Latest addition to the house

This past week we installed a new front door on our house. We found this beautiful glass door with a tree design in it that we think is fitting since we live on the site of an old tree nursery. Here's interior and exterior pictures. It still needs to be trimmed on the interior.

 

 

Celebrating a year

The thing I didn't mention in the last post is that the reason we're on this vacation is to celebrate our one-year wedding anniversary. How is it possible that a whole year has gone by? The actual anniversary is next weekend, but my husband is on call for work then so we decided to go early.

Here's our anniversary pic to commemorate the anniversary. This is us standing along the Lake Superior shoreline, looking up to the Split Rock Lighthouse.

 

Today we also went to Goosberry Falls State Park to see the waterfalls there.
Here's a picture of the lower falls. The water was gushing at an amazing rate because of all the rain that we've had the past month. We ran into an old military colleague of Jamey's who said he visits the Falls up to 5 times a year and he had never seen it this violent. Amazing.

 

You can see more pictures from our trip in my web album.

On vacation!

My husband and I are on the North Shore of Lake Superior, vacationing at a resort called Larsmont Cottages. It's a relatively new place just south of Two Harbors. Our room is about 50 feet from the shoreline and we've been listening to the waves crashing into the shore (it's been really windy the last couple days).

Our room is a standard hotel sized room, but it has a kitchenette, gas fireplace, whirlpool tub, satellite TV and a DVD player so it's a little nicer than your average room.

Yesterday morning I had a massage at the "massage cottage" that also sits right on the shoreline. It was a heavenly way to start my vacation.

Last night we sat in the outdoor whirlpool tub. It's a little protected from the wind, but wide open to the sky.

Yesterday the weather was really crappy so we spent the first half of the day in bed watching movies. Then we drove to Duluth where we walked around Canal Park, did a bit of shopping and then saw the movie "Michael Clayton." We ate dinner at Hell's Kitchen. I had this amazing sandwich called "Ham and Pear Crisp." It's basically a ham panini but with pears inside and a bread that was a little sweet.

Today we're going to tour the Split Rock Lighthouse and go to Gooseberry Falls State Park. Thankfully the bad weather cleared and the sun was out when we woke up this morning!

Gore's Nobel Peace Prize

I was very pleased this morning to hear that Al Gore had jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize. His work on global warming has been stellar and much-needed. I stumbled across this blog entry that completely sums up my thoughts about the other reason he deserves it. Below is a snippet and here's the full link to the entry by John Marshall.

There are several layers of irony and poetic justice wrapped into this honor. The first is that the greatest step for world peace would simply have been for Gore not to have had the presidency stolen from him in November 2000.

My first attempt at canning

 

Above is the result of my first attempt at making applesauce and canning! I helped my mom can all kinds of things (tomatoes, pickles, etc) when I was a kid but I couldn't remember much. Thank god for directions!

I found a web site with step-by-step directions (including pictures) on how to make applesauce. They recommended getting the attachments for the Kitchen Aid stand mixer that I have (the big heavy duty one). The attachment is a food grinder/sieve type of thing that is awesome at grinding down soft cooked apples into perfect sauce. I was stunned at how easy it was.

The attachment came as part of a set that also includes a food grinder and pasta maker. I'm anxious to try the other accessories!

The canning part was a bit harder. I was scared to death that they wouldn't seal properly. I'm still a bit worried cause the second batch I made has some air gaps in the sides. I didn't push down the sauce enough to make sure there weren't any gaps.

I ended up making two batches. The first one used one peck of honeycrisp, one peck of Courtland and a partial peck of MacIntosh. That made just over 7 pints.

So I went to a nearby orchard (just a small one) and got one peck of "red" Haralson and one peck of "red" Courtland. The woman at the orchard said the red varieties were sweeter than the regular Haralson and Courtlands. In the end, I think that batch tastes way better than the first batch!

Next year I'm going to try mixing four varieties of apples. I've read that the more varieties you put in the better tasting the applesauce. Since the canner takes 7 jars at a time, four pecks of apples would be about right for making 14 pints.

