LaughAloud

This beautiful pumpkin came in my CSA vegetable box last week. I was  torn between keeping it and using it for fall decor at Thanksgiving, but decided it would be more fun to cook it up and bake something delicious with it.

When I cut the pumpkin open to scoop out the seeds, I found this little seed actually growing inside of it. I've never seen something like this before, but Chip said it made sense, because in nature, the pumpkin would most like rot, and the seeds inside would start growing at the same time, eventually creating a new plant. what a cool thing to imagine.  

I have the day off on Wednesday for Veteran's Day and I plan to use my pumpkin to make chocolate pumpkin muffins. I figure pumpkin muffins with chocolate chips are delicious, so chocolate pumpkin muffins should be amazing. We'll see how they turn out.

 

A Most Delicious Mushroom Gravy

With Thanksgiving coming up, I'm planning out my menu, thinking about what I want to do differently this year, and what I'd like to do exactly the same. One dish I will be keeping from last year is the delicious vegetarian mushroom gravy. There are always a number of vegetarians at my Thanksgiving, and so I usually make one vegetarian gravy and one from the meat drippings, but last year, this vegetarian gravy turned out to be SO GOOD, it's the only gravy I'll be making this year.

I wanted to include the "recipe" here, but as I typed it out I realized, there is no real "recipe" at least not in the sense that I used specific amounts of anything, just however much seemed right. So here's what I put in, and sort of how I did it and that's about as close as it gets.

Vegetarian Mushroom Gravy

• onion
• garlic
• celery
• mushrooms
• pepper & salt
• thyme
• marjoram
• sage
• tarragon
• olive oil
• flour
• Imagine Vegetable Broth

The Mushroom Mixture

Saute together the onion, garlic, celery and mushrooms in a little olive oil with pepper and salt to taste. Remove from heat and stir in fresh chopped thyme, marjoram, sage and tarragon. (or whatever herbs you prefer.) This can be done a day or two ahead of time and set aside.

You can make this part as smooth or as chunky as you want. Last year I shredded the mushrooms in the food processor, but if smooth gravy is important to you, you can blend this mixture into nothing but flavor.

The Roux

For the roux, heat olive oil (or butter/fat of you choice) and flour over high heat, stirring constantly (I like using a wooden spoon or a whisk). This usually takes 2-4 minutes of constant stirring, as the mixture darkens.

You can make the roux Thanksgiving morning, and set aside at room temperature. Just before making the gravy, whisk together to recombine.

The Secret Ingredient

I'm sure you could use any vegetable broth, but I really think the Imagine Vegetable Broth I used last year is what REALLY made this gravy. It comes in regular and low sodium varieties and I've tried both their chicken and vegetable broths for various meals with excellent results. I buy it at the regular grocery store, but they carry it in their "organic" aisle.

Making the Gravy

Even though you're not using any meat drippings for this gravy, make this just before serving dinner so its hot and fresh. Combine in a sauce pan: the mushroom mixture, about half the container of the broth and a small amount of the roux. whisk together as it cooks and add broth and roux until the gravy is the right amount and the right consistency.

A teapot is a perfect way to serve the gravy while keeping it nice and toasty warm. (My gravy boat is now used for cranberry sauce :)

Wishes

The Archer

"Physically, for one arrow, he is capable of shooting near the exact center of the target. For one arrow he is capable of drawing a bow with more grace than Apollo could command. For one arrow, almost anyone can achieve excellence. However, when that one arrow must be repeated with another, and another, on command, the archer begins to question his ability to sustain beauty."

                    -- KiSik Lee & Tyler Benner, Total Archery: Inside the Archer

Inside the Archer

I've finally finished reading Total Archery: Inside the Archer by KiSik Lee (U.S. Head Coach) and Tyler Benner. It's a fantastic and detailed book that breaks down the steps of shooting  into distinct chapters. Best of all it is bursting with large, full color images, just the kind of thing I've been missing in an archery book.

