thanksgiving and what a beautiful thing that was – big huge Charlie Brown snowflakes tumbling to the ground and wetting the deep fryer. A contradiction in holidays, but oddly poetic. I welcome the arrival of winter.

Instead of snow, however, we have 1-2 inches of rain in our very near future. Thankfully, I have my tree in and up already - all glinting full of literally over a thousand lights and smelling delightful. It is impressive how quickly a room, nay, a house, can be transformed with festive holiday spirit. Thanksgiving continues here with the coming of the dark cold months, but turkey is a sweet memory and visions of cookies are now dancing in my head.

Gobbling Thanks

I’ve been trying to imagine what it was like back in 1621 at the “first” Thanksgiving.  William Bradford and the Pilgrims threw a celebratory feast that lasted 3 days and was attended by an unlikely union of religious separatists and Native Americans.  A great bounty after a year of death and suffering and I can barely imagine how thankful they were to not only have the food, but the welcoming and knowledgeable company in the new world, as well.

Today, we chose the fourth Thursday in November to mark our day of Thanks and we are serious about stuffing not only our birds.  I’ve learned a lot from the National Turkey Federation…   Apparently, approximately 736 million pounds of turkey were cooked on Thanksgiving in 2009 with an estimated 88% of Americans bellying up to the turkey bar.   That’s a whole lot of bird.    I’m sure the turkeys this year will be equally gobbled.  President Obama will pardon one tomorrow (http://washingtonscene.thehill.com/party-events-pictures/archive/7175-the-national-thanksgiving-turkey-meet-and-greet) but that is the lucky one that gets away....

I am looking down the barrel at a relatively small Thanksgiving this year, but my Thanks and excitement for the day is undiminished.  I love to cook and this day was made for me in the kitchen.  I’ve already cooked a pumpkin cheesecake, caramel sauce, and made my croutons for the stuffing.   Tomorrow will bring another pie and some veggie prep.  Thanksgiving, itself, will bring a fried Turkey this year…   The deep fried delicacy originated in the south and it seems the south has found me.  I am not in charge of the turkey frying, but am looking forward to the spectacle.  I am happy to be an audience for the bird while whipping up the potatoes, cooking up some sides, baking the bread….     I can smell it already and it smells delish.

I will be thinking over the next few days of all the things I am thankful for (above and beyond just the food).  My struggles and hurdles are nothing like what the Pilgrims experienced, but sometimes I lose perspective.  Work stresses, people problems, travel trials, money matters…. The list of things that distract me from the good in my world is embarrassingly prominent too often.  It is a good reminder, this Thanksgiving, that there is a cornucopia of things to really be thankful for, too.   I look forward to reminding myself of those things as I embrace the harvest the next couple of days.  I expect my Thanksgiving will last at least 3 days.

Cheers and many thanks to the many of you.

Sanity Now

      I think the best part of the Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear was walking to it.  Don’t get me wrong – I had a great time there (for the most part – wait for it), but getting there was exciting.   Walking  down the hill towards the Washington Monument, again, coffee in hand, we were moving en masse in one general direction with the populous.   Noone really knew much of anything about why we were there, except to show up and participate in something positive.

 

     With that, we walked and walked and were joined by more and more people – most also with coffee in hand – and soon it was a sea of people all walking in the same direction – moving toward something big.  It felt good.  I wish I could have seen that from a helicopter.   We soon realized there were way more people there than had been planned for and this was an hour before show-time.   We struggled to find a spot where I could at least see a screen every once in a while and planted ourselves.   Often, the crowd was more interesting than what was happening on screen – as a short person, I couldn’t see much.    But I sure could see my neighbors.    An older couple from Wisconsin who had an endless supply of food were trying to meet up with their son giving directions in terms of port-potties and trees (he never showed - shocker), a sarcastic woman from New York who met Devo, an extremely ugly couple trying to meet up with a friend and paying attention to nothing but that, folks in costumes, folks with signs, it was a mish-mash of a mass.  

