Happy Groundhog Day!!

February already! Yikes!

Well tomorrow is the Vietnamese New Year, the year of the rabbit apparently...Today is my second sick day of this Alabama winter. It's been pretty rainy here, but a few gorgeous days scattered in between. There's a video at the bottom of this post that shows you what I do when I'm home sick...I basically harass Hannah because I can...

Last weekend I went up to Coweeta again to sample - it was quite icy up the mountain and we had to use a Coweeta Lab truck with chains and 4wd to make it up to our sites as the dirt roads at the Coweeta Station don't get de-iced or plowed really. It was nice to see the streams in a wintery landscape - snow covered most of the ground and trekking to our sites were fun since we have less than 70m to walk to get to any of our 5 sites. It's not quite the epic journey Dan has to make in Iceland, and that's pretty ok with me...

Here are a couple of food-related pics of late...

My sick day amusements, first one is about a minute, the second one is about 3 minutes long...

A rainy Alabama day...

Hi! It's a very wet Alabama morning, which is great because the yard needs a good soaking. We dumped out our compost pile into our bed-in-the-making...the bottom was rich in black gold, the top half still a mix of coherent egg shells and vegetable peels, but I think it'll do just fine finishing up in the raised bed and be ready for some hard work come spring.

I just put together an apple cake that I made earlier in the Fall from this adorable blog called Working Class Foodies...The inspiration being it is Ellen's Bday and she in fact made this recipe a few days ago...granted Ellen is 2000 miles away in Idaho and will not be able to taste said cake, but I think remote birthday celebrations are a good thing nonetheless...

This is the recipe that is featured in the blog as I've transcribed it (I'm not a professional transcriber):

2-3 tart apples, cored and cut into chunks (peeled or not peeled, your preference, I'm too lazy to peel), 3 cups total

Mix with 2 tablespoons of sugar and 2 tablespoons of cinnamon

In another bowl, mix 2 cups AP flour, 2 cups white sugar, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 4 teaspoons baking powder, 2.5 teaspoons vanilla,1 cup vegetable oil, and 4 eggs.

Add in your apples

Dump into a buttered cake pan

Bake for 65 minutes at 350 degrees

Dust with powdered sugar and enjoy!

Super easy and delicious...Unfortunately, I only had one apple in the fridge (Dan can't read my mind yet so he took one apple for lunch this morning), so I made a half recipe and supplemented with raisins. It is currently baking away and it makes the house smell warm with baking cinnamon - just what I need on a rainy day, sigh

Tomorrow I leave for a Coweeta sampling trip. The dirt road up the mountain is supposedly pretty icy so we'll need to 4wd it with chains...should be an exciting adventure...

In other T-Town news, we've successfully "racked" our IPA into a glass carboy, which means we transferred it from the bucket to another container to remove it from the yeast which should be done doing its thing. If not removed, the yeast will impart a flavor onto the beer which is probably not a good flavor. I know very little of this process as you can tell. See pics of the randomness that is our life here.

Also, the Nelson parental units surprised us with a Wii Fit! I happen to have little coordination as you can see here, but all in all we are having fun improving our balance. I would have included a clip of Dan on the Wii, but all of them include him cursing at the end of it, so until I find out how to edit the clip (or give up and post it), you'll have to enjoy my lack of rhythm here:

xo

OCMS

Hey all. It's been a while since I (Dan) have posted anything so here I go. Our lives have been fairly uneventful since the Holidays passed. We finally took down our Christmas tree a couple of days ago and Chau put away the decorations. Other than that, not much new. However, Chau, I, and a few friends went out on Wednesday night to see the Old Crow Medicine Show at the Bama Theatre. If you are not familiar with OCMS, they are a fantastic alt-bluegrass band from Nasheville, TN. Both Chau and I have been into them for several years now but neither of us had ever seen them live. We can say that they put on a hell of a show! They played for ~2 hours, with a short intermission between sets. They ended their show with a song called "Dixieland Delight", a song originally written and performed by the great American country group, Alabama. However, the highlight of the show for Chau was their signature song, "Wagon Wheel". This tune was an unfinished Bob Dylan song/poem that the boys in OCMS finished and made their own. Check out this clip of OCMS playing "Wagon Wheel" . Enjoy!

Hi! Long time no update!

Weekly recap:

Sunday: Snow "storm"...while some areas of northern AL received up to 7" of snow, we in Tuscaloosa measured up at less than an inch (see pics of our back and front yard). This effectively closed down all roads in and out of the city as well as the University on Mondy (SNOW DAY!)

