That's right, food.
Ya'll know we have a culinary education, so we're been known to cook now and again, and post about it.
Inspired and excited by talking with James about owning a farm, and raising animals, and growing a garden, and making food stuff and products with the harvest, both animal and plant, we excitedly ( excitedly? Sure...why not) made dinner, which we had started yesterday.
We made a BBQ sauce and marinated some rib steaks yesterday. We`d have a precise recipe if we were any good at writing down, or measuring, what we throw together. The important thing to remember about cooking is it`s mostly to taste. Meaning maybe you want a stronger flavour than the recipe calls for, or a thinner sauce, or sweeter, etc. When it comes to reading a recipe ( for cooking, baking is a completely different situation, baking is practically a science) the measurements aren't that important, tasting, and texture, is. So we`re giving you our recipe, but we`re not giving you measurements, because we don`t have any. Fun. Right?
Well, we have some rough measurements...you can play around with it as much, or as little, as you like.
~ Frankie's BBQ Sauce:
- Canned Tomatoes (1 can 15oz-ish can) <-hey, a measurement!
- Apple sauce (about 20 oz)
- Vinegar (about 1/4 cup)
- Brown sugar (a small fist full)
- Worcestershire (about 1 tbsp, or to taste)
- Garlic (2 cloves, smashed)
- Smoked Paprika
So, you just mix all those things. You can blend it till smooth if you want, or keep it chunky - whatever you like. Throw in a few ribs, or rib steaks, and marinate for about 8 hours, or longer.
Treat like you would any other BBQ sauce, shake off the excess and throw the meat on the grill, baste as desired while the meat cooks.
All that extra leftover sauce? Reduce it and use it for other things, make sure to boil it hard to kill any pesky meat germs, or toss it out if you like to be wasteful. We boiled ours down and put it in the fridge for another day.
With dinner we also had grilled corn, vinegar coleslaw, and potato salad.
~ Grilled corn? If you have never done it try this:
Don't shuck (meaning don't take the outside [husks] off) the corn on the cob, wrap it all in tin foil and throw on a hot grill for at least 20 minutes. Remove tin foil and husk the corn. Enjoy! So juicy and retains all the flavour. We dare say all you need is a little salt...maybe. It's not normal for us to not recommend butter, but if you're watching your weight...just sayin'...
We made mayo from scratch too, because we happened to be out of it, and Miracle Whip (which The Mother has in the fridge) is just crap.
Home-made mayo is easy peasy (oh Lord, we're channelling Rachael Ray)
~ Our Whole Egg Mayo on the fly: (why whole eggs? We don't want to waste the whites, which are pretty fat free anyway, and didn't feel like making meringues, so it won't hurt to keep 'em in there)
Whisk together:
3 whole eggs
3 Tbsp white vinegar
Splash of Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp salt
Add in, by DRIZZLING oil slowly and whisking:
1 cups olive oil
2 cups vegetable oil
What you are doing here is called emulsifying. If you add too much oil too fast it will split - meaning the oil will separate from the rest of it, it will make an oil slick, and then you'll have to toss it out.
We opted for trying to use our Kitchen Aid mixer with the whisk attachment, and judging from our past with emulsified foods (such as hollandaise sauce), we would have gotten better results using a little elbow grease and pulling out the hand whisk.
Make sure you taste it, sometimes you can end up tasting the oil too much. It's important to use fresh oil. Oil stored for too long after being open can go rancid, and that is not a nice taste.
NOTICE: This makes about 1 QT of mayo...so, maybe do a version with 1 egg, because what the fuck are we going to do with all that mayo now?!
So here was dinner....
The dressing on the Slaw, which consisted of red cabbage, green cabbage and carrots, was simply vinegar, honey, salt and pepper, to taste - we mixed it last night and stirred it occasionally for 24 hours. It was a nice accompaniment with the heavier foods, cut the fat, so to speak.
So there you have it. We hope to work on some more food entries, but we have lots of other things to do too. Still have to get to the canvas and finish some paintings before we start another, and it looks like this week we're going to look at a big plot of land in the country, about 4 hours from where we currently are. Should be fun.
~Ivy et al
Looking for other food stuff on this blog?
Today was a good day.
We're working on getting back into writing every day, so bare with us as we write shit like this.
Started on some laundry today (crazy amounts of travel laundry!) and went grocery shopping. The Mother and Stepdad are at the lake for the weekend, and will be every weekend until we go back to the UK, so it's a nice relaxing time, mostly.