 

      Yusuf Islam and Ozzie Osbourne dueling trains was my favorite.   I think even being squished and not being able to move for 4 hours and not seeing much and not hearing everything, it was still worth it to be part of something big.  I can always watch it on TV…   It isn’t often you can be a part of something like that.  Glad to have gone.

      It was a mad rush to get out as the sea moved very slowly and we took over the roads.  Straight to a great Halloween party and a quick change and we were back having fun with friends.  It was a fun day for sure.   Love the Halloween party where we were all characters of The Life Aquatic or other Wes Anderson movies.   Fire was started in a cement and aluminum shark mouth with a massive blow torch, great food everywhere, beer free-flowing, and jellies glowing around the pond.    Folks had great fun and it was the perfect topper to the weekend.

      Happy belated Halloween.  Stay sane.

E pluribus unum

     I’ve always loved visiting Washington D.C.  I love the Mall, the grandiose buildings perfectly placed, the great green spaces teeming with business people and tourists alike.   I love that the scale of everything seems always skewed to the large and substantial, and that the city buzzes with potential.  

          My goal this trip was to see the Capitol building and possibly the Library of Congress.  I am embarrassed to admit that this goal was partially spawned from reading a bit of Brown and the descriptions of these buildings that sucked me right in.  The Apotheosis of Washington was calling, and I was ready.   I was not disappointed.

           A leisurely crisp, sunny, beautiful morning, we walked from our hotel a few blocks from the White House, with coffee in hand, the 0.5 miles to the Capitol on the east end of the mall.  Feeling good, we found the visitor center entrance with the help of a police officer and were screened and x-rayed and ready to start the tour.  As part of the unwashed masses without reservations, we only had a quick wait.  The visitor center itself is large -- 580,000 square feet of beautiful open space surprisingly well-lit for being underground.   The tour started off with a movie; Out of Many – One.  Sounds corny and I had my reservations, but it was outstanding and really made me think about how our country and our people have responded to history and who we are as a country.    And appropriately, that was pretty much what the whole weekend ended up being about since the Stewart/Colbert rally was gearing up outside with sound checks awaiting more unwashed masses to arrive the next morning (but that will be another blog post).

          The movie got us into it and really was inspiring – if you haven’t been to the Capitol Building, you should definitely go.   Best part of the building:  The Rotunda.   Complete with the Apotheosis of Washington painted in true fresco style by Brumidi in 1865, the piece was finished after the Civil War and is 180 ft above our heads painted on the interior of the massive dome that makes the Capitol the Capitol.  Super cool not only is the painting – it is a little weird – but the surrounding architecture.   The entire Rotunda is a huge piece of art both in structure and adornment.  Everywhere you look there is beauty.  The walls are fantastic, the art on the walls are fantastic, even the floors are fantastic.  

   I learned a great deal from that visit and the Library of Congress may have been even more artistically impressive.  Everywhere we looked we saw elegance, skill, mastery, thoughtfulness, intelligence, and evidence of a great understanding that this all was incredibly well thought-out and important to share with the world.   They were masters, the builders and artists that worked in D.C., and I am so thankful for being able to experience their work in some small way.

      I will be back.  I hope you go, too.  It was a great weekend.   Stay tuned for Rally fun and food fun!

Interloper

      Part of my job, believe it or not, is to pick lichens off black spruce trees.   At least that is part of my job today and yesterday and during this trip.  We are collecting different types of vegetation in the bogs so we can grind them up, analyze them, and correlate concentrations of their nutrients with atmospheric N and S deposition.   It can be a tedious process, but generally it is really enjoyable to be out in the bogs picking plants and such.  My nemesis out there is the little cranberry that hugs the ground and has tiny leaves.   That one takes forever to get enough material for analysis and if my fingers are cold, even longer.   I find I need to slip into that zen spot and zone it out.   Thankfully, yesterday, early in the afternoon, I was picking lichens.    

