Mary and Bo recommended we take the North Little Rock side of the trail, since it was almost all through parks and thus safer and more scenic. It’s really impressive what they’ve done on the seven mile trail out to the Big Dam Bridge in North Little Rock. The bike itself was a pretty goofy ride, which made up for the discomfort of it being all around a bit too small with awkward geometry.

We rode with Mary and Bo to the top of the bridge.

Since Mary had to be at work that afternoon they left us and went back they way they came. In fact, both Dave at River Trail Rentals and Mary encouraged us to just ride the North Little Rock side of the trail and out to Rebsamen Golf Course and back rather than trying to navigate the on-road portions of the trail on the Little Rock side.

In the end we chose to ride out to the end of the trail on the west end of the Little Rock side by the I-430 bridge, which will be extended to take people to Two Rivers Park and out to Pinnacle. Construction was under way. Once out there Craig and I decided to take the Little Rock side back, if for no other reason than to see the entire loop.

They were all correct that the portion after the golf course, until you get back to river front park is not that great. Little Rock could definitely stand to improve the trail, and after being in North Little Rock the difference is stark by comparison, though in truth if they just did a better job of marking the pavement the experience could be greatly improved.

Still the junction bridge, an old train bridge converted to a pedestrian bridge on the east end of the loop is pretty great. If and when they transform the train bridge nearer to the Clinton library things will be even more exciting.

After we returned the bikes we headed over to Hillcrest to check out the antique French chicken coop that Chris had at Clement that has been taunting me since he posted the link on Facebook.

They also had a collection of truly beautiful glass beads in some awesome colors.

I know better than to buy them and expect they’d do anything other than take up space in my house, which I don’t need right now. After Clement we stopped by Leo’s and got milkshakes. Craig had been committed to a vanilla shake, but unfortunately they were out of vanilla ice cream and he was stuck with a chocolate shake.

That evening we picked up Goke and went to dinner at the Buffalo Grill on Rebsamen. At last I had my cheese dip.

After dinner we went back to Goke’s so I could look through her old photos in hopes of finding the one of Granny with her three kids, wearing the dress she’d given me. After finding all sorts of great old photos, and almost all of them well labeled, at the very bottom of the second drawer of the bureau I found the photo I’d been looking for.

After class we went to Boulevard Bread so I could get a good cup of coffee. We ran into my friend Chris of Clement . It was great to sit outside in wonderful weather and catch up with them both.

Later, we went to lunch at Za Za with my mom and Rusty and all had amazing salads.

The backstory of the two restaurants is really the gossip of Little Rock right now for those that like good food.

That evening Craig and I met up with Russ at Vino’s. It was great to see Russ after so many years and hear about Kaky. It’s funny to be so old and feel so young!

Yesterday Craig and I spent the day taking three flights from Portland to Minneapolis then Memphis, finally arriving in Little Rock after 12 hours of travel. The picture above was taken in the Memphis Blues Bar, Terminal B in the Memphis airport. Our layover was 2 hours and 15 minutes, which was longer than it takes to drive from Memphis to Little Rock, at least if memory serves. Thus, we drank $40 worth of beer, or 2 beers each.

Craig also took video of us passing each other on the moving sidewalks while in Minneapolis. I played with the “Hipstamatic” app for my iphone. Taking the picture above and several pictures of Craig, including this one:

After getting into Little Rock we went to Flying Fish with mom and Rusty and then drove past the Clinton Library and Heifer International. Wow! The river area downtown is so incredibly different from when I lived here last!

To celebrate spring I baked and froze what we were told will be the last winter squash of the season from our CSA share at the 47th Ave Farm.  It was a monster. Craig came home with it and said several people there had to come back for theirs, and that if we’d had a full share rather than a half it would have been even larger. You can get a sense of scale by looking at the cleaver in the photo above.

I had to first bake it for 30 minutes, just so I could cut it. It barely fit in our oven:

After it sat for a bit, I split it in half, scooped out the innards  and then baked each half.

When both halves were baked I scooped out all the flesh into a big bowl, which by the end was on the verge of overflowing:

The bowl of mashed squash weighed 13 pounds! It filled six quart jars and one pint jar.

After the innards were placed in jars I moved most of it into the chest freezer (can I get a hell yea for chest freezers!) leaving a couple of jars out to make soup and pies with this week.