We made a great dinner of pork chops with pasta, broccoli, carrots and mushrooms for dinner using a pesto (on the chops and in the pasta) we picked up in Boston at the Sunday Market a couple of weeks ago, which we'll be writing about for our other blog, hopefully this week.
Mostly we've been talking with James about where we will live when we come back to the states. These decisions are going to take time and communication. He's been looking up information on country living in the United States, as well as ways to make income with a farm. It'll be a lot of work, of course. We sent The Father a message about it and he says it sounds like a good idea for us, and that growing your own vegetables and such is "the way of the future". We tend to agree, particularly with (most of) our love of non-GMO and non-HFCS/MSG laden foods.
We're also keeping our options open, for our own mental health.
That's it, it's all we've got for today. It's mostly nice being back "home", save the trip to the grocery store where we almost got into an argument with some hick guy who thought we were looking at him, apparently in the wrong way, or a way that made him uncomfortable, or something. (we get that a lot...)
We're leaving you with two, of the many, photos we took at the Chicago SHEDD Aquarium ( http://www.sheddaquarium.org/), they had their Jellies exhibit this year, it was the best part of the whole aquarium (save the dolphin, of course). So magical seeming...the other photos (even better than these two) will definitely be appearing on our Travelogue.
Tiger Jellyfish at the SHEDD Aquarium
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| (c) 2012 Frank Ly et al |
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| 2012 (c) Frank Ly et al |
We're home. It feels like we were never gone.
*big sigh*
Now back to writing, and painting, and biking ( to lose some weight before heading back to the UK), cooking and working on projects.
We did a lot of things the last few days, visited Baby Brother, looked at loads of real estate in the city where he lives and also in the state in which he lives.
We're leaning towards seclusion in the country these days, some acreage, some chickens and goats...maybe a rabbit. Who knows. That was today. It's hard to decide for us because we each have our "ideal" when it comes to where to live, some of us prefer urban, some the country...only one likes the idea of a suburbia TYPE setting. And then there is James to consider, and what he wants, where he wants to live.
Luckily we have some time, but we could find something before we leave, then let it sit for the year, to a year and a half, that we'll be in Europe.
In any case, we're home. Safe and sound. We'll be calculating the mileage we put on that poor car, as well as slowly working on some travel entries about what we did.
Summer, home, relaxation. Staying in one place until the beginning of August. This all sounds good.
Said goodbye to New York and New Jersey today, took a quick trip to see Nick Twist for lunch and headed west. We're going to go back to New York City one day, it's destiny. (plus, we didn't see one single tourist site, but for taking pictures from afar)
There's lots to write, but it's late. We stopped at about 11:15pm at a small (population: about 800) mountain town for the night, the headlights on the car are weak, and it's less than thrilled with the nearly 4000+ miles we have put on it in the last few weeks. Not to mention James called pulled over in Pennsylvania a few hours ago...so, it's best we stopped the night. Rest.
Tomorrow we're back on the road, hoping for a better day. Spending this much time in such close quarters with someone, no matter how much you like/love them...can't be healthy. Certainly gives you a lot of time to talk though...or not talk.
We'll hopefully be stopping to meet Single Mom Date ( @SingleMomDate), the woman who introduced James (The Boyfriend) to us over a year ago, tomorrow. We owe her dinner and a hug.
We've got about three nights left before we finally get near enough to home to breath deep.
It will be nice to be back in our own bed, to hug our cats, to cook our own food, to sleep...for a long long time.
It's just a month and a half before we have to leave for the UK/Europe again with James. We're already exhausted just thinking about that trip.
We're exhausted being us.
~ et al
First day in New York City was a little turbulent. We'll have to write more about this trip when we get back home. We've been far too stressed for almost the entire trip, and the fun has been sucked out of almost the whole thing. Tonight was the last straw.
We're cancelling the rest of our road trip, slicing off a week, as soon as we're done in New York we'll be headed back home, if we can muster two more days (the plan is to leave on Sunday) with a stop to visit Baby Brother on the way, maybe a stop or two if the people who wanted to see us have a backyard for our tent. Camping is even too expensive now.
We're cutting the cord, so to speak. Letting this experience go.
We probably won't get to see the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building. At least we saw Rockefeller Center, Times Square and a portion of Central Park (it's wonderful). Have yet to taste anything New York. Apparently "we're" concerned about calories.
