Moving is good

I've moved my blog! And I'm better at updating these days!

It's very new and much improved.

Check it out:

www.morganlommele.com

Best Burgers

Steve and I have been eating many typical summer meals. As part of our CSA, we receive a box full of fresh vegetables every week. Aside from the local, organic and seasonal vegetables, my favorite part of the CSA is that I don't have to wander up and down the Boulder Farmer's Market trying to decide what to buy and where to get the best deal. With our CSA through Cure Farm, someone else does my shopping.

Thanks to our CSA share, our meals are usually built around vegetables - grilled zucchini and squash, tomato and onion salads, carrots of some sort, braised greens, more salads, etc. These vegetables would be wonderful on their own, and usually are, but Steve and I usually prepare a "side" of meat to go with our vegetables. We've eaten a lot of burgers this summer, and have developed a few tricks to make them as delicious as possible. Notably, some sort of mayonnaise- or oil-based sauce, grilled onions, and a very simple burger preparation.

A few weeks ago, I made a mayo sauce with toasted and ground cumin and coriander seeds, and garlic. Yesterday, I used at least a cup of garden basil to make an aioli. Our sauce usually replaces the ketchup.

Then I grill large onion circles (just cut the onion down its length, keeping the rounds intact with eachother, coat with oil and salt, and grill on each side until grill marks appear). It's an easy twist on the regular burger toppings.

Lastly, I used to put all sorts of junk in my ground meat - onions, garlic, ketchup, Worcestereshire sauce, etc. I've learned that this not only makes the meat too crumbly, but it's difficult to grill, and it falls apart easily in the final burger. So, now I only mix with a pound of ground beef salt, pepper, onion powder and garlic powder to taste; one egg; and about one quarter cup of fine bread crumbs. The seasonings do add a lot of flavor; and the eggs and breadcrumbs help keep the meat together not only while assembling the patties, but on the grill and in the burger.

I will take pictures next time!

Here is a link to our CSA, with newsletters, and links to recipes: http://www.cureorganicfarm.com/csa.htm

Thoughts

I haven't updated my blog in a while. On a side note, I'm not a fan of bloggers who log on once a month to talk about how they're not blogging, then you hear nothing from them in between. I wish I blogged more. There's certainly excitement in my life that's worth sharing. Marathon training (Steve and I are running the Park City marathon in five days) , grad school and its subsequent end (of coursework at least, I still have a thesis to write), wedding and honeymoon planning (less than four weeks to go), and of course, always more than the requisite 40 hours of work work every week. I've been very busy, but what's funny is that I can't envision myself not being busy. I enjoy relaxing, and I certainly enjoy low-levels of stress, but I also really enjoy the four main things that are going on right now. On the other hand, I have three ongoing crafts projects that have been in progress for at the very most a year. I'm restoring a very old quilt, painting four canvasses for our home, and am trying to wrap up the knitting projects that I swore would be done by last Christmas. So these are a few of the things that I hope to be doing more of once Steve and I come home from our honeymoon, we have the fall quarter off from DU, and marathon training is complete. That, and updating my blog.

I don't think that all that is an excuse for not blogging, but I just can't focus on my blog! I've also decided that I want to revamp the blog. I'm tired of its look and feel and want something new.

In the meantime, want to crack up? Here's one of my favorite websites: http://www.dontevenreply.com.

Marathons

I'm running two marathons this year. I've never run a marathon, so I might be getting ahead of myself. At about 5 weeks into my training, I can safely say that I need to start lifting weights and stretching more, in order to keep my knees up to speed with the miles I'm putting in. It's not only a physical challenge, but a moral, psychological, and social one. We'll see how this turns out, but all in all, I am enjoying it.

Top 4 Best Uses for Bell Peppers

Bell peppers - green, red, yellow, orange - are versatile and most likely very good for you. One of my favorite workday lunches is an amalgamation of bread, some kind of spread, and a veggie and/or protein on top. Today, it was ciabatta bread, topped with homemade pesto (frozen from last summer) and roasted red, yellow and orange bell peppers. Roasted bell peppers are one of the most rewarding fixings, from a cost/benefit analysis. No exaggeration: wash pepper; cut pepper down each side and on the bottom, into about five pieces; place on cookie sheet; cover with olive oil and salt; place in the middle of the oven under a 500 degree broiler. Take them out, peel the skin off where it's charred and easily removable, and you have a pretty phenomenal, not to mention colorful, snack.

My lunch was rewarding. Too bad I had to eat it at my desk.

This got me thinking about my Top 4 favorite things to do with bell peppers:
1. Crudite, with a spicy dip
2. Roasted (woop woop!)
3. Stuffed with rice and/or meat
4. Pepper, onion and avocado salad

Wet And Wild

Steve and I couldn't figure out where to spend our three day Memorial Day weekend. Not on the Front Range, not too far from Colorado... We had debated the Picketwire Canyonlands, in the vicinity of the Comanche National Grasslands. That area has some of the oldest dinosaur fossils in the world and would be fun to hike and camp. We decided, though, to head to Crested Butte with two other couples to hike, mountain bike and watch our friend Kris race in the Gunnisson Growler.

