Trailing

ROUGH ROAD: We're still playing games semi regularly. (What else is there to do during a pandemic?)

Recently we have The Oregon Trail another go. It's rough. We've played it dozens of times and only won like three times. In our most recent session, Dot (Annabelle) died on her very first turn. Brutal.

SAUCED: We're starting to get a semi- significant amount of ripe tomatoes. 

Many of them have little slits or flaws, so the went in a big pot of spaghetti sauce Tuesday night. Yummy!

INSIDE THE LINES: For the past couple of weeks, Annabelle has participated in a Saturday evening craft and chat session for teens online, sponsored by the King County Library System. 

It sounded like she was having big fun, playing online trivia and a Pictionary type game, so I suggested CJ join last Saturday. He hesitated at first, because of the craft component. I suggested he print out a coloring page of a French bulldog. He found that acceptable, and did a great job coloring it!

Making It

MANY MEALS: It was a busy week last week. We had our normal work, and we had a Birthday Dreams cake that was due, and we had Teen Feed on Saturday, which is a meal team we help coordinate to provide 80 (!) dinners to homeless teens and young adults on the fourth Saturday every month. 

On this week's menu, we had Seattle Dogs. They were huge (quarter-pound) hot dogs on over-sized buns, with plenty of cream cheese, caramelized onions, and jalapenos, if people opted for some spice.

I spent hours on Friday and a couple more Saturday morning caramelizing about 28 pounds of onions. I used my pressure cooker to get them soft (plugged in on the back stoop to help keep the onion scent from becoming overwhelming), and then browned them on the stove top.  Believe you me, the whole house and my whole being still smelled like onions.

We also made what felt like a cubic yard of macaroni salad. We made 20+ cups of 'regular,' plus about 8 cups each of vegan and gluten free options. Kennedy also made mac salad. His, pictured below, was prettier than mine.

We did pack our mac salad with lots of fresh veggies, however. CJ peeled carrots and helped me chop celery. The photo below looks like a crime scene, ha ha, but it was just watermelon juice on a paper towel atop the celery tops. :)

Annabelle kept busy filling condiment cups with mustard and ketchup. At Christian's suggestion, she used a piping bag. It worked really well.

We also made two-dozen servings of rhubarb and strawberry cobbler. I didn't take any photos of that, but I do have this photo of a friend's peachy keen cobbler. So pretty!

But back to the onions. ...

We were heading northbound for Teen Feed north of the ship canal, in the University District,  from our very-south Seattle address when I realized about Mercer Street that I didn't recall the mega amounts of onions actually making it into our car. (Insert bad words and onion tears here.) So, Christian dropped me off at Teen Feed and then probably drove back home and back to the University District, no doubt at speeds that would make me Very Uncomfortable, to go fetch said onions. I appreciate his onion run and don't really want to see onions again any time soon.

HOME BOY: Kennedy's birthday is August 24. We bought him some peripherals to help make his teaching from home set up better.  Annabelle made him a unique work of art. 

Kennedy is one of the biggest fans of "The Simpsons" on the face of the Earth, I do believe. There is an iconic scene in that series where Homer, after harassing neighbor Ned Flanders, appears from and  disappears into a hedge separating their properties. 

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Annabelle recreated it using Perler beads and plastic boxwood.

Below, she fuses the beads together with a hot iron.

She cut a template the size and shape of Homer's body, and trimmed the hedge around it.

Here's a not great photo of the nearly-finished product. 

When she presented it to Ken, he actually started laughing and then choking he was so surprised. That's a high compliment, I think. 

Tasty Treats

POPPING: On Wednesday morning, we delivered our latest Birthday Dreams creation. The birthday teen reported liking music and movies. We went with the movie theme, deciding to make a big tub of popcorn. Out of cake.

It required some carving and a little engineering. We doubled and already-big cake recipe to give us plenty of layers to work with. We built the thing upside down. First two layers were 9-inch cake pans. Atop that, we put a cake board. This would be necessary later, to help support the weight, after we flipped the cake.

After the 9-inch rounds and the cake board, we put another 9-inch layer, and then a couple of 7-or so inch layers, These bottom three layers got three wooden dowels inserted in them, so that they were touching the bottom of the cake board resting atop the two biggest layers. There was also one long dowel running top to bottom through all five layers. 

We crumb coated the whole cake and then wrapped it in white marshmallow fondant. We dyed leftover white fondant red, and cut tapered stripes out for the cake's sides. Putting those on was tricky. Fondant likes to stretch as you lift it. From time to time we stuck it in the fridge or freezer to help it keep its shape.

Once the stripes were applied, it was time to flip. I put the silver cake board on top (well, really, the bottom) of the cake, which was resting on a metal cake lifter tool, held my breath and flipped it. Mercifully, nothing bad happened.

Once the cake was upright, Annabelle applied the circle on its front, and cut out letters for the teen's name (altered in the photo above). We then cut another cake board to match the size of the top of the cake, and made a kettle corn mount atop it (sticking that stuff together with melted marshmallow). It fit nicely atop the 'tub.' 

We used an extra big cake board to give room to surround the cake with movie-theater-style boxes of classic candy.

