Um...where did June go?

Today I was talking to my mom while making dinner. At that moment I was chopping the first green pepper (I couldn't leave it on long enough to turn red) from my red pepper plant on the driveway. I started going on and on about how my tomato plant was loaded with green cherry tomatoes just waiting to ripen and I had tons of pepper growing quickly. She mentioned how corn was supposed to be at the Farmers' Market this weekend...and that's when I realized that in only a few hours it will be July! July! The entire month of June is gone and I barely noticed. I accomplished LOADS in June but I was so busy that entire weeks were zipping by before I could realize that it's been 20 days since I last posted! 20 days! How does that happen?

Well, I'll tell you how...here's what I did in the month of June. (I apologize now for what is sure to become a record length post or possibly series of posts.)

1.)  I started roasting my own coffee. (I'll post more specifics in another post.) I was tired of having to buy pounds of coffee that was often old and from Columbia or Lawrence and therefore not easily obtainable. They cost $12 to $14 a pound and I have had several friends who roast coffee. So I took up another DIY hobby.

2.)  I started trying to run-commute twice a week. I pack an extra lunch and the next day's change of clothes on Mondays and Wednesdays. Then I run to work from home (1.5 miles each way) to the office and FINALLY found a way to sneak 2 workouts of 3 miles each into my weekly schedule. It does take a lot of planning but with work, summer school, and trying to lift weights with Jason over my MWF lunches there aren't a lot of hours left in the day. So now I run 15 minutes to work instead of drive for 7-10 minutes to work (depending on lights and traffic).

3.) I was elected President of Kirksville Young Professionals. I was Secretary last year and I am thrilled that my fellow board members had the confidence to vote for me as President. I am really looking forward to adding to all of the work we've accomplished in the past year. Go KVYP!

4.) We ate our very first cherry tomatoes on June 12th. I thought I would treat them special so I made a mini caprese salad. I drizzled them with olive oil from Spain and some basil from the backyard. Delish!

5.) I started summer school on June 6th and resumed commuting twice a week to Columbia for classes. The course is Advanced Regression Analysis and will conclude my statistics coursework.

6.) I rolled over 200,000 miles in Laurel (my Subaru Impreza). She did it with four brand new struts while commuting to Columbia (of course!). As a Subaru, I expect her to live at least another 50,000 to 100,000 miles. It makes me sad to think of a time when I might not get to drive her. :-( Also, my best friend Cara might find this the most amazing since it was only a few years ago that I rolled over 100,000 miles. A DeSoto, Kansas, police officer stopped to ask us what we were doing because we had hopped out of the car in a pitch black neighborhood, held up Amos Lee's new CD, and took a picture of us in front of the car. He thought we were insane and let us quickly leave DeSoto but I will never forget the memory.

7.) Jason brewed one last beer with my parents when they came to visit for Father's Day. (I was in the kitchen working on #8.) Joseph hadn't seen our new house and my brother Nathan had never been to Kirksville. It was a great weekend!



The beer baby bubbling away
in the hall closet.















8.) I cooked a lot of tasty food.

This is what you make when you buy a ton of strawberries at the Farmers' Market.

This is what you make when you buy tri-color potatoes and need to use the eggs and kale from the Farmer's Market. So tasty!



If you happen to have loads of asparagus from the Farmers' Market (or wherever you buy veggies) then here are two recipes.

From Hy-vee's Seasons magazine article on asparagus, April issue, pg. 28 (or page 30 of this .pdf.)

"2. Shave the spears into ribbons using a vegetable peeler. Toss with fresh lemon juice, extra-virgin olive oil, sea salt and freshly ground pepper. Shave Pecorino Romano or Parmesan cheese on top."

I left off the cheese from above and coupled it with Sauteed Corn, Pepper, and Sausage (I used turkey sausage that was on sale) also from a Hy-vee recipe. We had it for a really late brunch but you could eat them together or separate any time.

Oh look! More foil packet potatoes and grilled pork tenderloins! But do you have this Grilled Asparagus and Manchego Cheese recipe from Real Simple?