For the canning part, I bought a Ball Home Canning Basics Kit

It had everything you need, including a great book with directions and tons of recipes. Maybe next year I'll stretch my skills a bit further and make some kind of jam or even pickles. Jamey would probably love the pickles.

My 'CCO interview

I got a copy of my interview from WCCO radio. This should launch your Windows Media Player. Be sure your speakers are turned on

Saving journalism

There's a great post at a blog called howardowens.com about the 12 things journalists can do to save journalism.

The bottom line is that journalists have to become more techie. They need to know how to build web pages -- including dynamic web pages, how to use blogs, RSS feeds, wi-fi connections, etc.

These are all things that I've learned just in the last 5 years. One of the things they didn't mention is using databases and spreadsheets, which I would certainly add to the list.

Newsrooms have been notorious for being slow to change. The management doesn't force it and very few individuals take the initiative to make the changes themselves. There are always two or three in every newsroom who drive forward no matter what. Unfortunately, that's not enough to save us.

The list above also doesn't talk about what CONTENT we're going to publish with all these newfangled tools. We need to rise above the din and the boring stuff and come up with intriguing, useful, in-depth content.

Travel tips

I was telling one of my friends today about this great website I use whenever I travel and he suggested I put a note about it here. So here it is...

The website is called TripAdvisor.com and it's a place where travelers can post reviews of hotels, locales and other things. Then the website rates the places based on the reviews. The reviews are often wide-ranging even for places that are ranked very high. But what I like best is that within a review you can often find nuggets that you wouldn't otherwise learn until you got to the hotel.

For example, we used this site extensively when researching where we would stay when we went to St. Lucia. Within the reviews, several commented about avoiding getting rooms in certain buildings in the complex (at the resort where we stayed) because some were located along the main road and were really loud. That was really helpful and we made use of it when we requested our room.

I'm using the site right now to find good beach places to go next January or February. Our only requirements are that it be on a beach, with warm weather (80+ degrees), that it has scuba diving, that it's all-inclusive and that it's not a terribly long flight. If you've got any ideas, send them my way!

Crock-Pot Taco Chicken

I think I've found a new favorite "easy" recipe. This one was in the Pioneer Press awhile back and I finally tried it this week.

Ingredients:
6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2 cans tomatoes with green chilies (15 oz cans)
1 package taco seasoning mix (I used the lower sodium version)

In a crock-pot, add all ingredients and cook on low 7 to 9 hours (mine took only 7) or until chicken is tender and easily shreddable. Remove from crock-pot and allow to cool slightly; then shred using forks. I kept the tomatoes, but drained the remaining liquid.

This reheats extremely well, so it's a great one to make on the weekend and have available for a quick dinner (or two) during the week.

To serve, I put a tortilla in a fry pan (on medium-high heat) and put cheese and the chicken mixture (warmed up) on one side of the tortilla. Then closed the tortilla and cooked it on each side until just starts to brown. This makes the tortilla slightly stiff and more like a quesadilla. Could also add salsa or sour cream, but you don't really need it. These have great flavor.

My 15 minutes of fame, sort of

My appearance on WCCO Radio last night went well, at least in my opinion. I haven't heard the opinion of anyone who actually listened to the show, however. Even my husband missed it. And my boss was too busy with company at his house. I'm starting to wonder if anyone listened cause the host, Jearlyn Steele, opened the discussion up to callers about halfway through my 15-minute segment and nobody called! I was sort of grateful since I was worried about what kind of hare-brained questions I might get from the average caller. Jearlyn's questions, though, were thoughtful and interesting and I thought I did a good job of explaining why posting something as sensitive and seemingly personal as jail bookings on the Internet was a good thing. My main answer: it allows everybody to keep tabs on what the police and sheriff agencies are doing -- particularly who they are arresting. That gives everybody some watchdog power so that the police are not operating in the dark and arresting just anybody.