Pretty darn cute, if we do say so ourselves. Hoped the birthday person enjoyed it!

BATTY: I follow lots of local branches of King County Library System on Facebook. A couple of days ago, one of them posted an even, "Bats of the Pacific Northwest." It was billed as a one hour Zoom session. I signed the kids up, of course.  We know almost nothing about our local bat friends.

Can you spy CJ and Annabelle on the Zoom screen?

I didn't get to hear most of the program, but what I did hear was absolutely fascinating. I asked CeeJ and Bee to make me a list of seven things they learned about bats today.

Here's CJ's list. ...

Early this afternoon, I attended a virtual seminar about bat conservation in the Pacific Northwest, especially Washington state. Here are seven facts I learned about bats during the meeting:

Contrary to popular belief, the majority of bats tested do not have rabies. Approximately 1% of tested bats have rabies.

Megabats were formerly classified as primates. While bat species are currently classified as composing the order Chiroptera, bats do share Boreoeutheria, a clade or magnorder, with bats.

The smallest known mammal species (and, by extension, bat species) in the world is the bumblebee bat, which typically has a forearm length just over one inch long. Bumblebee bats, which are native to Thailand, are named such because of their size similarity to bumblebees.

Likewise, the largest known bat species is the giant golden-crowned flying fox, native to the Philippines. Giant golden-crowned flying foxes have an average forearm length of about eight and a half inches.

Bats are nocturnal creatures, often opting to travel at nighttime. This is part of the reason why they are seen less often by humans than common birds.

Bats have flight more flexible than that of birds, because they have membranes instead of feathers.

Bats are the only known mammal species capable of "true" flight, as opposed to the falling-with-style of "flying" squirrels.

And here's what Annabelle learned ...

1/5th of all mammals in the world are bats.
There are approximately 1411 different species of bat.
Bats are necessary for the pollination of over 300 species of fruit, including avocados, mangos, figs, and even some non-fruits like agave or nuts.
The Bumblebee Bat is the world's smallest mammal.
Not all bats use echolocation - some fruit bat species have larger and sharper eyes for better sight.
Pteropus bats - also known as Flying Foxes - are the largest species of bat, with wingspans of up to 6'.
Bats can live for more than 20 years, with the longest documented bat living 41 years!

One thing I learned - the saying 'blind as a bat' is a misnomer. Bats aren't blind. Not at all. They have eyesight as good as ours during the day, and much better than ours at night.  

PRE-FEED: Today, when I wasn't helping a couple hundred or so people get ballots for this November's election, I toiled in the kitchen to get ready for tomorrow's Teen Feed. By 8 a.m., I'd cooked up 30 cups of macaroni.

I also peeled, sliced and cooked up 20+ pounds of caramelized onions today. Can you imagine how our house and I smell right about now? 

Tomorrow, we just need to turn the cooked pasta into mac salad, and make cobbler to feed about 30 or so. No biggie. ... 

Baking It

 

CAKE DAY: Pretty much from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., we three worked on the beginnings of a cake project for Birthday Dreams. The cake is for a 17-year-old who loves movies. She wanted a vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream. Kinda boring as cakes go, but we give the people what they want.

We decided to make a cake in the shape of a big tub of popcorn like you get at the movie theater (remember those?).  For that, we had to double the recipe and make six cake layers.

CJ cut parchment circles for the bottoms of the pans.

He also helped sift the powdered sugar for the marshmallow fondant.

We did get the cake all baked, stacked and filled, crumb coated and covered in fondant yesterday. Today, while I work, the kids will have to stripe it and put the birthday girl's name on it. Oh, and top it with popcorn, of course!

ALL TOGETHER NOW: The kids have been working a puzzle the last couple of days, and finished it yesterday afternoon. 

While they were puzzling with that, I was mulling over our kitchen floor. I have been looking for flooring for months/years now and really didn't find anything I loved for that space. It's definitely going to have a retro look - we just got a 'new' (to us) white fridge, and we have an Imperial Flair stove we're going to install. 

I kept looking at new stuff, by my mind always wandered back to the vintage VCT (vinyl composite tiles). I ordered samples last week, and they showed up a few days ago. I really do like these colors, and I did some research online about potential patterns.

Last night, I finally ordered the tile, so stay tuned - this ugly floor is gonna be going away within a month, I'd say. 

Slice of Life

WINGING IT: On Friday, we joined Kennedy for an outing to the Seatac Disc Golf Course. 

The property is right under the flight path for Seatac airport, so it's a good place to do some plane spotting while you stroll the grounds. 

It's a good place to play on a sunny day, as there's lots of shade from a variety of evergreens. There is also the occasional something blooming to be seen,

 

CUT IT OUT: Recently, we found ourselves with a couple of extra watermelon on our hands. I have always considered my watermelon slicing skills lacking, so I asked CJ to find me a 'life hack' type tutorial about how to cut up a watermelon.

He sent me a link to a page with clear, step-by-step instructions, and even a short video. After reading and watching those, I felt ready to take on my own watermelon.

First you cut it in half length-wise. Then you cut that half in half. You now have a quarter of a watermelon to work with.

