I think I want one of these, even though I’m not sure how useful it would be.
You were spared from a glut of garden blogging and pictures this year. We did pretty well. Anna watched something on TV about how carrots and tomato plants have a certain symbiotic relationship – so we did tomatoes and carrots together. And it worked out well.
There was also fortuitous timing by Owen’s favorite cartoon, PBS’s Curious George. You see, George planted some carrots, and grew a perfect carrot, which he fed to bunnies, or something. I may be missing a plot element or two, but not by much. So Owen really enjoyed having carrots out there to pull out.
I think this sensor could be useful for our vegetable garden and other plants around the yard. Anna and I have already decided we’re going to try a lot harder in the yard next year. Maybe this tool would be useful towards that?
I’ve always liked making pizza.
Growing up, mom and dad always made ‘American’ style pizza. You all know it – think of any of your typical delivery pizza chains. Red sauce, lots of toppings, a thick crust. That was pizza for most of my childhood. I still love it, and on very cold days, the thought of a thick, tomato-laden pan pizza from Pizza Hut is very warming.
At some point, I think via the Bertucci’s that opened up by Springfield Mall, I was introduced to brick-oven pizza, which is really more of a neopolitan style. Coincidentally, that’s also where I had barbecue chicken pizza for the first time. I liked it a lot – the crisp, chewy crust with light topping and char.
Since then, I have done a lot of experimenting with different doughs for neopolitan style pizza crusts.
My new favorite, though, is a recipe we got from the Pizza! Pizza! Pizza! class we took at Cook Street here in Denver, where the instructor told me, “You win the class.” It helped that I had a lot of self-taught experience. (I love taking classes at Cook Street – we also took the Fish Tale course.)
And really, the recipe isn’t much different than the second dough listed above – but really more the techniques used to make the dough and prepare the pizza. Basically, you try and work it as little as possible to get it to come together, and let the yeast do its thing. Flour hasn’t mattered, the quality of olive oil hasn’t mattered – at least not yet.
The class taught a pizza-making fanatic like me that I really do need a pizza peel. It also taught us how to make Flammekuchen, which is a white pizza sauce made with bacon, butter, and cream.
We cooked our pizzas in an actual wood-fired brick oven that was running at about 750 degrees. The way to get pizzas in and out of there was with a peel. It made great pizzas – the extremely high heat charred the dough and made it crisp and melted and singed the cheese and toppings. The char is what tastes good.
Sadly, we only have a Pampered Chef pizza stone that isn’t approved for temperatures higher than 425 degrees. I was reading about this, though. That may be something to try one day.
My current technique is to put the stone in the oven to let it get hot. Pull the stone out, then try to work the dough quickly into a circle. Then put the dough on the hot stone – at which point it starts to become inelastic as it starts cooking when it hits the stone. Next, quickly top the pizza before the dough gets overcooked from the hot stone. Load stone and pizza back into the oven. It has to be done very quickly, which means that there is a huge margin for error. This is true especially when trying to shape the dough.
We were taught in the class to make the pizza on the peel, and then use a quick flick of the wrist to unload the pizza from the peel into the oven (or in a home case, the pizza stone). Saves some frustration and stress, since I wouldn’t be trying to very quickly assemble a pizza to avoid overcooking.
I always thought I wouldn’t use a peel, or didn’t think it was necessary. I also thought it wouldn’t work in our house, since our oven opens towards the island in the center of the kitchen – but turns out, I’m wrong!
Now I want to eat pizza.
I’d really like to play Skyrim. It’s a new release, so it’s a full $60 to play right now.
The problem with Skyrim, though, is that it’s a single-player game. Well, that isn’t the problem so much as the fact that Skyrim is also a huge, immersive role playing game. That means, in order to properly get into it, you have to spend lots of time playing it. It’s a giant open-world map in the style of the other Elder Scrolls game (which I have also played) that are huge, time-sucking games where you feel like you’ve only played for a few minutes, and instead, hours have gone by.
It’s an open-world game that truly lets you create your avatar in the styling you choose. If you want to be a fast-talker, you can do that. If you want to hit everything you see with swords, you can do that, too. If you want to be a sneaky assassin that pokes people in the ribs with sticks and runs off … well, that’s less effective, but it can be done. It’s neat. I generally sneak around and horde things.
It also features flower picking.
I played Oblivion when we had just moved out here to Colorado, when we didn’t have kids, any real social network, or other obligations. Anna watched for a bit over my shoulder once, when I was running through a flowery field and hitting the ‘take item’ button. You see, in this game, you can be an alchemist who picks herbs, flowers, roots, and other such items and combine them together to make salves, potions, spells and the like.
I didn’t do any of that – I just ran through fields snagging whatever flowers I could with the intent of selling them. She got a kick out of that, and so it became the flower-picking game. I guess you could say that this game would be Flower Picker 2.
Another fun thing you could do was go into a store, steal everything in the store, and then sell it back to the store owner. I think they fixed that later, though.
I want to play the game. I don’t need to play the game – and I certainly don’t need the time sink. To be honest, if I’m going to play Xbox, I’d rather play online with buddies than pick flowers. But, it’d be nice. Even if it takes me Troy-like time to finish the game.
It’s the last day of November.
Normally that’d be the demarcation line between “Christmas” and “not Christmas”. But you know how that goes these days. The Friday after Thanksgiving seems to be our new acceptable date to put up our Christmas stuff, mostly because it’s convenient – no work, and with family in town to help out. So most of our stuff is out, and we’re getting our first of two Christmas trees this weekend.
The other tradition that starts around good ol’ schwarzer Freitag is the answering of the question, “So what do you want for Christmas?”
I’d like to be clear – this is a wonderful problem to have. First, I have people who actually want to buy me presents. I’ll never overlook that or take it for granted. The problem gets better – I don’t really want anything, or at least much of anything.
