the birds! the birds!
i got a bird feeder pole a few years ago for christmas because at the time i had no deck to nail bird feeders into. i hung up some feeders, and it seems like all i’d gotten in the past were wrens, robins, and blackbirds.
so i wasn’t expecting much when i stuck my pole out in my backyard and filled my feeders. boy was i in for a surprise.
the first birds i noticed were the goldfinches. there are literal flocks of goldfinches that come and hang out on my feeders and on the ground for breakfast. then the orioles came! this was such a nice contrast to the boring blackbirds and wrens i’d gotten in the past.
of course i got some purple finches (i’d had a few of those up in st. joe – not very common though). then i saw a few rose-breasted grosbeak and a few indigo buntings, as well as a woodpecker!
i decided to get a hummingbird feeder, which was a good move. i saw a hummingbird sunday morning zipping around the feeder.
i put my birdbook next to my sliding doors, and i need to get my long lens on my camera so i can start taking some pics of these birds.
next step is a pair of binoculars. somehow i’ve become a bird watcher in my old age.
why i will never add you as my facebook friend
the other day i got a facebook friend request from my arch-nemesis from gradeschool. let’s call him bob. i had pictured this moment many times, wondering how long it would take for him to finally send the request; i have quite a few fb friends from gradeschool. in all scenarios, the moment ended with me laughing and ignoring the request.
bob might be a perfectly nice person now, but in kindergarten to fourth grade, he was the bane of my existence. unfortunately, bob was next to me alphabetically, which meant that most of the time, bob and i stood next to each other in line, waited for lunch next to each other, sat next together in class, etc. etc. (i was last for everything. this means i was more often than not in the back of the room, last person in the row of desks. curse you W last name!)
i remember one instance in first grade when i was doing my addition or words or something, and bob started throwing stuff at me, or making stupid faces at me, or something equally annoying. after ignoring him as best i could, i finally turned and waved my hands at him, hopefully getting him to shut up. it just so happened that the teacher decided to face the class at this moment, and there went my name on the chalkboard. (as consolation, bob already had his name on the board, so he got a checkmark. he also got his name on the board quite a bit, whereas my name up there was a rare occurrence.)
what else just made me irate as a 7-year-old was the fact that he couldn’t finish his book-it books EVER. if everyone in a class finished their required book-it books in a month, the class would get a pizza party. everyone’s class got at least one pizza party, but bob never finished the five books in a month required to get the party. meanwhile, the teachers are ADDING dots after my books because i’m reading 5 times the requirements. how aggravating!
my mom tells the story that in third grade or so, i finally went up to the teacher and requested not to sit next to bob anymore. after fourth grade, he was gone from our class and placed in public school.
looking back, i realize that he was just an average little boy who probably had some degree of ADD, but to my gradeschool self, he was the antithesis of everything i stood for in school.
so when i finally got the request and laughed it, i had to tell my mom, who heard about bob every single day i was in school, i’m sure. she said it’s possible bob had a completely different experience than i did and thinks that being fb friends is more than reasonable. furthermore, i had taken a look at his profile (as much as i could), and it looks like he’s a web designer/developer so we would have something in common. this made me reflect for a moment and wonder if maybe i should give him a chance.
nah.
*delete*
ATK: double-chocolate cookies
well, it turns out i’m not going to make EVERY cookie in the america’s test kitchen cookbook; some of them contain DEVIL’S SYRUP. i’m not going to bend my boycott for you, ATK.
so i jumped ahead a couple recipes, and the next in line was the double chocolate cookie. this is an intense cookie. it calls for melted chocolate AND cocoa powder. if you wanted to be really intense, you could add some chocolate chips to it as well. not to mention it calls for instant coffee/espresso powder. o.O 
i didn’t have instant coffee OR espresso powder, so on recommendation from nate, i ground the heck out of some coffee we already had. it was dark chocolate truffle flavored as well, so i’m sure that added to the chocolateyness that was these cookies.