You insert your knife and slice horizontally, from end to end, making sure the tip of your knife is touching the rind on the other side from where you're cutting. You repeat those horizontal slice lines on the other face of the quartered watermelon. 

Now, you're ready to make the vertical cuts. You slice from the peak to the bottom rind.

Once that's done, you trace along the rind of the watermelon with your knife (on both sides of the quartered melon). This step is kind of like when you cut grapefruit from the rind. 

Once that's done, the cubed watermelon just falls out into the bowl. So easy! 

Wish I'd known this decades ago.

Summer Schooling

CLASSY: All this week, Annabelle is involved in a "Girls Who Code" summer 'camp.' It's online, of course (%#$@ pandemic). 

The organization works to close the gender gap in computer science careers. 

According to their website, "In 1995, 37% of computer scientists were women. Today, it’s only 24%. The percent will continue to decline if we do nothing. We know that the biggest drop off of girls in computer science is between the ages of 13 and 17." They report serving over 300,000 girls to date through their Summer Immersion Program, clubs, and college loops.

Girls who Code lists bravery, sisterhood and activism as goals that define their organization.

Annabelle has been learning about HTML and JavaScript. Her homework today included watching this video.

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CJ had a class on Monday morning. I'll have him tell you about it.  

Monday morning, I took part in a brief virtual workshop hosted by the Japan-America Society of the State of Washington.The 45-minute event  went over some of the customs and traditions of Japanese shopping and malls.

For example, we were taught about how in Japan, it's advised against giving cashiers large amounts of change (for example, $20). This can make it difficult for a cashier to give you change back. Another feature of Japanese markets is the vending machines, which often contain "seasonal products" like soup during winter and cold drinks during summer, and items not typically seen in Western vending machines, like toys. Japanese malls, in comparison to Western malls, are usually vertically-oriented instead of horizontally-oriented, and often have movie theaters at the top.

McMUSSELS: CJ also has a short report about an article he read yesterday in Science News. 

Yesterday afternoon, my grandfather gave me a magazine. He urged me to read To Save Appalachia’s Endangered Mussels, Scientists Hatched a Bold Plan, an article about a mussel conservation effort in the state of Kentucky. To begin, the article starts with an offbeat description of an emergency mussel rescue/surgery operation in a rural McDonald's parking lot in Kentucky. This seems like an odd spot to be doing important conservation work, but the researchers don't seem to mind. According to the article, "a single mussel can filter more than 50 liters of water per day, removing algae and pollution, including toxic substances dumped into rivers as industrial waste." This ability to clean up toxic waste is possibly the single most important reason for the presence of mussels, as well as a potential cause of them being an endangered species.

Finders Creepers

HIDDEN 'GEMS': As reported here recently, we finally tore down the wall between the kitchen and this view (photo taken from the kitchen on Monday).

At this point in our lives, we have torn down too many walls to count. And you know how you hear neat-o stories about people finding trea$ure$ or great mementos in their walls when remodeling? Yeah, we're not those people, unfortunately.

The former kitchen wall yielded a couple of curiosities. One was a beat up old Heidelberg beer box part, being used as a baffle of some sorts.  

The other surprise? ... Hey, what's that? ...

Oh HELL no! It's a petrified reptilian creature staring lifelessly out at us. >SHUDDER<

Wonder how long he'd been there - two weeks or 50 years? Not a pleasant place or way to die, that's for sure.

MUSIC MATTERS: Over the past week CJ has had the opportunity to visit two record stores, much to his pleasure. It was his first visit to one in months, due to damn COVID. And while the Novel Coronavirus 19 isn't going anywhere anytime soon in the States, CJ masked up and socially distance shopped at each place. 

He can tell you a bit about his recent acquisitions. 

In the past three days, I've bought two albums that I've wanted in my record collection for a long time. In the midst of this global pandemic, I opted to support local businesses by buying them from brick-and-mortar stores.

The first album was Bleach, the debut album of iconic Seattle band Nirvana. Bleach arguably serves as one of the foundational albums of the Grunge genre, and was the first recorded and widely-available showcase of Nirvana's songwriting and performance chops. The cashier at Silver Platters, the store I purchased Bleach at, told me that he had seen me pick up the album at least three or four times before during previous visits.

Also worth noting is that the issue of Bleach I purchased contains a recording of a full performance by Nirvana on February 9, 1990 at the Pine Street Theatre in Portland, Oregon. The recording demonstrates Nirvana's live show pre-Nevermind.

This morning, my mother and I went to Easy Street Records in Seattle to get breakfast and purchase an album. In haste, I picked out Surfer Rosa by the Pixies. Surfer Rosa was the Pixies' first full-length album, and included Where Is My Mind?, their most famous song. The Pixies were a major influence on several major bands to follow, including Nirvana, Weezer, and Radiohead.

Also, shout out to Nonnie and Bops for CJ's Silver Platters gift certificate. You can see he put it to good use. 

Here's an exterior shot of Easy Street from my vantage point while waiting on CJ this morning. 

HOPPY DAYS: While most of our garden underwhelms, we do have to give props to the hops. They are growing like gangbusters. 

Looks like brewing with home grown hops is in Christian's future!