Monday: see above, Hannah, Dan and I hunker down at home and play a lot of Wii

Tuesday: The city is still crippled by the snow storm, grocery stores have no fruit, vegetables, milk, eggs, or TP on the shelves..kinda funny, but kinda scary. Thankfully not many people resorted to soy milk so Dan and I were quite happy at the store

Wednesday: First day of classes start for Dan. He's taking an Aquatic Entomology Lab, an Aquatic Ecology seminar (read seminal papers in aquatic ecology), and the weekly Biology seminar (students give talks)...should be a manageable load for him this semester which will be good as he gears up for summer field work in Iceland and starts studying for his comprehensive exams next year. Chau takes her car in for a regularly scheduled maintenance that takes about 2.5 hours which means she sits in the comfy Toyota dealership drinking lots of coffee and watches a lot of home improvement shows. This leads her to get a home improvement itch and she goes hog wild at Lowe's gathering up supplies to weatherize the home and do something about that pesky peeling paint in the kitchen (see pics for the outcome)

Thursday: nothing happened on this day

Friday: After a day of work we have a few friends over and brew our first batch of beer. It's a "Tuskaloosa IPA" and looks to be doing well. It has to ferment for another 3 weeks and then we get to bottle and wait for carbonation. The house smelled quite tasty during the whole process and we're excited for the next steps! (see pics of the process!)

Saturday:

Recoup from Friday night beer-making gallantry, Dan plays some "hoops" with the boys...We try Moe's BBQ (consensus: tasty!) for the first time. We also receive a package from me pops that has a painting Simon made for my Christmas present! Check it out in the pic link!

Sunday:

Dan and I help out our grad student friend, Mike out in the field. Chau goes caving for the first time ever and survives to tell the tale! Four of us in total packed in 20 bales of corn litter into a cave for a nutrient enhancement study - 5 trips each from the van to the cave entrance and then we squirm our way into the cave to disperse the corn litter along the experimental reach. Since cave ecosystems have very little nutrients (no regular leaf fall or sunlight to photosynthesize), this is an experiment to see how a cave will react with a pulse of nutrients over a year. Sadly not many pictures exists since I only had my phone to snap shots during the hike to the cave entrance. It was a lot of fun and a great workout. After we finished with the work aspect we trekked further into the cave and saw cool cave formations that occur slowly over time - cave straws, angel wings, stalagmites, stalactites and columns! We also saw a plethora of cave organisms - cave crickets, cave salamanders, cave crayfish, cave spiders, and adorable little bats (the size of your thumb) awaiting warmer weather. All in all an awesome experience that was lots and lots of fun!

Here are some pics of the last week...

xo!

Ahh...the great (suburban) outdoors

Hello! 

Today Dan and I went out to Moss Rock Preserve just south of Birmingham to cut our teeth on some southern sandstone.  It was a great winter day - clear and sunny with a nice chill in the air.  Using the GPS that I got from Dad for Xmas we navigated there with very little effort (there goes our sense of direction).  The preserve is butting up next to a new ticky tack development but is still a preserve in the middle of the city so I guess it's hard to complain too much.  Easy access means a boatload of toddlers and families, teenagers taking artsy photos in goth clothing, boulders covered in graffiti - some good, some blah, combined with a handful of weekend boulderers (most of whom are friendly, some are stuck up and silent - I am talking to you, blue coat "brah" with disheveled blond hair who lacked the ability to: smile, say "hi", not look at me with disdain, or be remotely courteous to some weekend walkers who were asking for directions...shame on you).  With so many people around it made the place seem more like an outdoor climbing gym, super fun! Sandstone feels great!  Just as grippy as the granite we got out west, but not as rough on the ol' paws!  We had a lot of fun just playing around on the LARGE boulders.   Dan bought a guide book for the area so that was helpful in guiding us to problems at our level.  That said, I found that a) I am out of climbing shape, b) I am out of specifically outdoor climbing shape and c) problems in the Southeast are graded differently than out west.  I'm used to getting V0-V1s with some basic ease, but I found today even attempting the V1s out at Moss Rock was near impossible for me (for reference, the badass climbers can tackle a V14+)!  So I got a couple "V0-"s under my belt and was happy with that.  I think it being cold outside and TALL boulders freaked me out a bit - excuses all the time with me!  Regardless, we had a lot of fun and will be heading out that way more often I hope!

After a bit of climbing we navigated to the Garage Cafe which we have been meaning to check out for quite some time.  It's a cafe tucked in an odd neighborhood and is eclectic in that the outdoor seating area is cluttered with very random items - mostly garden statuary and the like, and all for sale.  They serve a multitude of beers by the bottle, it's nice and warm inside with plenty of flat screens to watch sports, and served a mean sandwich (Dan and I split a rueben and it was excellent!).  It's a super cute place and I wish we lived closer to it!

