Jessica and Thayer's RMBL Blog

Moving

2010-06-02T10:06:00.002-06:00

On Friday, Thayer and I are leaving RMBL. We both have such mixed feelings about this move. On one hand, I'm thrilled to be moving into a newly-renovated two-bedroom apartment near campus in Norman, OK. I'll be able to walk to classes and bike to the farmer's market! And there are lots of coffee shops (and a knitting store) within an easy biking radius. Not to mention that we'll both be starting grad school! But RMBL is just beginning to come alive- more people, more plants, more animals (the marmots are up to hilarious antics). And since we're moving to a different climate, we're pretty much missing out on spring and early summer. The NOAA forecast for the day we move into our new apartment is 'HOT' (98 F to be precise).

We start our journey early on Friday morning. We're stopping in Pueblo, CO for lunch and a yarn store visit. Then we'll spend the night in Pampa, TX before arriving in Norman, OK around lunch time. Wish us luck!

Dusky Grouse and Porcupines!

2010-05-12T18:29:00.001-06:00

On a walk this afternoon, Thayer and I came across a handsome male Dusky Grouse singing his courting song. Hoo hoo hoo. Hoo hooooo hoo hoo.

And three nights ago, while Carolyn and CR were staying with us, this big fatty of a porcupine payed us a nighttime visit.

Some other photos from our walk this afternoon.

2010-05-05T13:22:00.000-06:00

Our marmots are awake! And by 'our', I mean the two little ones that were sleeping under the deck of Gates. We've been waiting a while for our first glimpse of them. I saw a marmot running across the grass near Ender about two weeks ago, and we've been waiting since then for the two little ones to wake up. I heard a thump from outside our window and joked to Thayer that it was probably a marmot falling off our bench. I looked through the window, and lo and behold, there was a marmot! (Albeit not falling off our bench)

2010-05-04T15:46:00.002-06:00

The road was plowed yesterday! Huzzah! At the moment it's still a muddy slush-pile, but it should dry up and be drivable in a few days.

The weather was wonderfully sunny, but a little gusty for our visit to the weather station today. We went on a walk and found lots of growing things.

And several beetles.

2010-05-02T09:35:00.000-06:00

This is what we woke up to this morning. About five more inches of snow. Doesn't the weather know that it's May and we want the road to open?

2010-05-01T16:26:00.005-06:00

Also, the shawl I've been working on is finished (click for bigger photos)! It's very large- about 6.5' by 2', I would say.

2010-05-01T16:17:00.001-06:00

Even though the latest storm has set us back a bit in terms of melting, the valley is looking remarkably clear!

Gothic isn't nearly as clear as this- there's still a fair amount of snow around our cabin. Our porch is clear though, and I'm looking forward to reading outside once the weather warms up (32 F and windy with off and on snow is not warm enough).
[T - the south facing hillsides are totally out of the snow now, and the little sprouts of plants are starting to poke out of the dirt! It's really exciting]

The sheer volume of melt is amazing. Believe it or not, 397" of snow adds up to a lot of water, even if it's dry snow. Here's a view of what the recent cold snap did to some of that melted snow.

[T - every little valley between hills turns into streams at this time of year. This is one that runs under the road]

Bluebird

2010-05-01T15:12:00.001-06:00

Look who we saw on our ski/walk into town today.

A handsome little mountain bluebird.

[T - they're blue all over! When we saw it, we we had no idea what it was, since the midwest has eastern bluebirds which are quite a bit different. We wondered if they had different bluebirds here, especially since it's just so...blue, how could it be anything other than than a blue bird?]

2010-04-23T09:35:00.003-06:00

The melt was going so well! Rivers of melt water were running past our cabin.

And then....
We had three new inches of snow added two nights ago, but yesterday's sunny afternoon managed to melt most of that. Then upon waking up today, we discovered that another two inches of new snow lay on the ground. It's currently snowing (ugh). On average, the snow pack is at about two feet- the more snow we get, the longer it'll take for the road to open. But as you've seen in earlier posts, it's melting very unevenly. Our 'front yard' is mostly free of snow now, as is the slope down to the river.
I just checked the NOAA forecast: 5-9" today. Yuck!!!

[T - it's also covering up our poor brown snow that is responsible for such a rapid melting. The clean white snow will melt much slower. Hopefully more dirt will blow in, or else we'll be stuck with snow forever. Very disappointing...]

As for the shawl I'm working on, it's actually lace that needs a serious blocking. It's nearly finished- just needs the addition of a border on one edge.

2010-04-20T13:31:00.000-06:00

We haven't written in a while, but so many seasonal changes have taken place since our last post. The snow is melting at a quick pace now, thanks to a light coating of some red-brown dirt that blew in with a storm.

There's a big temporary stream full of snow melt opening up right in the middle of Gothic, next to our cabin.

The hill next to our porch is now bare.

And so is our porch (thanks to some shoveling on Thayer's part).

Animal life is quickly returning to and waking up in Gothic. The robins are singing their hearts out to defend territory. I've seen one marmot awake so far, and we're hoping more will wake up in the next few days. A few ground squirrels and chipmunks have woken up, too. Thankfully, the nuisance bear of the fall has yet to make an appearance.

I'm working on a new shawl- 'Courting Sophia' by Kat Coyle.

2010-04-05T16:36:00.001-06:00

What do you get when you pour hot water down a rabbit burrow?

Hot cross bunnies!

And what do you get when you add dried fruit to enriched, spiced bread dough, make rolls, and top them with flour paste crosses and orange glaze?

Hot cross buns! (recipe from here- although beware, it's in British- grams, celsius, etc.) They are so delicious, especially hot out of the oven. I used chopped dried cranberries in place of raisins, and made my glaze out of strained orange marmalade (with a little extra water and white sugar).

Here are my conversions, if you're interested in baking these: 1 and 1/3 cup milk, 5 Tbl sugar, slightly less than 5 cups of flour, 4 Tbl butter, finishing amounts for paste: ~half a cup of flour, 1/4 cup water)

2010-04-03T15:26:00.000-06:00

Thayer and I will be joining Dave Hambright's lab at the University of Oklahoma this fall. We're moving to Norman at the end of May. I'll be sad to leave RMBL, but very very excited to start the PhD program in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology!

2010-04-03T10:42:00.000-06:00

The recent storm continues to bring snow our way. We received 11" from the last round, and another 4" last night. It's snowing pretty hard right now and we're expecting 3-7" today. This stuff is really fluffy and it's coating all of the trees in a thick layer of fresh snow.

Happy Easter! I made this bunny yesterday, but since I don't have any black embroidery floss on hand, he remains faceless. Pattern available here.

2010-04-01T12:09:00.001-06:00

The storm is hitting us hard. Since I woke up, we've gotten about 4" of snow, with more expected throughout the day and night. It's not too cold out (28 F), but the gusty winds are persisting. Earlier this morning, I couldn't even make out Maroon from our living room window.

Thayer and I made some tasty cookies yesterday. We used the leftover dough from our December sugar cookies that we had frozen. Rolled the dough out, cut squares, and put a healthy dollop of jam (strawberry, grape, or orange marmalade) in the center. After folding them up, they baked for 8 minutes before being cooled and eaten.

[T - they were really good, and almost as easy as plain sugar cookies]

Toto, toto!

2010-03-31T09:32:00.000-06:00

You would not believe how windy its been here over the past day. Gusts have been as fast as 60 mph! Living in a wooden house on a hill, Thayer and I are pretty aware of the wind. Richards cabin (directly across from ours) has had an enormous slab of snow sitting on its roof for a while now. The wind combined with warmer temps caused it to slide off and break.

The warmer temps have led to an increase in critters in our cabin. We're starting to see mice again, and there are spiders everywhere! Here's a cute little weevil that I found crawling around our windowsill.

As you can probably see from the first too photos, the wind is bringing in a storm. We're expecting a foot of snow (or more) over the next few days. The snow was already blowing in over the mountains when I woke up.

Delicious!

2010-03-30T08:16:00.000-06:00

Thayer and I just made a marvelous batch of very easy vegan brownies. Even in our remote cabin, we had everything on hand that the recipe called for. The end product was moist, chewy, very chocolatey, and a little cake-like.

Here's the recipe (reprinted from here).

1 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/2 cup raw sugar (or refined sugar)
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup unbleached white flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup semisweet vegan chocolate chips (or cut up some dark chocolate)
1/3 cup walnuts (optional)
1 dash cinnamon (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 and lightly spray or oil an 8 x 8 baking pan.
Mix applesauce, sugar, and vanilla in a medium bowl. In another bowl, whisk flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt (and cinnamon if using) together.
Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add the applesauce mixture. Mix until just combined. Gently fold in chocolate chips (and walnuts if using).
Spread in prepared pan and bake 25-30 min, until center is firm and not sticky. Cool completely before slicing.

Not snowing, but it's going to....

2010-03-30T08:08:00.001-06:00

My red sweater is very nearly finished (click for a larger view)! It's just missing 7 buttons which I'll have to buy upon my return to civilization.

It's snowing....again.

2010-03-26T17:45:00.000-06:00

We have about four and a half feet on the ground and we're expecting a few more inches today and tonight. It's gusty and snowy and . . . I'm ready for spring. We went into town yesterday to deliver mail and pick up some weather station stuff (including a new motor, which will hopefully fix our snow collecting bucket system). For a change of pace, I snowshoed (and walked where the snow was frozen enough) and Thayer skied. This reminded me that cross-country skiing was invented for a purpose- long distance treks over well-frozen terrain. It's really much faster and easier than walking with bulky things strapped to your feet. The weather cooperated very well for the trek into town- so sunny that Thayer ended up with some sunburn on his face. I got my haircut for the first time in a year while we were in CB- it feels marvelous!

Here's what it looks like outside our cabin today.

And here is what the snow looks like, piled under the eave of our porch.

In very very exciting news (to me at least), my sweater is nearly finished. It's just waiting for its hems to be sewn up and buttons to be purchased/attached. Do you remember all of those damn gauge swatches I made for this sweater? I ended up having to reclaim that yarn to have enough for sewing the hems down. But here is what the sweater looks like. It's not quite this pink; when I finish it, I'll have Thayer take a photo outside to give a more accurate idea of the color.

The cuff detail

And the lace panel on the back

Pita Bagels

2010-03-19T18:58:00.000-06:00

Thayer and I really loved the bagels that we made a few months ago, but they took so much time. We've found a substitute that is much quicker and easier, but serves the same purpose. The pita bagel recipe in Maggie Glezer's A Blessing of Bread is just perfect. It uses a basic pita dough that is shaped into bagels, coated in sesame seeds, rolled flat, and broiled.

2010-03-19T10:23:00.000-06:00

See? I told you it wasn't spring yet. We're expecting (according to NOAA) 6-10" today and a little more tonight. I'm really happy we're getting a bit more, because the trail to town has been getting icy/grody/crusty/covered in dog poo and big holes from dumbos walking on it.

We made bread a few days ago that turned out pretty fantastic. I used Peter Reinhart's recipe for pain a l'ancienne. It's a pretty nifty way to get delicious flavor without too much work- you just mix the dough and let it sit in the fridge for a night before taking it out, letting it rise, and then shaping and baking.

2010-03-10T15:10:00.001-07:00

Ack- we haven't posted in such a long time. It's been a pretty busy couple of weeks, I suppose. Since our last post, I visited both the St. Paul and Duluth campuses of the U of MN, and got to spend a little bit of time with Carolyn and CR. The time spent on the campuses was busy but very informative; I talked with loads of people, all of whom had different and interesting perspectives on the program to which I'm applying- the Water Resource Science MS/PhD program. Then I flew to Madison (yes, I flew from Minneapolis to Madison- it was ridiculous- I could have driven there in the same amount of time). I spent two days touring the campus and meeting with people in the Center for Limnology. I also got to catch up on some Olympics and eat out at tasty restaurants.

[T- during this time, Gothic had a big snowstorm, so I skied back from bringing Jessica to town in quite a blizzard, and then had a lot of shoveling to do. It was very light snow, so even with snowshoes everyone was sinking into the snow quite deeply. It looked as if John and I had shoveled trails everywhere, but it was just that we made trenches in the snow wherever we went. I had to dig the weather instruments out of their snowpiles, we got so much snowfall. I was tired most of the time she was gone, from all the shoveling - even snowshoeing and skiing was extremely tiring. The cabin was very quiet without her there, and I can't say that I cared for it!]

After this whirlwind trip, I relaxed and slept a lot for three days before Thayer and I took our trip to Oklahoma University (in Norman). We had a wonderful time touring the campus, meeting with current grad students and other prospective grad students, and best of all, we visited the OU Biological Station on Lake Texoma! Also, the weather was wonderful- 50's and sunny the entire time- although we're informed that it's not always like that in Oklahoma. All in all, we got lots of useful information for choosing programs (which must done by April 15).

[T - the trip was very fun, and Rich, the grad student who housed us, did an awesome job. He was really nice and really gave us a great feel for OU and Norman. However, We don't want to say too much about our campus visits and what we think since the blog is public and we haven't made official decisions yet]

So we're back in Gothic, recuperating from our busy trips. The weather here has been relatively warm (mid-30's) and mostly sunny. We've been getting intermittent dustings of snow, but nothing to compare to the massive amount of snow that was dumped on Gothic while I was in Minnesota. Most of that snow has compacted now, and the skiing and snowshoeing are, in general, pretty great. We're looking forward to some warmer and sunnier weather that's headed our way this weekend, although winter won't be over for us for quite some time.

[T - we looked around for our porcupine, but he was nowhere to be found. We saw our fox yesterday though - we were on the porch and he came around the corner of the house and was very surprised to see us. He eyed us suspiciously for a moment, and then trotted away, keeping an eye on us. He is definitely not the fox that lives down across the road by John, because we have seen that fox follow people really closely. We suspect feeding has been involved.]

I've been making more progress on my red sweater. It was originally intended as a project for the Ravelympics- meaning that I was supposed to complete it in the duration of the winter olympics. I failed at that (I blame my week-long trip to the Midwest), but I did make a good start on the sweater. So far, I've completed the back and one of the front pieces.