Ribeyes from my parent's side of beef, Kirksville snow peas
seasoned with sesame oil and red pepper flakes, and tri-color
foil packet potatoes all grilled.

Finally, Gnocchi with Turkey Ragu (the dinner I was preparing tonight when I realized June was over.)

Flashback Friday - May 1, 2011

Many bloggers have something like Friday Link Love or One Word Wednesday - a day that they try to consistently publish a themed post. I've decided to create Flashback Friday to catch all of the things I forget to mention.

So for this Flashback Friday we are going to travel back in time to May 1, 2011. The past two years I've competed in TriZou, a sprint triathlon held at the University of Missouri. This year, rather than pretending not to drown for 400 meters, I registered for DuZou. DuZou is a duathlon where you run 1 mile, bike 7 miles, and then run 1 more mile. Only about 100 people register for the duathlon versus the 800 or so who complete TriZou.

It turns out that turning 30 does have some benefits because...I placed 3rd in my age group of 30-34 year old women!! Me! 3rd Place! The last time I placed in anything was rowing for OU as a novice team at the Women's Big 12 Championships the first year of the club team's existence. We were 3rd place but we missed the awards ceremony and never received our medals. (Still sad about that!)

Jason and I left as soon as we finished the race because we needed to get back to Kirksville. I would never in a million years have thought I placed but then I received my results online. It said I placed 3rd and after two trips to the event sponsor's business I finally got my medal. Check it out!!

Quick and Tasty Dinner

I thought I would share what I made for dinner on Thursday night but first here's a tip. If you shop at Hy-vee (or probably any grocery store chain) you can sign up to receive weekly ads by e-mail as well as their weekly newsletter.

I learned from Iowa Girl Eats that Hy-vee also posts weekly menus. In fact I believe they post at least 5 weekly menus: Regular, Budget-Friendly, Heart Healthy, Weight Control, and Diabetic Friendly. If I can't come up with anything to make then I'll look at these menus for ideas. They also have a ton of recipes on their website including a function where you can add the ingredients you need to your grocery list and print it. I noticed turkey sausage was on sale so I searched Hy-vee's online recipes for "sausage." I found this Rigatoni Sausage Toss recipe.

I made a few variations by using turkey Italian sausage instead of pork. I also only had fusilli pasta on hand. It was a quick and tasty dinner and made enough for three leftover servings. My only complaint (which is pretty common) was that the turkey sausage (or maybe the jarred sauce) tasted salty. However, I've found that most people like a lot more salt than I do. Besides the ease of the recipe I also enjoyed the combination of sauce with fresh vegetables.

Here's my version of the recipe:

Put the water on to boil and remove the turkey sausage from casings (if applicable). Crumble into skillet. Brown sausage.

Prepare the fusilli according to package directions. Use the boil time to rinse/spin your spinach, halve the grape tomatoes, and warm the jar of sauce. (I used Classico Sweet Basil and Tomato.)

Drain the pasta.

Place spinach in a large bowl. Top with tomatoes, hot cooked sausage, and hot pasta.

Stir in pasta sauce and sprinkle with freshly grated Parmesan cheese (the recipe calls for a lot more than I used).
Bon Appetit!

When you leave town for five days you really notice the progress in your plants. I couldn't believe how much these grew even in the short time we were gone.

Check out these pictures of the original plants and what they look like this week:

Pepper and tomato plants going crazy!





So many cute little tomatoes!
Grow, grow, grow!



Nasturiums! Now we just need the flowers.

Best of all...remember these little basil plants?
Mom and I split the middle plant into four
and the left one was attacked by leaf eating
bug or something and almost died.

And now LOOK at this basil! Yippeee! I plucked some leaves tonight and made my first batch of pesto. You can barely even tell I took any leaves. I'm so excited!!



