Snowpocalypse, meet El Nino

After reading Jody's blogs and talking to Log and Jod (mind the loooong o's) about the crazy crazy weather they are having, I was reminded of just how ginormous the US is and how incredibly different the Atlantic and Pacific coasts can be.

While Logie and Jody are stuck under two feet of crazy blizzard, lovingly named the "Snowpocalypse," Dunc and I are enjoying the warm temperatures that are part and parcel to a Pacific climate patten known as El Nino. If you aren't familiar with El Nino, this video should be quite helpful and informative. Or if you actually want to learn about it, check out these guys.

To demonstrate just how different the weather between the two coasts can be, this is what I did today:

Yes, it was 60 degrees today and I went running in shorts and a t-shirt. Although technically I am just sitting in the front yard with Oly Bear. But I promise you, I did run and 'twas warm. El Nino, you are awesome. And Oly, you are too.

If only you wouldn't play so hard to get... jerk...

We can video "tape" animals too!!!

For your viewing pleasure, some videos Dunc and I finally downloaded from the flip cam. Of course most are of animals.

BUTTERS!

IZZY!

The myth and mystique of the Pumpkin

The Fun Level

OLY! (This one is real long, but Oly was feeling left out of the video scene, and he looks real pretty in the sunlight.)

Sleep sitting up!

Beet Murder

Oh yes, you read that right. Beet Murder. We just so happen to receive an overabundance, or a perfect amount of abundance... or perfect amount of bundance? Anywho, we get a lot of beets in our farm box. Typically, I am a roasted beet type of girl, but we had about 10 small and medium beets on our hands begging to be eaten.

After a bit of googling, I found that it is not only nutritious but delicious to eat beets raw. Enter THE SPIRALIZER!!! (Another awesome Christmas addition to the kitchen--thanks again Dad and Thonky!) I have yet to nickname this kitchen gadget, but you can bet your boots it will get an X-Men themed name to join the team of Professor K/Xavier and Wolverine. Probably a villain, being murderous and all. Vote?

1) Mr. Sinister - he just so happens to be "a master manipulator" and pretty much an all around evil genius.
2) Astra - she can "reduce her density in order to become intangible"
3) Sabretooth - obviously, he has some very sharp teeth, among other awesome mutant capabilities. And I do like the idea of having rivals amongst my kitchen gadgetry.
4) Spiral - perhaps too obvious?

But back to the murder. I give you the scene of the crime:

Death by spiralization. Delicious and beautiful.

We have your standard red beet, the chioggia beet and some turnips! All spiralized to perfection.

But what to do with these spiralized beauties? 

SALAD!

We tossed all the veggies together with a Seestor Katy inspired dressing.

I believe it was for Christmas Dinner that Katy served us a salad with a "parsnip dressing". Wanting to replicate the delicious flavor, I gave big seestor a call and she gave me instructions on inventing my own veggie based dressings. So I threw a bit of parsnip, a few cloves of garlic, some carrot top greens, olive oil, salt and lemon juice into Wolverine, et voilà!

Well sort of, I may have scraped the sucker clean before remembering that I just invented (in a way...) a new tasty treat and should document it. But you get the idea. Right?

And it was delicious. Although quite pink... those beets are good at coloring EVERYTHING.

Alas, the spiralizer only took care of 5 beets. Enter the old stand-by, roasting!

There you have it. An evening of delicious beet destruction.

And to finish it off with a pun... Just BEET IT!

We may or may not enjoy photographing our animals... maybe...

It might be apparent that Duncan and I really like our animals. 

It isn't? Well we do. 

Oh you want proof do you? 

Okay, so 90% of the pictures on our camera look like the following:

I call this one "nose" 

I call these ones "toes"... 

(I'm very creative when it comes to naming pieces. I do love how Oly falls asleep in the best positions. 

Like this one, with all his feet neatly in a pile. Good dog)

"CO-HABITATION"

(Much better than Butter's preferred form of co-habitating 

which involves attacking Oly's face, legs or tail.)

"Smooshedcatfacepie" by Duncan (He is better at naming... I will try harder.)

"Kitten Nose?" "Hanger face?" (I really need to get better at this. But I do have some context for this one. This is Butters being very helpful as I cleaned and organized the closet. He attacked the hangers and clothes I had on the bed, then burrowed beneath the clothes and passed out. Good cat.)

Okay, this series I am calling "I can has focus" and are all of Butters looking out the window. But what is he staring so intently at? Any guesses?

(Seeerious focus here. I can't even distract him with my lens in his face.)

What is it, you ask? Kind of obvious actually....

A CROW!

I think the crow knew that Butter Butt was watching and couldn't get at him. What a jerk.

And there you have it. Animals are awesome and only one (or two) of the many reasons why having our new lens ROCKS!!! More photos of other things besides animals to come. Well more things AND more animals.

Adventures in Texas with Lindy and the Pretzel!

I know Lindy gave you all/most of the details about last week's adventures in Austin/Round Rock/Pfluggerville, but for those of you who don't visit facebook (lin posted a bunch of these photos) or Picasa (Dunc's albums), here is a photo recap from my camera:

My first night there, we needed to watch the Rose Bowl (Longhorns!) so we headed to Sushi Mimi (I think...) and I took these lovely gems.

