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.

Busing in some life skills

My kids swim competitively, which translates to someone in our family is at a pool 7 days a week.  And since my wife and I are the only drivers in our family, this really means that my wife (mostly) or me are driving to a pool 7 days a week.  Our kids have moved up swimming groups and the practice schedule has changed to earlier in the day and further away from home.  Kids 1 and 2's practices are at the same place, Seattle University, but Kid 1's is before Kid 2 gets out of school.

To avoid my wife making multiple 30 minute trips to Seattle University and to teach some life skills, we've decided that Kid 1 (age 13) will take the bus.  Its about an hour bus ride on the the express, with one transfer in downtown Seattle.  Yesterday, we did a trial run of the trip with the whole family.

The ride actually went pretty well, and even with a slight delay in the schedule, we still made it in the right amount of time.  It was a bit of a stretch to get Kid 1 to ask the driver where the stop was, since we're not all that familiar with the transfer spots.  We've got a little work to do there, he asked, "Where do I get of for Fourth and Cherry?"  You can laugh, the driver laughed too.

We made it to the pool without event and then did a bit of a walking tour of Seattle, but we needed lunch first.  We walked past a few Ethiopian restaurants and a Haitian restaurant and found a great Vietnamese restaurant, The Lemongrass.  The food was great and the servers were quite friendly.  We were stuffed and needed to walk it off.

In the distance, Scout saw a church steeple and suggested that we walk there.  It was really fun to just wander around, with no particular place to go and take in the sites.  The weather was great, the sky was blue and the spring flowers were blooming.  It was the kind of day which makes for taking great photographs.

Today, he did a solo run and we met him in Seattle.  It was met with a little opposition, but his swimming coach thought that it will teach him to take care of himself.  

Tuesday will be the live run, so we'll see how it goes.  He'll learn how to get around a city and he'll learn some independence and responsibility from it.

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!

The Conspiracy of Closed

Re-read the title, I'm not writing about when my wife goes shopping, but this about things being closed.

On Sunday, I took Kid 3 to swim practice. Since I was half-way to the University, I decided I would turn in my completed Macro-economics final exam. I drove the rest of the way there and as I got there, I realized that there was an exhibit at the Burke Museum that I would enjoy seeing. I used my iPhone to check the hours of the museum and found that I had 15 minutes before it closed. I had an hour and 15 minutes before the MBA office was supposed to close, so I decided to check out the museum.

As I walk up, one of the museum employees steps outside to dump out her coffee cup. I try the door and it is locked. She says to me, "We're closed."

"Is it 5pm," I ask, sounding surprised and verifying the hours posted on the door.

"We close early to count money," she said. And she had to knock on the door to get back inside, too.

Oh, well. I have a few more quarters before my MBA is complete, so I'll have many opportunities to go back. On to the MBA office...


...where I learn that on Sundays that the building closes at 5pm. I can't even get in.

So, I go back to Mercer Island where my son is swimming. I'll go to the library, because there is free wi-fi there (I write this post from there now).

I get to the library (can you guess where this is going) and it closes at 5pm on Sunday! So, I just park in the parking lot, hoping I can pick up their wi-fi signal, which I am not able to do. So, for about 40 minutes I play on my iPhone and download useless applications until it is time to go pick up my son.

After his swim practice, I call my wife to ask if she'd like me to pick up something for dinner. Kid 2 (a girl) answers the phone and says I should stop at Taco Bell. I know enough to ask whether or not she said that or it was really what her mom said. I hear Heather in the background say, "Get pizza."

The voice on the phone says, "Oh, yeah, get Sahara Pizza," and at this point, I ask to speak to her mom.

The voice changes, altogether too quick, "Yes?" Wait, I recognize that voice. Its not my wife's voice, its the Kid 2 impression of mom voice.

The disguise seen through, she dutifully passes the phone on to my wife. She confirms that I should get Papa Murphy's pizza, as there are always coupons in my messenger bag.