Yesterday, Thayer made oatmeal bread. It turned out extra delicious and very pretty, in my opinion.

[T - I didn't make it all, Jessica kneaded it for me, because she's much better at it. It was a noble sacrifice on her part, because the oatmeal dough is a very naughty sticky dough and we don't have a mixer or even a paddle scraper to facilitate the process]

Another tiny knitted bear and more bread

2010-02-14T17:40:00.000-07:00

I made another batch of "French" bread. This time I used Julia Child's recipe, which is very similar to the other recipes I've used, except that it calls for longer rising times. The rising took about 8 hours, in total, I think. The recipe certainly isn't more difficult, it just takes more planning. As I'm in a cabin all day, I don't have that hard of a time in scheduling bread baking, believe it or not. Here are the finished loaves. I'm not sure why the tops are so dark- maybe too much steam?

And look, a nice uneven crumb! I probably could have let it rise a little more, but I've been scared by horrible collapsing bread events at this altitude.

For Christmas, Carolyn and CR gave me a little knitted polar bear ornament. I was intrigued by its construction, and set about to duplicate it. The brown bear in the picture is my attempt to do that.

Isn't he adorable? And really easy to make, too. His bottom is a toe-up sock toe. Then his shoulders are shaped like the toe of a top-down sock. His head is shaped with a typical sock heel, and then his nose is just simple decreases! The arms and feet are just little tubes. In short- simple to make if you've ever made a sock.

Another book that I picked up from the library- A Blessing of Bread- has yielded lots of recipes that I want to try (Israeli Pita Bagels, anyone?). At the moment, I have a batch of Lithuanian Challah rising in the oven. Unlike most Challah recipes, it's made without any eggs, except for the final egg wash.

And Still More Bread

2010-02-12T20:11:00.000-07:00

We've begun to hear back from grad schools. I'll be visiting UW Madison and UMN Twin Cities/ Duluth next week. The week after that, Thayer and I will be visiting U of OK for a little bit. The visits will be a combination of them seeing how they like us, and us seeing how we like them. Here's to hoping that the weather cooperates with tiny airplanes.

We went into town today. I picked up some knitting needles for that red sweater. Also stopped by the library to get bread books! I checked out The Bread Baker's Apprentice (which on first glance I LOVE), A Blessing of Bread (Jewish bread traditions), and Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume 2 (solely for the French Bread recipe, but I'm also intrigued by the vegetable section). I don't know what I want to try first! All of the recipes look so fun and different from my other bread books.

But first, I have two new bread trials that I want to report back on. First, we made James Beard's delightfully garlicky focaccia. I think my dough wasn't wet enough (which often happens with Beard's recipes....), but otherwise it turned out very tasty.

I also made the Italian bread featured here. Very similar to my "French" bread except for the addition of a bit of olive oil and some milk. It turned out quite tasty. I've had problems shaping free form loaves in the past, so I was pleasantly surprised by these loaves.

Bread, More Bread!

2010-02-08T16:38:00.001-07:00

More "french" bread, because we ate all of my last batch so quickly. This time, I got the oven really hot before I put the bread in and then turned down the temp. I'm also slightly improving on my scoring of the loaves, as you can see. It turned out just as tasty, with a little richer flavor, a slightly less even crumb, and a very nice crust.

My sweater is done and fits wonderfully. It's quite toasty and- so far- buttonless.

The weather was beautiful and clear and sunny today. Linda was kind enough to loan me her snowshoes, and I took them out for a spin today. So fun! I was slightly amazed with how much easier it was to get up hills; I'm really clumsy on skis. To celebrate my new mobility, Thayer and I went up to Judd Falls.

Chili

2010-02-07T18:11:00.001-07:00

Because a couple people have wanted the chili recipe, particularly Linda, I thought I could just post it on the blog. I don't always precisely measure things when I do this, but I have a general idea. Also, this recipe is very easy to make vegan, if one wishes.

3 cups black beans (dry)
1 cup garbanzo beans (dry)
2 cups lentils (dry)
1 onion
1-2 cups canned diced (or whatever) tomato, depending on how much you like tomatoes
1 can tomato paste (optional - we put them in when we have them, but our chili changes too much time to time to say whether or not we taste a difference)
4 tablespoons chili powder
4 tablespoons cumin
2 tablespoons butter (a nice fat, even a little bit, prevents the mealy mouth feel you can get from just plain beans. To be vegan, just use olive oil. I actually usually use both)
1-2 tablespoons of both vegetable and no chicken Better than Bouillon
~1 cup corn, depending on how much you want (we never measure, just dump corn in the pot
~1 cup dry skim milk (you could use regular milk, but you would have to not put in as much water to compensate. Leave out the milk to make it vegan, but with the milk it adds calcium and makes the meal a complete protein without adding fat. J- Or you could add a little coconut milk.)
1 tablespoon sage
several healthy squirts of sri racha hot sauce (depending on taste)
salt (no idea how much I put in)

First, we start with 3 cups black beans - we wash them, and then let them soak for 10 minutes, then replace that water and let them soak overnight. Supposedly, this reduces the oligosaccarides which can cause intestinal discomfort and bloating. Then we add the garbanzo beans, which don't need a presoak.

The next morning, drain off most of your bean water, but you can save about a cup of it, as it will have really rich black bean flavor to it. Start cooking the beans, and add the lentils and tomatoes now. While that's going, saute the onions and then pour the onions (with their oil, for mouth-feel and flavor) into the beans. You can start adding seasonings whenever you want, but you don't want to add them too early because it's hard to taste accurately with all the extra water that will be boiled off. However, if you add them too late, the flavors won't be soaked up by the beans. We tend to add the dry milk towards the end of things.

Something that Jessica and I have tried and works really well is to reduce the acidity of the chili by simply shaking some baking soda into the chili and stirring it. It doesn't affect the flavor if you don't add that much (as it's reacting with the acid to form salt and water) and we find the chili to be much more pleasant with a reduced acidity. I, in particular, found that I get canker sores from eating too much of the non-treated chili. Just be careful not to add too much too fast, as it will bubble and foam and the starch in the water from the beans will give the foam structure so it will build up. It dissipates after a few minutes.

Just keep cooking the chili until the beans are cooked all the way through, adding water as necessary. The lentils will completely disintegrate, giving the chili a very meaty stew like quality, only with more flavor and better for you than ground beef.

Ta Dah!

Comments

2010-02-07T12:59:00.000-07:00

Hi folks- I just wanted to let you know that we've changed the way comments are added a tiny bit. To cut down on all of the spam, we've added 'word recognition' to the comment form. This means you'll have to type that squiggly word into a box. Shouldn't be a problem unless if you're a robot. If this is the case, you- the robot- can just email your comments to us (I assume robots are capable of email if they can handle posting spam).

Sweater Frustration and Snow

2010-02-07T11:13:00.001-07:00

It's snowing. It snowed all day yesterday and so far has been snowing all day today. It's a pretty light snowfall. We're expecting 4-8" today.

No, it's not the green sweater that's frustrating- it's my pinky-red sweater that I'm just starting. I ordered seven very pretty skeins of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock yarn in "Bold Red". First of all, the nomiker "bold red" conjures images of a deep, robust blue-ish tinged red, right? Well, when the yarn arrived in the mail it was more of a pinky-red. I've made peace with that and I've come to like the color. Secondly, the sweater I'm going to knit with this yarn is knit at 25 sts per four inches. Enter swatching hell. Swatching involves knitting the yarn with different size needles to determine what size you need to use to get the same gauge that the designer used (so your sweater does not end up five times bigger than you wanted). First, I knit a small square with size 3 needles. Then size 4. Then size 1. Then size 3 again (oops). Then size 2. Then I realized that I don't own the needle size that should give me the correct gauge (size 2, but the European size 2= 3.0 mm, not the American size 2= 2.75). So now I'm waiting for the needles to arrive in the mail. Ugh.

In the end, the yarn will become this sweater- the Mountain View Cardigan by Connie Chang Chinchio. The sweater has some ribbing around the waist to add some nice shape to it!

"French" Bread

2010-02-05T18:02:00.001-07:00

I tried my hand at Betsy Oppenneer's recipe for "French" bread (from The Bread Book) yesterday. It's not technically French bread because my oven lacks fancy steam injection (can you believe that?!?), and I made it from our standard all-purpose flour. Despite the fact that my crust will never be perfectly crusty/flaky/delicious, I labor on. To develop more flavor and a chewier texture, the bread dough uses half the usual amount of yeast (only one scant tablespoon, no fat, and rises FOREVER (seriously- 5 total hours). Here it is after its second rising.

My bread rose pretty well, but not to as lofty of heights as I would have liked. I didn't get the wonderful holey texture of an authentic French Bread. I fear our very chilly cabin is to blame; next time they'll rise in a slightly warmed oven, just like all our other bread. The end result was four handsome and tasty baguettes.

And today's lunch, a Quorn pattie with fresh muenster cheese, horseradish mustard, and homemade bread.

2010-02-04T17:01:00.001-07:00

Linda and Leanne came to visit us for a few days. We had a wonderful time sharing our life in Gothic with them. We shared some delicious food- we made them our tasty chili (Thayer's perfect recipe) and Linda made us a tasty tomato/garlic/olive oil dish. The weather cooperated perfectly- it was sunny and warm most of the days and Linda and Leanne were able to explore around Gothic on their snowshoes. Unfortunately, Gunnison Electric did not cooperate as nicely with our guests' visit. Gothic lost power for about 24 hours on Sunday/Monday due to a very "clever" person driving a fence post into a buried electric cable two years ago. We lost power and water (by extension, as our pump was out) and had to use our nearby outhouse for the first time this season. Oh well, all part of the rustic back-country experience!

[T - Linda in particular found it made her vacation even better, so it wasn't really an issue. The porcupine was in his usual tree on the second day of their visit, so they got a bunch of pictures of it munching away. It didn't find them particularly terrifying, apparently. The power company actually came all the way up to visit us, looking for damage to the power line. They drove a big snowcat up to our cabin, which means we actually have a big trail going all the way from our cabin into town. We are keeping one tread track for skis and one for walking. It's really exciting to be able to go five feet out of our house without having to put on skis. Now if only the snowcat had visited the weather station! We'll have to try to maintain it, because its really nice to have. It's currently snowing, and I don't know how much we're actually going to get. ]

Anyway, other than the power outage, we had a wonderful visit with Linda and Leanne. And then, on the way to take them back to the airport, we stopped at Secret Stash in CB and had FABULOUS pizza. Thayer and I split a tasty pizza with grape tomatoes, ricotta cheese, fresh garlic, and parmesan; we even had leftovers. [Can you tell that I'm slowly growing more and more excited about fresh veg and going out to eat?]

[T - we'll probably get real fat as soon as we move out of our cabin, just because we'll want to do nothing except eat all the things we couldn't get in Gothic]

Here are Linda and Leanne at the trailhead, preparing for the ski into Gothic.

And here we are with Leanne, taking a short break from the ski.

[T - the sled was heavy! Linda and Leanne managed to pack very light though, I was able to pull everything in the sled so that they didn't need to have packs on]

There is also exciting news on the knitting front! I finished my green sweater (except for attaching the buttons). As we speak, it's blocking on the bed (and the color is most accurate here).

Remember those steeks? You can see them sewn down on the inside of the sweater here.

And look, waist shaping (and a hem)!!

Thayer and I made some tasty dinner last night. Homemade tortillas and refried beans! I was amazed by how easy both processes actually were. The tortillas in particular were quicker than any other flatbread we've tried up til now (mostly because they're non a yeast-leavened "bread").

[T - The tortillas are really good with cinnamon sugar butter melted on them as a dessert tortilla, as well!]

Nighttime in Gothic

2010-01-29T20:11:00.000-07:00

The moon was especially bright tonight because full moon is tomorrow and there were no clouds in the sky. It inspired some nighttime photography. Thayer and I purchased a new camera this summer and we're still learning how to make it work. Fussing around with exposure length and ISO, I got these.

The Green Sweater

2010-01-28T11:54:00.002-07:00

Over the past week, we've gotten about 40'' of snowfall in Gothic- that's over three feet, for the math-challenged. It's been very picturesque with snow falling nearly all day, every day, but I was still very happy to wake up to this. Look at the snow on top of Ender- the cabin in the lower left corner. That is a lot of snow.

[T - I had to finally go outside and shovel out our southern windows. The hobby room ones had several inches of snow piling up, and the main window was approaching a foot of snow near one side. It's because as snow falls off our roof, it builds up a little hill against the window - the actual outside snow level is still below the sill, although not by much anymore. It's all cleared away now, which was fun - from all the dripping from the roof a lot of it was pretty icy. I got to use the big hammer to turn it into chunks, which was fun.]

Not that this is going to last- we're expecting more snow later this weekend. In the midst of all this snow, I've made massive sweater progress. This is the body of the sweater, which I completed a few days ago. To the left you see the bottom hem of the sweater. As you move to the right, you see some waist shaping that I added, and then two funny pouchy-looking things on string. Those will become the sleeves. It's knit in the round all the way up to the shoulders. Which means... steeks!

As excerpted from the Wikipedia article on steeks:

In knitting, steeking is a shortcut used to knit garments such as sweaters in the round without interruption for openings or sleeves until the end. After completing a tube, a straight line is cut along the center of a column of stitches, in order to make room for an opening or place to attach another piece. The steek itself is a bridge of extra stitches, in which the cut is made, and is usually 6-10 stitches wide. This technique was developed by the knitters of the Shetland archipelago and is particularly associated with Fair Isle sweaters, although it can be used for solid colors as well.

So.... steeks. I have four on this sweater. First, it's a cardigan, so I will cut down the middle to open it up. Then, there are two sleeve steeks and a neck sleeve. To ensure that my sweater doesn't just unravel when I cut it (nightmare inducing), I crocheted along stitches on either side of where I was going to cut. Note that my yarn (alpaca-wool blend) is less "sticky hairy" (Wikipedia's words, not mine) than the Shetland wool commonly used for steeking.

And then I cut in between those two light-green, crocheted edges. As you can see, my sweater did not instantaneously unravel into a pile of useless green scraps of yarn. So... success!