I then used the recipe in Mark Bittman’ How to Cook Everything and made spicy pumpkin seeds.

Even though this whole process start to finish took almost 8 hours, and thus my whole Sunday, the seeds in particular are  so delicious and addictive that I almost want another pumpkin!

Then on Monday I made crust for two pumpkin pies and the first of the pies. Unfortunately, the filling sloshed all over the crust (and the oven window) and thus it looked as if the pie was burnt. It still tasted good, though not as good as the first pie I’d made last month with the Long Island Cheese Pumpkin. On Tuesday, I made the second of the pies, and had even more trouble with the crust…this time it actually split in the pre-baking phase. I brought it to the office to celebrate LJ’s birthday, and despite not being beautiful in presentation when we cut into the pie it was delicious!

]]> http://www.pantiesinapinch.com/?feed=rss2&p=344 2 http://www.pantiesinapinch.com/?p=313 http://www.pantiesinapinch.com/?p=313#comments Thu, 22 Oct 2009 02:56:34 +0000 pinch http://www.pantiesinapinch.com/?p=313 Yesterday was a beautiful fall day. I got to ride my bike in cool, but not wet weather and met Linette at Pix for wine and dessert. There was only one option in the case that was at all seasonal, so that’s what we chose. It was called “Ichabod” and involved star anise, cinnamon, pumpkin custard and a lot of dark chocolate.

Today, LJ and I took our lunch break at the Wednesday downtown farmer’s market for Tastebud’s amazing salads. Next week is the last week of the 2009 season. I’ll miss the market November-April, and especially the salad. They have a restaurant now, and I’ve been once. They do oven roasted vegetables, but I don’t recall seeing the salad on their menu.

On our walk back we encountered a shower of falling leaves. They had already covered the ground and the benches.

Last night Kevin Condron came over for dinner and then we went to see Where The Wild Things Are and later stopped by to check out another find FoPo drinking establishment, O’Malley’s? At some point Kevin asked me about the blog. Noting that it looked hacked. And it did. I moved the blog to a new server, then just left it with the “Hello World” message and broken image links for months.

This morning, despite having a rather lengthy to do list I sat down to try and get the blog at least closer to the state it was before the server move. Then I finally committed to change to The Unstandard theme. I’ve had this theme bookmarked for a long time. What both attracted me to it, and scared me from committing is that it uses images rather than words as the teasers. I know it is going to require me to think about posting in a different way. I’m excited to see where it takes me.

Aside from adjusting the old posts to accommodate a new theme, I also made a delicious vegan creamy chunky cauliflower soup. I had seen a link to the recipe in the comments from a bitten post, and bookmarked the page. A week or so later I saw through a Facebook status update that Vicki had made it and loved it. And so yesterday I thought I bought all the ingredients I needed. I should have read the recipe first, in which case I really would have bought all the ingredients I needed. Today I got the rest, made the soup tonight, and it was phenomenal.

I need a diet with more cruciferous vegetables and less dairy. Its nice to add a good go-to cool weather recipe to my arsenal.

I started out January making lots of bean and vegetable soups. The last couple of weeks I’ve been on a potato kick, though not really in soup form. My trainer, Alayne, has a book at her gym, Potatoes Not Prozac. I haven’t read it, but I suspect that the cold weather and short days may be influencing my increased potato intake.

Craig and I have also been working on purging. I still have a ways to go, but on Saturday we filled the Subrau with donations for Goodwill and Free Geek. We got to follow it up by bringing Hammy’s pizza to the Muellers and meeting their newest member, Owen.

I have some new year’s goals that aren’t yet being met, included getting better at posting to the blog. Luckily, I continue to change the start of the new year. The first of January became inauguration day then Chinese New Year. Luckily for me yesterday was the start of Tet: Vietnamese New Year.

On Saturday we will be hosting the second annual Chili Rumble. It should be a fun time and a good kick-off for the year of the buffalo.

Bonzi and I just returned from our first walk of the new year and the rain was constant enough that he had to shake it off half way through just to allow for more to soak into his fur. This being Portland we did still manage to find another dog and owner at our local park playing fetch.

Now that I’m back at home I’m going to make a couple of quick breads to bring over to our friends that are making New Year’s Day meals. I continue to be delighted at how many of my non-Southern friends have picked up the tradition of black-eyed peas and greens. I’ll just say right now, I have the greatest friends. For that and so much more I am grateful.