We've always been good at travelling, we've done loads of it in the past. This is...different. This trip isn't working. Lots of things are not working.
We had a plan for a West Coast trip following the 4th of July, but we're reconsidering it. We're spending too much money on this one and it feels...for a lack of a better word...gross. Icky. Salty with tears.
It tastes and feels like failure, on so many levels.
Today's "highlights"?:
Missing one of the last buses from New York City back to New Jersey and not being able to tolerate the NYC Port Authority Terminal for ANOTHER hour, so spent $62 dollars on a taxi (flat rate, $50 plus the $12 Lincoln Tunnel Toll), after having skipped grabbing a bite to eat in order to save a little cash to get back to the hotel. Where we found out our primary e-mail account was hacked from Saudi Arabia last night. Now we're sitting in a hotel in New Jersey listening to heavy traffic and two very clearly drunk Mexicans cuss, swear and slam doors at 2am in the morning.
Did we mention James hated New York after the first half an hour? Not because of the people, or anything. Just because it's not what he expected. This is the place we've been dreaming of visiting for our entire life ( so far, aside from missing the bus, we love it).
Two more days of being in the city ( hopefully)...it's not fun when the only person outside your head you are travelling with hates it as much as some of the one inside our head trying to ruin the whole trip for us. A once in a lifetime kind of trip.
So, that sucks.
Fail. FOL, FML
...especially if it involves us, our DID/MPD and...turns out, anyone. He thought it was going to be easier than it is...a relationship with us. We thought it was going to be easier with someone who knew we all existed...more to come on that.
More to come on lots.
It's been a tough few days, there hasn't been a sun in the sky we could see in a week. A week. No sun, raining and cold...and sleeping in a tent all but the last time we did an entry.
No wonder we feel like we want to die.
We miss writing. We miss it so much, but there is never time in a day what with sight-seeing (or trying to) and just getting mobilized while camping...and we're never in a single place long enough.
In a couple of days we'll be staying in New Jersey, right outside New York City. We've wanted to go to NYC for as long as any of us can remember and knew it existed. Hopefully we have a good time. Boston wasn't so great...like we said, more to come on that.
For tonight we sleep.
Man, we miss writing...and not crying.
 Wow.
Well, camping together really teaches you stuff. Mostly that the one of us that was organized all the time is definitely gone (w e're okay with that), but it's like learning all over again; and we're stubborn and difficult, apparently.
Camping. We know we've done it YEARS and YEARS ago in Washington State, a bunch of times, with a boyfriend; then a few years ago in Ontario, Canada with another, for weeks at a time...and now, now...it's like camping for the very first time.
First of all, did you know New York State has mountains? And did you know the Allegany State Park is IN the mountains...and did you know at night it gets cold, freezing cold, in the mountains? Did you you know two regular sized Mexican blankets will NOT keep two adults warm through a cold, damp, night, or two in the mountains...
Yeah, it wasn't very restful those first two nights. Luckily we were tight lipped with the bitching and complaining, as was James. Taking a trip into a nearby city, finally, the day of our final night, we got two sleeping bags to throw on our air mattress and slept way better last night.
So, the park. The park is amazing, so many lush trees, and animals, lakes and streams.
The first day we decided to go for a hike, which was supposed to be about 6 miles roundtrip. We were wrong, and at one point tried to be adventurous, going in search of a trail and headed off into the trees next to a stream. We figured the trail would pass the stream because the trail ran parallel to the bridge/road the the stream went under, where we had been standing.
Over an hour later we emerged, our legs scratched all to hell from off-trail adventure, feet damp from removing shoes and socks and crossing streams of jagged rocks, only to come out on the road FIVE MINUTES from where we had entered the forest. We basically did a huge loop, and never did find the trail we were looking for, only a site they used for making firewood, full with a wood chipper and old picnic tables.
It was pretty fun, despite "misplacing the trail", walking through streams, being an adventurer, even though we are sure James was worried, but to be fair, he knew we had very basic idea of how we were going to find the trail, but Allegenay State Park is rife with bears and other wild animals they don't have in England, not to mention it's 65,000 acres (97 square miles). It's the 3rd largest State Park in the United States.
We stayed cheery and optimistic, laughing and yelling "Yay! Problem solving!" and "Team building exercises!", as James rolled his eyes at us. It turned out to be the best part of the hike that turned out to be 11 miles, lasting 6.5 hours.
