These chickens live across the street from me. Technically across two streets and a canal, I suppose. I get to watch them wander around in the road and into the canal (when it’s dry; they’re not big into swimming) and the rooster is not my best friend in the summer when I have the windows open… But they are very handsome and I really need to start carrying my real camera because the phone picture on barely does them justice.
One of the ranches I walk by has a lot of cattle, including several longhorns. This pair hangs out together a lot and are always very attentive as I walk by.
I get to see a lot of wildlife while I’m walking. There are some wetlands on a ranch that I walk near – the road is above the ranch so I’m looking down. The pond attracts a lot of ducks – in summer it’s covered in algae and in winter part or all of it freezes over.
If you look closely (you may want to click to enlarge the photo) you can see that part of the pond is frozen and the ducks are walking on the ice there! A very entertaining scene, indeed.
First, let me be fully honest. The date is the publication date of the post and not (at least generally) the date the photo was taken. Let’s face it – I’m usually going to be out walking later and then I may put together a post for the next day. Or I may even be using a picture I took while walking quite a while ago (it’s possible!)…
What I will guarantee is that I took the photos and I did so while I was out for a walk and I probably saw a lot more stuff during that walk than I took pictures of. So I hope you’re going walking too, and taking time to enjoy all that you see.
This particular day I was walking and saw smoke and flame. Wildfire is a constant threat here, though generally not as much during winter. When I saw flames through the trees that seemed to extend quite a way I called 911 to report it. It was then I was told it was a planned burn to dispose of debris and was coordinated with our local fire officials. I expressed concern because there was a LOT of fire and only one person I could see actually tending things (and one small looking water truck). The operator took my information and I figured that would be it. Shortly after that, my phone rang. It was the fire chief calling to tell me what precautions were in place and that the fire department was regularly checking on the area.
Click to see the large image and you can spot the guy tending the fires (this will give a sense of scale) – this was perhaps 1/3 of the total area that had fires burning.
I love that I live somewhere that I get a personal call to help me be certain my neighbors are safe. (and it was all fine in the end)
It certainly made for an interesting walk that day!
During the holidays I was gearing up to go out for my daily walk, something my husband has gotten used to me doing. This time he started to put on his shoes and I was surprised. He has some back and joint issues that make long distance walking, and certainly at the pace I do it, not truly feasible. But he wanted to go with me – so I suggested a change in route and that we walk to our local pub and then back, thus having a built-in break at a place we both enjoy hanging out. He thought that was an even better idea, of course.
So off we went. We walked a slower pace than I do alone, but probably similar to what most people would walk. Under a mile in he remarked it was further than he thought – and I was very glad I had suggested what I had! The walk to the pub by a direct route is only a bit over 1.5 miles. That’s a really short walk by my standards!
A bit later he said something much more profound.
Yes. They do. You’re moving slower and you have more time to notice things around you – and you can stop and investigate more closely if you want to. We live in an interesting area; it’s residential and rural simultaneously. We said hello to the steer we passed by (they watched but did not respond). We saw all sorts of birds. We saw more damage from the windstorm – many trees fallen over.
When we were ready to head home he picked a slightly longer route that involved a road I hadn’t walked on before. It has fast become a favorite – we saw goats (big goats!), chickens (also big!), and more cattle. We saw an enormous flock of birds cleaning up residual corn from a large field – when they flew together the noise was impressive. And we saw this building, which I think looks really cool.
Why this survived the wind when other things didn’t is a bit of a mystery (though the angled boards are likely the major part of the answer). I can’t quite make out what the roof once said and it’s possible this wasn’t a business anyway, but just a building that made money letting a business advertise on its roof in farm country. It has a story, and I don’t really want to know it. I like that it’s there. It gives me a nice feeling and I don’t know why.
I’ve decided I will try to get more pictures of the things I enjoy seeing while I walk and share them here. Sometimes I will venture out with my “real” camera in tow maybe even along with tripod (but remember, I’m on foot for many miles!), and other times we’ll be stuck with what I can manage on my cell phone (which honestly can be pretty good sometimes). I hope you enjoy seeing what I see!
When the weather gets colder soup becomes a very attractive meal. I love making soup for guests because I make it the day before and then have very little prep when people come over. This week I made black bean soup and I thought I’d share it because it’s ridiculously simple and tastes wonderful.
1 cup (ish) chopped onion
1 cup (ish) chopped carrot
1 cup (ish) chopped celery
1 seeded/chopped red bell pepper (can be yellow or orange)
1 seeded/chopped jalapeno (optional)
1 seeded/chopped habanero pepper (optional)
2 cloves garlic, minced
4 cans black beans (sure, you can go to the trouble of soaking your own beans, but I don’t)
2-4 cups chicken stock (use vegetable stock to keep this a vegetarian dish) – amount depends on consistency you want
I happened to have matchstick carrots on hand for my salads-in-a-jar that I make for lunch at work, so I used those this time.
