Bountiful Baskets : Week 1

Thanks to Michael & Jaspenelle, we heard about this great produce co-op called Bountiful Baskets – $15 a week, and you get a basket that’s 50% fruit, 50% vegetables. Saturday morning, just six hours after heading to bed from our Party of the Week, I woke up to go pick up our basket. I chose to ride my bike over – it was only four miles, and I figured with a combination of my backpack and the basket, it should all fit.

Well, it did, but not with much breathing room! The pickup went quickly and easily, though I think the volunteer was surprised at how I was hauling my produce . For our $15, we got:

• 3 roma tomatoes
• 1 head romaine lettuce
• 1 bunch spinach
• A 1 lb bag of baby carrots
• 1 head cabbage
• 5 lb russet potatoes
• 1 pineapple
• 5 braeburn apples
• 4 oranges
• 1 bunch bananas
• 1 lb strawberries
• 1 package raspberries
• 3 avocados

We’re trading the cabbage for the avocados from Ben and Laurie’s basket – not that I don’t like cabbage, but I LOVE avocados.

I also stopped by the farmer’s market that was halfway between Bountiful Baskets and home and picked up an amazing loaf of bread from the local Hutterite Brethren.

All I can say is yum. For breakfast that morning, we had French Toast with the fresh raspberries… and finished off the rest of the raspberries that morning. The apples and oranges we’ve been eating as snacks at work. Sunday night I made pineapple upside down cake with the fresh pineapple. The lettuce and spinach are getting used as salad, topped with the tomatoes and avocado as well as feta and cranberries and a pomegranate red wine vinaigrette. The strawberries and carrots are also ending up as snacks… but very tasty ones! The potatoes, thus far, have been used for both hashbrowns and potatoes au gratin.

In general, thus far, I really really like Bountiful Baskets. I know we lucked out to have all things we recognize and like in the first basket, though I also look forward to the challenge when something gets picked up that’s a little less “usual” for our diet. The only thing that confounds me a bit is that darn 7 a.m. pickup time on a Saturday. Ouch!

But – that’s our first go-around at Bountiful Baskets. Next week is a “week off,” but I’ll be certain to keep trying to post what we end up making with our Bountiful Baskets.

The Story of the Violated Chicken(s)

Letting me read food blogs is… well, it’s like letting a drug addict have free reign in a pharmacy. It’s dangerous, and yet so entertaining in a horrible way.

So, last week, right before our Party of the Week, I ended up reading over Serious Eats, where they discussed to methods of roasting chicken to keep it moist and flavorful. Rather than choose one method to roast chicken, I decided we may as well give both a try. The first and more… exciting… method was what shall henceforth be referred to as “violated chicken.” Rather than using an expensive, single-use roasting pan, the violated chicken method uses a bundt pan. The fact that this method makes use of a pan that is pretty much otherwise single-use was attractive. Add to that that the instructions include “impale the chicken on the center post of the pan” was just an added bonus. Oh yeah, the other method was butterflying – cutting out the backbone and laying the chicken flat. Not nearly as exciting, but worth a try.

So, two whole chickens were acquired from the Safeway Clearance Meat section (my absolute favorite place to buy meat, honestly). Both were about 4 pounds, and even had the same “sell by” date. First, the bundt pan was prepared by placing it inside a 9×9 pan to capture drippings. Then carrots, onions, potatoes, and garlic were chopped and placed in the bundt pan. That got set aside while everything else was prepared.

The first chicken, intended for the impaling, got rubbed with butter under the skin, along with seasonings. Next time, I will definitely add more salt and seasonings, but this was just a start. The whole chicken is then upended and impaled on the bundt pan. Add more paprika and spice, and it’s ready to go.

The other chicken, I cut the backbone out using a pair of kitchen scissors. I then pushed down the entire chicken so it laid flat. More butter and spices under the skin, and placed on a foil-lined rimmed pan.

Both of the chickens then went into a 450-degree oven for 15 minutes to get the skin all crisp and tasty. Then the oven goes down to 350, and it took about another 35 to 45 minutes to roast the chicken up to temperature. Both of these methods actually cooked the breast meat slower than the dark meat – which is exactly what we were shooting for. Both also stayed very moist, and were perfect for chicken enchiladas the next day too.

So, the conclusion? Impale your chicken! It’s fun, it’s dirty, and it makes a crispy, tasty, perfectly-roasted chicken. And you can make dirty jokes during dinner preparation. What could be better? See all the pictures in the Flickr set.

Multi-Modal kind of gal

I’m the first one to admit, there are times my brain get stuck on an idea and I get a bit obsessed with it. There are times that this has not turned out so well, and there are times it actually does alright. Multi-modal transport is one of those obsessions I have returned to multiple times, and I think I might finally be reaching a balancing point.

What exactly is multi-modal transport? Well, it’s a catch-all term for doing things other than just driving or just bussing or just riding one’s bike. I’ve tried to do the exclusively-bike-commuter thing, and that hasn’t worked well. Exclusively bussing causes issues now and again. Exclusively driving, well, that’s kind of the return point – something I’ve done because I always did it.

Growing up, I lived in rural Idaho where your best bet for public transportation was calling your parents for a ride. Cycling and walking worked sometimes and kind of – but our house was a good few miles outside of town, and that seemed like Such A Long Way when you’re 12. By the time I was in high school and could drive, I drove every day because it was the quickest and easiest way to get around. Sure, I rode my bike now and again, but more for fun than as transportation.

In college it was much the same – Helena didn’t have public transport, and I didn’t have a bicycle at college with me – so walking and driving it was.