My son and I drive up and go through my bag and find the coupons. Its raining and we wonder if we should just call it in and not leave the car. But we know we'll have to wait anyway, so I propose that we go hang out at Safeway because there is free wi-fi there.

Kid1 proposes that we go to the REI right next door, and I won't pass that up. We go order our pizza and guess what - REI was closed!

Luckily, Papa Murphy's didn't run out of crusts (that has happened to me before) and so we were able to get our pizza and go home.

It was just a giant conspiracy!

And if you are wondering, I did get my exam turned in. I made a special trip to the University, but had to adjust my plans because on Monday, I got an email that said the MBA office was closing an hour early because it was finals week! The conspiracy continues!

Happy Valentine's Day

Yesterday, Valentine's Day 2009, I woke up at 5:10 am. Nope, I wasn't doing anything special for my valentine; we were getting ready to go to a swim meet.

My wife and I had decided that because of the swim meet, we would have a low-key Valentine's Day. We planned on just taking it easy after the swim meet and cooking dinner together. Heather really likes lamb (which I really don't) and I found a lamb recipe that seemed okay - shallot crusted rack of lamb sounds not too bad, and I'd cook lamb for my sweetheart. For sides, we had mushroom risotto, asparagus and braised leeks. We also decided to make red velvet cupcakes, which really look cool.

The dinner came together nicely, with just about everything coming to the table at the same time. We got a little later start than intended, as we watched a movie after we got home, so we ate a little later, too. But the dinner was enjoyable, I found the lamb to be acceptable, though Heather's lamb preference is the shank, I've now learned (or at least am cognizant of).

After dinner, Heather said that it was a classic Beau dinner. Balsamic reduction (on the crust), red meat and asparagus. She might be on to something here. But it was nice, a low key dinner with my family whom I love very much. It was a good way to spend Valentine's Day.

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.

Meanest woman ever

Okay, so I went a little overboard with the title, but she really wasn't very nice.

This weekend we had a swim meet in Puyallup and like most other swim meets, it started pretty early. We left our house at 6:30am, in order to be there at 7:30am, so we could find seats and be ready for warm-ups at 8am.

At about 8:00 or so, an older woman arrived. I say older in retrospect, because elder implies some wisdom gathered through the ages. She asked me if the seats to one side of me were taken - there was some one else's towel spread on them - and I responded, "Some one's stuff is there." She proceeds to spread out her towel right behind me and tells me, "You need to move." After the fact, my wife told me that there were plenty of other seats, but we were by the starting blocks.

I scoot forward some, thinking she needs the room temporarily to spread out her stuff but promptly I get a knee stuck in my back. Yes, she was inside my personal bubble, but swim meets get crowded, so I can deal it. She kept moving her knee around, trying to push me forward. It became apparent that this wasn't an accidental incursion into my personal space, it was a deliberate invasion.

I proposed to her that we each move a little bit sideways and we can both have plenty of room. She declined that option, saying she was expecting more people, and kept her knee stuck in my back.

If reason based negotiations weren't going to work, I was going to be comfortable. I leaned back against her knees and was quite comfortable.

Her grown daughter, a swimmer's mom, eventually arrived. When she sat down, she asked me to move my bag using polite words like "please" and "thank you." I obliged, as you get more flies with honey than vinegar to borrow a colloquialism.

Shortly thereafter, she wanted to know what was going on and her mom took this opportunity to say how much more comfortable we could be if we weren't having a pushing match.

My response was that she was the only one pushing and that I was quite comfortable leaning against her knees. She then went on to say that swim meets are crowded and that people should move for others.

"People should move for people who are polite and ask them. Your age hasn't taught you politeness, but somehow your daughter learned politeness. I've offered twice that we can each move over and share the space, but you seem happy to try to push me aside with your knees. I'm happy leaning against them."

She was shocked and surprised that her daughter was recognized as polite, but didn't say more.

Swim meets are long and she had to go to the bathroom at some point. When she returned, the polite one, her daughter, said "Excuse me," so I scooted forward and got both knees in the back. But again, it was comfortable to lean on them, so there I stayed.

