Eating my way through summer swim meets: Muffuletta and Apricot Tart

One of the last Lime Pie pops from the previous swim meet went to one of my neighbors on the kids summer swim team. She said that the were good and I asked her if she wanted to collaborate for dinner at the next swim meet.   She was quick to come on board although parents should have fun at swim meets too, even though there was a bit of a double standard of eating gooey yummy stuff while the kids are supposed to be out there giving their athletic best performance.

I went through my sandwich recipes in Evernote and found a few good sandwiches. I traded a few emails with my neighbor and she said she'd bring a dessert. Dessert and sandwiches - that's a dinner in my book!

Even though, my neighbor said in her email she went to Tulane in New Orleans, I went with the muffuletta. It seems like such a simple, yet flavorful combination for a summer's evening. I was wrong on at least one count, but we'll get to that later.

Early in the day, I made the olive salad, so that the flavors could nicely come together.  I'll cop to it - I took more than one spoonful during the day. A good cook always tastes their product!

The sandwiches came together quite nicely and Kid3 and I headed off to the swim meet.  As we left, it started to rain.  I went back in and grabbed my gore-tex parka, which got me a little joshing from my son. It didn't seem to him that that was the right jacket for a swim meet.

It rained off and on as we went to the swim meet, but it was a light summer rain. I found a spot to sit and our neighbor joined us shortly thereafter. She had brought some salads and an apricot tart. This swim meet was going to be alright!

We enjoyed the sandwiches, as our kids did too between events, then it started to really rain.  We didn't have a shelter to hide out under, so my neighbor hid under her umbrella and I stood up so that my parka would keep me dry. While that kept us both dry, my chair filled with water, so I had no dry place to sit afterwards.  This is where I was wrong: the sandwich was good, but it wasn't a summer's evening. It was like early spring in the PNW with all the rain we got.

What was really funny, if you can call it that, was that the weather kept changing. I could see the break in the clouds that was coming our way and sure enough, the rain would stop, the sun would come out.  And then about 20 minutes later, the rain would start up again.

During one of the sun breaks, we broke out the apricot tart and enjoyed dessert.  Then it started to really rain.  My son went and stood in the warm shower in the locker room for something like 30 events (at least an hour, I stopped keeping track of the time). I think that he was the wisest of all of us. I was just as wet as he was (my boxers were wet), but at least he was warm.

The swim meet might have been unpleasant, but the food was good. And since my trip next week was cancelled, I need to start planning for this Thursday's swim meet!

Lime Pie ice pops and summer swim meets

In a recent Tasting Table newsletter, there was a recipe for Lime Pie ice pops. I think I read the email on one of the recent (and rare) nice June summer days here in the PNW.  Since summer swim meets were starting up, I decided that I'd make them for us for the Thursday swim meet.

Wednesday evening, my wife and I were going out to a foodie tweetup. My grand plans entailed me stopping at the grocery on the way home to pickup the limes and sweetened condensed milk that we didn't have at home.  Such are the plans of mice and men: I forgot to stop at any one of the 3 grocery stores I had to drive by.

But I was not going to be stopped.  Doing some backward planning, allowing for at least 7 hours of freezing (a few more than the recipe calls for), I needed to have them in the freezer by 10am.  Adjusting for the fact that I also needed to be working at that time, I needed to get them in the freezer before I started working at 7am.  In turn, that meant I was at the grocery store at 5:30am.

Whisking the base. Ignore that bottle of lime juice!

The early morning shopping trip, though, allowed me to make the ice pops with Kid 2. That Thursday was the last day of school for her and she had extra time, since she didn't have to make her lunch.

We got the ice pops in the molds and in the freezer and Kid 2 off to school.  Undisturbed, the ice pops sat in the freezer all day, hardening.  Only Kid 2 and I knew about them and I know for me that the surprise was building all day.  I was looking forward to enjoying them at the pool.  As the day went on and I was thinking about the tart lime pops, I came to the conclusion that I'm going to eat my way through the summer swim meets.  Summer swimming is fun for the kids and its gonna be yummy for me (and my wife too).

Delicious!