I like it spicy, so I use both the jalapeno and habanero peppers. The usual warnings about handling hot peppers apply! Carrots/onion/celery are a standard mirepoix that is a great start to any soup. After all the veggies are chopped, saute them in a large pot with about 4 tablespoons of butter (don’t forget the garlic!):
Once the veggies soften (this smells divine, by the way) add the black beans (do not drain) and stock:
Let this simmer a while (there is not a specific amount of time; you just want the veggies nice and soft). While it’s simmering, taste the broth – if you feel a need you can add red pepper flakes or ground pepper, but honestly I rarely need to do that. There is plenty of great flavor in the base ingredients.
This is a pureed soup. While you can now transfer to a food processor/blender to puree that is really kind of a pain. I highly recommend a stick blender so you can puree it right in the pot:
After pureeing, I let it simmer a bit longer so I can again sample for flavor. Then remove from heat, let the pot cool a bit, and cover and put in the refrigerator overnight. This really helps the flavors meld, plus it makes the next day’s meal a snap. Just reheat on the stove, and serve with some nice bread and fresh avocado (or sour cream, or whatever sounds good to you!).
Bon appetit!
Yes, most people would post their Thanksgiving turkey items actually on Thanksgiving. But let’s face it, this wouldn’t do any good for anyone on Thanksgiving itself (I’ve always found those tv segments full of recipes that happen when it’s too late to be useful annoying) and I was busy eating, watching football, walking, and enjoying time with family.
A few years ago my sister bought an infrared turkey fryer and transported it to my parents’ home to be used for the Thanksgiving turkey. It worked amazingly well. After that instead of taking it back to her house she left it with us. Thanksgiving moved to my house and so did the infrared fryer. It’s hooked up to a propane tank. Once it’s heated up (about 10-15 minutes is what I allowed) you drop the basket with turkey into the fryer (turkey is oiled):
Then you put the cover on, which is important because it also heats up and helps brown the skin:
This is an eleven pound turkey; the fryer can handle up to a sixteen pound bird but we definitely don’t need one that big!
It takes just 10 minutes per pound, and you don’t do anything to it in the meantime. This means the kitchen is free for doing all the other things that go along with the meal, which is much much simpler. The fat drains out the bottom into a container drawer that can be pulled out and cleaned pretty easily. They claim you could take it to make gravy, but ick. Not gonna happen.
After 110 minutes I used a meat thermometer to make sure the bird was at least 165F, which it was. I recommend an Ove Glove or two for this stage, because it’s really really hot inside the fryer!
It does take two people to pull the basket out and get the bird out onto a plate. My husband helped here, and nearly dropped the bird. That could have been comically tragic (we wouldn’t have starved – there was plenty of other food). In the end, it looked and tasted great and there are plenty of leftovers. My apologies for this photo, but I was focused more on getting everything to the table and didn’t take the time to pull out the tripod and do this properly….
If you do a big sit-down meal for Christmas or anything else, I do recommend considering an infrared fryer. For Christmas we just lay out a ton of food and let people graze, so I’ll just be cleaning the fryer out and putting it away for next year…
When I was young, I was an active person. I was a cheerleader in the south, where it’s taken as seriously (if not moreso) than football. We had two-a-day practices during the summer.
(technically that one on the right is when I was in New Mexico – and now you all have proof I am a natural blonde. So, if you have comments – please type slowly.)
I didn’t actually appreciate I was a slender person until I looked back at photos from high school many years later… In college I took up martial arts, and by the time I was a senior I was taking or teaching as many as 8 classes a week. I was fit. I also collected some big-ass trophies from tournaments. I eventually threw those away, but I still have my gi and my belts. (stopped at first degree black belt, if you’re interested).
Then I went to grad school. There, my brain got the workout and my body did not – and I didn’t make the effort to change that. So, the weight started creeping up. I come from hearty genetics that says I will survive famine, I think. Over time I’d get a piece of equipment for my house, or go on a diet, or whatever – and keep relatively stable. For a while at work there was a gym onsite and a friend and I helped each other keep our commitments to working out. But then I changed jobs and moved across the country. I love my where I work and what I do, but there is no gym on site and I am simply not wired to join a gym at this point. I won’t go. I know I won’t. I have had varying kinds of exercise equipment in my home, but for whatever reason they weren’t giving the results (and I *did* use them). Weight crept up.
And up.
And came perilously close to 200 pounds. That scared me. So I tried one of those packaged food diets. The food wasn’t great, but I found some things I did like and I stuck with it. I started to lose weight and I learned a lot about portion size (gosh, I was way over-eating some foods!). I also got into a stronger habit of drinking plenty of water, which definitely matters for me. Everyone is different, of course.