I did that four times before picking up stitches for a sleeve. You can kind of see here that the waist shaping I added appears to fit pretty darn well! Yay!

And two days later, a full 3/4 length sleeve.

In non-knitting news, Linda (one of Thayer's family friends) and her sister are coming out to stay with us for a few days. We're so excited for their Saturday arrival!

[T - we're hoping it will be nice and sunny so that the skiing and the sled pulling goes fast, because a little crust goes a long way, especially with the ol' sled. Here's to hoping Linda and Leanne manage to pack light!]

2010-01-24T18:57:00.002-07:00

I have a new fun toy: wordle. It makes fun little word clouds for any website or entered text. Here's the wordle for the past few posts on our blog.

A knitting post

2010-01-23T11:02:00.002-07:00

This post will be (almost entirely) knitting-related, so feel free to avert your eyes.
First, I wanted to share some of the Christmas presents that I've been working on over the past few months. Here is a stranded earflap hat that I made for my dad.

And here are a pair of mittens made for my mom.

And these mittens have a matching scarf:

It's knit lengthwise on circular needles in garter stitch- i.e. really, really easy, with a lovely finished product.
And here is the shawl I gave to Thayer's mom, Carolyn.

I made a set of cotton dishcloths for my Grandma and Grandpa True. Thayer carved some lovely buttons for them.

And here is the shawl that I made for Callie (you saw it's beginning in another post).

I sent it with one of the shawl pins that I had carved. The yarn color is most accurate here.

And now I want to show you what I'm working on at the moment. I had previously talked about the sweater that I'm making. I just started it two days ago (once we had retrieved the yarn from the post office). Here is what it will look like when finished (hopefully).

I'm adding some waist shaping to make it a little less boxy. Here is my schematic

And my progress thus far. It's a really lovely alpaca/wool blend in a nice heathered green color. I'm so excited for this to be finished!!!

I'm also working on a hat for myself. When finished, it should look something like this (photo taken from Twist Collective- a very, very cool site featuring patterns from the top knitwear designers).

Here is my progress- part of the first earflap. It's kind of slow going, as it's knit on size 0 needles.

And of course, there is my wedding shawl, which I've been working on for nearly a year. The yarn is a lovely mint-green cobweb/laceweight wool- Jade Sapphire's Lacey Lamb. When finished (or rather, if ever finished, because it's taking FOREVER), it will be V-shaped with a nice border. It's knit on size 0 needles. So far, I've finished the triangle and almost one of the arms (with a shoe for scale).

Well, I think that's about it on the knitting front. Of course there are some other minor projects in the works (socks, yoga mat bag, socks, etc.), but this is how I'm spending the majority of my knitting time.

Of course, we're doing things other than knitting. I made some bread yesterday.

And we've gotten quite a lot of snow. It's been snowing off and on for the past week, and that's expected to continue over the next few days.

[T - today since it's beautiful and sunny we get to shovel off various lab things that don't like being completely buried under snow]

2010-01-16T15:38:00.000-07:00

We skied into town today, to pick up packages of our Christmas presents, sent by our parents. The weather was just amazing- mid-30's and brilliantly sunny. Also, there's a class from Western State Uni up here studying our snowshoe hares, and since many of them skied in yesterday, the trail was amazingly well-packed. All in all, it made for an enjoyable (and fast) ski. Here are some photos taken on the way back, looking towards Gothic (as always, click for a bigger version).

2010-01-16T15:27:00.003-07:00

Remember when we used to have these guys at our window? I am so bummed that the marmots are hibernating now.

2010-01-08T10:49:00.001-07:00

After a whirlwind tour of the Midwest and a full day of traveling, Thayer and I arrived back in Gates Cabin yesterday afternoon. Our trip was wonderful- we spent three days in Minneapolis and about three days in Libertyville. In Minneapolis, we got to attend Claire and Sam's wedding, which was beautiful and happy. We also spent a great amount of time with Thayer's parents, Carolyn and CR. I thoroughly took advantage of being back in civilization by visiting a yarn store, REI, and Starbucks. Libertyville was likewise wonderful; I visited a yarn store there, too! We had some great time to reconnect with my parents, saw my grandparents for 'Christmas dinner', and visited my sister, Kate, in Chicago. We went to lunchies with her near DePaul, and then spent a (too short) afternoon at the Lincoln Park Zoo. It was very very fun, and even though it was much colder then we're used to, it wasn't too horrible being outside. Although I have to admit that the gray weather in Chicago was definitely not appreciated.

[T - the trip went by way too fast, but we got to do pretty much all that we meant to, at least. I was so happy seeing Claire and Sam getting married! There weren't really any shops that I wanted to go to, although I looked at snowshoes at REI, just because I was curious. There's no way I'm investing in winter gear when I might be going somewhere that doesn't even get regular snow. They're pretty cool though. It was kind of weird being in climate controlled houses. Our cabin is so much more variable in temperature! I also missed our wood stove. It's so cozy to make a happy little fire in it and feel it warm up nice and toasty, not to mention that it's just pretty having a fire. It's weird how much sunnier it is here in Gothic in the winter, but I never really thought about it until we were in the midwest and nothing really get particularly bright and the sky can be overcast for no reason.

The culture shock at being back in civilization for a bit wasn't nearly as bad as we thought it might be. Complicated traffic was kind of overwhelming, and Jessica and I found we had a much lower threshold for loud stupid people after being completely isolated from anything irritating like that, but it was pretty manageable. TV was kind of exciting. Jessica and I actually enjoyed watching commercials, because they were pretty much all new to us. We also enjoyed having food that wasn't our usual selection of cabin food! We took full advantage of it.

We also went to Avatar in 3D at an IMAX theater near Jessica's house, and Ebert doesn't exaggerate when he says it is a genre defining movie. I'm sure I would have enjoyed it a lot in 2D, as I found the characters lovable and the plot fun in a predictable/cute way, but in 3D it's nothing that has ever been done before. It is by far the most immersed I've ever been in a movie. It made me want to go into the world. After a bit, I stopped thinking about how it was 3D and just thinking about how the world was so unbelievably real. It's the first time I've fully accepted CGI without having that niggling awareness that it's not "real." I have been unfavorably comparing CGI monsters and spaceships to the classic 80's models up until this point, but I just have to say that especially the CGI ships in this I loved and admired just as much as any model. The whole movie is kinda like if Fern Gully had special effects that swept me away. Well, and if Crysta's grandmother was instead Sigourney Weaver. There were some things Jessica and I would have changed, and the script isn't going to make you stare deep into your soul, but we didn't really care.

Also, I think it's the first movie I've ever seen with a horse running around on fire. It's a CGI alien horse, but still.]

I used some Christmas money from my Grandma and Grandpa True to buy this wonderful gorgeous handpainted yarn in Minneapolis. It's a silk and wool blend, made by Mountain Colors- one of my absolute favorite yarn manufacturers.

It will eventually become this shawl

This is how far I am on it now (thankfully the often-overzealous TSA people did not take away my needles)

Also, I received yarn and the pattern to make Elizabeth Zimmerman's green cardigan (you can see it here). Yay- so much knitting fun for the next few months!!! And speaking of knitting, now that I've given away Christmas presents, I'll be able to show you (maybe tomorrow) what I've been working on over the past few months.

Even though our visits were wonderful and far too short, we are so happy to be back in Gothic. I mean, where else will you see this?

Gothic has welcomed us back with sunny weather in the low 30's- life is good. I figured out how to take widescreen photos with our camera, so I'll leave you with this image from the day before we left for our trip.

Christmas Cookies

2009-12-26T18:04:00.006-07:00

On Christmas eve, Thayer and I made cookies. We used this recipe, which was absolutely delicious, if you don't mind your cookies being made up of about half butter (mmmmmm). I made colored sugar using some old food coloring, granulated white sugar, and a mortar and pestle. I think it turned out pretty darn well! Here are some of the cookies (the more boring shapes, i.e. heart, star, have been omitted and/or eaten before photos could be taken).
Things you can knit:

[T- Jessica was the only one making knitted themed cookies, for some reason...]

Things that live in the Fox River:

[T - I made the Dapnia and the round goby, and if they look kind of simple, it's because they were my first cookies, before I really got the hang of it]

With close-ups: Green Sunfish

And a really one:

Round Goby

With a real round goby:

A Rotifer: Asplanchna

[T - I think making Asplanchna was cheating a bit. I would have liked to see a little bit more complex one like Keratella]

with the 'real' Asplanchna

Sea lamprey

And a real sea lamprey

A spiny waterflea

And a real spiny waterflea (with a fishhook waterflea)

And finally, as per Bart's request, a (sideways) Daphnia

And a real Daphnia (this is actually one of the photos I took)

Also, Thayer made a bunch of really cool dinosaur cookies

Clockwise from upper left: Velociraptor, Apatasaurus, Stegasaurus, and Plesiosaurus

A closeup on the Steggie, because it is so awesome:

[T - I dunno why my velociraptor didn't get a closeup, I thought it was pretty cool. I guess this is what happens when you let Jessica take the pictures]

Okay, fine, here's a close up of the Velociraptor

And a HUGE damselfly nymph. Unfortunately, this cookie broke a lot- segmentation doesn't work quite as well on cookies as it does on insects.

[T- also, cookies do not get stronger the bigger they are, they just get broken]

And a giraffe and an elephant. The giraffe actually started out as my poor attempt at an Apatasaurus.

[T - Jessica also truly unleashed her creative energies at the end of cookie making when we had both lost steam, creating such masterpieces as "snowball," a round cookie, and "pile of smooshed cookie dough," which were no less delicious for their uninspired nature. By this point I had already made a bunch of dinosaurs and was very done with cookie-making as well.

In other news, we are all alone in Gothic! John is out visiting for Christmas and Billy headed back into Gunnison, but we're looking after the place just fine on our own. We did weather station on Tuesday which went swimmingly (turns out getting up the hill on skis is not too bad, as long as you're not doing it in the middle of a blizzard) except for one little part at the end where one of my ski bindings broke! We went into town today (I borrowed John's snowshoes) and took my skis to the Alpineer to have a look at them. We shall see what they say about that. The weather was beautiful for a town trip today, and the snow is nice and firm for really wonderful skiing and snowshoeing, so that was exciting! We took the sled, because both of our parents gave us Christmas boxes to haul back to Gothic, but the snow was nice and compressed so the the sled actually slid instead of dragging like a big plastic anchor.

Jessica and I had a really nice Christmas together and we both got very fun things from each other. Being alone in a cabin surrounded by beautiful scenery and four feet of snow was very romantic and made for a very relaxing Christmas.]

Here is Thayer snowshoeing with the sled.

And a view from the other side (you can see the broken ski in the sled):

The Christmas Branch

2009-12-18T15:41:00.000-07:00

First of all, we got even more snow since our last post- the mountains are just so gorgeous coated in such a thick layer of snow. Another foot, at least. Luckily it's packing down nicely, and skiing was actually pleasant this morning! We had to bring water from the lab to Maroon cabin- unfortunately the pipes have frozen for both John's cabin and Maroon (the nice one that skiers stay in). It's quite a bummer, but we're still lucky to have our water.

We found an evergreen branch broken off a tree near our cabin (possibly our porcupine's doing?)- voila- Christmas "Tree"! We piled up our presents below it and decorated it with some homemade ornaments.

A tiny teddy- isn't she cute? And miniature mittens!

Thayer made some lovely snowflakes for the tree.

I made another little stocking.

A few weeks ago, my mom sent me a fun little kit to make felted gingerbread men. Here's one of them (sideways- sorry).

Our Little Blizzard

2009-12-10T16:13:00.001-07:00

So, I promised a description of our recent storm, and here it is. The storm came in on Sunday and got heavier and heavier until Tuesday afternoon. We ended up with about 2.5-3 feet and some drifts that are definitely much higher. It was really fluffy stuff- there was only 2.5 inches of water in all of that, according to our weather station trip. Unfortunately, since it was so fluffy, skis were nearly useless. The minute I put weight on a ski, it would slide down at least two feet to the snow-pack from previous storms. In short, it was really frustrating. It was fun and gorgeous to be trapped in a blizzard- until we had to go outside. But I digress.

Do you remember the waterfall I showed you several weeks ago- Judd Falls? Well, we walked up there the day before the storm hit, and it's frozen over now. Thayer nearly missed it and walked past because it's so much quieter with a layer of snow and ice covering the moving water.

[T - in spots where there is just ice, you can see the water running underneath it]

And how cool is this lichen?

[T - it was on a memorial bench at the falls]

Here are some "action shots" of our storm. I think they're from Monday.

Tuesday was our turn to visit the weather station. We woke up to a cold cabin, a power outage and lack of running water (we have an electric water pump). And then, the weather was . . . uncooperative, to say the least. Yay! We learned pretty quickly that skis were nearly useless on flat ground and more frustrating than you could possibly imagine on the upward slopes of hills. There was no way in heck that either of us could herringbone up the hills, because we couldn't pick our skis up through the 2+ feet of snow that they were instantaneously buried under the minute our feet touched down. Ugh. So, the skis were discarded and we both climbed ski-booted up the steep hill to the weather station. Also, the wind had picked up by the time we got to the weather station hill, and there were times when we weren't quite sure which way the path was supposed to go, or couldn't see anything other than white - 'I dunno- aim for that tree, I think'. But we did manage to get up there after an hour of strenuous climbing (four times longer than our usual walk)- Thayer breaking trail for me, for which I'm eternally grateful. Thayer did the weather station stuff (we switch off weeks) and as we were getting ready to leave, we realized that, since the internet was down, we would have to climb up the next day with a flash drive to retrieve the data that we had downloaded from the precipitation gauge. The climb down was nearly as hard, as we were so exhausted. But once we got back to the cabin it felt SO good to start a fire and veg out for the rest of the day.

We walked/climbed/fell back up to the weather station yesterday, to retrieve the data with my flash drive. It was so much more enjoyable than our Tuesday hike- there was actually some sun and NO blowing snow! We didn't even bother with skis yesterday- sturdy boots with ski poles for balance were much more effective. We managed the whole thing in little over an hour- the time that it took us to just get to the weather station on Tuesday. It was so wonderful!