That is a species we can collect from a standing position and so when I looked around for more on a different tree, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye.  A small mammal was running toward me on the animal path I was using – like it owned the joint – and really it did and should have, as I am an interloper there.  I had to look the cutie up, and it turned out to be a short-tailed weasel - Mustela erminea – all white except for a small black end to its tail.  It was adorable loping toward me, until it got within a few feet and was still full-speed.  I squealed, it veered right, and off it went doing its own thing.  So freakin’ cute.   Wish I had had my camera at the ready.

       Surprising to me was the whiteness of the little ermine.  It seemed so out of place there in the greens and browns of the bog, but winter is coming here and I swear I saw flurries yesterday afternoon.   Wet flurries are called for tomorrow and so I am glad we are heading back to Meanook to do a little water chemistry instead of tromping around in the cold wet.  Fall is coming back east, but here, winter is fast approaching and it all reminds me that the seasons are changing everywhere.   I am ready for fall and winter to arrive and for this crazy hot summer to be a memory  – though I will miss my garden which is still throwing out gobs of peppers and hums with bees.   It still has a way to go even with fall here.  Perhaps the fall will bring new opportunities and fun adventures.  I hope so.    For now, that little weasel lightened my heart and reminded me of the crisp clearness of winter and a life lived from a different perspective.

Wetland Casualties

The days are short already in Alberta and the differences are marked from eastern Pennsylvania. The stars last night were beautiful.  They burned brightly from the deep darkness that surrounded Meanook Biological Research Station, and the Milky Way spilled across the sky to remind us how our galaxy earned its name.  Every tiny pin-point blazed with great clarity.  No Aurora Borealis yet, but maybe we will be lucky to see them later in the trip.  The aspen, birch, and larch have lost their leaves and fall is hanging on here by a thread with the looming long, cold, and dark of winter just around the corner.  We are driving now, to Fort McMurray, as I type.  Meanook was welcoming last night, but it was a short short stop-over.  Onward to the uglies of oil-town, Canada.  A few years ago, I was able to get above it all in a helicopter and was able to see the expanse from a bird's eye view.  Not exactly a pretty picture.

The road to Fort McMurray (63) is being twinned.   Which means for us, that as they truck up all the huge equipment they will need for their winter activities up here, we are stuck in long lines of machinery that take up the entire width of the road, while on both sides of us, massive earth movers are clearing and stripping football-field-widths of forest and wetlands.  We just passed a massive tube that took up an entire two full lanes of highway.  Don’t ask me what that tube will be used for, but I do know it represents the massiveness of the projects up here.  It is a sad sight and rather frustrating.  What should be a 4 hour drive through beautiful boreal systems has turned into an epic trek through a bit of a wasteland.   We just passed one of our old fen sites – a beautiful patterned fen -  and you could see some pvc water wells still out there only about 10 meters from the freshly piled dirt.  I am guessing we will abandon that site.  We have two more sites on this road and I worry for them and for our research and for the wetlands in general.  I suppose with all of this construction there is now ample opportunity to document short and long-term changes in these places, but it sure is depressing. 

We’ve been trying to put together a project looking at the effects of drought and flooding using roads as our dams and differences are already apparent here in this big mess.  This really isn’t surprising at all.  Changes in the hydrology make big differences when you are talking wetlands and there are huge changes going on here.  Google Earth is a great resource for checking out all the oil pads and roads and how all of this manipulation wreaks havoc on these systems.  Carbon cycling changes, vegetation changes, chemistry changes, pretty much everything changes on both sides of the road and these changes are translated deep into the systems often in ways we don’t understand.  Sometimes the most important thing to appreciate is that ultimately, we know very very little.  Guess that is what science is all about.   

 I understand a nor’easter is happening back home and as I move through space and time and dust and stench here, I hope all is well with my place and my neighbors and my loved ones.

Refinishing Floor Fun

I thought I understood refinishing floors.  I know enough to be dangerous, is closer to the truth.  Three bouts with rentals from Home Depot gave me a little too much courage.   I was all confident going into the dining room refinishing and feeling all sorts of good about it.    Sunday morning, I picked up the sander, muscled it into my trunk, bought all my extras, and drove it all home.   My first clue that it was going to be an interesting day was when I went through 4 changes of the coarsest grit and started sanding off nail heads before I got to all the nooks and crannies.   I paused to nail-punch a bunch of nails back down below surface and change the pads again and decided I might just need another trip to Home Depot.