Next we "zipped" along to Alabrew, which is a home brewing store and we bought a "kit" for a Tuskaloosa IPA.  A kit is basically all the ingredients you need to brew a certain kind of beer.  Alabrew has a list of all sorts of beers that you know and love and you simply pick out a kit then they package up all the barley, hops, malt extract, sugar, etc that you'll need to brew that specific beer.  Hopefully after the whole process (~1.5 months) we'll end up with 5 gallons of a nice IPA beer to enjoy!  We'll keep you updated on the results!

Before returning home to check on the mutt, I had a craving for the weekend tamales that are made in a truck outside La Veracruzana market.  Dan had yet to try these tasty morsels so we picked up a few along with some cheap guacamole ingredients.  We had a nice mini feast on tamales which are wrapped in banana leaves that gives them a nice floral-like flavor and keeps them extra moist!  The salsas that came along for the ride were smoky and tangy - just what I needed.  Now we're winding down with a little Wii and hopefully we'll go out and meet a few friends at the Alcove for a nightcap in a few hours and call it good.

Check out the link to some pics of our great day!

xo!

Madelin's paintings and more arrive!

Yippee! We received a fun fun package from Dan's Mom the other day - it was like Christmas Part II! Thanks much! Here are a couple of photos of us enjoying our new paintings!

Also, I received a fun fun package from my good friend Karrie from Seattle. She gifted me this great mug of my old neighborhood in Seattle - the intersection of two neighborhoods actually: Capitol Hill/Pill Hill (Pill Hill is a nickname for First Hill where a great number of hospitals are located).

As you can see from the expression on my face, it is early in the morning (for me anyhow) and the coffee has not yet entered the bloodstream:

Also in the package was a fun gift for Hannah:

This is a christmas card made of rawhide. That's right, an edible card for our furry girl. She doesn't seem to know what to do with all of this attention...

Here are additional photos that are a mix of some more Tran Christmas, NYE, my recent trip to Coweeta in January, and random food pics.

xo!

Happy New Year!!

Hello 2011!!!  On to another year of more adventures and laughs.  Right now just a written update.  I left my camera cables at home in Long Beach so I can't upload any recent photos - looks for more pics regarding the Tran Christmas, cooking, and champagne opening!  Dan and I arrived home in Tuscaloosa Tuesday night after a day of traveling.  We were both pooped after sitting around airports all day (mostly Dan, he arrived 7 hours ahead of me but spent his time climbing at First Ave Rocks while waiting for my 11pm arrival).  It was good to be home but alas our home was not yet complete as Hannah was still boarded until the next morning - the earliest we could pick her up!  So we woke early the next day to pick up the little girl and we can safely say that she was happy to see us!  We spent the rest of the day lounging around the house and catching up on smothering her with love.  I don't think she slept much in the kennel as many of the other dogs were barky, she seemed pretty exhausted and she's been sleeping a lot more than usual ever since.  

Last night Dan and I had a low key New Year's Eve at home with the pooch.  We established a new NYE ritual of:

1) Dan getting drunk while we both watch the Chick-Fil-A Bowl that takes place in Atlanta, GA

2) Dan high-fiving our mistletoe after Florida State wins said Chick-Fil-A Bowl (P.S. high-fiving a mistletoe that has been up a month and therefore brittle as, well - brittle, means it goes spraying across the room in a confetti of green leaves)

3) Sweeping up mistletoe (see #2)

4) Successfully opening a bottle of the cheapest champagne available

5) Filling beer glasses of champagne and drinking it down

6) Singing the Auld Lang Syne song at the top of our lungs at the stroke of midnight with the many different versions offered up by Wikipedia

All in all a spectacular NYE spent at home safe and sound.  We had a nasty thunder storm all last night that made us thankful to be home.  Today we spent the day watching Alabama beat up on Michigan State (49-7 in the Capitol One Bowl in Orlando), I tried my hand at crock pot yogurt and we'll see how it turns out tomorrow morning!  Thanks to my little brother Anthony we've been playing Kirby's Epic Yarn on the Wii along with Dan's new favorite game of stress, Yummy Yummy Cooking Jam.  After a week of being gone from the Tuscaloosa home we're very content to settle down at the homestead with Hannah like the old couple we are - ha!  Dan's been cooking up some tasty dinners - chicken yellow curry, baked chicken with an oregano-chile pepper-brown sugar rub and brussel sprouts, along with tonights so - broccoli soba noodles ala Moosewood.  We are so very happy...

xo!