Then we came home and hung out with the animals:

Cohabitation:

Phyllis!

Rick!

Lin!

Rick! loves Chris.

The next day after a Whole Foods visit, I cooked up some risotto and Chris worked his magic on some chicken:

And we made some mulled cider! It was real cold in Texas. (My fault?)

And then it was time for Baby Shower Day! Before the shower, Lauren (Lody) and I ran around Lady Bird Lake. It was totally awesome.

The red dotted lines show all the options there are around the lake. It was super awesome. Cold, but awesome.

To the shower!

Growing belly!

Lizard made this beautiful diaper cake.

Betsy (Henson, not me) made these delicious wraps.

Lizard's hand decorated cake and Lindy and I made cake balls!

Two headed pregnant lady!

Attempts at guessing Riley's name.

Cathy and Rhyan, too cute.

Baby Taylor loves her hands.

Belly string!

Lin with all the presents!

Confused over the Moby wrap thing.

This is why... many instructions...

Totally worth it. Baby wrap!

Little Lindy decided to tie up Lauren.

And here Lauren is teaching us how to cut a cake without ruining the frosting. Floss!!! AMAZING.

Of course, before I left, we had to go to Chuy's!

Oh Riley, your parents are so awesome.

Chuy's chips!

Lindy takes great pictures. Seriously.

Thanks Lindy and Chris (And Rick! and Jess and Phil) for hosting me Texas-style! I can't wait to come back and see the little Pretzel live and in person!

Revisiting the Polar Bear

You may recall that Duncan and I were planning to and did run a 5k on New Year's Day that ended with a dive into the freezing waters of Lake Washington. And it was COLD. It also was one of the harder races I've run in the last 12 months.

Still, it is hands down the best race of the year. 

I was a bit hungover (sorry parents!) from imbibing a bottle of champagne on NYE, but the movement of running felt great. Dunc and I started the race out together, but I knew we wouldn't stick it out for the whole race. Even with my longer distance training, Dunc still is stronger and faster in the short distances. 

I had aspirations of running sub-24, but the night's festivities were not going to allow it. At mile marker 1, I was running about an 8:30 mile and Dunc had about 400 meters on me. I kept the same pace up 'til mile 2 and then BAM: heavy legs, mind games, the WALL. I really wanted to walk, and people started passing me, but I just told myself: "Self, you will not be happy if you walk. AND you ran a half marathon. C'mon!!! This is a measly 3 miles!!! Get to the lake!!! NOW!!!!"

So I pushed through and started picking up the pace a little until finally I rounded the bend to the boat launch. I dove into the water head first. Now last year, the lake was actually much warmer than the air temperature, but this year, the lake was so much colder. After diving in, my breath was totally taken away and I slowly made my way around the turn to finally run out of the water and finish. Whew.

It didn't take long to find a soaking wet Duncan at the finish line, he had ended up coming in about 30 seconds ahead of me and after discussing our race had the same mile 2 wall, but his motivation was: "Betsy will be so disappointed if I walk..." Not true, but whatever keeps you running!!!

 After the dive in, I hadn't yet realized that diving head first in the water may result in the loss of glasses...

 Dunc clearly has also had the breath shocked out of him.

 And here he is totally warm and toasty at the finish.

The official results: 

NO

FN

LN

AGE

SEX

DIVISION

CITY

OVERALL

DIVPL

SEXPL

TIME

PACE

486

Elizabeth

Evans

25

F

F2029

Seattle

176

7/96

35/473

25:41

8:18

487

Duncan

Hauenstein

24

M

M2029

Seattle

155

25/79

125/468

25:05

8:06

And the Double Dip Team results:

11.   50:46 explosivo                                 (  25:23)

====================================================

  1    25:05    487 Duncan Hauenstein        Seattle            WA 24  M

  2    25:41    486 Elizabeth Evans          Seattle            WA 25  F

We came in 11th as a team out of 46 teams... not too shabby! I was pleased with the improvement over last year and Duncan is officially hooked. Anyone else want to run into the lake???

I love potatoes.

SWEET potatoes! And Molokai purple potatoes... and the purple potatoes we recently received in our CSA box... I really do love potatoes.

Why all the potato love? Because this evening, we cooked up a bunch more potatoes in the beauty of a cassoulet dish with some chicken, beets and red wine. DELISH!

Our CSA box provides us with an abundance of potatoes:

Les pommes de terre! (This is one of my favorite French words, literally, the apple of the earth. Ahhh, ze french. Sometimes they get it so right!)

As you can see, I cut them all up and threw them in the baking dish along with some onions, smashed garlic, salt, A LOT of pepper, and some of these beauties:

 

These are Full Circle Farm Chioggia beets and your standard red beet. I love beets too. I am a bit like Brick Tamland, I just look at things (read: food) and fall in love.

 Here all the veggies mixed up with a bit a lot of olive oil and ready for a hot oven!

Although this isn't really a new recipe (I didn't find it in one of my new cookbooks), I thought this could still qualify as meeting my once-a-week-new-recipe/food-blog resolution. Yeah?

Go now, put many delicious things into a pot and cook it. You will not be disappointed. And watch Anchorman, because Steve Carell will make you smile.