It is a book dense with information and for that reason I really spread out reading it. I started while I was at home re-cooperating from surgery and quickly became overwhelmed. Maybe because not only wasn't I able to shoot, but I could even stand up to go through the motions of what the book discussed. Or maybe I couldn't concentrate  because of the percocet. Either way, I set aside the book until a short time after I returned to work, which led to the nice ritual of taking the 6:30 bus to campus, and sitting in the coffee shop for 30 minutes or so to read a chapter of Inside the Archer before work. It was perfect. And it left me un-rushed, letting everything really soak in. I took notes. I had questions. Things I didn't quite understand and things that didn't seem quite right and things I wanted to know more about. Which leads me to...

I got SO much more out of this book because I have an experienced coach who I trust to ask my questions to. I can't even imagine reading this book without such a guide. As someone who knows my shooting and knows my flaws and who also has immense experience in the sport, my coach answer my questions and explain what I didn't quite understand. He could also tell me which things I should just not worry about and which ones I should focus on now and which I could worry about later. I think reading and really trying to implement the techniques in this book without a coach, even one seen only occasionally would be a mistake, especially for a relatively new archer such as myself. Which bring me to...

I'm glad I read this book now, and not a year or even 6 months ago. Although, if it had been available, I probably would have. All the great pictures, the step-by-step break down of the shot, I wouldn't have been able to resist.  I think I would have been overwhelmed by the information and much of it would have been talking about a final technique so far from where I was it would have meant very little, and would have seemed almost an impossible feat to achieve. As it is, I feel like I've gotten to a place where I have a fairly good understanding of the basics of what I should be doing (even if I'm not doing all of it) allowing me to really get lot out of the book, some of which can be applied now and some later. (And some maybe not at all - I like my wrist sling.) Knowing how far I've come in the past year, nothing seems quite so impossible as it did a year ago, even if it is far off in the future.

My biggest complaint about the book, was that it sometimes strives for poetry at the expense of clarity. I understand this impulse and fall prey to it myself (as you must know if you regularly read this blog) but I feel it can be more easily excused in fiction or creative non-fiction than in an explanatory text. When writing about something difficult to understand, a method many people struggle with, it's probably best to keep things a bit simpler and not let the words get in the way of the explanation. However, in the last chapter ("The Emotionality of Shooting") this style was perfect, and I wished there was even more time devoted to this.

Two things I really wish this book included:

An Index. OK, yes, I'm a librarian, I realized I might be a little biased. But the presence of an index is really one of the hallmarks of a good reference work and that is certainly what this is. It is a work that can be carefully read cover to cover, but almost certainly there will be parts you want to go back to, to hone in on certain details. The way the book is broken done step by step makes that easier, but there is a significant amount of cross referencing between chapters and a index would have been an improvement.

An Appendix listing the archers in the photos. I realize this book strives to portray "the archer" as anyone and everyone in the text and labeling the photos with the names of the archers could be a distraction to this endeavor, but an appendix with names would be nice.

Maybe these will be found in a second edition?

Last Night's Dream of After the End

A permanent winter had fallen upon the world, feet of snow insulating the ground, falling, always falling. Whether because of the extreme winter, or some other disaster, people had begun retreating to underground caves and living there, with some of the old comforts. Hoarding artifacts of the past in the hopes that someday someone would find them. The caves were warm and not so different from our old homes. We had stoves and light, furniture. More like cozy, underground hobbit house than caves.

I am standing in front of a deep stone wall of the cave in which we live. I run my hand over the carvings made by a friend now gone, who had themselves studied the ancient cave paintings. (Who this friend was and what happened to them, I can't quite grasp.) These carvings were done "before" in the hopes of creating a lasting record of our myths and history. The fear being that it would be so long into our future before people again had the luxury to study the past instead of just surviving the future, that only the stone would be sure to survive.