When I eventually moved to Spokane, I was admittedly So Excited to live in a place that had mass transit. I would drive from my house to the park n’ ride lot, and then hop the hour-long bus ride to work. It wasn’t long, though, until I figured out driving took me 20 minutes. Then I moved, and a bus ride would have been 90 minutes. So, I drove most of the time. Mountain Gear was great, though, in encouraging biking to work (I didn’t appreciate showers at work until I didn’t have them). So, I bought an amazing cruiser bike that I dearly love from a co-worker, and starting biking every now and again. That was a 14-ish mile ride, and while I did it a few times, I didn’t do it as often as I should have. Cold, snowy winters and many workdays that lasted unexpectedly long talked me out of it.

The bug had been planted in my brain, though.

To make a very long story short, two jobs and a move later, I’m trying it again. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’ve gained about 100 pounds since college (ouch. That hurts to type) and am more out of shape than I like to admit. There are no showers at my work, and so I am going through deodorant at an alarming pace. I’m liking it, though, I really am.

Believe me, I understand better than anyone the arguments for not biking or bussing. If I didn’t work downtown, I probably wouldn’t be nearly as excited about it. At the same time, I am discovering that in less than a month I’ve cut my on-bike commute time from 58 minutes to 37. It feels good to wake up and have my working out done before I even start work. Best of all, I don’t feel guilty about the calories in the mocha I get some mornings. While the ride downtown is lovely and partially downhill, I still load my bike up on the bus rack for the trip home. I am not nearly as confident that I would survive the uphill.

Biking or bussing to work isn’t for everyone. There are benefits though, and this is one “lifestyle change” I’m hoping to keep up with. Besides, Bike To Work Week is next week, and if a 350-pound girl on a giant cruiser bike and a serious coffee addiction can give it a shot, I’m willing to think just about anyone could. Besides, I’m about to put a cup holder on the basket on the front of my bike… because what would be better than feeding two addictions at once?

The Castle Story

Ok, so, now that the news is out, I can officially tell the story… or at least semi-officially. Peter and I were VERY VERY excited to be having our wedding at the castle in Idaho. When we went to look at the place, we could just imagine the whole event there. So we chatted with the owner, settled on a price, and put a deposit in as soon as we could.

That’s when the problems started. We didn’t receive anything except a deposit receipt number – no contract, no policy sheet, nothing except an email basically saying “thanks.”

About 100 days before the wedding date, we wrote the owner of the castle, offering to pay off the full cost of the reservation at that point. The owner said no thanks, please stick to the policy of paying 50% 60 days before the reservation, and 50% 30 days before. He also included an invoice for the total cost of the reservation. This invoice, however, indicated that we owed him for a 4 night reservation, between July 30 and August 2. However, that’s only 3 nights. I asked him to double check this, and he acted like he was doing us a favor by correcting the reservation. The prices he wrote also had an event fee $200 more than discussed and $400 more than was on his policy sheet. I asked him for a contract, and heard nothing back.

Then, just two weeks later (90 days before the wedding), we got an email asking us why he hadn’t received our payment yet. I wrote back, confused, asking why he didn’t want us to stick to the 60/30 day policy, as he had just confirmed. His reaction was that “oh, well, for events, it’s our policy that payments need to be 90 and 60 days before the reservation.” To put it mildly, this was news to us. I asked for a contract, including the amount we owed him and exactly when it was due.

Instead, I got back an email… with prices different than what he first wrote us, what was on the contract, and what was on the policy sheet. At this point, I specifically asked for for an outlined contract with whichever policy sheet he was working off of. Once again, we got nothing back, except a note saying he “didn’t see a reason for a contract.”

At this point, after a week or more of serious stressing and worrying, we finally decided that it wasn’t worth dealing with the unknowns and the stress. So we canceled the reservation, with less than 90 days to the wedding date. We are trying to get a new venue lined up in the next week or so – so our guests have a chance to change their plans (hopefully they won’t have to change them much.) We’ll also need to send out “correction cards” or something of the like to everyone that we have already sent invitations to – and finish sending out the rest of the invites.

The good news is, this is hopefully the only drama that the wedding will encounter. The corset and dress are in progress, the ceremony is pretty much written, the food is (mostly, kind of) figured out, and we’ll be getting married. In the end, as long as we get married and as long as our friends and family have fun, it’s definitely successful.

Now, we just need to find a venue.

Card Weaving

I’m going to start this by saying it is entirely Jaspenelle’s fault. For Peter’s 28th birthday, Jaspenelle gave him a tablet weaving setup – and he got interested in the craft. Then I got interested, because at this point Peter was a cute guy that I liked and tablet weaving actually seemed pretty awesome. I talked him into making me my own loom. A little over two years later, and I still thread up and work on a card weaving / tablet weaving project every now and again. It’s not an everyday thing, because, frankly, threading it up can be a real pain because the cats want to be so darn helpful. Once it’s threaded up, though, it’s a great project for knitting night or entertaining myself on the bus.

My brother-in-law gave us a set of beautiful hand-made wooden cards to use. Peter has threaded up a project, and while they are a little more sticky to use, they’ll be great for re-creation items where we are going for “more authenticity”. Usually, we use a basic playing card that’s sliced to square and punched with four holes. I have yet to figure out a way to make them in bulk and get the edges smooth. Luckily, most of the time, we don’t have to re-make the cards very often. About once every three or four projects.

The basic idea of card weaving is that you can control each individual thread in a weaving pattern in eight different ways – four threads, each that can be turned forward or back. This means you can make lots and lots of awesome patterns, some of which vary front-to back, others that are the same. Either way, the straps are very thick, strong, and flexible. Is anyone interested in a tutorial?

In either case, here’s a few of the projects both Peter and I have done.

As usual, plenty more photos on the Flickr set.