I took all the ice packs, loaded up my cooler and a few bags to smash graham crackers.  Then as the kids finished their events or it was time for a refreshing break, I'd prep a lime pie pop for them.  They actually tasted like Key Lime Pie, which was a great snack for the [non-swimmers at the] swim meet.

My handiwork.

If you'd like to try them out, you can find the recipe here.

Things I learned during summer

As summer draws to a close, I think about the back to school "what I did over my summer vacation reports" so I started to think about mine.  My summer was quite jam packed with a work project which consumed most of the summer, but I learned quite a few things.

1. A light rain fall, all day long, will start to soak through the seams of my softshell jacket.  Its always great to know the limits of your gear and now I do.  It rained on us one day while we were on San Juan Island, so it wasn't dangerous and it was nice to get back to our house and get un-soggy.
2. My wife enjoys hiking much more when there is a nice destination.  Destinations which qualify as nice include wild flowers, water falls and lakes.  She likes the water a lot.
   
   
3. My daughter prefers lululemon to Juicy Couture.  Even thought both are expensive, I think I can endorse that, because at least lululemon projects an active lifestyle while Juicy projects clubbing and Paris Hilton.
4. Technical fabrics are great.  See number one in this list, but I've started wearing wicking shirts while running, hiking and just around the house.  The really do wick away the sweat that much faster which contributes to me being warmer all around.
5. Getting away, even if for a few days, makes a great vacation.  We rented a house on the San Jaun Islands for 5 days and it was a great break.  It was really nice to have a full kitchen, but also nice to be in a vacation spot.
6. Outlet Malls are cool.  We stopped at the Seattle Premium Outlets and the ones in Burlington on the way back from our vacation and got a lot of great back to school clothes for our daughter.  The boys wanted to stay in the car, so they didn't get very much cool stuff.  Pooey on them.
7. I've learned a whole lot about Subversion, php, mysql, apache, bugzilla and Ubuntu, but I'll go into that later.  I've got a few servers with a LAMP stack which I administer and they're running pretty well!

Though I'm not in school, I'm always learning something.   I hope you enjoyed your summer too!

A vacation finally

The swim seasons (yes, plural) have come to an end and my gigantor work project which has had me working every day since June 14th has come to an end and we are taking a vacation.  For the last 3 days, we've been in a house we rented in Friday's Harbor on San Juan Island. Its got a great kitchen and the guy left us his kayak, though I'm not sure if we'd use it solo - maybe next time.

There is no TV, no phone, no microwave and it is great.  Yes, there is wi-fi and with Skype I've made a few work related calls, but really its been work free.

We've explored all over the island, checking out the historical sites and sitting by the water.   We've explored lots of beaches, checking out the light houses and the kids have probably raised the sea level with all the rocks they've thrown in the water.

We checked out the Whale Museum, but have not seen any Orcas in the wild. Yet.

Today, I watched the tide come in, just sitting on the beach for 3 hours.  Yeah, I got a little burned, but I actually re-applied sun block today (not just putting it on once).  

But most importantly, my mind was clear. I listened to the waves crash and the rocks on the shore roll under the force of the waves.  I watched my kids play in the cold water (they're crazy that way, it doesn't matter how cold they are).  I didn't think about student loans, bills, work or to do lists.  Its been a long time since I've been able to do that.

With all that I've been working, the fact that I can clear my mind and not worry about anything has been super relaxing.  I've even slept in - 8:30 and 9 am, which is incredibly decadent for me.  This has been a great weekend and I've really needed it.  And I'm loving it.

The End of Summer is near

My summer vacation (from my MBA) is drawing to a close. Work is picking up pace again and classes start next week. While I was on vacation, I was able to do a few things which I enjoyed and are worth writing the "what I did on my summer vacation" post.

I wrote earlier that I had set up some Ubuntu servers and I have established them as backup servers for all of the computers at home. I replaced the 40 GB disk with a 1 TB disk and now can backup all of the data on my wife and kids' computers and have some room for future expansion. While it was quite easy to do, I had to swap disks, not add a new one, as the case only has space for one hard disk.