4 eggs in these cookies! that is a ton. the recipes calls to spread the coffee over the whisked eggs to let it dissolve, but i didn’t do that great of a job when spreading, so it just sort of sat there.
when everything was in, it looked a lot like brownie batter and had the consistency of brownie batter (except a wee bit thicker). i was all set to go, when i realized i hadn’t added the cocoa powder. and the batter looked and tasted completely fine. what the heck; more chocolate never hurt anyone. (except dogs. don’t feed your dogs chocolate.)
i seriously could’ve made brownies with this batter. it calls to roll it into balls, but to heck with that. i just scooped it onto the sheets with my cookie scoop. unfortunately, they looked like little turds.
these baked pretty quick – you can bake them two sheets at a time as well, as long as you rotate halfway through.
holy crap; these are delicious, but you seriously need something to cut them with – a huge glass of milk or bowl of ice cream will do the trick. using these to make ice cream or cream cheese frosting sandwiches would be a stellar idea.
all the other ATK cookies i’ve made i can scarf down one after another. these are 2 and done. i don’t know if i would necessarily make these again, but they are definitely a force to be reckoned with.
point: ATK (? maybe?)
book review: the dark tower
back when i was young and stupid and thought i wouldn’t like stephen king, i heard a lot about his “dark tower” series from a lot of people. number one thing being that it isn’t like his other books, and i would probably like it. (this before i realized he didn’t write horror all the time.)
so, in effort to get over my stupidity a few years ago (and GLAD I DID!!!), i bought my first king book, “the gunslinger,” and promptly read it. i was not entranced by the plot, but i was intrigued by his storytelling. a few months later i picked up “the green mile” and then all bets were off. i started reading mr king’s books left and right. WHY HAD I WAITED SO LONG???
but it was another year or so until i picked up the second DT book, and when i did, i was really turned off. i bet if i reread it now, it would be ok, but something just turned me off from that book at the time. i did finish it, but it took me a long time to pick up the third book – in fact, it was the end of this past march. and i flew through the rest of the series in a little more than a month, just finishing the final book last night.
contrary to popular opinion, i did not find anything wrong with the end at all. in fact, this series was the best vampire, zombie, time-traveling, parallel universe, post-apocalyptic, dystopian, auto-biographical, good vs evil, fantasy, sci-fi, literary-lifting, robot, meta, ego-stroking, writing advice/lesson, breaking of the fourth wall, deus ex machina, western, romance series i’ve ever read!
now, i’m going to go into some analysis and thoughts on the series, especially the last book, and if you plan on reading the books in the future, i suggest not reading the jump.
…
no reunion :(
every year my mom’s family gets together for a family reunion up at leech lake, where we spend 3.5 days swimming, camping, hanging out with each other, and bonfiring.
this year, we have two weddings almost directly after: one in august and one in september. unfortunately, the powers that be (aunts and uncles) have nixed the reunion this year. also unfortunately, the reunion is the only real vacation i can count on every summer.
don’t get me wrong; i loooove going to weddings. i love getting all fancy and dancing and drinking. but it’s just not the same! i want a lake with a boat and a loon and swimming and fires and beer and being with a bunch of people i like. while i’ll still be seeing those same people, it’ll be for a shorter amount of time and with other people there i don’t know. plus there is just not the same venue for jokes. (we always tell horrible jokes at our reunions.)
so now i’m on a mission to find a lake this summer that i can swim in. one deficiency of this area is its overabundance of rivers and creeks and lack of big lakes.
getting to be that time
the rctc hort department has a yearly spring sale where you can buy flowers and veggies. i went last year and got some great stuff. took my mom to it this year, and she picked up pansies and geraniums, while i picked up some flower, peppers and tomatoes, and a hanging fuschia basket. i’m going to have tomatoes coming out of my ears.
so, my dads getting the boxes ready. this saturday i’m hoping to get over to get the compost. i already got the loam last weekend to mix in. i know it’s really soon to be putting in my veggies, especially since it’s cooler than normal, but my plants i started from seed are going nuts! and i’m getting anxious to get this stuff in 😀 yay garden!
ATK: chocolate chips
i knew this would be the real test. and it’s pretty darn close. america’s test kitchen classic chocolate chip cookies are really good, a very close second to my family recipe, but i’m not giving up my recipe.
the recipe seems pretty innocuous – basic CCcookie ingredients. i’ve never added just an egg yolk to a CCC recipe, but i’ll go with it.
as with the brown sugar cookie, this one called for browning the butter.
you know it’s ready when it stops steaming and the froth is gone from the top. this pan of melted butter is good to go.
reading directions, blending dry goods, etc., etc., then OOOH – there it is. the weird thing.
whisk sugar and butter for 30 seconds, then let rest for 3 minutes. repeat 3 times. what?? the only think i can think of that this accomplishes is it cools off the butter and lets the wet ingredients cream a little better.