May 2009 brings us all peace, joy, love and happiness!

Craig and I celebrated the next evening by having a  great dinner out at Le Pigeon, the creators of my most favorite dessert ever (cornbread with ice cream syrup and hot fresh bacon bits), with good friends we keep meaning to make plans with. The food, the company and the celebratory feeling made it one of the best nights in recent memory.

That week-end my father, cousins and aunts came to town for my aunt Martha’s memorial. It was great to spend time with them all, and a special thanks to my neighbor Don for playing guitar at her memorial service. That said, when he and Pastor Sue played “Why Me, Lord?” I lost it.

The next week I headed off to a work site visit in St. Clair County, IL. I arrived at the hotel and learned that my uncle Johnny had passed away. He’d been fighting cancer, but the news was still unexpected. It made my planned stop-over in Little Rock for the week-end even more appealing. I arrived while my grandmother’s maple tree was at the height of its color. Pictures do not do it justice, but here are a few regardless.

It was also the 4th Anniversary (read: free admission) at the Clinton Presidential Library. We took a family trip out there, though our first stop was the Flying Fish for some delicious catfish. I managed to get a candid shot of my grandmother mid-gasp:

All in all, a great trip.

The next week I headed to Corbin/Williamsburg, Kentucky for work on another site visit. I’ve spent more time in Kentucky than any other site we work with besides Portland, and I love it there. There is so much creativity and compassion. This time there were also real tourist destinations, so after the site visit we went to Cumberland Falls:

And on the way back to Lexington we stopped at the original Kentucky Fried Chicken, where the colonel crafted his secret recipe. I even got my picture taken with the life-sized statue already posing on a bench:

The following Saturday Craig and I had the first of two great date nights seeing live music. We first stopped at my colleague Mac’s 50th birthday party celebration, which was lots of fun. Then we headed on to Cassidy’s to meet up with the crew that would be heading to the Crystal for the Drive by Truckers/Hold Steady show. I have lots of pictures from the night, but I’ll just share one of the Hold Steady and one of my clock photos with Patterson Hood of DBT.

When we got to the Crystal Ballroom our friends all headed to the bar area, but Craig and I stayed in the all ages side and made our way to the front. It was a fantastic show. Both bands genuinely enjoyed performing and both were better live than recorded.

Not even a week later we saw a fantastic show at the Doug Fir thanks to Yonna’s encouragement. I wish I could recall the name of the opening act, but suffice to say when we got there no one was standing on the floor and by the time he was done half the crowd had waltzed. Then Tom Heinl of Eugene played a super fun set. Finally, Holly Golightly and the Brokeoffs, sent us out on a high note.

For Thanksgiving Craig made a video of us rocking out to Superconductor’s “Bush Pilot”. You can find it on his humanclock channel of youtube.

Saturday we spent the night at our friend Matt’s place in Husum, WA. It was a quick trip, but lots of fun. His house is in a postcard perfect setting. And that’s how I got to December.

]]> http://www.pantiesinapinch.com/?feed=rss2&p=154 0 http://www.pantiesinapinch.com/?p=146 http://www.pantiesinapinch.com/?p=146#comments Sun, 23 Nov 2008 21:06:54 +0000 cora http://www.pantiesinapinch.com/?p=146 A few weeks ago my dad, Ed, my aunt Sarah, her husband Bruce and my first cousin once removed (thanks for clarifying, Melynn) Sandy were in tow for my aunt Martha’s memorial service. Since Sarah, Bruce, my dad and Ed all arrived on Friday I thought it would be nice to have them over for dinner. I wanted it to be a dinner that I could prepare in advance so that I would be distracted by cooking when they arrived. I wanted to make lasagne, but Ed is no fan of cheese, so I decided to try the recipe for “Classic Lasagne, Bolognese-Style” as found in Mark Bittman’s wonderful book, How to Cook Everything. His recipe calls for making Spinach Pasta, also found in the book, but I opted to instead take advantage of Pastaworks for fresh sheets of spinach pasta.

*This isn't at our house, but in the wine cellar of the Veritable Quandry (VQ for all the locals) at brunch the next morning.

My family all enjoyed the lasagne, and I told them I’d give them the recipe. It has been a couple of weeks now, but here it is.