I've written some scripts for both linux and windows XP to backup user's data. I'm sure that there are a billion of these on the internet, but let me know if you are interested and I'll share them with you.

I'd really put in a plug for installing CygWin on a Windows machine as rsync is much more configurable and provides better feedback than the Windows backup tool. And it provides a little more flexibility in what you can do with the files once they are on the backup server.

I was also able to get two day hikes in, one with my family and one with a Meetup group. It was great to get into the outdoors, take some photos and just enjoy the views. We went on one day hike to Denny Creek and as a family then I went to Tolmie Peak at Mount Rainier National Park with the Meetup group.

I'm glad I was able to get those in, because its so hard to do stuff on the weekends during school with team meetings, homework and swim meets. I'm looking forward to the snow this winter and really want to get a snow camping trip in this winter. Don't get sick, Wade!

I'm on vacation today and Heather and I are figuring out what we're going to do for our upcoming anniversary. It'll be quite nice to have some relaxing alone time with her.

That's all for now!

I'm not dead...

My wife mentioned last night that my last blog entry was in May. I knew it had been a while, but I didn't realize that it had been that long. Sure, I make updates on twitter, but 140 characters a few times a day just isn't the same as a full blown blog posting.

So, this blog will be a summary of what I've done since the middle of May and hopefully, I can turn some of the entries here into more postings. I do wish I'd write more, as keeping a journal keeps the mind sharp.

For the first few weeks after my messenger bag was stolen, I had a loaner laptop from work. It was a beater - the screen frame was cracked on both sides and it ran hot. Sure, it was a laptop and got me by, but it just wasn't the same. Thank goodness for my backup and documents in the cloud, I was able to continue work and finish out the quarter for school.

When the school quarter ended, I was officially on summer break. Being in an Evening MBA program, that really means that I was back to just working as the draw on my time. I've been trying hard, and not often succeeding, to not replace my school time with work time and actually enjoy some of my free time.

With both the kids and me on vacation, we had house guests at the end of June. My wife's sister and brother and some portion of their families came to visit. We did some of the touristy things around Seattle. The weather was excellent for their visit and the day we were on Alki Beach, the Light House was open for tours. It's not open often, so we were lucky to be able to check it out. We went to Mount Rainier and had another beautiful day there - it was one of those perfect days when the skies are clear and you can see all around. The new visitor center was open and there was still snow on the ground at Paradise. The bad thing was that it was so bright: clear day, snow to reflect the sunlight and I'd not yet replaced my sunglasses. Thanks to Heather for the picture.

The kids' year round swimming season concluded and the summer recreational season occurred during the month of June and July. Again the kids did very well, both with swimming and just peforming at swim meet after swim meet. Kid 1 and 2 both qualified for Pacific Northwest Swimming Champs and Kid 1 had the highest cumulative points at all dual for the summer league and broke a club record! They're great swimmers and its a good thing considering how much time we spend at pools.

We've had a number of car related issues, number one being the break-in (after a swim meet). Someone let the air out of two of my tires (at a swim meet), which I did not realize until I was several miles away on the freeway with two totally thrashed tires. I'd decided to replace the MINI's runflats with non-runflat tires, for performance and cost reasons, and this was the worst case scenario with not having a spare. The tires wouldn't take air (I did have a compressor) and so it required a flatbed to carry the MINI to the tire shop. It took far longer than it needed to, as the insurance company's roadside assist couldn't find a flatbed they had contracted with. You can read what Heather had to say about it. The final car issue (note to Fate, I said it was the final one) was that my wife was crashed into in a parking lot (after a swim meet). We're still dealing with the damage caused by the uninsured driver, but we're finding (and has been the case n all of the dealings this summer) that our insurance company, USAA, is pretty good.

While my car was in the shop (new tires and some engine work), I worked from a few coffee shops in Seattle and had some great picnics with my family. We went to Greenlake Park one day for lunch and then dinner at the famed Dick's Drive In (Again, hanks to Heather for the picture.).

It was cool to go to Dick's because Sir Mix-A-Lot sang about it. It was cool to eat dinner at the park with my family and play tag and watch the hoola hoopers. But Dick's was not a good burger. Or fries.