My floor is parquet and so every square foot is comprised of 6 parallel 2” boards.  Each of these sets is rotated 90 degrees from each other and each little board has been sitting there for almost a hundred years finding its own angle of repose.  Depressions big and small dotted the landscape and thwarted the big grits of the sander.   Out came my little Ryobi Corner Cat for a couple of hours.    Finally got all the varnish off and down to bare wood everywhere at a nice fine grit… back complaining… knees complaining…wrists and ears and nose complaining…. Gabby, my cat, complaining.      I will definitely have a sanding party for my living room floor after going through that on my own in the dining room.    

Ultimately, it all ended up very well.  I uncovered a lovely inlay of what I think may be dark walnut/cherry? any ideas? And oak, I think, between living room and dining room.  Whoever put this floor together had a very artistic eye and I very much appreciate their woodworking skills and the beauty of the different wood juxtapositions is really amazing and well thought-out.   The floor looked/looks great.   I proceeded to get rid of the dust to prepare it for staining and polyurethane and this is where I went all wrong…    I have done this before, and this is why it is such a surprise.  I mopped the floor.  This is post vacuuming and wiping down with a sponge.  If I had to do it again, I would burn the mop, instead of use it on my floor, because once I got about 1/3 of the way into staining the floor, mop-marks – not sander marks – started showing up little by little.   It gave me pause, but in my head, I convinced myself that it was just a little moisture making it look a little different.   Four days later… those little mop marks are Still There.  How is this possible…..     Can I tell you how frustrating it is to go through all that and to have it sanded nearly perfectly (not a sander mark to be found) and then to have Mop Marks show up??     Crap.     

And so:   Word to the wise.   Even if you’ve done it before.   If you are sanding a floor, Do Not Use A Mop to aid in your clean up. 

 

All in all it came out pretty well, but when the living room floor gets done, the mop will be solidly hiding under some box somewhere in the basement.   And I will absolutely be sure to make more of a party of it.   I figure my house has character and character goes a long way and ultimately, I’m pretty ok with it, but there was a hint of almost perfect hanging in the air there for just a moment.  That hint still has potential whispering to me for my living room.  We shall see.  Will I ever learn? 

A Preponderance of Peppers

For those of you who may not be in the know about my idiosyncrasies, let me just expose one of them right here and right now.   I think vinegar sucks.  Acetic acid in any form – cider, balsamic, white, what have you   –    it is all anathema.   Yuck to the n^th degree.  I am guessing you haven't put much thought into this, but there are times when I feel that vinegar is in everything.  It isn't, I know, and other folks with much more serious aversions (read here actual allergies) have it much worse than I do, but let me say this:   vinegar is in pretty much every condiment out there and they all make me want to vomit.


      Happily for me, and before I lose you entirely with my talk of throwing up, I also am pleased to share that this year I have a GLUT of peppers from my garden.  I am not sure what exactly happened, but the peppers have run amok.  I suspect the incredibly high heat this summer (55 days of 90 degrees or above) may have had something to do with it.  My garden is a jungle of 15-20 types of peppers and most of them have done well.  Every year new peppers pop up as volunteers; and this year, I seem to have at least 5 volunteer new crosses between Thai peppers and several of my other last-year peppers growing in places where I did not expect peppers at all.   Perhaps I'll pull a Mendel and save some seeds from the most interesting ones and see what the next generation yields.   It is an odd thing to have what looks like a typical Thai chili pepper that is normally damn hot (50,000-100,000 on the Scoville scale:  Habenero is just above it) and to take a bite only to find it has no heat at all -- Zippo on the Scoville.  A boring bland thing all dressed to kill.     Inappropriate pepper friskiness has yielded some losers among the winners, but that could be an entirely different post.   Thankfully, most of my peppers are fabulously varied in excellent ways and most of them are hot hot hot.