In less happy gardening news, my fuschia was poorly potted and tried to die on me while I was out of town. I bought it already potted. Even though it rained while we were gone I think it was too protected under the eaves. When we got home it looked like this and the peat moss type soil had pulled away from the sides of the hanging basket. Tonight I gave it one last chance, removed the dead portions, and repotted it in better potting soil. It looks really pathetic but it might make it.

I also think bunnies think asiatic daisies are delicious. The bunnies have stayed out of everything else but these plants have been sheared down. Guess these perennials won't be sticking around after all. For now I'm going to leave them in the ground in case they rally.

Memorial Day Weekend

Jason and I went on vacation over the holiday weekend with our friends Kristi and Gerrit. Last year, six of us went camping over Memorial Day Weekend and decided to make it a tradition. Unfortunately this year our other friends Rachel and Clifton weren't able to make it but you'll read about our make-up camping trip over the 4th of July.

Kristi and Gerrit are from Michigan so we decided that a camping/winery tour of the Leelanau Peninsula would be perfect. I believe this peninsula is essentially the pinky of Michigan on the west side of the state. With Jason and I on the trip a few breweries also were added to the bill including a second trip to Bell's in Kalamazoo.

We left Thursday afternoon and headed for Three Floyds Brewing and our first overnight in Munster, Indiana. Friday we stopped at The Livery in Benton Harbor for lunch and then New Holland Brewing Co. in Holland on our way to a homestay with Kristi's family. We didn't get many pictures of lunch except for Kristi's giant burrito that we all helped her eat.

It always helps to show gigantic food next to Pleepleus to put it in perspective.

The Livery



Great Hops! Check out New Holland's sign.




















 

Saturday and Sunday we visited wineries on the Leelanau Peninsula as well as the Jolly Pumpkin Traverse City location. Jason took most of the pictures on his video camera so I don't have them to share yet. He's putting together a video of the trip so maybe I can post it here soon.


Maricaibo Especial at Jolly Pumpkin






Monday we stopped by Founders Brewing in Grand Rapids on the way to stay with Gerrit's parents.



At Founders in our homemade Pleepleus t-shirts.



HopCat is also an awesome beer bar. Beer Advocate rated HopCat the 3rd best beer bar in the world...so naturally we had to check it out when we were literally in the neighborhood.

We enjoyed talking to the bartenders, one of which treated us to an empty growler for coming to visit all the way from Missouri. I paid back the favor by filling the growler with one of their in-house brews Hoppopotamus.

We seem to have a hard time leaving the state of Michigan without a trip to Bell's Brewery. On our way home we swung by Kalamazoo to have lunch at the Eccentric Cafe at Bell's.

This brewery makes Jason's favorite beer Two Hearted Ale. In fact this is how much he loves Bell's...

His tattoo of their logo that he got in Alaska, May 2009

Happy man outside their door on Tuesday for lunch.

Pleepleus showing off the sampling boards at Bell's in the shape of Michigan.

Thank you for humoring my tour of Michigan breweries led by a monkey. We had so much fun with great friends and Michigan insiders Kristi and Gerrit. Their families were wonderful hosts and so generous. I'll try to post more on the wine side of the trip soon.

Pleepleus

I started writing my post about Memorial Day weekend and realized that I've never introduced my few blog readers to Pleepleus.

Historical Background:
The original Pleepleus belongs to Zane Lamprey and starred in the show Three Sheets. (You can even "Like" Zane's Pleepleus on Facebook.) He was the Ty Beanie Baby "Swinger." Except for Pleepleus's fan page on Facebook the newer (uglier and not as cool) Official Pleepleus Doll is available on Zane's website.

Anyway, a year or two ago when we were obsessively going through all four seasons of Three Sheets (and I read his book too), Jason bought me my very own Pleepleus at a time that I was really stressed out. It turns out that this adorable little monkey is almost as good at providing stress relief as watching squirrels or petting cats and dogs. In fact before he went out of town tonight Jason propped him up on my pillow to great me from clean sheets on the bed. Big smiles for both the monkey and the freshly made bed!

Anyway, this cute little guy goes pretty much everywhere with us...softball games, camping, RAGBRAI, nights out, breweries. He was in our engagement photos and he did an excellent job holding our unity candle in our wedding in October.