To make things right, the next day, lunch was at Red Mill Burgers and was much better.

I'm still replacing my stolen things, but I'm getting there. As you can see by the photo credits, most of the photos here were taken by Heather. I've not yet replaced my camera and the iPhone, while a great phone, is only a mediocre camera.

I've continued to use Ubuntu, and have added some computers to our network. Now my backups are more robust and I can actually backup or get my files from anywhere I'm connected to the Internet. I've been learning about nfs and running a server. There are a few more fun pictures of my computers and Ubuntu on my flickr account.

Rancid released another album at the beginning of July. I really like punk and really like the fact that Rancid sings so much about the East Bay and Berkeley where I did my undergrad studies. Kid 1 and I went to their concert when they came to Seattle and had a fun, though he fell asleep during the show (two long swim practices in the morning don't make a late night easy). It was fun to debate whether or not this was his first real concert - I still maintain that American Idol on tour just doesn't count.

I've not done a lot of cooking lately, but I did make two batches of ice cream recently. I made a sweet cream and chocolate covered bacon ice cream and a mint chip ice cream (I needed to make some thing more normal tasting) and they've both been quite refreshing with the weather we've been having lately.

Thats all for now, there are several things that I'd like to expound upon here and make full blown posts out of and I'll try to get to that later. I hope you are enjoying your summer too!

Done with summer courses

For seven weeks, I am free of school! Yesterday evening, my team made our final presentation for Leading and Managing Organizations and I turned in my final paper on my social capital. It feels great to be done with classes again and surprisingly, the weather here has turned back to summer again!

Now, I can breath a sigh of relief and catch up with the rest of my life again.

Saturday night dinner by myself

Tonight's dinner, originally uploaded by beau.raines.

Last night, Heather and the kids went to see the American Idol show in Tacoma, so I had the afternoon and evening to myself.

I ended up going to the grocery store (we'd been out of orange juice for a while) and I had a craving for avocados. This was my final product!

I enjoyed soy-cilantro chicken on skewers, grilled marinated tofu and a tomato and avocado salad. Accompanied by Rouge Chipotle ale and a peanut soy sauce dipping sauce.

While I was cooking, I had some Reed's Ginger Beer - it had been a very long time since I had seen that in the store and so I snatched it up. We'll have to see what the kids think since it is an acquired taste.

I also made strawberry ice cream while Heather was out. Strawberry ice cream requires that you macerate the berries, strain the liquid out and then puree some of them. If you're keeping track, thats 5 dirty dishes in those steps alone. I didn't empty and reload the dishwasher last night (it was a 22 ounce bottle of beer so I didn't do too much after dinner other than sit on the couch and watch a movie). When Heather came home later, we were talking and she asked if I had a party because of all the dishes! I'm going to go start Heather's coffee and empty and load the dishes now, for those of you that may be wondering. :)

Earlier in the day, I was chatting with a friend about cooking and meals and it some how came out that we use cloth napkins at every meal. You can see that even in my dinner by myself, I have a cloth napkin. She was a little surprised about the cloth napkins. We don't do it from an eco standpoint, I think it is more about the dining experience.

It has already been ascertained that I am weird, but is it out of the ordinary to use cloth napkins (especially white, restaurant grade ones) at every meal?

The smells of summer

With the arrival of nice summer weather in Seattle, we have been keeping the windows open more. Today, on the breeze, was the smell of poo.

Helen, was it you? Or do I have one of my other upwind neighbors to thank for the "smell of summer?"

I'm less than pleased with this.

Weather

My computer, running Ubuntu, has icons in a system bar to show certain things. When I sat down this morning, I saw something I hadn't seen before - a yellow dot. My first thought was it was some cautionary alert.

But then I realized that it was the weather applet!

I had never seen the sunny weather indicator before!

I should have been able to connect the dots; I went out this morning to get coffee beans for my wife and when I came home, I didn't take my sunglasses off because of the sun streaming through our kitchen window.

Today looks like it will be a nice day. I'm wearing shorts (and ankle high socks, for those that it matters). I'm glad to be home again. I just spent 4 days in California, but it wasn't very sunny there.

