birds : holiday visit to Lake Artemesia

After a completely gray and rainy Sunday, we took advantage of the beautiful clear weather to walk around Lake Artemesia. I can’t remember the last time I was up there; they’ve completely repaved and widened the path around the lake, and have removed at least one tree the roots of which were growing up through the pavement. Since so many people have the day off for Martin Luther King Day, the parking lot was full and the paths were busy with families, kids and adults walking dogs or on bikes.

The lake was partially frozen, so the usual winter residents were a bit crowded into only two areas of open water. We saw huge numbers of Canada Geese, a couple of pairs of Mallards, a decent flock of Ring-necked Ducks, a dozen or so Ruddy Ducks, about that many American Coots, and loads of Ring-billed Gulls on the lake, both in the water and on the ice. The big excitement was the sighting of a pair of Black Scoters, which marked my first new life birds of the year. There were hardly any other birds active at noon, but we did see a chickadee, a White-throated Sparrow, and a Song Sparrow along the paths and a smallish Red-tailed Hawk circled overhead as we were leaving.

birds : holiday visit to Lake Artemesia

food : cooking goals for 2010

So far, I have only a couple of cooking goals for the year. One, I want to learn to cook dried beans in my slow cooker. Two, I want to learn to make pizzas. Neither of these will seem like major challenges to most of you, I’m sure, but they are things that I’ve had a block on that I want to get past. To this end, I am soaking my first batch of dried (Great Northern) beans overnight tonight and will be making them in the slow cooker tomorrow. The inaugural cooked-white-beans dish will be Marcella Hazan’s white bean soup, which is essentially white beans, garlic, and parsley. (I finally scored a copy of the original The Classic Italian Cookbook at a local thrift store this weekend and already have about a dozen recipes marked to try; rather than spring for the new version, I’ll now keep an eye out for the equally out of print and well-regarded More Classic Italian Cooking!)

On the second point, we’ve set a date for the 31st of January to make our first homemade pizza (yes, that’s the next weekend day we will have free together after today). Between now and then I’ll be assembling whatever it is we need for pizzas, and polishing up the as-yet-unused pizza stone we received as a wedding gift. (We did request the pizza stone, we just haven’t broken the barrier of actually making a pizza yet.)

In general, I want to branch out into making bread, but I am not yet ready to set a specific goal. I have a strong suspicion that the pizza hump is actually just a foothill of the yeasted-dough mountain by which I remain completely daunted. It’s not even the prospect of either a bread brick or a pot of runny goop that is the specific problem, I am just disproportionately stressed by the whole idea. So, after January 31st, the goal is to make some bread. Sometime. Before 2011. Or maybe not. No pressure!

food : cooking goals for 2010

New Year’s Eve movie fest of flops

I had great plans to take advantage of Netflix’s online movie service to create a theme night for New Year’s Eve, when we watch movies in order to keep our minds off of how sleepy we’re getting as we wait for midnight to arrive. This year, the theme was going to be ‘World War II prisoners in Asia,’ with Empire of the Sun and Seven Years in Tibet. Not the most cheery theme, but I was convinced that these films were underrated gems full of derring-do and historical context that would be both engaging and educational. I can now say with some certainty that they’re not: they’re flops.

To be fair, we never even made it to the end of Empire of the Sun, let alone Seven Years in Tibet. Empire of the Sun was unbearable, and since that film has been largely recognized as Steven Spielberg’s Big Flop, we decided to believe that Seven Years in Tibet was probably actually Brad Pitt’s Big Flop as well and just give it a miss. Which is no doubt why they were both available for free online viewing.

Instead, we regrouped and watched The Princess Bride for the umpteenth time. It remains hilarious, in case you were wondering.

New Year’s Eve movie fest of flops

the mindfulness oracle

This year we celebrated the new year with the Still Water folks at a New Year’s Day brunch. The highlight of the event is the visit from the mindfulness oracle (or maybe The Mindfulness Oracle), who delivers what you need in the new year via chapters from the Tao Te Ching.

Apparently, what I need this year is also what I needed last year, because I received the same selection two years in a row. It happens to also be the first chapter, so I will start 2010 from the beginning and in the darkness again. Not so different from any other year, really.

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnameable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the
manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

— from the Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell translation

the mindfulness oracle