Most things I can think of that are are very much “stuff” – things that would be nice to have, but that I don’t really need. I don’t think this is a unique station in life for a thirty-something dad with a wife and kids, and I’m probably just an echo of some continuous noise on the internet on this topic – but dammit, I’m trying to get back into writing, and possibly even capturing some interesting things about my/our lives for my kids to read one day.
The things I can think of that we need are an entirely different, and mostly expensive subject.
So, with this post, I intend to announce an well overthought forced blog-march. For the next week or two, each day I’m going to pontificate and loudly overanalyze a few things I’d like for Christmas. It may be general or specific. The challenge to me will be to think of things that aren’t just stuff. And things that aren’t directly (or at an angle) for the kids. Like this, or this. Side note: see? Expensive.
For instance, I think it’d be really neat to have one of these – but it is expensive, and I honestly have no idea what I’d do with it.
I’ll start later this afternoon.
Today’s thing to not forget: Christmas lights.
Few things brighten up Owen’s eyes more than a single strand of Christmas lights. Luckily for me, and him, we have a giant pile of light strands.
He noticed other neighbors had lights up and had begun asking me, “Daddy, where are our lights?
This year, with his dexterity and communication enhancements, he’s much more interested in ‘helping’ daddy with the lights.
Next thing to not forget – when Owen is generally interested in something and trying to help and or win appreciation from me, the word ‘daddy’ gets used frequently. And of course, it works. When we were testing the lights, one particular globe-light strand was his favorite. “Daddy, maybe test those ones!” So we tested those first and then after switching bulbs and globes as necessary to get a full working strand I unplugged them. So they turned off. Which to Owen – means that they are broken.
I go to the bin to get the next strand to test, and hear “Daddy, I fixed it!” He’s taken the strand we’ve just repaired, and plugged it back in, and is genuinely proud of himself for fixing these lights that were oh so dark just a moment before.
Then, last night when the lights were on I took him outside so he could inspect our handiwork. Big grin for a short while – but then he had taken upon himself the monumental task of inspecting each individual light. This required him to point to each light and to name the color aloud in order to ensure that I stayed up-to-date on our Christmas light status. And I was happy to listen.
On a less parent-bragging note: the last two years, we’ve been taking advantage of Home Depot’s light recycling program to pick up some LED lights cheaply. These bulbs are supposed to last forever, don’t have the series problem, and use less electricity. One of the strands failed this year after only light use last year – half of the bulbs don’t light up, even after switching bulbs, multi-metering, and other such things to figure out why these more expensive lights weren’t working.
I mean, I guess I shouldn’t expect a lot from these inexpensive LED bulbs… but I guess I want to.
This is to remind me that I only get a few more Halloweens with the kids where it’s new and exciting and fun.
Owen has been begging to wear his monkey costume around the house. Today I think I decided we should let him if he wants – he won’t ever get a chance again to be this monkey. Nor will I get that chance back.
Also, I need to remember to be thankful for the family we have. This is Owen’s third Thanksgiving and Lily’s first – we only get a guaranteed handful together, so I need to try to make them count.
This may sound melancholy, but it isn’t meant to be. It’s happy – just remembering to experience things versus trying to capture them all.
I need to start using this thing again. Google+ has been neat, but it’s not for everybody, and Anna doesn’t really have a way to share facespace pictures. I don’t think. And I’m still steadfastly refusing to join facespace given things like this.
Mostly I need to capture things I’m thinking. I was really good about that in the before times. Now I keep forgetting stuff that I’m pretty sure I don’t want to forget.
Right now I want to remember Owen’s rocket jammies and how excited he is about them. They have stars on them that glow in the dark.
The evening routine is the same, but now when I turn out the light he lifts up his blankets and excitedly exclaims “HERE THEY COME!” as the stars start to glow. He’s actually somewhat excited for lights out! This is the kind of magic I want to remember. Glow in the dark stars on his jammies are currently the coolest thing in the entire world to him right now.
Lots of stuff has happened since the beach. Namely, family life.
Some milestones we may have missed:
8 months old!
Lily has been nothing short of amazing. She’s doing all the things she’s supposed to do and is very close to rearing up on her hands and knees and starting to crawl. She’s kind of crawling right now, only backwards. She has no difficulty getting to where she wants to be, it’s just … unorthodox. For adults and toddlers, anyway.
She likes to eat.
Owen is learning to play the digiridoo:
Halloween went well. Owen wanted to go trick or treating every night from 1 November to about 7 November until he finally realized it was really more of a “once a year” thing. One day I look forward to telling him stories of how entertained he was by two of his favorite things – doorbells and candy.
I never get tired of this picture.
And Lily also was seven months:
OK, all the photos I’ve taken from the beach are here for consumption:
If you’re on the googlebook, you’ve probably seen a few of these already.
Thanks nana and papa!
We took the three month picture yesterday, when Anna reminded me I never posted the two month picture.
And
And, just so that Kenny isn’t totally wrong that my blog has become nothing but pictures of Owen – it’s hard to play games on my phone these days:
It appears to be getting better. Lily has slept through a couple of nights – and by “slept through” I mean we’ve gotten a window between 20:15 and 03:15. You don’t realize how much you need that contiguous sleep until you’ve gone without it for a few months. Yesterday was probably her most “talky” day – she was sassing and talking at me, smiling, making faces. Good times.
Owen must be growing or something, because he’s been taking four plus hour naps, in addition to playing at full speed whenever he’s awake. We were at a birthday party the other day, and he played so hard that when I went to pick him up and tell him it was time to go, I expected an epic meltdown. Instead, he was too tired to fuss.
It was a nice three day weekend, even if I can’t really remember what it is that we did.