      
I have digressed.   My point with all of this is that I made my first hot sauce today --  I am so excited!   In general, commercial hot sauces (read here condiment) are vinegar-laden and very Kim-unfriendly.  There are the occasional sauces that you can buy from websites or specialty stores, but in general, I'm out of luck.   And so, here I am with a fresh batch of incredibly hot hot sauce made from fresh chilis and I'm really not sure what to do with it, but I am sure I will find lots and lots of new and delicious opportunities.  Grilled chicken, for example, was awesome with a bit of the magic condiment drizzled about.  It also complimented the fresh garden green beans which were nestled on a bed of spinach on the side.  Doors have been unlocked and eyes have been opened today.  
          Bring on the sauce!    Bring on the Sauce!  Bring On The Sauce!  

Last Day

    Ahhh - the last day here in Canada for me for a few weeks, and surprise surprise, the rain continues.  It will be good to be home.   There was potential to go out today to get in that elusive Utikuma site still, however, mud thwarts us at every turn. 
     Yesterday we went out to collect some larch cones for our colleague and while we were at the Perryvale fen, this big fellow above (a Darner of some sort) found us and visited for a while. You would be surprised at how difficult it is to find larch cones with seeds still in them.  Or more likely, this is not something that enters your thoughts at all.  Smaller easier-to-get-to trees aren't producing very many cones, while the big trees produce their cones closer to the top.  We spent a few hours man-handling and pulling trees over trying to get enough and then finally I took a bow saw to a big one....  from the looks of the rings, it was definitely over 60 years old.  Success.
      That particular fen was surprisingly dry and stressed even with all this rain of late, and it is a site where we study the effects of drought.  We stopped measuring carbon fluxes from there a few years ago as it seemed to be recovering from the prolonged droughts, but from the looks of it, we might want to revisit.  It was definitely stressed and the mosses were decidedly unhappy.   
       And so with that final send off trip out to an old site, I am now Homeward Bound!   Hoping for smooth travels and comfortable temps back home.  It will be good to be back.
     
     

Beware.... Rant below.

  A friend of mine argued a year or so ago that we should stop buying oil from Saudi Arabia...  that it was expensive and we could do better.   My response included that one must also keep in mind that ANY oil is expensive to us consumers, yes, but ultimately also deleterious to the environment not only for the globally shared combustion products of carbon dioxide and pollutive N compounds, but also on a more locally point source viewpoint, as well…       Consider the oil sands area of Canada where my group is doing ecological impact research and where I am now breathing the air.   Canada, this benign country to our north, was the biggest supplier of oil to the US last year and it continues this year -- According to the DOE, Canada remained the largest exporter of total petroleum in June, exporting 2.733 million barrels per day to the United States, which is an increase from May (2.527 thousand barrels per day). The second largest exporter of total petroleum was Saudi Arabia with 1.353 million barrels per day (http://www.eia.doe.gov).  Much of this oil is coming from the oil sands in Alberta where they are both strip-mining the forests and wetlands and using in-situ steam methods to acquire the raw materials.  The processing of these oil sands produces vast amounts of slag in the form of contaminated sand (2 tons of sand yield one barrel of oil) and huge piles of sulfur that they protect with loud cannons so that birds won’t unsuspectingly land and die in these highly contaminated areas.  They use copious amounts of water from the Athabasca River to release the oil from the sands and divert natural resources from the local people.  These indigenous people are being greatly affected not only in their loss of hunting grounds and water supply, but the water supply that they do receive back from this area seems to be tainted -- the fish in the area around the indigenous town of Fort Chepewyan (north of Fort McMurray) are developing growths and losing flesh.  In a population of 1200 people in this town and surrounding areas, there were 6 deaths in Feb 2008 from cancer.  The cancer rate there is above what one would expect, however, more studies must be done says the government.

    I propose not only NOT buying gas from Saudi Arabia, but also trying to limit use of petroleum based energy resources in general. 
   With that, I relinquish my soap box.   And perhaps have a beer.
   