A few hours later, she got up and left to sit in her car. Her daughter said to me, no longer so polite, "Go ahead and lean back now. Does it make you feel like a big man to push on my mom?"

Calmly and politely, "I will lean back and it doesn't make me feel like a big man. She was the only one pushing and not very polite either."

"My mom is very nice and polite."

"Maybe when you are around, she wasn't polite when she was talking to me."

This line of discussion quickly ended, but I was ready to propose her mom's sudden personality change on stroke or Alzheimer's. You have to look out for the older people.

I was amazed at how rude this woman was and we were both stubborn. I would have to also say that it was more comfortable leaning against her knees than the benches. I do feel a little bad that she was probably uncomfortable for the rest of the afternoon, but just because you are old doesn't make you entitled to push other people around.

This was a surprising occurrence because people at swim meets are usually quite nice. I still don't get it, two days later.

Watching movies on an iPod

Recently, Lifehacker, a blog on Productivity, had a post on converting DVDs to an iPod playable format. I downloaded the software (all free) and have started on a few. My thoughts on the process:

• Pretty darn easy to do
• End to end, it is pretty slow
• Pretty cool to have a movie on a video iPod

The instructions that the posting include are easy to follow and there aren't really that many settings to change. I did once pick the wrong audio track and got the director's comments on Star Wars, but hey, I was learning.

The ripping process is pretty quick, about 30 minutes for a DVD, but the encoding process takes some time. On top of that it is a two step process, and you have to manually start the encoding process. I've just let it run overnight and had great success with that. The Videora encoding software will also queue movies to convert, so that can be a time savings.

Then, I'd have to say it was pretty cool to be watching a movie on a video iPod. I don't actually have one, but I was borrowing my son's (while he had lost the privilege of using it). I was a little uncertain about watching a movie on that small of a screen, but what ended up being weirder was watching Blue Velvet before 8 in the morning at a swim meet!

I've got to get one of these video iPods!

Retro-blogging and yelping offline

I've been doing a lot of traveling lately and haven't had much time to blog or post reviews on Yelp.

Yesterday, we were at a swim meet I wrote a mega-catchup retro-blog and retro reviews for Yelp. Actually, there were several not just one big 'un.

I also wrote them offline, with a pen, in my moleskine journal, knowing my battery wasn't going to last long enough to write them all and do the work I needed to do, too.

This post (in my journal) puts me down to the last 3 pages in the journal. Not to worry, I've already purchased another, so I can keep up. And I've also requested another laptop battery, so that I can finish transcribing tomorrow on the plane.

Ran out of gas

Saturday was going to be a one post day, but something happened today that warrants an extra one. You can read Heather's recounting on her blog.

As the title implies, we ran out of gas this morning. We had a swim meet in Kitsap and had to leave our house at 5:55 am in order to make the Fauntleroy-Southworth ferry.

The kids got up with out complaint just after 5 am and got ready. We were only a few minutes late leaving our house and I noticed that the fuel gauge was already on E. I wasn't worried about it, because I hadn't heard Heather talk about how low on fuel she was.

About a mile from our house, I felt the car stutter. Only after it happened the second time, did I realize what it was and put the car in neutral.

We coasted to a stop on the side of the two lane road. Because I was wearing shoes, pants and had a jacket (Heather was in a nice short skirt and sandals - going to a swim meet, rememeber), I walked home to get a gas can and to drive for gas.

I flipped the collar on my pea coat up and headed out into the dark, foggy and cold morning. As I started up the main street into our development, the fog was settling on the sidewalks and getting icy. I had to walk on the grass, because I could get better traction there.

It took a while, but I found a gas can and took my MINI to the gas station.

In my rush, I filled the gas can too quickly and it splashed out. I wiped it off as best I could, but I already smelled like a gas station attendant. I didn't want my car to smell that way, so I unrolled all the windows. At 45 mph and 28 degrees, there is quite a wind chill.