[T - also, we didn't sink quite as deeply in this time. Snowshoes would have been useful, but alas. Well, we made due and got a good workout. The ozone machine thingy was working though, so that's exciting.]

There was a little time for lunch, and then I had a phone interview/conversation with a potential graduate adviser at Oklahoma. After that, Thayer had his own interview with the same potential adviser. I think both of our calls went pretty well, but we'll see in a month or so how it turns out.

Compared with Tuesday and Wednesday, today was a much appreciated sluggish lazy day. The sun finally came out and the fresh snow draped over Gothic looks so picturesque.

Just about an hour ago, I skied around the cabin to test the snow. It has packed down quite a bit, and skiing is no longer an exercise in frustration. Look at how blue the sky is.

Everyone was taking advantage of the brief respite from storms. Bucketloads of little songbirds were flying around and calling. I saw some snowshoe hare tracks (no surprise that they're out and active).

I also came across a porcupine trail (really more 'trail' than 'tracks'- they carve hilarious troughs in the snow).

As I was admiring its tracks, I heard the telltale wood-munching of a porcupine. This one was perched halfway up a pine tree, busily stripping its branches (remember to click the photo for a larger image).

[T- I think its face looks surprisingly like a snow monkey face, and the quills kind of remind me of their fuzzy guard hairs]

This one was so much larger and pricklier than the juvenile that we've seen along Gothic road. It didn't pay us any attention- except for when Thayer laughed at it- that got a look. And here it is in midreach for a tasty branch.
[T - I was laughing because I had just looked to check my camera shot and saw this picture in the viewfinder. I think the little tongue hanging out is hilarious. I watched him for a while, but got bored after 15 minutes of him just sitting eating pine needles. I'm impressed there's anything that actually chooses to eat pine needles, but he seemed to be enjoying himself]

The snow below the porcupine tree was nearly covered in discarded or dropped branches.

[T - I don't think he was trying very hard to conserve the pine branches, as he had an entire tree to eat if he was so inclined]

2009-12-09T15:21:00.000-07:00

So we've both been meaning to write a post about our recent blizzard. We got about 3 feet of snow over just the past few days. Unfortunately it's light fluffy stuff that is a monster to ski on and will be until it packs down a little bit. I'm sure both of us will write more about this and post some pics (as it has impacted our lives quite a bit over yesterday and today), but for now I'm just going to link you to this NYtimes article that has a photo of the snow in Appleton! That's right- Appleton! Just down the street from Lawrence.

2009-12-06T10:06:00.000-07:00

That's right, we're under a blizzard warning right now! Yay snow! Finally we'll be able to get some skiing in (without worrying about hitting rocks).

Thanksgiving

2009-11-28T12:31:00.001-07:00

We had a wonderful potluck Thanksgiving here in Gothic in Maroon Cabin. Lots of great RMBL people came and brought delicious food. Our contribution was bread: a loaf of challah bread and 24 buttermilk rolls. Here's a view of the challah (using Oppeneer's recipe). It is quite a stunning loaf, thanks to the braiding and egg wash, and it makes tasty toast!

[T - I was in charge of the rolls, mostly. They were perfect thanksgiving rolls!]

Unfortunately, we didn't get a photo of the rolls before they were eaten, but I think you can imagine what rolls would look like.

[T - they were round, with a raised top and flat on the bottom, in case you can't imagine what rolls look like. Oh, kind of a floury brown color.]

They turned out really light and fluffy, with a delicious buttermilky flavor. We made the dough the night before and warmed it up and shaped it the morning of Thanksgiving. The night in the fridge really helped the flavor develop, I think.

[T - there was also turkey, green bean casserole, roasted sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, wild rice with mushrooms and almonds, stuffing, cranberries, egg nog, and pumpkin pie! It was yummy. Kind of weird to be around so many people - definitely not used to crowds]

Warm woolen things

2009-11-24T14:05:00.004-07:00

Our cabin, as you would expect, becomes very chilly overnight. Waking up to 45 F room is not entirely enchanting. It's especially bad when we have to get up early. Otherwise, I just hide out under my thick down comforter until the sun starts to warm up the cabin (which happens pretty quick, as our cabin is covered in south facing windows). However, for those times when it's not as warm as I'd like it to be, I made myself some cozy wristwarmers.

[T - Jessica gets cold a lot.]

The yarn is a thick and cozy angora/wool blend from Peace Fleece. Thayer's Aunt Ranae sent it in a wonderful early Christmas package (also including Minnesota-produced cheese, maple syrup, and coffee- yay!).

[T - it was a really awesome package! Did you get my email thanking you for it, Ranae?]

For the cold floors in our cabin, I made Thayer a pair of felted slippers. They're knit out of Knit Picks Wool of the Andes. Unfortunately, until I buy some leather soles, these puppies are SUPER slippery on the wood stairs.

[T - Jessica also neglected to mention that they're still about a size 30 slipper. Our front-loading washer is an uncooperative felter, as most front loaders are. They are insufficiently agitating for the likes of felting projects, although the slippers are MUCH smaller than originally. They start out as hats for giants that could each fit both of my feet at once. They've been through the wash three times already. They get to ride again with our next load of laundry, hopefully down to a little snugger size, although I wear them just fine as they are.]

Carolyn and CR generously gave me some gorgeous qiviut lace yarn for my birthday. Qiviut is wool from muskoxen, which is combed off 'domesticated' muskoxen by some very brave souls in Canada, Alaska, and Greenland. As you can probably guess from their range, qiviut is extremely warm yet lightweight and soft. It's just lovely stuff.

I knitted up a cowl for myself, and it is just the softest thing I've ever felt. This is a pretty bad photo- the color is actually much greener.

And one more knitted item, if you can stand it. A mini Christmas stocking! Knit from leftover Knit Picks Essential sock yarn.

Porcupine!

2009-11-22T10:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we went into Crested Butte and Gunnison. And now, thanks to the Crested Butte post office, we are both finally finished with graduate school applications! The last forms have been sent in and now it's just time to wait. If you're curious, I applied at Minnesota-Duluth, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, and Cornell. Thayer applied at Michigan State, Minnesota-Duluth, and Oklahoma. Now we wait until January/February/March to get things in the mail from these schools.

The car had been left at the trailhead, so we had to walk a few miles to get it. On our trip, we came across the same North American Porcupine that we saw on our last car trip, but this time, I remembered the camera! The porcupine was sitting in a bush, busily stripping it of bark. When it saw us, it very clumsily climbed/fell out of the bush and tried to 'hide' in the base of the bush. Porcupine 'hiding' pretty much means making sure that their head is covered, since the rest of their body is covered in quills.

And a picture of its little face. He had done quite a number on the bush- om nom bark.

And here is the view of the road we walked along

"Chicken" Pot Pie

2009-11-18T10:17:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, I woke up with a craving for chicken pot pie. After doing a quick kitchen inventory, I decided that we probably had enough ingredients to cobble something together at least resembling chicken pot pie. We had frozen veggies (corn, peas), crust ingredients, mashed potatoes, veggie gravy, and veggie chicken cutlets. Thayer's mom sent us a recipe and we got started on the pie. The crust was a little sticky and finicky at first, but I managed to get it into the pie tins. We then spread a healthy helping of mashed potatoes on the bottom, spooned in the gravy/"chicken"/veggie mixture, and carefully placed the top crust onto the pie.

[T- next time we're going to make gravy on the side to put on the slices...]

After baking for about 35 minutes, we had a faux chicken pot pie!

It tasted absolutely delicious- fabulous comfort food.

[T- so good!]

With the leftover crust, we made little pie crust cookies. Thayer cut out cute shapes and we decorated them with butter and cinnamon sugar. After a little bit of baking, they were so fabulously buttery and tasty.

[T- the actual name of them is "pie crust dealies."]

A Tyrannosaurus and an Apatosaurus (not a Brontosaurus)!

[T- I also made a bunny, but Jessica ate it, so you won't get to see it unfortunately. Jessica made a star, a heart, and then a bunch of lumps. Cutting shapes out of pie crust gets old after the first few.]

2009-11-16T12:46:00.000-07:00

Snowman

2009-11-14T16:54:00.001-07:00

The snow has continued to pile up since yesterday. It's still coming down as I write this, and likely will be until tomorrow. We did a little bit of cross-country skiing today, and we made a snowman! Here is Thayer adjusting its hat.

[T - It seemed like kinda sticky snow (it at least was sticky enough to stick some to our skis) so I wanted to make a snowman. The snow here is different though - it has a very low moisture content apparently, so its not very sticky. It's kind of dusty and difficult to pack, so getting our snowman body segments was really hard to start. It kept kind of disintegrating on us. Once we managed to get them rolling though, things went a little smoother and our balls managed to get big enough. By the time it was time for the head, the sun was going down and it was getting colder, so the snow was way less sticky and we had a heck of a time packing one together. Then we got some carrots for the mouth and ears, charcoal briquettes for the eyes, a stick for a nose, some cow parsnip stems for arms, and an oil funnel for a hat. Jessica found a scarf in the closet that someone had left here to complete the look. Actually, the scarf was the first thing Jessica went and got. It seemed so perfect! Earlier today we also saw an adorable beautiful ermine leaping around in the snow, hunting. It would completely disappear under the snow and then pop up in another spot, almost like it was swimming!]

And the final product!

2009-11-13T10:19:00.000-07:00

We were greeted this morning by flurries and a pretty dusting of snow on the ground. This was part of a larger storm that was supposed to dump a foot or too but ended up passing us by. According to Billy, this might be the snow, meaning that it might stick!

Luckily, I had just finished a pair of mittens for myself! This mitten is knitted off a traditional Latvian pattern from the district of Kurzeme (from Lizbeth Upitis' Latvian Mitten book). I've been working off and on (but mostly off) on these suckers since last winter. The red stripey yarn came from a store in London.

And another view

On cold mornings I'm so happy to have my French Press cozy to keep my coffee warm. I made it this summer out of my hand-spun yarn (the brown nubby stuff) and beautiful yarn that Carolyn brought me from France (the blue-green). It's just a tube that I felted, but the two yarns felted differently, and this is what I ended up with....

A knitting friend commented that it looks like something the Weasleys (from Harry Potter) would have in their house. I have to agree.

Bagels!

2009-11-06T11:36:00.001-07:00

We made bagels yesterday! They ended up being more work than either of us thought they would be. I used the recipe from Baking With Julia (which I just got from the library) because it had very detailed descriptions and even photos of how to shape them. First, I made the dough (a pretty standard bread dough). Then it had two risings- the second of which was in the fridge.

[T-it was fun to poke]

It got a little overexcited, thanks to the altitude. Then half of the dough got shaped into bagels.

Once that half was bagel-shaped, they were boiled for a few minutes.

Post boiling:

They got an egg wash and toppings (fried onions, sesame seeds, salt). After baking, they looked like this.

Here is one of the sliced sesame seed bagels. They're very tasty, but maybe not worth all of the work.

[T- I found them pretty delicious, especially fresh out of the oven, but it was the most work of anything we've baked so far, I'd say. Also, so many dishes from the process, many of which were le grodos. I made a cheesy omelet breakfast sandwich with one, and it was good! Don't tell Julia though, I didn't use copious amounts of butter for cooking the omelet. I also didn't manage to make it in 15 seconds and I didn't manage to flip it over solely through one handed pan wrangling. I used a spatula]

2009-10-30T21:12:00.001-06:00

Thayer and I were watching TV tonight when we heard a really strange noise. It was a strange repeated metallic 'plink'. This was not the first time that our nighttime television was interrupted by strange noises- remember woodrat? So Thayer went to investigate and as he was about to climb the stairs, he discovered the source of the noise.

This little mousie was cleaning all the bait (organic nutella) off our used mousetraps. We had piled them up on the stairs, ready to go up to the bedroom, where we've been catching tons of mice. He was so stunned by the flashlight that Thayer was holding that I was able to scoop him up into a tupperware.

I walked him over to a nearby unoccupied cabin, hoping that he would make that his new home. He'll probably just show up again in a few days..... oh, well.

[T- he was a really tiny little guy. Maybe that's why he was so gullible.
In other animal sightings news, when we were coming back from Gunnison on Tuesday as I was driving the dirt road from Mount CB to Gothic, it was snowing a little and the road was all white. Jessica, who was looking out hte window, noticed a round black thing sitting in the snow on the side of the road and made me pull over. It was a baby porcupine! It was a little guy, only about the size of a basketball (N Am. porcupines get over three feet long and can weigh up to 40 pounds!). He was a little leery of us, and kept turning to display his quilly butt to us, but when we split up and each stood several feet to either side of him, he got a little less cautious. He stood up and turned and looked at each of us, and then decided to (unbelievably clumsily) make his way down the hill off the road. His tail was still really little, it looked like a Glyptodon tail and hadn't achieved the big dragging paddle shape of adult porcupines. He almost rolled down the hill at one point, we were amazed he could even stay on his feet, he waddled so badly. We didn't have the camera though. Bully on us, eh?]

More snow

2009-10-28T17:09:00.002-06:00

Gothic was blanketed in a couple of inches of fluffy snow today, so Thayer and I tested out our cross country skis. It was lots of fun, even if we fell a couple of times. Living on a hill has a few distinct disadvantages when it comes to my klutzy cross country skiing. I'm sure that we'll get the hang of it eventually!

[T - I had to take the first picture, in case you're wondering why I'm not wearing mittens. I didn't really ski without mittens. My hands would have been very snowy. The skiing was fun, we kind of milled around Gothic. It's not deep enough to be very smooth skiing yet, and bushes and grass are still kinda in the way, but it was decent on the trails. I only fell down a couple times, although I wasn't graceful]

As we were sitting in front of Gates, the two gray jays came over to investigate. Remember that you can click this photo to see a bigger image!

This afternoon, I made some oatmeal sourdough bread. I used Betsy Oppeneer's recipe for 13-grain bread from The Bread Book. Thayer and I kinda changed the recipe to use oatmeal (not 13 grain cereal) and added sorghum syrup in addition to honey. It turned out really well. The cabin was pretty chilly today, so I was worried about rising, but we just set the bowl near wood stove and it rose nicely.