Laborador Tea is starting to turn.  Their blossoms, turned seed pods, held water nicely.    More Rain.  Everywhere we went today it stank of hydrocarbons - we went to our furthest north site and then one south of Fort Mac, too, and it was all totally smelly and very disconcerting.  Fort McMurray is really rather gross and disgusting on days like today.  Everything is covered with a thick layer of mud -- to the point where rain only makes cars muddier - the mud that is being brought to the main roads by all the 4x4s and massive trucks traveling from the side roads is now liquefied and spraying every which way turning things into one big mud bomb everywhere you look.  Wipers flap helplessly on the windshield as they push around splattered-up mud -- even in a heavy rain.  At the Syncrude main processing site, I watched a worker get out of his car today and take a squeegee to a speed limit sign.   It is that muddy.   One can usually get used to a little mud, and figure that that is part of the gig, but when you don't see the sun and see rain instead and dark skies and trucks that are unidentifiable because of their consistent brown-ness and everything you own is muddy and there is no sun in sight and the air stinks of toxic fumes and did I mention the no sun?  one starts to feel a little unhealthy.  I am feeling a little unhealthy.....       may we be done with Fort Mac soon!!  Wish me luck.

Grey and Dank

It is cold and wet here.... though could be snowing, so I shouldn't complain.... Off to three sites today, but thought I would quick pop up a pic from yesterday (Thanks, Melanie for the camera cord!). This is a fen we walk through to get to our bog which is all south of Fort McMurray. 3 out of 4 sloggers got soakers - this is our term for boot underwater and so feet get wet. Water water everywhere!

September, Alberta, Day One

Day One: Stymied.

Here I am again in Alberta with my cohort, navigating the unpredictabilities of field work. Today we intended to start work with a bang - hitting our hardest-to-get-to site (road-wise) and were turned back by muddy slicks. We were optimistic and had a plan. Plans change. I got out and wandered along the road and instantly had 10 pound boots from the accumulated mud…. And that was on the good part of the road, and so we witnessed some smallish bear prints, turned back, and will instead wander to Fort McMurray tomorrow in hopes of more passable roads once again by the start of next week.

Meanwhile, bugs still splat the windshield, reminding me to keep my headnet handy just in case. Temps are in the 50s during the day, but freezing at night and so I started my day with a scarf wrapped around the neck and warm gloves in the field bag. The gloves were not needed, but the scarf gave me comfort. Leaves are just starting to change and became increasingly yellow as we moved north today – I look forward to this change because I know from experience that the vegetation here puts on quite a fall show – Aspen and larch glow school-bus yellow to match the middle lines in the road. They are vibrantly punctuated by black and white spruce -- which are neither black nor white, but instead are deep rich greens. This brightly mottled canvas of upland and lowland have a backdrop of intense turquoise blue on the sunny days – bluer than bluets. Today, instead, it was grey and dizzly and at some points down-right foggy. Moisture collected on every needle and leaf surface. Didn’t bode well for drying out the road, but we’ll keep fingers crossed and keep on keeping on.

By far, the best thing about today is the sighting of 4 bears – a mama bear and triplets all scrambling across the road wary of our approaching truck. We paused on the road, and they paused at the edge of the forest; the middle little one popped up onto its hind-legs with a send-off sniff and they were off in search of things more yummy than us. That was a good mom. We also saw a coyote, multiple deer, 4 red-tails, 2 kestrels, a northern harrier, countless ravens, 1 shrike, and an unidentified blue bird of some sort…. ?? busy day. The moose was elusive today, but perhaps tomorrow…. They are in rut season either now or very soon, and so beware the moose in the field. They are not the smartest of animals to begin with and then add to that a single-mindedness and you get something that you don’t really want to meet. Last year we were regaled with stories of a moose getting all up in a local hammock’s business – either hot for the fabric or ready to fight it, so the Albertan’s say, and so while I am not sure how this could really be, I do not know the moose’s brain like they do, and so I will take their word on it. Any way you look at it, a moose in rut is not something to confuse. I will let you know.

And so Fort McMurray tomorrow and for a few days….