I got back to Heather and the the kids and started pouring the gas in. I must have chosen the slowest gas can we had at home - it had no air inlet. So, I stood in the lane of traffic for about 3 minutes while filling the car.

After taking my car back and filling up Heather's Expedition, we ended up missing the ferry. We drove the long was around (across the Tacoma Narrows) and ended up about 40 minutes late.

We didn't miss all of the warmups and I got some exercise this morning. All's well that ends well. Hopefully we take the ferry home. That will be enjoyable.

Boy did I feel dumb

On Saturday's in the fall, we have soccer games. As you might recall, I am the coach for both my oldest son's and daughter's soccer teams. But swimming season has also begun, which they both participate in as well. And as you can guess, there was a conflict this weekend. It wasn't really tough to overcome, but I screwed it up.

Warm ups for swim meets usually start at 8 am. Back that up for finding parking, getting to the pool, getting the stuff you need to entertain yourself and your non swimming kids, eating breakfast, and dragging kids out of bed that means that a swim meet day starts just about as early as a work day.

The boys soccer game was in the middle of the first day of the swim meet (I forgot to mention that, didn't I - some are two days), so we took two cars and I would go to the soccer game with out my son, since he was swimming. No problems here, I left the pool right on time and got to the field on time for soccer warm ups.

The soccer game was a great game. The boys really worked on playing their positions and it payed off. We were playing on a dirt field and I don't think they like it very much, but maybe this game will help them overcome that. I called my wife after the game and found out that the swim meet was done and she was going shopping to find a birthday present for a party our youngest was going to.

We were supposed to be at the girls' field at 1:30 for a 2 pm game. Heather didn't think that there was enough time to buy birthday stuff and eat lunch at home before we had to leave, so we decided to meet at Chipotle. I was supposed to go home and get my daughter her soccer gear and meet them there. This is where things started to go down hill.

I get home without incident and took off my soccer cleats before going inside. With this being fall soccer in the rainy North West, cleats get muddy or help pick up the cut grass, depending if you are playing on dirt or grass. My wife frowns (rightly so) on either of those substances in the house. My daughter's soccer stuff was right where she told me it would be and I zipped back out to Chipotle. It turns out, I left my cleats at home. Mess up #1.

I went to Chipotle and they weren't there yet. I found them shopping still and finished out the trip with them. I took the booster seat so that I could take my daughter to soccer and asked if she wanted to change in the bathroom in the restaurant. She wanted to change in the car. Mess up #2, but I didn't realize it at the time.

We had a nice lunch and I though I needed to leave at 1:20 to get to the field, which was pretty close. Everything went smoothly and we got the field just before 1:30. My daughter changed in the car and we walked out to the field. I walked up to the other coach and he said he wasn't the one we were playing and asked if we were at the right field. I thought I would wait for people to show up, but by now it was 1:35 but the kids and parents are timely.

I checked my Google Calendar reminder and learned that I was at the wrong field! Mess up #3. And there was only a slight chance that I would make it to the other field before 2pm. We run back to my MINI and as I'm driving, calling the team parents. Unfortunately, the roster I carry around with me only has home numbers (mess up #4). Luckily, one of the families also list their mobile number on their home answering machine. I called her, but she had dropped off her husband (without mobile phone) and daughter at the game. She was closer to the field than I and offered to return to let them know that I really was on my way.

We got to the game at about 1:56 and sprinted to the field. The parent's told me they were all warmed up and ready to go. I assigned positions and put the girls on the field and the ref came to me and asked if I had a pinnie for the goalie. I did, but they were in the car. Mess up #5. I sprinted back to the car and grabbed a jersey. On the good side, I don't really think that the game started late (that's my story and I'm sticking to it).

The girls game was great and the ref was really good (It is nice to have a ref that cares at the younger kid's games). The ref was probably also a good role model because she was a teenage girl still playing soccer.

So, amidst my mess ups, which count 5, there were some good points. My son's swim meet went very well and both soccer games went well. In the end, all's well, that ends well, right?