[T - the bread is delicious and unique, especially lightly salted]

Weather Station

2009-10-27T10:02:00.002-06:00

We woke up this morning to a chilly cabin and a brilliant pink sunrise. This photo doesn't do it justice.\

[T - I snapped the picture too late, after almost all the dawn pink had faded away. There was a very small window to really capture it]

After a quick breakfast (leftover muffins, toast, and coffee), we hiked up to the weather station to do our biweekly maintenance (we trade off with John). The weather station is up on a little hill.

It's a little box- but it's heated! I recorded lots of numbers onto sheets. Very exciting!

Here's a view of the ozone filter (on the right) and the wind speed/direction monitor (on the left). They're on top of the weather station.

The ozone filter gets swapped out every week. The tower is lowered by a rope.

The rain gauge and precipitation collector bucket are on top of this scaffolding.

Performing tests to make sure the precipitation is recorded correctly.

And we're done!

And now, we're off to Gunnison to pick up some more food supplies before it snows. We're supposed to get a major storm tonight/tomorrow/the next day!

Yet another post about baking

2009-10-26T11:08:00.000-06:00

This morning, I had freshly baked sourdough muffins with my coffee! Fresh and hot out of the oven, they were absolutely delicious. I used Betsy's recipe from The Bread Book. The dough is mixed up in the evening, left to sit and ripen over night, and then spooned into muffin tins and popped into the oven. They bake for just 20 minutes and then- voila- fresh muffins!

They were great on their own, with an interesting slightly sourdough taste and a nice spongy texture, but they also would be great to smear things on. Thayer thinks they'd be great covered in butter (but then again, what isn't). I think a tart orange marmalade would be fab.

And they were really nice with coffee. The cabin temp was about 54 F when we woke up, so warm breakfast was greatly appreciated.

You must think that all we do is bake. It's not true, I promise! The thing is, our other activities aren't particularly blogable. I'm knitting a lot of Christmas presents at the moment, and since their recipients read the blog, I can't show you pictures. We're doing grad school apps at the moment, and that's just not very interesting to most people. But maybe you'd like to know where we're applying? So far, it looks like I'm applying to the University of Oklahoma, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the University of Minnesota at Duluth, and Cornell University. And it looks like Thayer is applying to Michigan State University, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Minnesota at Duluth. These lists aren't quite finalized, and we're still waiting to hear back from some folks, but it gives you an idea.

And we're reading. Right now, we're reading aloud Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I'm reading The Great Mortality: An intimate history of the Black Death, the most devastating plague of all time, by John Kelly. Kelly tells the story of how the plague impacted (mostly) European cities and why its impact was so severely dramatic (I'll give you a hint- marmots). I'm also reading English Bread and Yeast Cookery by Elizabeth David, which I've talked about in previous posts (and was suggested by Scott). Thayer is reading The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood. We haven't forgotten your recommendations for reading- those are on our lists, too! We've also become slight news junkies- Thayer reads the BBC news and I the NYTimes, among other things. As we go about our very fast-paced days, we're listening to NPR and classical public radio (Chicago and Minneapolis).

Bread that actually turned out!

2009-10-24T18:36:00.000-06:00

Today, excited by my recent acquisition of Elizabeth David's English Bread and Yeast Cookery, I decided to make a nice loaf of bread. I used her recipe for 'a basic loaf'. It turned out wonderfully! Thayer thinks it's the best basic loaf we've ever made. It's light and has a nice and rich flavor to it, considering that it's just flour, water, and yeast. My shaping leaves a little something to be desired, but otherwise... mmmm.

Also, my mom sent me this pretty little rock that she found on the shore of Lake Michigan. Doesn't it make a cool necklace?

Epic Fail

2009-10-23T16:49:00.005-06:00

On Wednesday night, I started a sponge for some German rye sourdough bread (from Oppenneer's The Bread Book). My sponge was happy and bubbly by Thursday morning. We left to help the RMBL office with some mailings that ended up taking about 4.5 hours.

[T-Sarah put us to work stuffing envelopes with personalized mailers to all the people who love RMBL. I was pretty antsy by the time we were done, but at least we survived without going completely batty, which I can only imagine Sarah would have without a bunch of volunteer help. Also, she gave us blueberry muffins, so no harm no foul. Om nom. Oh, and if you are reading this and you got one of RMBL's mailers, you should stuff the return envelope full of money, because we worked hard to make sure you got a mailer with your name on it and everything!]

We also had some food in town, went to the library (where I picked up Elizabeth David's English Bread and Yeast Cookery), and picked up our mail (including my x-country skis!). I also searched for candy corn in Clark's, the little grocery store, but in vain!

[T - we did get candy at the bank though. We dropped off some deposits for RMBL at two of the local banks, and I got an orange dum-dum at one and a box of Halloween nerds at another! There was a big gummi fly I wanted to try, but I love nerds too much to pass them up, and in reality, it probably wouldn't have been very good. It was just so enticing. Also, as a result of the high altitude, its wrapper was puffed up like a balloon, which was probably part of the reason why I was so tempted to get it.]

Upon concluding our errands and returning to Gothic, I started my rye bread. Everything was going fine until I had shaped it into two little freestanding loaves to let it rise for the last time. They simply would not rise up- only out! The dough rose just fine in the bowl the first time. I suspect that my dough wasn't sturdy/thick enough for freestanding loaves. Oh well. It was baked and cooled last night.

This morning, I sliced off a piece and popped it into my mouth. It was really REALLY strange tasting. Honestly, the only way I could describe it to Thayer at first was 'weird, very weird'. The recipe had called for 3 tablespoons caraway seeds, which, at the time, seemed like too many. It was too many. As Thayer said, it tasted like sticking your face into an Indian spice rack. Also, the dough did not rise enough. It was really heavy tasting bread. I don't know, maybe it's edible with copious amounts of good butter. But it certainly is not tasty. We're going to try to make them into bread crumbs and croutons. I think it might work for croutons on our Indian inspired stir-fries and soups.

[T- The bread got lodged in my teeth too, so I couldn't escape the sensation that I had just eaten a package of nightmarishly caraway-infused paste. I don't really know what the bread is like, just because you can't notice anything around its...unique flavor. I think that as bread crumbs, it may well add a delightful flavor to a dish.]

[T - today we also helped out Jenny (science director at RMBL) fill in plots that had been dug out as part of research on an invasive plant. They were investigating whether a very thorough soil disruption and displacement will prevent regrowth, and as a result, there were twenty plots with the top 5-10 inches dug out, and we grabbed some shovels and put the dirt back into the plots. Just some practice for grad school...

At any rate, it was nice. We started off our day with some exercise, and it was a clear sunny day, but cool enough that the shoveling didn't get hot. I also find physical labor like that very refreshing (for a while) and we finished filling in the plots about the same time that I was tired of shoveling dirt, so it worked out well! Also, Jenny appreciated the help, and J and I have a fair amount of time on our hands, after all. I was just glad I wasn't the one shoveling them out in the first place, as the dirt gets very packed around here and is absolutely full of rocks, all the way up to shovel-blade sized boulders. Apparently, after they did the first few by hand, they realized how insanely difficult it was and moved on to a more mechanized approach.

As a COMPLETELY unrelated side note note, I also wanted to add a very special tag that for those of you who don't know, sourdough mothers form a delightful liquid on the top of them as they sit. Now, as we all know (or should), the metabolic byproduct of yeast as it digests sugar in a restricted oxygen environment is ethanol, so this liquid is actually alcoholic. This liquid is called 'hooch'. The starter has about a thick cm of it on top- J takes a perverse amount of pleasure in referring to it as a 'hoochie mama'. I tolerate it, out of the kindness of my heart. Apparently, in the pioneer days, desperate for anything remotely entertaining, people drank it right off the starter when it formed. Jessica and I have yet to try it, but we are curious about just how foul it is. We will keep you posted.]

Some very sour dough

2009-10-21T11:59:00.000-06:00

Over the past 10 days, I've been meticulously following James Beard's recipe for sourdough. For those of you unfamiliar with the process, you let a milk/flour/sugar/yeast mixture sit on the counter and get really foul for about a week- that's your starter. Then, you use a cup of your starter and mix it with flour and more yeast and - tah dah! Sourdough. Here's a view of my starter

And, after three risings, here are my loaves.

At this point, the process started to go wrong. Using our sharpest knife (which is still pretty darn dull) I tried to make cuts in the loaves. Then they collapsed. Seriously. It was pretty depressing. So then I tried to put the loaves into the oven, and, being me, I dropped them. Dropped them! I put them back on the pan, shoved them into the oven, and tried to ignore the fact that one of the loaves now had marks from where it had fallen onto the oven rack. Well, about 35 minutes later, I pulled these out of the oven. Not ruined at all, despite my best efforts. But see how the one on the left has those imprints? Oven rack.

They're quite tasty- not too sour. Thayer actually likes them, even though he doesn't normally like sourdough. And now that I have a good starter, I can make sourdough like a maniac!

Mmmmm coffee, nutella, and sourdough tartines.

2009-10-19T16:40:00.003-06:00

There is a pair of gray jays who often come around our cabin in the late afternoon. They make funny jay-ish noises. You can listen to their calls here. This is't a fabulous picture, but they seem to know when I have a camera in my hands and object to having their picture taken.

[T- they're bigger than they look in this picture. They're fairly stocky birds, and are about the size of a dove. Definitely bigger than the blue jays you see around the midwest. There aren't any blue jays here, actually, but we do have Stellar's Jays, which are also a little bigger, but not as big as gray jays. They're absolutely beautiful, and kind of iridescent. Our first experience with the gray jays was out hiking, when we stopped to sit on a log and a pair of them flew over and peered at us suspiciously from a low branch of a tree. Later we read that they often poke around campgrounds or picnic grounds looking for tasty things people have left. That pair was probably disappointed, as we didn't have any food. Speaking of birds, we will have a special opportunity that isn't really available outside of Alaska, except for here - ptarmigans visit the area in the winter! We're both super excited to see them, although supposedly it's actually mostly terrifying since you'll be skiing along and previously invisible birds explode out of the snow right in front of you.]

Not much has been happening around here. Gothic is now home to only Billy, John, Thayer, and myself. It's very quiet, for the most part. We've been helping a little with tasks that need to get finished before winter hits. We cleaned up two cabins- Barclay and Maroon. Barclay was renovated this summer, so we helped tidy, sweep, and remove cobwebs.

[T - it was terrifyingly dusty, as you may be familiar with if you've ever seen anything being renovated or constructed out of wood. Jessica attacked the ceiling and walls with a broom while I zoomed around with a 15 gallon shop vac sucking up copious amounts of wood dust and debris]

Maroon cabin is a newly constructed cabin that is rented out through the winter for cross country skiers. Part of our job this winter will be to keep Maroon clean after skiers have used it. On Saturday, Thayer and I helped John to take down some of the fencing around RMBL. There are extensive fences surrounding all of the RMBL property to keep out the cows during their fall romp through the valley. Unfortunately, though, the massive amounts of snow we get can really damage our fences and gates unless if they're dismantled in the fall. The cows have now left, so, we disassembled the barbed-wire and high-tension fencing on a beautiful fall day.
[T- it was hard work! Doing anything off the road is hard work here. Trudging around in the woods and fields is a workout. We also saw a pretty little waterfall that has cut a diagonal shelf out of the side of a rock face. It looks fake, but it's not. I also saw little fishies in the river! I don't know what they were, as they had no desire to be examined closely and I was supposed to be working anyway. Oh! We also walked past some beaver ponds and saw a lodge in the distance, and saw quite a few beaver-assaulted aspens as well. I don't suppose we'll be seeing any beavers until next spring, as I suspect they're lying low with the onset of cold weather.]

It really is fall around here. All of our aspens have lost their leaves, as you can see here

Knitting

2009-10-13T18:45:00.002-06:00

As I'm in between some bigger knitting projects and waiting for some yarn I ordered, I decided to start working on little Christmas ornaments. Some of these will probably go as gifts, and some will decorate our cabin. Here are two of them, both knit out of my handspun yarn.

As you can see in the video below, it snowed quite a bit today! There were maybe three inches of accumulation. By late afternoon, much of it had melted, but there is still some on the ground!

[T- we also did the weather station today, for the first time on our own without John supervising. It went well, and we mailed off a sample of our snow for the weather station people. Actually, it was melted snow, so we mailed them a jar of water]

Snow!

2009-10-13T18:39:00.000-06:00

Pita Bread!

2009-10-11T10:43:00.000-06:00

We made pita bread last night. As usual, we used one of James Beard's recipes. It called for 'hard wheat' but we subbed in some all purpose mixed with whole wheat. First we made 8 little balls of dough.

Then we rolled them out flat and coated the bottom with ground up oatmeal (i.e. cornmeal substitute).

We baked them for just about 7 minutes. Pita bread!

They turned out pretty darn good, although a little lumpy and 'homemade' looking. We used some of our bulk falafel mix to make some little falafel patties. And voila... dinner!

In other news, Thayer and I are working on the grad school application process, which is taking up a surprising amount of time. Currently, we're contacting potential advisers and waiting for responses. Wish us luck!

2009-10-07T10:28:00.001-06:00

These mule deer (and many others) have been munching on our 'backyard' pretty regularly. Hopefully they're fattening up for winter.
[T-they walked right past our picture window the other day, and were sort of confused as to what was going on, but they were pretty sure we weren't trying to eat them]

Two nights ago, we made homemade refried beans for dinner. For how simple they were (mashed up pinto beans with onions and a little spice), they were delicious. We made burritos with some of the tortillas that my Grandma sent.

[T-they were sooooooooo gooooood!]

As yesterday was Tuesday, we did weather station maintenance with John. It went well, and I think we're getting the hang of it! Unfortunately, the bucket that collects rain/snow was totally frozen through and we had to wait for it to thaw before we could pour the water sample into a bottle. In the meantime, John helped us to collect this

A freaking HUGE television. It didn't look that big (okay, it looked big, but not THIS big) until we got it into the cabin and compared its size with our furniture. It now takes up the entire wall where we used to have a bookshelf. We watched some Gilmore Girls on it last night- just to test it out, of course- and it is great. I'm still mildly alarmed by its size and feel like I should be watching sports on it or something (isn't that why people have big tvs?).