The second best of the hike was The Bear Cave-Mt Seneca Trail, 4 miles in itself, the start is uphill ( depending on which entrance you take) and climbs to an elevation of 2,106 ft - but only about 600 feet from the starting point, so it's not so bad, but it is rated 'moderate' in difficulty. At the end are giant boulders jutting from the earth, you can see the layers of history in them, and they are covered in moss, forming all sorts of neat paths and caves.
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| Bear Cave Trail Boulders - Allegany State Park, 2012 |
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| Bear Cave Trail Boulders - Allegany State Park, 2012 |
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| Bear Caves Trail, Allegany State Park, 2012 |
Once we got back to the campsite, with blistered and tired feet, we decided we wouldn't be doing any more hiking while at Allegany Park, and went to a park spot nearby that had barbeque pits to make dinner of steak, mushrooms, zucchini and corn on the cob. ( it had gotten to late to build a fire at our campsite)
Allegany Park itself was great, we arrived the weekend before the season opened so the general stores weren't open, which also meant it was very quiet, and free of people and cars. The initial camp spot we reserved, at Cain Hollow Campground (in the Quaker Area), was in Loop C, but the ground of the sites in both Loop C and B proved to be too hard to get tent pegs in, so after some driving around we settled on the more open field like terrain of Loop A. It was excellent, and private. Though the shower and bathroom facilities lacked..., compared to the facilities about 4 miles away, which we used the last two nights, because showering with dead bugs and birds, well...one night was enough. ( bird poop all over!)
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Our campsite at Cain Hollow - Quaker Area - Loop A
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All in all if you like to camp, tent style, and hike/bike lots, this is the park for you ( though they have plenty, loads actually, of sites for RV style, as well as many cabins); if you like nature and animals this is the place for you - we saw woodchucks, foxes, deer more than once, and lightening bugs, slugs.
For James it was the first time he'd seen a woodchuck and lightening bugs, he took pictures and video of both. We had hoped for bears, but from a distance and not near our campsite, sadly there were none to be seen, though lots of warnings. We figured in our tenting spot, far away from people, we were a nylon bagged treat for local bears.
It should also be noted that cellular service, including wireless signals, were limited in much of the park.
Our first camping experience with James is complete, of course there was some bickering, but once we got into the flow of it it was peaceful and fun. We've decided to do more camping on the trip than planned ( mostly to save money), however, we will be doing more KOA-style because we want to do less outdoors and more just having a place to rest our head as we venture into nearby cities.
Today we took an impromptu trip to Niagara Falls, less than 68 miles north of Allegany State Park. It was raining so our departure got delayed a bit as we waited for it to ease up so we could pack up the tent. James enjoyed Niagara, and we were happy to have seen it from the American side, having seen it once from the Canadian side. Being behind from stopping to buy New York State apples on the 'winery trail' we only made it as far as Syracuse, New York - where we got the cheapest hotel we could find for the night. Tomorrow we head to Boston. We're looking forward to fresh seafood ( not James, he dislikes seafood), and doing some exploration of the East Coast. It will be our first real trip to the coast, and our first view of the Atlantic Ocean.
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For more information:
Allegany State Park: http://www.stateparks.com/allegany.html
Allegany State Park - Quaker Area: http://nysparks.com/parks/1/details.aspx
Allegany State Park - Red House Area: http://nysparks.com/parks/73/details.aspx
Allegany State Park Map: http://enchantedmountains.com/files/downloads/map/img/map-allegany-state-park-20091203.jpg
Allegany State Park Reservations on Reserve America: http://newyorkstateparks.reserveamerica.com/Camping/Allegany%20State%20Park/r/campgroundDetails.do?subTabIndex=campDetail&contractCode=NY&parkId=31
[This entry is being copied to Our Frank Adventures, where there will be more photos]
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You just know someone, somewhere, is going to use this as an opportunity to demonize marijuana, like the addiction expert cited in an Associated Press article stating "she wouldn't rule out marijuana causing the agitation."[4]. Cauging those quick news article skimmers, those jump to conclusion junkies, to forget that any drug, including nicotine withdrawal and alcohol, are just as likely to cause said agitation...but then, those are legal drugs.
Did we mention we're actually a HIGHLY decorated war veteran too, and when the time comes, we are the ones who found the cure for cancer. Also, we wrote the Bible.