The weather forecast was rain, rain, rain. That's ok! Adventure! I love road trips because you don't have to worry about filling those ridiculously small travel containers of shampoo, pulling a deltoid because you refuse to check your luggage and haul it all through security, or cram your purse and laptop under the seat in front of you. Not to mention the planning part. On a road trip, there's minimal planning involved. You can shove your stuff in the back of the Jeep and take off. I'm especially lucky because I don't have to drive. Anyway, Steve, Schivonne, Kris and I shoved in our four mountain bikes, two tents, four mats, four sleeping bags, four backpacks, one cooler, numerous 6-packs of beer, four camping chairs, blankets, pillows, fly rods, and other camping necessities. Emphasis on shove!
So on the road, eating pasta salad and cookies, we sang songs and shared dark secrets. You can't do that on a plane - someone will inevitably hear you. It rained our entire trip down to CB, and was still raining when we arrived at our camp spot, at 10:00 p.m. We rolled up to our secret camping spot on National Forest land, right outside of Crested Butte. We were still excited about camping, completely dry, and didn't mind setting up camp and bearing with the weather. (Kind of like how you can always tell that a waitress is new - she's still smiling, eager to help, and happy to be there.) So we slid in the mud, slipped on corn lilies, and set up camp. It was still raining.

Corn lily.
Evening adventure. View from our camp spot. You can see the red dust that blew over the Rockies in early April.
Road up to our camp.
Saturday morning, oh my God, it wasn't raining. This turned out to be an anomaly, but it just makes everything seem so much brighter when it's not raining. We hiked the in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park that day. It rained off an on, but not enough to dampen our spirits. We were just happy to be outside. Steve and I had hiked the down the canyon over Memorial Day 2007, and camped at the bottom. That year, we started from the North Rim, which was easily accessible from the direction in which we arrived, around Paonia. This year we accessed the Park from the South Rim, the more traveled side. To hike down to the Gunnison River - usually a mile or two of actually hiking over at least 1,700 feet - you need a permit, a lecture on the dangers of hiking, a warning that you need to know how to self rescue, clear instructions to not poop in the woods, a thorough review what poison ivy is, and how you could and probably will die down in the canyon. We happily obliged - it's a filter process that keeps the other hoohas out of dangerous situations that would otherwise eliminate those opportunities for adventurers like us. We received our permit, spoke with the nice lady, and hiked down. It's not an easy hike, but it's amazing to be down in that canyon, on a River that was completely undiscovered until about 100 years ago. It's a very special place. Unlike two years ago, the poison ivy was mild and Steve didn't make me wash my face the second he saw me brush up against poison ivy.

Canyon view from the top.
River at the bottom, with the canyon walls


Poison ivy - beware!
Our two hour ride back to the camp site was peppered with casual comments along the lines of, well, what should we do if it's raining tonight? How are we going to cook our food? Will our tents be wet? Are there hostels in the area? All comments were non-committal, as if the person mentioning them didn't want to be the one who made the group go to a hotel, or didn't want to bail, but didn't want to be blamed for making the group sleep indoors and quit our adventure. We stopped at WallyWorld, bought some fire wood, a tarp, and hoped for the best, despite the fact that the rain was unrelenting. I know that people say that it's just water, it will dry, but whatever, when it's just water that's keeping you wet for a steady 48 hours, you start to evaluate your options, and wonder what the meaning of vacation is.

In any event, we pull up to our camp to my new best friend, rain/mud, and look at each other. What are our options? I'm not sure at what point we decide to stay, perhaps it was a gradual decision fueled by both ingenuity and beer, but we did. Steve and I replaced the large tarp that was under our tent with the new WallyWorld tarp (this turned out to be a bad decision, and was the impetus for our hostel stay the next night), and Steve put those dendrites to work! He created a shelter for us by stringing a tarp through a few trees, some stakes and the Jeep. It was a wonderful little dry spot for us. We were able to build a fire under the tarp, make dinner, set up our camp chairs and relax under the pitter patter of the rain on our tent. It was a wonderful adventure.

Steve, Schivonne and Cory under our temporary housing unit.
On Sunday, we woke early to drive down to Gunnison with Kris for his mountain bike race. It was a chilly, wet morning, but he was off, and the five of us sat in a coffee shop for two hours and read magazines. It was one of my most relaxing memories in recent months. I love the feeling of being away from home, with no obligations, just the freedom to hang out and not worry about the time. After a while, we drove to a spot where we thought we could both run (Steve and I needed to get in a 8-mile run for our marathon training) and see Kris race.

Run in, Kris done, we then stood around wondering what to do now. Our tents were getting wet (especially ours, due to the tarp switch out that allowed water to seep in), we were not warming /drying up, and we had heard about a nice little warm and cozy hostel up in CB. I called, bargained with the dude, and got us a 6-person, private room for $15/person. Not too shabby! We packed up our camping gear, shoved it all back into the car. At this point, we still hadn't used our mountain bikes. We lugged them all the way across Colorado, but it was too muddy to ride. We didn't want to ruin the trails.