We have an entrance on each end of the cave, tunnels that climb up towards the cold. One entrance collapses. We try to dig it out, to squeeze out towards the light, but it is solid and we are left with only one way out to the world. And this is only the beginning. Other caves begin to collapse, leaving people trapped and dying underground. And the decision is made, for everyone to move out of the caves, away from the last remnants of comfort and technology, of our lost civilization. And we leave the artifacts of our past behind. The books and music and carving on the cave walls. Leave them behind in the hopes that someday people will find the things we left behind and learn of what was in the "before." And out  we go, into the new cold world and try to survive in the new winter.

Twilight

"When she thinks of her father now, she sees him at the end of the day. That's his time of day, twilight, or just before. The late afternoon, when the sun is setting, when it feels sad and beautiful, like the last day. When the sadness is too unbearable to think about, and this makes you strangely cheerful."

-- Jane Mendelsohn, I Was Amelia Earhart

Home on the Range

I'm finally shooting again! I'm taking it slow and only allowing myself to go out once a week for the two hours of my competitive archery class, but that is still better than nothing. I've only gone out twice so far, once this week and once last week, but I'm feeling really good and felt like I've come back better and more focused even if I need to build a little bit of my back and shoulder muscles back up. My twitter post from right after my first time back out at the range sums up nicely how I feel about being back at it: "So much fun @ archery today!!! Always feel so alive after shooting & have really missed it! Plus coach says I look great for 2 months off!"

One thing that I love about going out to the range, is that on top of shooting, I'm often outside at my favorite time of day. Being still, in one place near the end of the day and watching the world change and glow and cool around me while doing something I love. Other than shooting it is rare that I spend several hours outside in one place near the end of the day. There is something about the last hours of light and the start of twilight that is so calming but also full of energy and life. It feels like the best time to be still and so much of archery is about being still, being at peace but also controlling the power in your body, in your bow and the twilight hours for me are really the time of day that brings those things together in the world.

When I wasn't shooting after surgery, at first it was an issue of physically not being able to. It wasn't just not being able to stand, but the tremendous energy it took to do anything while my body was working hard to heal. While I wasn't shooting, I did a fair amount of reading about archery, watching archery videos, thinking about archery. But having already resigned myself to not being able to shoot, I was able to do all these things without feeling an overwhelming desire to shoot. But now, I get to campus early and start my day spending 30 minutes in the coffee shop reading a chapter from Inside the Archer. On the shuttle to work, I watch videos from World Cup archery matches. And I want to go to the range and shoot. I can barely wait till next week when I get to go again.

Even now, as I've started shooting and am walking more and more, I get more tired from physical exertion than before my surgery. The healing is a slow process and so I'm trying to listen to my body and let myself heal while slowly getting back to my regular life. For now, I'm only allowing myself to go to the range once a week. It doesn't mean I don't do things other days to practice and work on my form, but its still not the same as being out on the range. Especially during the days last light. Sometimes slow can be so hard, but I know I'll be glad for taking it slow when my ankle is finally healed.

Restored

Several months ago my camera started acting up. It still took video just fine, but still pictures had white lines through the entire picture. Luckily, when Chip bought it for me a couple years ago, it came with a 2 year, extended warrenty. But did I send it in right away? No. It sat around while I used my old beat up fujifilm with the knob that didn't quite work, until finally last month I took it in to George's Camera to be sent back to Nikon. It came back yesterday as good as new, and I finally have my camera back & newly restored! Here's a couple of the test pictures from yesterday:

 

I got this little pitcher plant for the kitchen to eat the tiny fruit flies that have been coming around. We were having problems with them at work, and the plant seemed to really make a difference there, so hopefully this little eating machine will take care of our kitchen too.

When I started taking pictures of Obi, he tried to cast a spell on me. 'Do not take my picture...feed me more food!"

San Diego Sunset

It was a beautiful sunset today & this doesn't even begin to do it justice. San Diego hardly ever has amazing clouds like this. I took this out the window on the highway. Don't worry I was in the passenger seat.