Step 1. Make Bolognese Sauce. I tripled the recipe, to freeze and eat some at a later date. I’d recommend doubling it if you like a saucier lasagne, though you should still have enough left for dinner.

Bolognese Sauce (Ragu)
Makes about 1 quart

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, minced
1 carrot, peeled and minced
1/4 cup minced bacon or pancetta
1/2 pound lean ground pork (or use all beef)
1/2 pound lean ground beef
3/4 cup dry white wine (or juice from the tomatoes)
1 (28- or 35-ounce) can whole plum tomatoes, drained (reserve juice, if needed instead of wine)
1 cup beef or chicken stock, preferably homemade
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 cup cream, half-and-half, or milk
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese (optional)

1. Put the olive oil in a large, deep skillet or saucepan. Turn the heat to medium-low and, a minute later, add the onion, carrot, celery, and bacon or pancetta. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are tender, about 10 minutes.
2. Add the ground meat and cook, stirring and breaking up any clumps, until all traces of red are gone, about 5 minutes. Add the wine or tomato juice, raise the heat a bit, and cook, stirring occasionally, until most of the liquid is evaporated, about 5 minutes.
3. Crush the tomatoes wit a fork or your hands and add them to the pot; stir, then add the stock. Turn the heat to low and cook at a slow simmer, stirring occasionally and breaking up the tomatoes and any clumps of meat that remain. After an hour or so, add salt and pepper. Cook for at least another hour, until much of the liquid has evaporated and the sauce is very thick. (This sauce may be covered and refrigerated for a day or two, or put in a closed container and frozen for several weeks. Reheat before completing.)
4. Add the cream, half-and-half or milk and cook for another 15 to 30 minutes, stirring occasionally; taste and add more salt and/or pepper as needed.

Classic Lasagne, Bolognese Style
Makes about 6 servings
Time: 45 minutes (with premade sauce)

At least 5 quarts water
1 recipe Spinach Pasta or other fresh pasta or 12 dried lasagne noodles
1 recipe Béchamel Sauce, about 1 1/2 cups
3 cups, more or less, Meat Sauce, Bolognese-Style (Ragu)
2 tablespoons softened butter (preferred) or extra-virgin olive oil
1 1/2 cups freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
Salt, if needed

1. Set at least 5 quarts water in a large pot over high heat. When it comes to a boil, salt it.
2. Meanwhile, if you are using fresh pasta, roll it out. Cut to fit the dish. (Note that since I used purchased fresh sheets of pasta, and assembled the lasagne in advance, I did not cook my pasta.)
3. Cook the noodles a few at a time; keep them underdone (if they are fresh, this means little more than a minute in cooking time). Drain carefully in a colander, then allow to rest on towels while you prepare the béchamel sauce (see recipe that follows). Preheat oven to 400F
4. Smear the bottom of your baking pan with the butter or oil, then place a layer of noodles, touching but not overlapping. Trim any overhanging edges. Cover the noodles with about one-quarter each of the béchamel, meat sauce, and Parmesan, then with a light sprinkling of black pepper (between the meat sauce and the Parmesan there should be enough salt, but if you feel it is underseasoned, add a little salt to each layer also). Make four layers, ending with a sprinkling of Parmesan. (The dish can be prepared in advance up to this point, then well wrapped and refrigerated for a day or frozen for a month; defrost in the refrigerator for a day before cooking if possible.)
5. Bake for about 20-30 minutes, until the lasagne is bubbly. Remove from the oven and let rest for 5 minutes before cutting and serving. Or let cool completely, cover well, and refrigerate for up to 2 days, or freeze for up to a month.

Béchamel sauce:

1 1/2 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 tablespoons flour
1 1/2 cups milk

1. In a small saucepan, heat the butter over medium-low heat. When the foam begins to subside, stir in the flour. Turn the heat to low and cook, stirring with a wire whisk almost constantly, until the flour-butter mixture darkens, at least 3 minutes. You can cook it longer if ou would like a darker color and slightly more complex flavor.
2. Stir in the liquid, a little bit at a time, still using the whisk. When about a cup of the liquid has been stirred in, the mixture will be fairly thick. Add more liquid, a little at a time, until the consistence is just about a little thinner than you like, then cook, still over low heat until the mixture is the thickness you want.
3. Season to task and serve immediately or keep warm over gently simmering water for up to an hour, stirring occasionally.