This engagement photo was the ending to our wedding video.

So handsome in his tux (that also happens to fit on a wine bottle).

I could post a ton of pictures of our furry friend like my friends post pictures of their dogs. But I'll spare you except for a few of my favorites from our honeymoon.



Sampling at Russian River Brewing Co.





Tackling the Bear Rupublic Brewing Co. bear



Hanging out in the

Armstrong Redwoods



Sizing up our burger at Third Street Ale Works
in Santa Rosa, CA





Taking wine tasting notes
in Northern Sonoma County



Now that you've officially met Pleepleus I can get back to my post about last weekend.

A different take on DIY

On Saturday, in honor of American Craft Beer Week, Jason and I brewed 3 beers: a Rogue Dead Guy Ale clone, a Black IPA, and an Extra Pale Ale. Though we make really good beer, we are still amateur enough that we use extract kits to brew. This means that rather than using an all grain brewing process we use malt extract that has already been created from the grains. This simplifies the process and requires a lot less equipment.



First you smack the yeast packet between your palms.







It starts out this thin but in a few hours it will expand so large the packet looks like it will burst. For two of the three beers, we actually made yeast starters where the yeast in this packet multiply and then are added to some boiled malt extract so they will multiply even more. This is important if you are brewing beers with high original gravity.



Time to light the fire. We used to do this on the stove but now use the "Bayou Classic" with a propane tank to brew with a full five-gallon boil. This was our first step toward all-grain brewing and should improve the quality of the beer versus adding 3 gallons of water at the end of the boil as we used to.



Pour the grains into a mesh bag (provided with kit).





Tie a knot at the top of the mesh bag. Then heat one gallon of
water on the stove to 150 degrees then steep the grains for 20 minutes or until
they reach 170 degrees. I was having some bag luck with keeping the
temperature consistent with our stove so fingers crossed it didn't hurt the beer.

Add the one gallon from inside to the four gallons heating outside.
Bring to a boil for one hour...eat lunch while keeping an eye on the pot.
You definitely want to avoid a boil over. No fun!



Fellow home brewers from Kirksville came over to

join in the fun! Here I am about to pour in a hop addition.



The 0 minute hop addition

The Black IPA had 6 ounces of hops. The first addition was 1 oz. of Summit hops with an alpha of 18.75% for the entire 60 minutes of boiling. This should be one hoppy, bitter beer (in a good way). I'm very excited!! Hops are added at different times for different reasons throughout the boil. Those Summit hops were for bittering and therefore were added at the beginning. The Cascade and Centennial hop additions at the 15, 10, and 5 minute mark as we counted down from 60 minutes were for creating a nice citrusy, hop flavor. Then the 1 oz. at the 0 minute mark is for aroma. The final 1 oz. I'll dryhop it with in a few weeks will give that extra over the top kick of hoppiness.

The Extra Pale Ale had only 3 ounces of hops by comparison and will not be dryhopped.

Here you can see clear tubes coming out of the pot.

When you are boiling beer it is called wort. It sounds lovely doesn't it? Anyway, these clear tubes are coming out of a wort chiller called Chillzilla. (Some of you met Chillzilla at our couple wedding shower in Iowa last summer). Our garden hose is hooked up to one end of this contraption and pumps cold water through a series of copper coils. The water in the coils warms and is pumped out the tubes at the other end pulling heat away from the wort. This is a critical stage in brewing where you want to cool the wort as fast as you can while also not exposing it to contaminants.

Brewing spectators

More spectators and lovers of our homebrew

We had a successful brew day with lots of support and lots of fun. Now we wait...in about a week and a half we'll siphon these beers into a secondary fermentation. Essentially put it a clean fermenting bucket. After another two weeks of fermenting we will siphon the beer into 5-gallon ball-lock kegs. We hook the kegs up to the CO2 tank in our four-tap kegerator and push gas through them for a couple days. After that the beer will be ready to drink so come pay us a visit!