[T-it's got mundo glare problems during the day, but it works great at night! Oh, and P.S. if anyone out there reading our blog lives near a Penzy's (hi mom!), we're going through spices faster than anticipated, and if one felt like sending a package of fun things, some Penzy's spices would be great, especially fox point seasoning!]

Success!

2009-10-05T09:41:00.000-06:00

We caught the second woodrat on Saturday! He was very cute, although I forgot to take a picture of him for the blog, because we handed him off before I had expected. J and I were out getting cows out of Gothic and John stopped by in the Subaru, and he was heading into town, so I gave him woodrat to drop off since he was already going that way. Hopefully we will not get any more woodrat visitors...

woodrat 2

2009-10-02T18:35:00.000-06:00

T - last night at 4 in the morning, J and I woke up to a really loud thumping noise of an unidentified nature. After a few seconds of us both sitting up and clarifying that it was not imaginary and agreeing that it, unfortunately, DID sound as if it came from inside, I grudgingly agreed to get dressed and investigate. It was, after all, a rather alarmingly loud thumping, and I was convinced I heard some other scratchy noises after it. I was very much hoping that a certain mr. bear was not trying to stay in our cabin with us, so I started by investigating upstairs locations. Did anything tip over in the closet? No, it didn't appear so. Nothing looked out of place in the bedroom. Was there anything going on in the spare bedroom? Hmmm, doesn't look like it.
I was holding an electric lantern, and shining it about for signs of anything, and looked at the weird unfinished space behind the desk in the spare bedroom. Well, as a matter of fact, it looked as if the little pieces of two by fours I had set up before had fallen down, which explained the very loud thumping noise. Pieces of lumber falling on open wood floor will make very disturbing noises indeed. For those of you who don't remember why there were stacked two by fours behind the desk in the unfinished space with the water heater in the spare bedroom, I will refresh your memory!
A couple weeks ago or so, when Jessica and I chased woodrat#2 around and attempted to catch him, the slippery little devil ran up the stairs and into the spare bedroom into the unfinished space. It's actually only a few feet wide, because it's the area behind where the bathroom wall cuts into the spare bedroom, so I was able to use a big piece of cardboard tucked behind the desk to seal off the space. Since we wanted to catch the woodrat and not just seal him off, I built a little ramp from stacked two by fours that were sitting in there to give woodrat a way to get out of the space, but since it led up to the desk and then he would have to jump down from the desk to go anywhere, he wouldn't have a way back in to elude our capture attempts.
SO, ANYWAY, it was this two by four ramp that had fallen down. I turned on the crawlspace light, and, sitting in the corner, was a very confused woodrat. he/she just kind of sat there and looked at me, as if to say "I was minding my own business climbing on a nice piece of wood that looked like it led to fun interesting places and then it fell down all of a sudden and I was so confused and then a giant monster came and turned on all the bright lights and I can't see and what on EARTH IS GOING ON?!"
He sat there long enough for me to call J in and admire the little troublemaker, but soon after that he decided that all the staring and pointing and commenting on the cuteness of his furry tail was really too much attention and ran away back into a hidey-hole. I put a live trap kinda wedged in there so when he comes back it will seem to be a most exciting place to investigate, and we'll see if we have any luck this time.

Scat!

2009-10-02T11:37:00.001-06:00

I wasn't even finished with my morning coffee when Thayer looked out the window and informed me that we had cows in our backyard. So on went the scarf, hat, and shoes. We managed to get the two cows and two calves (big ones, not too young) out the gate without too much problem, except for when the cows decided to run over to the stream to get a drink of water.

On our way back, I noticed some new scat (i.e. poop) on our front porch. Thayer had given me the Petersen's Guide to Animal Tracks (including footprints and scat), so I broke it out and started identifying our mystery poop.

This one appears to be porcupine scat.

Here's a closeup of one of them.

And this, which we found around the side of the cabin, is most likely mule deer poop.

[T - identifying animal poop is a rather ambiguous experience]

And Thayer and I have been trying our hands at carving shawl pins (for the shawls I knit). Here are some of them. The top two were carved by Thayer, and the bottom one by me.

A close-up of my pin.

[T- my pins didn't earn closeups, due to camera control bias]

2009-10-01T09:53:00.001-06:00

Yesterday, we woke up to low hanging clouds, brisk wind (gusts up to 45 mph), and rain.

And this morning, the mountain was covered in snow! We're still getting some snow flurries now.

We have a little bit of news of happenings from Tuesday. At 8, we met John at the lab at gathered up supplies for tending the weather station. We hiked up a little hill to the weather station, which is a small white box of a building with all sorts of instruments sticking off the top. The procedure took about 2.5 hours and included collecting a bucket full of last week's precipitation. Thayer and I will be alternating weeks with John throughout the winter, and it will be quite an adventure once more snow starts piling in.

[T- it's kind of fun; there's lots of writing down things and looking at instruments. I'm sure the charm will wear off as the novelty does, but it's kinda cool that we're one of the few places that maintains these weather stations during the winter too. Apparently most of them close down with the snow]

So we got back to Gates cabin around 10:30 and had breakfast and read, enjoying the nice weather. Around 2 pm, I was looking out the bedroom window when I noticed a few cows on RMBL property across the street. I informed Thayer, and we started getting ready to head down to chase them out. I was filling a glass of water when . . . blurb blurb spurt . . . our water shut off. With further impetus to head down the hill, we laced up our shoes and headed down. Billy was already in the midst of trying to shoo the 4 cows and we joined him. It wasn't nearly as bad as last time and was over relatively quickly. When we told billy about the water not working, he walked us over to the pump house. For some reason, the pump had gone off, and a manual reset started it working just fine. Unfortunately, since our cabin is up on a hill, if the pump goes off, the water drains away from us. Our water has been working fine since then, so it doesn't seem like anything serious happened (a pipe leak, out of water, or broken pump).

Crested Butte and Gunnison

2009-09-28T19:17:00.001-06:00

Last night, Thayer helped me to make chocolate biscotti. We used the recipe here. Our motivation was the large amounts of cocoa powder left behind by previous occupants. We ended up using some of the dagoba organic cocao powder, which was just heavenly. Neither of us have much experience making biscotti, but I think they turned out pretty darn good. Here's a photo of the logs before their first baking.

[T-I personally think we should have just eaten the batter and called it a day, but that probably wouldn't have been the best choice in the long run. Also, the lumps in the lower roll are cranberries, not rat poo. I know you were thinking it.]
After baking for a bit, we let the logs cool and sliced them into strips, which were then baked again (making them biscotti!). Here's a photo of the completed product, as part of my breakfast this morning. Mmmmmm....

[T- I had one too and it was really good, although I somehow didn't manage to think of dipping it in my morning tea, which would have been superb. I will tomorrow though. There are quite a few left. If anyone likes the idea of sending us things, baked goods like cookies are a tremendous idea. J's mom sent us pumpkin muffins and we ate the whole bag in a day.]
Today we went into a nearby town, Gunnison, to pick up some groceries and Walmarty things. It was about a 40 minute drive or so, through some very pretty country. I think I've mentionned that our aspens around Gothic aren't turning 'right' this year. I happen to think they're pretty, but the aspens along our drive put them to shame. These ones were flaming orange, but the best that ours have managed is a greenish yellow.

[T- first we stopped in Crested Butte on official caretaker business! Billy had some paperwork to send to the office, since it's moved from Gothic to Crested Butte for the winter, and we dropped that off and chatted for a little bit, where we got our SECOND official winter caretaker business assignment for the day - pick up a nametag from a shop in Gunnison while we were down there. They keep us pretty busy here...]

In Walmart, we got all sorts of fun things, like mouse-proof bins and sand paper! The grocery store was a little more exciting, with gummy bears and cheese and cauliflower for me and frozen juice and cheese crackers and bulk cookie cereal for Thayer. Yeah, we went a little crazy.

[T- I also got boiled linseed oil as a nice neutral wood finisher that I can use indoors without killing us. We also got some hoisin sauce, stir fry sauce, and sri racha (whatever, that was a total guess on spelling) hot sauce for cooking. We already have soy sauce, ponzu, and oyster sauce. I've been making stir fries lately and enjoying it a lot]

On our drive home, we stopped in Crested Butte and had burritos at Teocali Tamale.

[T- I think it should be called Crested Burrito, but whatever. They were delicious either way, so I'm not going to argue. They also have mahi mahi tacos I'm going to have to try, but I just got the delicious veggie burrito this time.]

The weather was gorgeous today- really amazing- 70's and brilliantly sunny, so we walked around town for a bit. On our walk, we remembered that we had been meaning to visit the Crested Butte library, so we wandered over there. It's a wonderful little library and they kindly gave us library cards even though we don't have a permanent street address. We explained that we were winter caretakers at RMBL and they laughed and said that we would definitely need books! Thayer and I each got a few books. I'm reading Being Caribou by Karsten Heuer right now, and I am loving it so much. It tells the story of two people who follow (on foot, mostly) the caribou migration to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge throughout five months and 1,500 km. It's a quick read, so if you're looking for some fun nature reading, you should give it a try. I should also mention that there's a documentary that tells the same story. The husband and wife who undertook this are a writer and filmmaker, respectively.

[T- I just got a trashy fantasy book in the series I've been reading. I'm also reading a Best American Short Stories collection, and will soon read The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood]

While at the library, we discovered that we will be able to interlibrary loan nearly anything we want throughout the winter!

[T- we're a part of the Marmot library system, which uses trained marmots with books tied to their backs for interlibrary loan deliveries. The system is very, very inefficient in the winter. It really is called the marmot library network, though.]

So, with this in mind, I'd like to solicit book suggestions. Is there anything you've read recently and loved? Or maybe a favorite book that I haven't read yet? I appreciate any and all suggestions!

2009-09-26T18:08:00.000-06:00

The weather was surprising and warm today! So warm that the butterflies were confused! This one landed on my foot while I was absorbing the sun and making the vitamin D.
[T - the butterfly is licking sweat off J's foot; you can see the proboscis unfurled and poking Jessica. It has pretty orange and brown patterns on the top of the wings, but displays excellent cryptic coloration on the bottom. Very bark/leaflike!]

And, as promised, we'd like to share our creepy basement/cellar and poop-filled attic. The door to our basement is in our 'hobby' room next to our front door. Here's a view of it.
[T- the jars in the upper corner are J's olives]
It opens and there are stairs! (exciting, I know)
After climbing down the stairs,
you see this
Seriously! That's a real polar bear head (it's even moldy). The cellar is chilly, so I suppose a polar bear fits? Who knows what the previous occupants were thinking. And the rest of the cellar:
It runs under the entire house, as far as we can tell. It's mostly dirt 'floors' and empty boxes.
[T- as far as I can tell, it's actually sealed off really well. I couldn't find any signs of animal life down here. We found moldy books down here, some of which we brought up to air out on account of them actually being worth reading. There were other less appealing books that were insufficiently charismatic to escape their cold dark moldy despair.]
And the attic! The door is in our bedroom.
It's one of the pull down type doors, with stairs and everything
[T- I had a non-blurry photo of J doing this too, but she elected for the blurry one instead. Something about it being hard to tell with tiny thumbnails and whatnot]
Here it is. It also has empty boxes.
There's also a futon frame, an empty suitcase, some roll-up padding, a bucket, and a polar fleece sweater filled with rat-poo. It seems that we found woodrat #2's bed. Charming, no?
[T- we also helped Billy lay some phone line to his cabin today. Apparently rodents got to it in too many places and patches weren't cutting it anymore, so he decided to lay a whole new one, and he's going to tie it up off the ground to discourage critters and whatnot from disrupting important phone calls. We mostly just stood at strategic points and kept the line feeding out. It was not very challenging, but today was an absolutely beautiful sunny day so even just standing around was fun.
We also made acorn squash and white bean soup! It was pureed and yummy!
Oh, also, we ordered a few more things with John's bulk food order and they came today, so that's really exciting. We got better than bullion, loose tea, and frozen pizzas.]

A Tea Cozy

2009-09-25T14:37:00.001-06:00

Thayer and I often have a pot of tea in the afternoon. Unfortunately, the cabin is usually relatively chilly by then, and our tea gets cold quickly. A crocheted solution!
I used some scrap yarn and whipped this up two days ago. I think it should work pretty well. Thayer picked out the yarn and made the pom-pom on top. He's very proud of it. There might eventually be some crocheted flowers on it, if I can figure out how to make those.

We've been pretty quiet on the blog recently because we really haven't been doing much of note. But stay tuned for a visit to our creepy cellar and attic!

2009-09-22T09:00:00.000-06:00

We are so lucky to be in such an amazingly beautiful place.
This is the view that greeted me from our bedroom window.
And here is the view from our front door.
(remember that you can see a larger view of the photos by clicking on them)

2009-09-21T09:20:00.000-06:00

It's snowing!

Lots of Food!