The rest of our trip was warm. We drove up to CB, walked around, I bought a Hershey's Kiss halloween costume for $2.50 (here's a preview: http://tinyurl.com/l578md), ate delicious pizza, and conked out. We had been on an adventure all day! We still had to polish off some of the beer we lugged around, so we did that, watched Tommy Boy, and fell asleep in our warm hostel beds. If ever you're in CB and need an affordable, convenient, clean and accommodating place to stay, I would highly recommend the Crested Butte International Lodge and Hostel. It was cheap for us because of the off-season, but the prices are reasonable year round, you can cook in the kitchen, and it's just a fun way to travel. And, they have Tommy Boy on DVD. Here's the movie in a nutshell:

I got a D+! I'm gonna graduate!
You're right! You're not your dad! He could sell a ketchup Popsicle to a woman in white gloves!
It's called reading! Top to bottom, left to right... a group of words together is called a sentence. Take Tylenol for any headaches... Midol for any cramps.
Shut up, Richard.

Oh gosh, such a good movie.

Anyway, still too rainy to ride on Monday, so we decided to go home. Not before eating the fluffiest pancakes in the world! Go to the Paradise Cafe on Elk Ave for a delicious breakfast next time you're in Crested Butte. Just delightful! The last highlight of the weekend (aside from a drive through Tiny Town on the way home, which doesn't deserve more than these sparse words), we visited Peanut Lake, about one mile NW of Crested Butte. I saw Peanut Lake on a map, and since that's the cutest name for a Lake in the entire universe (try me), we had to visit. I would still call it Peanut Lake, but with an asterisk and an indication that it's somewhat anticlimactic, given the grandeur of a name such as Peanut Lake, and the small little lake that it was. It was very pretty, though.

I think that despite the rain, the lugging around of stuff and the fact that Peanut Lake could have been shaped into a more defined peanut, this was an excellent weekend. I was happy to be with friends, eat fluffy pancakes, enjoy Crested Butte and Gunnison again, drink good beer, find my next Halloween costume, and more importantly, not sit at a desk.

Steve at Peanut Lake.
A beautiful house in Crested Butte.

Peas In A Pod

I was looking for drawings of peas, or peas in a pods (don't ask) on the interwebs, and found some of the funniest and most awesome (and sometimes bizarre) drawings. I would like to share them, especially "Super Pea." Here are some.

Neko Case

Neko Case comes out with her new album tomorrow.

Steve and I were blown away by one of the best radio interview segments we've ever heard yesterday, Scott Simon interviewing Neko Case.

Here's a preview, and I highly recommend listening to the full 10-minute interview. It's enlightening and fulfilling and very thoughtful:

"I just really dig feeling subservient to nature," she says. "It brings me a peace and calm. Kind of like a Faustian thing, I think, where you want the devil's minion to tell you, 'You know, Faust, I could tell you what the meaning of life is, but your human brain is so tiny, you just wouldn't get it.'"

Word Of The Day

Use it in a sentence. This is interesting.

Gordian knot.

1. a very difficult problem, insoluble in its own terms; an inextricable difficulty; to cut the Gordian knot is to remove a difficulty by bold and energetic measures: "A territorial dispute over an incredibly small plot of land had become a multi-generational Gordian knot."

2. an intricate knot tied by Gordius, the king of Phrygia, and cut by the sword of Alexander the Great after he heard that whoever undid it would become ruler of Asia

---

Origin:
Approximately 1579; an allusion to the knot tied in legend by Gordius, king of Phrygia.

In action:
"In 'Caucasia,' those bystanders are children, Cole and Birdie Lee. Their mother, Sandy, is the shy, overweight daughter of a Cambridge blue blood (Cotton Mather is a cherished ancestor) and a liberal Harvard academic. Their father, Deck, is a bright, upwardly mobile graduate student who grew up scant miles (and yet light years) away, in the Orchard Street Projects of Dorchester. Like a lot of interracial couples at the time, Sandy Lodge and Deck Lee marry in the assumption that the Gordian knot that is America's race problem would loosen, if not come undone, in the foreseeable future. It doesn't, of course. In Boston it grows even tighter, as the tension surrounding the great busing experiment of the early 1970s polarizes the city's black and white populations to an even greater degree."

Karen Grigsby Bates. "Passing: Blacks who go incognito in white society learn terrible truths and tell dangerous lies." [Book Review: 'Caucasia' by Danzy Senna] Salon.com (April 15, 1998).

"Perhaps the secret of Oprah's success lies in her ability to align worthy ideals with canny marketing. There are those who balk at the fact that she is the world's most influential book critic, that Toni Morrison landed on the mass-culture map not because of her Nobel Prize but because Oprah coronated two of her books. That Morrison might be, at least for a moment, as hot a commodity as a Beanie Baby is an irony, but even the mustiest academic has to admit it's a sweet one. Perhaps because pop-icon status is so often accorded to people of slight or dubious achievement, we become suspicious when achievers like Morrison get what they deserve from us. If a rhapsodic review from Oprah can help to untie that Gordian knot of reasoning, so much the better."

Erin J. Aubry. "The Oprah Effect: The TV star has transformed the publishing world," LA Weekly (May 29 - June 4, 1998).