After many months, I had lost 36 pounds. That was Thanksgiving 2010. I felt great. By that time I had stopped with the pre-packaged plan and was maintaining on my own. Of course, it was the holidays. My weight started to creep up and by Thanksgiving 2011 I had gained back 10 pounds – but still, it wasn’t too bad. Of course, it was the holidays again…
By early summer 2012 I was close to having regained half of what I had lost, and I was also close to deciding to get the pre-packaged food again to get back on track. About this same time, my twitter-and-real-life friend @NomdeB introduced me to FitBit:
This is a nifty little tracker that is a pedometer and much much more. It syncs wirelessly to your computer to keep a log of your activity and can also help you track your sleep patterns (depending on the version you get; you wear it on a wrist strap for that). I got mine in early July 2012. Since then, I have been quite dedicated to making sure I hit 10000 steps a day – and in fact now I push for 5 miles a day, which for me is closer to 11000 steps. I get to work early so I can park several buildings away from my office. I schedule meetings in other people’s offices so I can walk to them. I find that this also helps me mentally break from whatever task I was working on before the meeting and focus on what’s ahead while I walk there. When I am home I use MapMyWalk (a free app on my phone) and walk around my neighborhood. That is all I am doing. I walk at least 5 miles a day, cumulatively but sometimes all at once. When I travel for work I usually spend my layovers in airports walking around the terminal instead of sitting at my gate. Walking is something I do 100% for me. It is a precious gift I am giving myself every single day.
End result so far? I’ve had a net loss of about 13 pounds and dropped my body fat percentage by about 4%. That translates into losing about 15 pounds of fat and gaining about 2 pounds of muscle. And I’ve done this with zero change in my eating habits. I am not tracking calories. I am not worrying about food. I don’t go nuts, but I don’t worry either. I am sure that if I did, I could have trimmed down faster – but this is a very sustainable life for me right now. [Note, @NomdeB also highly recommends an app called LoseIt which is a food tracker, and I’ve heard good things about it. I just don’t feel I need it. These things all depend on what motivates you – and the raw data about my activity levels is all I need.]
I don’t have a target weight – I am at a healthy weight now but it’s possible I will lose more. Since I’m not dieting I figure at some point I will stabilize based on my level of activity and how much I’m eating. I’m good with that. I’m healthy. And as for Thanksgiving 2012?
Tomorrow, I will be back where I was in 2010, except with a lower body fat percentage.
I feel great!
Each morning I try to get to my office an hour early so I can take a nice long walk before I officially start the day. I find it quite soothing. I started doing this during the summer and so now, as the days grow shorter and colder, it’s more of a challenge. But it’s still a great start to my day so even though now it is dark when I rise and when I leave the house, it’s worth the effort. I’m fortunate to have my office near the Columbia River, and there is a nice walking trail that I am on nearly every day. As the start of the days have grown colder, I noticed the mists rising off the river.
Now of course I don’t carry the fancy camera while I’m walking before work, so I’m stuck with taking pictures with my phone. On this walk I saw pheasants (when they flushed I nearly had a heart attack), quail (in *trees* which is weird because they generally seem to forget they can fly and just scurry everywhere), ducks, geese, seagulls, and bunnies. It was a lovely (chilly) morning.
The mists rising up are what I imagine Scotland looks like all the time. Which is silly, because I’ve been to Scotland and it didn’t look like this. It was snowing.
Nonetheless, I’m delighted that this is a poor quality photograph. It looks like a nice watercolor to me. I hope you enjoy it.
Yes, that’s right. I’m done. In fact, I have been for quite a while. I realize it’s only October. I’ve been done since sometime in June. Even more, things are already wrapped. Want to know how? Or why?
We all get catalogs in the mail (at least, everyone I know does) – and we also get ads via email. Usually I delete the latter and recycle the former and ignore it all. But sometime in April or May I decided I would start going through the catalogs and marking items that might be good gifts.
today’s haul of catalogs…
Then one weekend I sat with all the catalogs and made some decisions. To keep it all organized, I created a spreadsheet – I’ve been doing this for several years so I have a decent system of color coding on the spreadsheet that works for me:
You see that I can easily keep track of how much I’ve spent, where thing are coming from (I keep all the email related to order confirmations and shipping notices in a single folder) and what the status is. When items arrive, I go ahead and wrap them (I have a bin of wrapping paper in a closet where it’s easy to get to). Then into a closet everything goes:
this year’s loot for my family
Now, I am not known for my lovely giftwrapping – in fact it’s quite the opposite. Also, I don’t do bows so that everything can stack for storage. And nametags can fall off, so I don’t use those either. Instead, I write on the tape who the package is for (and any instructions like “1 of 2” in case there are related packages that should be opened in a particular order).
seeing this will drive my mother nuts.
I used a label maker in the past, but realized this year a Sharpie on the tape was faster and simpler.
Now after Thanksgiving when I put up the tree I just pull out the packages and put them under the tree and I’m all set. The beauty is I have no stress, I don’t over-spend because I’m keeping track, and by the time things are being opened I have forgotten what’s in them so it’s just as much a surprise for me!
I also go ahead and buy birthday presents at the same time if I see something and I’m done with Christmas presents. I realize this isn’t for everyone, but it works for me and it makes the vacation I take during the holiday season much more relaxing. Hopefully something in this will work for you and take some holiday stress out of your life. Enjoy!
@KellyOSullivan 