2009-09-20T09:38:00.000-06:00

Yesterday morning (at 8- too early!), Thayer and I drove into Crested Butte. CB is about a twenty minute drive from Gothic and is an adorable Colorado-touristy town. Lots of restaurants, coffee shops (many roast their own coffee), silver- and gold-smiths, and outdoor outfitters.
[T - it's about 8 streets wide by 10 streets long or something. Very cute and small. They also have a big store that just sells fancypants sunglasses. I was impressed. Also while we were in town, we went into the little local grocery store and got eggs and carrots and a fireplace lighter and soap. Some stuff is really expensive, but vegetarian organic eggs were only like 3 dollars a dozen! The cashier told us that some people seem to have problems with those fireplace lighters at the altitude here, but it lit just fine for me. Maybe I got lucky, or maybe as it runs lower on fuel it will be more frustrating]
In front of the local health food store, we located the truck and truck-driver of our natural foods bulk order. It was like Christmas- so many delightful boxes full of delicious treats. We loaded our Subaru full of boxes before walking over to Camp 4 Coffee. I had one of the most delicious cafe au laits ever. It was such a treat after being in our cabin for two weeks.
[T- it wasn't quite as exciting for me. Mostly I just got to hold it and spill coffee on myself as we drove down the bumpy dirt road home]
Here's a view of most of our loot (excluding frozen things, which had already been put away).
And a select list of some of our goodies:
-one case of Yorkshire Gold Tea
-one case of Newman's Own Ginger-O's
-5 lbs. of pistachios
-5 lbs. of walnuts
-2 cases chocolate almond milk
-one case organic "nutella"
[T- I can't eat it though, it turns out - it has peanut traces. The Kroeger one we bought in Gunnison is safe though, and J is more into nutella than me anyway so it all works out]
Yes, we made out pretty well. Don't worry, there are healthy foods in that pile, too. All of this food is in preparation for winter, which is definitely coming quickly now. We have cold rainstorms every afternoon, sometimes with sleet or hail. The small bit of morning sunshine is doing less and less to take the chill off the cold air.
[T- we have yet to see the sun so far today. It's quite chilly]
The marmots seem to agree with us, as we're seeing very little of them now. Sometimes they'll be out in the morning sun munching on thistle, but they're spending much more time in their burrows. Soon, they'll be hunkering down for the winter in their social burrows (an article about social hibernation in yellow-bellied marmots) and we won't see them at all. The aspens are changing colors in funny little patches. Some have lost all their leaves and some are still green (microclimates!).
And we finally used our woodstove for the first time yesterday.
[T- some of the wood was a little wet, but we coaxed it into going eventually. A bellows would have been handy, but I couldn't find one so I gave my lungs a workout instead. Once it gets going in that stove, it puts out a delightful amount of heat. That stylish window screening you see leaning against it is the technologically advanced ember guard I was using while we had the stove open. It actually worked very well, even if it wasn't intended for said use. In the pile of paper recycling you can see to the left of the stove, J found a Gunnison newspaper that was all hilarious postings for things like "beautiful donkeys for sale" and "found: one blue fiberglass oar on fifth street." One guy advertised that he would be willing to help elk hunters carry their elk kill in exchange for some delicious elk meat. Another ad was posted by someone who was interested in purchasing an AK-47 Assault Rifle and meteorites. Yep, that's pretty much all the ad said. He wanted an assault rifle, and also, meteorites.]
And speaking of preparing for winter, I'm working on a pair of knee socks with some sock wool that Thayer gave me. Here are their feet, complete with heels. I've now picked up those stitches around the open part and am knitting some legs onto them. It's a new pattern at which all knitters should take a look.

2009-09-17T17:55:00.000-06:00

For Thayer's birthday yesterday, we made english muffins and black bean chili. Both recipes turned out absolutely delicious, and left us with quite a bit of food in the freezer. The black bean chili was made using Thayer's recipe, which is pretty straight-forward but really tasty. Maybe, if you're lucky, he'll share it with you at some point. [T- I dunno about that...] The muffin making was quite an effort. I used the yeast-leavened recipe from Oppeneer's 'The Bread Book'. They had two risings and were then cooked on a 'griddle' (i.e. on unevenly-heated skillets on our electric stove). In honor of Thayer's love of cheese, half of them had cheddar cheese kneaded into the dough [T - they didn't really taste obviously of cheese, but the cheesy ones were savory in a way that was really different from the regular ones. Both the cheesed and the plain english muffins really popped with some butter]. Since we didn't have any cornmeal to dust them with to prevent sticking (and couldn't very well run off to the store) we used ground-up oatmeal, which gave them an interesting and yummy flavor. They turned out very similar to good store-bought muffins.
Here are some of the muffins cooking on the stove:
A finished muffin (on its side) [T-they aren't actually egg-shaped. I dunno what's up with the perspective in this picture]
The entire batch of muffins (most of them ended up in our freezer): [T- actually, there were more than this. Probably close to a dozen of them had been eaten already, because I know I had quite a few, and Jessica had a couple, too]
And finally, putting butter on a muffin fresh off the griddle:
Just as we were finishing up with the muffins and preparing for our chili, I looked out our window and saw this: [T- I spotted them first, and told Jessica she should probably look out the window, because...]
That, dear reader, is one of the 10 cows that had gotten onto RMBL property. Since RMBL is surrounded with public land (lots of National Forest), cattle regularly make there way along the road through Gothic on their way to grazing. There are sturdy fences lining the road for the very purpose of keeping out the cows. Unfortunately, fences work much more poorly when gates are left open. We had been told earlier this month that part of our job was to chase out the cattle if they were to make their way into Gothic. So, quickly turning off ovens and burners, Thayer and I laced up our shoes and headed out our door to chase the cattle back through the gate and off the property. As you probably know, neither Thayer nor I has extensive cattle-chasing experience, and this event was correspondingly interesting and frustrating for us. We learned that cows are big and can move much much faster than a human over heterogeneous terrain (and probably homogeneous terrain as well, but we didn't get to experience that). The cows led us on a merry chase, lasting for at least an hour and a half- all over the RMBL property. They seemed to purposefully choose the paths that were more of a pain-in-the-butt for us. But, it felt pretty good when we finally got them out the gate! [T- three gates had been left open somehow, so no wonder the cows found a way in. The cows actually headed up the hills to the north of Gothic until they hit the fence up there, and then we had to herd them along all the way down to the west fence, and then not much longer after that there was a gate we could put them out of. It had also just rained, so everything was slick and muddy]

Yesterday I finished a pair of mittens for Thayer, just in time for his birthday and with plenty of time before the cold weather sets in. I'm still planning to add a liner to keep them extra warm, but here they are (next to some pretty fall-colored aspens):
As we mentioned in a previous post, we've been slowly stacking our wood in preparation for winter. Today, we finished! This is what's left of the old pile on our front 'lawn'. [T-the voles living in the wood pile thought I was just about the most terrifying thing that had ever happened to them, as I kept slowly making their house smaller and smaller as they were stranded in the middle of a big dirt patch with bright sunlight. Leaving the woodpile was too terrifying, but staying in was too terrifying as well. Then again, voles must spend most of their lives in abject terror if you think about it. Eventually, they got up the gumption to run into the grass, except for one that stayed until the very last load of firewood. As I dropped off the last pieces, he shot out from under the bits of bark he was hiding under. He's just lucky I didn't happen to accidentally step on him - voles have pretty terrible eyesight]
And to end this post, a cute golden-mantled ground squirrel! [T- I don't know why he was so interested in the camera, but it made for some good pictures]

Commenting

2009-09-16T20:58:00.000-06:00

Hey! If you would like to leave us a comment (and we would really love that, yo!) it should now be relatively straightforward, as we changed some settings. When you click comment, you should just need to select "name/url," which is the second to last option on the pulldown menu on the right. Then, you just have to type in your name (or whatever you want to type, I suppose) and you DO NOT need to provide a URL to post. Then, just write your comment and click "post comment." If that's not working, let us know via facebook or whatever. We've heard there are several people who have been trying to comment but have been unable, hence this informative post!

HOPEFULLY, the issue is now resolved. Comment away!!!!!

woodrats

2009-09-15T16:03:00.000-06:00

-T: Yesterday we got ahold of some bigger live traps from the RMBL office, and baited them and set both of them in likely rat locations; one we put up on in front of the hole we knew woodrat A was using to get in the cabin, in the same spot as where we had put the much smaller Sherman trap. The other one we put near where woodrat B disappeared when we chased it the night before last, in the upstairs spare bedroom. We used peanut butter and oats, with spinach stuck on top. Apparently woodrats are mostly vegetation browsers, so we thought the spinach might be a nice touch.

The trap upstairs in the spare bedroom still hasn't had any activity, but the same rat that came back the first two times got himself caught for a third time early yesterday evening! This time, we had a plan. We decided to keep him overnight and them drop him off at the trail head four miles away from Gothic - a fairly daunting distance for a rat, we hope. Below, you can see him in his live trap cage. I gave him carrots too, which he took and piled in the corner you can see there.
He wasn't all that crazy about being in the cage, and at first we didn't have a vehicle until Wednesday, so I decided to try to make him a bigger and more comfortable cage using a garbage can and some racks from the toaster oven. However, he decided that escaping was more fun than being a good well behaved wood rat, so we had a fun five minutes where he was cornered in the hobby room but not running back into the live trap. You can see him in the corner here - he's really cute.

We used a broom to chase him back into a live trap, and then decided he could just sit and think about what he had done, as he was a very naughty rat. As it turned out, Cody (another RMBL workerperson) was free and said he could drive the rat to the trailhead and release him as he went back into town, so this afternoon we said goodbye to woodrat A. Woodrat B is still somewhere in the cabin, but we're prepared for him now.

And, in conclusion, here is a picture of a mama mule deer and a baby mule deer, right in front of our cabin (the cabin in the picture is across from us, it's named Galena).

The woodrat saga continues- a worthy adversary proves him or herself

2009-09-14T10:06:00.000-06:00

J-

Thayer wrote earlier about a bushy-tailed woodrat that we caught in our cabin. As he said, we released him at a nearby (yet unoccupied) cabin, hoping he would make himself a new home and stop pooping on our couch. We also found the hole through which he had been entering our cabin and plugged up the indoor side of the hole. Unfortunately, there have been some recent developments with respect to these cute little rodents. Last night, Thayer and I were sitting on our couch when a very brazen woodrat walked through our kitchen and hid behind the stove. To make a long story short, we thought we had it cornered, but it jumped up the stairs into our spare bedroom. Armed with flashlights, headlamps, brooms, and trash bins, we scoured the room from top to bottom before discovering yet another hole in the wall. We determined that this hole and the closet hole are the two interior holes that connect (through the space in the wall) to one exterior hole. Thayer devised a clever ramp that would allow woodrat #2 to escape his hole but not get back into it. Then we used a bunch of aluminum foil and a 2x4 to close up the exterior hole. For good measure, we placed a Sherman live trap (baited with Nutella and oatmeal) in front of the exterior hole. We thought that this would be the end of the rat saga for a bit. But no....

As I was opening up our cabin doors this morning, I checked the hole barrier and trap. The barrier was still in place, but the trap was....gone. I climbed around the side of the house, where I found a very heavy Sherman trap sitting on the grass. Opening it, we found a very confused woodrat. We think this was the woodrat we relocated in our past post, who was trying to get back into his cozy house. Both the trapped rat and the relocated rat were blind in one eye, so we strongly suspect them to be one and the same. He was pretty cute, but the trap was far too small for him (we're currently trying to locate some larger live traps). So, after we got him out of the trap and into a trash bin (where I took this picture), he jumped (about 2 ft. straight up) out of the bin and ran into our wood pile. Oh good, yet another woodpile inhabitant.

Oh, and I baked some bread!
This was the basic whitebread recipe from Betsy Oppeneer that I mentionned in the last post. I made it with some whole wheat flour, and it turned out very well, if I do say so myself. It's fabulous sandwich bread.

Beetles, weasels, and sleet, oh my!

2009-09-13T18:10:00.001-06:00

I'm not sure if we've mentioned these guys before:
These mule deer are incredibly ubiquitous around here. We see them browsing every evening around dinner time or so. There are about three adults and two juveniles that hang around in town.

It's beginning to feel more like fall- cool breezes and more stormy weather. Since we're in a valley surrounded by mountains, we expect our first snowfall pretty soon, probably in late September. That snow, we're told, will melt quickly and the 'real' snow won't come until mid to late October. Yesterday we got a taste of what's to come with a chilly storm. There was quite a lot of sleet and loud thunder!
In preparation for winter, we started stacking our wood today. The weather was brisk, but sunny, and we definitely made a dent in our big pile-o-wood. You can compare this picture with the earlier one of our cabin. The pile really is much smaller!

While packing, we found some critters who had been content inhabitants of the wood pile before we so rudely disturbed them. This longhorn beetle (of the family Cerambycidae) was hanging out on one of the pieces of wood.

And also, a short-tailed weasel (Mustela erminea)! This weasel kept darting in and out of the wood pile as we removed pieces. It was clearly distressed that we were removing such a fabulous small-mammal house from our yard. I'm sure it will make a new home below the big stacks of wood now surrounding our cabin. Both Thayer and I are really hoping that it will make some meals out of the mice that have been giving us trouble.In other news of animals hunting for meals, we saw our fox grab a chipmunk this evening. The fox was walking down the road, stopped and looked to the side, and then suddenly pounced into the tall grass. We had heard from our neighbors (who have now left for the season) that the younger foxes are pretty inept hunters, but this guy seemed to do just fine. Although I sincerely doubt that hunting for small mammals is that challenging, considering there are sizable abundances here.

One last thing before I sign off. We had noticed an espresso maker up on a shelf when we moved in, and yesterday we got it down to see how broken it was. And it wasn't! Well, it is missing a piece that prevents me from actually brewing espresso, but the milk steamer is working great! I have reveled in this new discovery by drinking lots of lattes (with coffee brewed in a french press) over the past two days. Now, unfortunately, I'm running alarmingly low on coffee. Oh dear, I suppose we'll have to make a town trip soon.

All sorts of fuzzy things

2009-09-11T21:20:00.000-06:00

T: Well, we still haven't managed to go on our hike to Copper Lake yet, actually - We didn't go yesterday because I woke up with a small headache and we also did not have bread for sandwiches; we were planning to bring lunch with us, since it's a bit of a trek. Then, today, we helped move the RMBL office down to Crested Butte for the winter, so we weren't feeling too ambitious after that. We shall see when we get to it, but it is still in the works, I assure you.

However, we did go on a shorter walk today, on the deer creek trail to the south of Gothic, an area we hadn't explored yet. It was quite pleasant, but it was through a different terrain, a hilly grassy landscape that wasn't particularly impressive and did not make for novel wildlife spotting except for chipmunks. There are actually four chipmunks (one's a ground squirrel, but you can pretend) around here - the least chipmunk, the Colorado chipmunk, the uinta chipmunk, and the golden-mantled ground squirrel.
There is a golden mantled ground squirrel that looks in our window on a regular basis, and often sits on the porch outside our window. As always, click for bigger pictures.

Identifying characteristics are the two stripes, one on each flank, with a gray back and golden neck, along with a short little nose. They are also the largest of the four ground-dwelling Sciurids.

As with most furred animals, maintenance of one's fur is a very high priority.

And sometimes, you just get itchy.