Continuing to have great weekends!

Heather and Daughter had a swim meet in Tacoma and Son 1 had swim practice and then played with a friend, so Son 3 and I had another Saturday morning together again. After his swim clinic, we headed into Seattle to pickup my graded final exams and wander around the University.

We got the University at 11:36; had we arrived at noon, parking would have been free. We stopped by the MBA Lounge, and grabbed my finals and he and I played some foosball! It was a bunch of fun and he is about as good as me at foosball (which either means I'm not very good or he is really, really good for a 6 year old). However, this fun time suggests to me that if we ever convert the toy dump play room to a game room, we should get a foosball table.

We wandered through the Burke Museum (free because I'm a student). Unfortunately, the same exhibits were there last time when we visited. In eight days, though, we might have to go back. There is an exhibit on Polar Bears coming, 28 June - 31 December.

Son 3 chose Mediterranean food from Sammir's Mediterranean Grill and we took our food back to the University and ate on the grass. I'm not sure why he chose food from the med, but I'm not complaining - it was pretty good.

We came home and played some more Wii (another one of our typical Son 3 and me activities) until the rest of our family go home!

Chalk one more enjoyable weekend day up with Son 3.

Father's Day Weekend

No, we didn't celebrate late, I'm finally writing about it.

It was great!

I could stop right there, but I'll share more. The weather was excellent - one of the first great weather days in a long time. And when I mean great, I mean like San Diego great; blue skies, hardly any clouds, not too hot. It was just a beautiful day.

Then, my wife and kids took me to Alki Beach, some place in Seattle I'd never been before. And its a real beach! Sand (and women's beach volleyball that day), waves, roller bladers and bikes on a little path; it felt like we were in California. I didn't realize that people actually wore bikinis in Seattle either!




Alki Beach really felt like Santa Cruz, you were on the beach, yet you could see the mountains. I was really in awe all day long.



We got lunch at Christo's and then walked down to the tide pool area where Daughter had a school field trip a few week's earlier. We got there during high tide, so we weren't able to see many tide pools but we had fun dallying on the edge of the water.

We tried to stop at the Alki Bakery, but they were out of baked goods! Entirely. Being the supply chain geek, I couldn't help but realize that they failed to account for both the increase in demand due to the holiday and the causal factor of the great weather (I think the weather was the one that tipped the scale). So we went to Starbucks instead (at least their local, right) for cold drinks.

I can't tell you how great it was to be free of school, enjoying a father's day with my family and having such a beautiful day to enjoy.

Schools out for summer!

Today is the last day of school for my kids and they are all quite happy!

So am I - my grades for this quarter were posted yesterday and I was quite pleased with the end result.

Summer time (at least from school) has arrived. Hopefully, the weather will cooperate as well and summer will finally arrive. It's shaping up to be a nice day today - blue skies with high clouds at my house.

Here's to summer!

Summer is here?

I think that summer might have arrived. We've had two beautiful days in a row! I will write about my great Father's day separately and some other things I've done recently, but tonight, I want to write about how nice it has been.

Today, I saw nothing but blue skies all day long. Heather was at swim practice and I called her to see if she wanted to have a picnic dinner. She was up for it and we met on Mercer Island at Luther Burbank Park. It was a great time.

The kids tell us that it should be a nice afternoon tomorrow as well. This is probably good for Son #1, since his school is letting out after something like 2-1/2 hours; he'll get to enjoy the nice weather.

If tomorrow is as nice as today, I'll be rooting for another picnic dinner and I might even work outside on the patio table! I hope good weather catches up with where ever you may be!

Summertime in Seattle?

My calendar tells me that it is summer time - it is after the 21st of June.

Yesterday, I wore shorts and a t-shirt to a swim meet and I got sunburned on my legs. Today, I wore pants, a sweatshirt and a Gore-tex parka because it was cold and rainy.

Only in Seattle could summer be like this.

I learned an old Northwestern adage today.

If you can't see Mount Rainer, it is raining.
If you can see Mount Rainier, it will be raining soon.

Ain't that the truth.