16 oz. of vanilla from penzey’s. no messing around with vanilla this time.
i love CCCs because all you have to do is scoop them up and put them on the cookie sheet. no rolling, dipping in sugar, all that jazz. the recipe called for this to make only 16 cookies – that’s huge!! instead i made normal sized cookies.
i have to admit: if i didn’t have my own recipe already, i would make these cookies (with maybe less chocochips – there were a lot).
point: it’s a tie.
ATK:1; kate: 2; draw: 1
next up: chocolate cookies.
the flip side: southeast mn – a blooming romance?
my mom and i complain about rochester a lot. i know. it’s bad. i’m sorry. i’m trying; really, i am. so here are some things about southeastern minnesota (and yes, rochester) that i do like and hope to get more into as the summer progresses now that i’m in a house and not cramped.
1. OUTBACK STEAKHOUSE. bring on the cheese fries. the one in st cloud closed over the recession, and it made me sad.
2. trader joe’s! i really like it. i also like the food co-op in rochester and get my bulk foods there. i did go to the roch farmer’s market last summer, and i am going to try out the st. charles market this summer to see if it’s decent.
3. i am really excited to spend some time at whitewater state park this summer.
4. bike trail! going to try to get down to lanesboro, preston, houston, rushford area for some biking and snooping around in antique shops.
5. i like my job! 🙂
6. i like my house!
7. fireflies. for realz. there are no fireflies up in central mn.
8. the pastures and windy little creeks and little snuggy rock hidey-holes all over the countryside. you’ll be driving along and glance out in a pasture, and there’s a little hole through a hummock out in the pasture with a stone arch holding it open.
9. the bluffs and hills, and the drives are nicer with scenery (at least when you’re in the valleys). the farmland, however, is not that scenic.
10. i can’t think of a 10th. nate and i have sat here and couldn’t think of one thing that rochester has that st. cloud has as well. you let me know!
central mn: a love story
this june marks 2 years that i’ll have been living down in southeastern minnesota again. i grew up here and have now returned. in the 15 years between, i lived in west-central and central minnesota.
i still miss central minnesota.
i miss the trees. i miss the lakes. i miss the cries of loons at night. i miss the sense that we’re all in this together. i miss the notion that 20 miles is not that far, and neither is 80, in all reality. i miss 4-year colleges. i miss the ‘burbs (waite park, sauk rapids, sartell, st. joe, st. augusta). i miss cruising D through st cloud on a friday night. i miss the community. i miss the st. john’s woods. i miss the forested valleys between the hwy. 23 and st. john’s exits on I-94. i miss I-94. i even miss I-94 traffic. i miss the U-turns because it meant there were actually places in st. cloud i wanted to get to. i miss tgifridays and granite city and kay’s kitchen.i miss munsinger garden. weirdly enough, i even miss coborn’s. i miss the awesomely creepy albany cemetery. i miss the trees (did i mention that?). i miss the roads (you really have no idea how wondrous the st. cloud intersections are). i miss the backroads around avon, albany, and holdingford. i miss the trees. i miss the st. cloud library. i miss the DQ in albany. i sorta miss st. cloud superman. i miss how just north of sartell you start to see hints of “up north” with pines and birch trees lining the roads. i miss miss miss it.
now don’t get me wrong – i DO like st. charles. it reminds me a lot of st. joe in a way. i like my house. i like looking out my backyard at the stand of trees. i even like looking out my front yard. i like the fact that the ace in town will sharpen my knives AND cut me a piece of glass.
i have been trying to pin down what it is that is rubbing me wrong about rochester (sorry to my roch readers…), and i may have pinpointed part of what bugs me – it seems like rochester is just a collection of neighborhoods instead of one big city/town that everyone cares about. nate also has said that the income disparity is pretty black and white here, whereas at least in cloud town it sort of gradually increased from one income bracket to the next (and i think STC has a more working-class base).
if st. cloud state, st. ben’s, or st. john’s called me up tomorrow and offered me the same job i’m doing now for the same pay rate, i would seriously consider taking one of them up on their offer. if they offered me more money? absolutely.
maybe i’ll be back someday.