Last evening, we had another visitor - as we were cooking dinner, we saw a fox trotting up the road that goes past our house! He decided to lie down only about fifty feet from our house, so I decided to see if I could possibly get a picture of him (or her). The fox ended up being not particularly nervous, so I scooted towards him, snapping pictures.

Occasionally, he would sniff at the air, or cue in on sounds he heard in the brush. A few times, he got up and started stalking something, but mostly he just thought a little rest in the road seemed like a good idea.

This is after he wandered down a different path for a little bit, stalking something he heard. By his posture, you can clearly see he was horrendously alarmed by my taking pictures of him. I was probably about 8 or 10 feet behind him here, I'm not really sure. Pretty soon after this picture, he moved a little farther up and a marmot spotted him, who started alarm calling from the top of a wood pile, so the fox decided to trot off, and all my pictures after this are blurrier and less interesting.

So after the little fox interlude, Jessica and I went back to making dinner, where we had decided to be adventuresome and make naan, an Indian flatbread. We followed Madhur Jaffrey's basic recipe, and it turned out very well! You can see the result for yourself below:

It is served here with curried chickpeas and onions, and it was quite delicious. I also topped my naan with melted cheese, which I thought was quite delightful!

In other food news, We are putting together our second order of food, this time from the natural foods catalog, which has a huge selection of stuff, and, while terrifyingly daunting, also ended up being a massive amount of fun, and we simply can't wait to pick it up!

J: We still have a bit of our food budget to spend, so let us know if you can think of any fun treats or useful foods that we might be missing. We just discovered that we can order a case of Home Run Inn pizzas- a thrilling prospect.

For those of you who aren't in the know, our cabin, being in the middle of the woods and all, gets a few mice who think that our cabin is a very nifty place to live. They're easy enough to deal with, but a few days ago we discovered that a slightly larger fellow calls our cabin home as well. I was somewhat surprised when I saw a rather *large* furball standing on the stairs, looking at me. I chased him under the stairs into the broom closet, where he ran up the shelves and into a hole in the wall. He is none other than a bushy-tailed woodrat ( http://www.fs.fed.us/r2/shoshone/resources/wildlife/Images/BushytailedWoodrat.jpg ). I got a good glimpse of him before he ran into the wall. Well, we put a Sherman live trap in front of the hole, but we didn't have any luck catching him that way, although the bait did seem to be missing from the trap. Then yesterday we removed the trap to try something different, but we didn't get around to putting anything in front of the hole.

Well, last night mr. woodrat had the courtesy to knock knickknacks off of the two windowsills and then go to sleep in a blanket on the couch, leaving a delightful amount of rat poo in the folds of the blanket, which Jessica discovered this morning. Well, I cut a piece of firewood and wedged it in front of the hole to seal it off, thinking that would be the end of it. To my surprise however, tonight I saw, out of the corner of my eye, something very large run out from under the wood stove and under the stairs! Apparently, he hadn't left after his little blanket siesta, and had gone to sleep in the cardboard stack behind the stove. Well, I followed him into the closet where I found a very very confused rat trying very hard to get into his hole, despite the wood now covering it. What followed after this was an incredibly pathetic game of hide and go seek where Jessica and I attempted to herd a terrified woodrat into a plastic garbage can with a spatula and a broom. This went on for about 15 minutes before we finally succeeded, and we took him outside and released him in some nearby bushes. Since he just kept trying to run back to the same hole I blocked off the entire time we were chasing him, we think he only had the one way in and out of the cabin, and our visits from the woodrat will hopefully be over. If he didn't poop everywhere and generally do naughty chewing activities, we wouldn't even mind sharing with him. He is by far the cutest rat I've ever seen, and when we released him into the bushes, he hopped away like a little kangaroo.

As a side note, bushy-tailed woodrats are also the true packrat, as they are the rat species with the most pronounced stealing and stashing behavior, with a particular fondness for shiny objects. If you manage to locate their middens, they are filled with all sorts of interesting things. I have a feeling that if we looked in the walls of this house, we would find all kinds of stolen bottlecaps and jewelry that the woodrat put there.

J: I'm hoping we'll find woodrat's midden when we clean out the broom closet. It's loaded with leftovers from previous inhabitants (ski wax, blankets, the aforementioned Sherman traps, buckets, etc.). Speaking of things left behind, we're planning on doing a blog on the amazing things that people saw fit to leave behind (as a teaser: wind-up sushi and a biography of Zac Hanson- the youngest member of THE HANSONS)

Bread!

2009-09-08T13:28:00.001-06:00

As Thayer mentioned last night, I was in the process of baking bread. I used the basic white bread recipe from Beard on Bread and had moderate success. This isn't my favorite white bread recipe (I prefer Betsy Oppenneer's basic white bread) and the high altitude (9500 ft., thank you) made the rising and mixing kinda strange. The loaf turned out tasty, but dense- we'll see if we can't improve that in the future. However, it makes good toast and sandwich bread and it has a nice crust.
At this point, you might be asking yourself- they're making bread, but what else will they eat in a cabin for nine months? Well, I'm happy to write a little about that now. Before we arrived, we placed a bulk order with Sysco for all of our really basic needs. Tons of flour (50 lb. each of bread and whole wheat), rice (brown and basmati), beans (lentils, garbanzo, pinto, black and navy), pasta (macaroni and spaghetti), frozen veggies (corn, peas, green beans, and 'Japanese-style mix'), and frozen black bean patties. Oh, and we also got a BIG bag of powdered nonfat milk, which Thayer doesn't mind the taste of. And cereal- rice krispies, cheerios, raisin bran, and oatmeal. I'm probably forgetting some of the Sysco order, but then again, you're probably getting sick of reading my lists of groceries.

We're envisioning eating a lot of bread, stir-fries, sandwiches, and chili. So far, the cooking is going well. We haven't yet been thwarted by the higher altitudes, but we've been sticking to pretty simple fare. To liven things up, we're making a second bulk order from a natural foods supplier. We got the catalog from Billy Barr this morning, and I've been salivating and looking over it ever since. We need an entire case of Newman-O's, right? And a case of organic chocolate bars, too, right? There's still quite a bit of our food budget left, so we'll probably pick out a couple treats to keep us happy in the middle of an avalanche.

On the work front, we have nearly another week off. The building supervisor (I believe that's her title), Robyn, is taking a week off, so we're relaxing even further into vacation mode. I'll be driving our Subaru (the "subie") into town early tomorrow morning for its fall maintenance, but then we're off all week! We're planning to hike out to Copper Lake tomorrow to have a picnic and to enjoy the balmy weather while we still can.

Didymo!

2009-09-07T21:07:00.000-06:00

Jessica

Thayer and I went on a hike this afternoon. We hiked up the Copper Creek trail, which leads off of RMBL property into the Maroon Bells Wilderness Area (part of Gunnison National Forest). At the trail head, we had a view of Judd Falls. This is just a bit to the east of our cabin, and we can hear the pleasant white noise when we have our side door open.
After walking a little further, we came upon this:
A super enormous cricket! I mean, this thing is freaking huge. Also, it was pretty much just sitting on the trail, not moving. Thayer suspects it might be a female totally gravid with eggs (note swollen abdomen and large ovipositor). And here's a close up:
We didn't think that she should be left on the trail, so Thayer scooted her to the side with a big stick, carefully avoiding any potentially angry mouthparts. I posted it's picture on bugguide.net, where a bevy of enthusiastic semi-amateur entomologists will kindly deign to identify insects. I'll let you know if we have any further developments.

-T: it was actually a flat rock I used to move it, but that's okay. Also, the pictures do not adequately capture the scale of this thing, but just compare it to my finger and you can see that it's about as tall and half as long as my index finger. That's a big cricket, I promise.

-J: I've heard back from someone at bugguide.net, and apparently our "cricket" is actually a shield back katydid (of the family Tettigoniidae). And indeed, it is a female. (http://bugguide.net/node/view/330323)

-J: I've heard back from another kind person at bugguide.net, and our "cricket" appears to be the Mormon cricket (Anabrus simplex). If you're curious, the USDA has a nice site about them: http://www.sidney.ars.usda.gov/grasshopper/ID_Tools/F_Sheets/mormoncr.htm.

On our hike, we had to unexpectedly cross Copper Creek, which necessitated shoe and sock removal. Here's Thayer standing near the stream after braving the freezing cold water.

-T: if this picture was taller, you could see that I don't have any shoes or socks on.

On the way back, I stubbornly kept my shoes on and walked/scooted across the logs you can see to the right in this photo. (Also, I the water is deeper and colder than it looks in this photo, I swear.)
While scooting across, I noticed nothing other than didymo! Also known as rock snot or Didymosphenia geminata, this is a species of diatom (i.e. algae) that can totally overgrow the bottoms of streams and lakes. Although it's native in Colorado, it's been introduced all over the world, including in the Northeastern U.S. and streams in New Zealand (http://www.biosecurity.govt.nz/didymo). The huge snotty masses this diatom forms are yucky and interfere with fish feeding. We've been keeping an eye out for this in the Lower Fox River, WI, so I was excited to see it in its native habitat.

-T: I don't think I have much to add, other than that a marmot looked in our window today again, and we are currently baking bread - our first experience with high altitude baking! Tomorrow we will supposedly actually do something useful around here, or at least that's the claim.

We're here!

2009-09-05T19:14:00.000-06:00

Jessica

On Thursday morning, we drove into Gothic, CO, (Elevation: 9,500 feet, Population: soon to be 4)home of the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory. With Thayer's parents, we drove 2.5 days and about 1,126 miles from Minneapolis to Gothic in a packed, yet comfortable, van.
When we pulled into the parking lot in Gothic, we were greeted by:
Yellow-bellied marmots (Marmota flaviventris)!!!! This one was hanging out in the parking lot near the office. There is a large population of these guys in Gothic, and as they've been studied since 1962, they're pretty habituated to people. You can get pretty close to them before they waddle off under a building or into tall grasses. Also, they're cute.

Thayer and I will be calling Gates cabin home for the next nine months. It's a lovely two-level, well-insulated cabin with amazing views.
That's Mount Gothic in the background and our wood pile in the foreground. As I said, the views are unbelievable. Our cabin is in a small valley and there are mountains everywhere you look. I still can't believe that this will be home for the next 9 months. It's quite surreal. For instance, here is the view from our kitchen table:
And here is the view from the side porch of our cabin (looking east) at Gothic Mountain.
We've taken several hikes and seen a myriad of small mammals (and larger ones). I'll post some more pics over the next few days, but mule deer, yellow-bellied marmots, least chipmunks, Colorado chipmunks, and golden-mantled ground squirrels are all super common in Gothic.

I think that's all I have for now, but you can look forward to pictures of the interior of our cabin and tales of daily life in Gothic.

Thayer

I'm writing now that Jessica has had her say, although I don't know what I'm going to add. I have a few photos to contribute, and maybe some stuff off the top of my head. So far we have been finding walking a touch more strenuous as a result of the altitude, but neither of us have been suffering unduly because of it. We are excited to be positively bursting with oxygenation once we go back down to lower altitudes!

Our cabin seems to be very well insulated, since it's currently completely unheated (no need to light the wood stove, yet) but it seems to stay at about 70 degrees around the clock, despite temperatures in the 30's and 40's at night.

We are settling into the cabin very nicely so far. Thankfully we are almost all unpacked now, as it was quite terrifying at first with boxes everywhere. Much to our surprise, a shocking amount of (unbelievably random) stuff was waiting for us in the cabin, which was nice except for that we needed to clear away the unwanted stuff before we could unpack our own stuff. As a result, unpacking has been a slow, multi-tiered process in which we banish useless or disgusting cabin items and replace them with our own useful and not quite so disgusting possessions. Luckily, there is a second bedroom upstairs:
To which we have quickly converted into a storage closet. If I weren't all the way downstairs and already sitting at the computer, I'd take a picture of the stuff we put up there. Don't be too sad however, as really it would just be a picture of some boxes. I believe most of the people reading this have seen boxes before, so I will rely on the reader to use his or her imagination to picture some boxes off to the right of this photo.

We have converted the southwest corner of the house into our lounging area, as you can see in this picture.
You can see me using the very computer I am using to type this blog! Jessica is absent from the picture seeing as how she was the photographer, but visualize her sitting where the laptop is and you will get a good idea of what we look like in the evening.

Speaking of evening, I took pictures outside in the dark! They may not be exciting, but I will put insightful captions on them to delight our readers.

This is Gothic Mountain, complete with cabin in foreground, just shortly after sunset. With mountains on either side, it gets very dark very quickly after the sun goes down, and if there is not a moon out, it becomes pitch black.

The last of the light fading from the sky. As with all of the pictures in this blog, click for larger versions. If you enlarge it, you can appreciate both the subtle coloration of the sky and the fact that I can't manage to hold the camera still for the life of me. In this case, it's really not my fault though, night pictures have a way longer exposure. We really need a tripod or something.

This is the cabin across from us, to the east. The blurring is artistic, not accidental...

Here, I attempt to channel the energy of the night into a single photograph. The trails of light from the cabin windows represent the looping transience of human life, brief incandescent pathways which appear to lead somewhere but ultimately double back, standing out loudly from the terrain but still only inhabiting a very small fraction of the total space. In opposition, the solid black of the earth captures the apparent yet illusory impression that the earth is consistent and unchanging. The smudged trees upon the horizon capture the energy of the forest which is in constant flux, yet always familiar and recognizable throughout all of its infinite permutations.

Or, it's possible that I just wanted to see what happens when you whip the camera around while you take a picture. Wheee, lookit the light trail!

I think we are going to do more thorough picturebloggering of the cabin tomorrow, but here are two teaser pictures to whet your appetite!

This is our cool second floor balcony/hallway. It overlooks a nook on the first floor, and has two story windows and a cool wood banister! It also has a large awkward plant in the corner, and an ugly carpet. Jessica and I plan to do Yoga up here!
This is our bedroom! It's cute. That's my dresser, Jessica's is to the left. There's also a large semi-walk in closet, and a ceiling trapdoor to an attic! Stay tuned for more RMBL updates!!

Colorado blog

2009-08-19T20:55:00.000-06:00

Hi everybody! Welcome to Thayer and Jessica's Colorado RMBL blog!