New Hatch!

Blogger has been down for a few days but I took this photo of the robin chicks today!

Bird Visitors

While waiting to get photos of some White Crowned Sparrows this Catbird landed near me. I shot this "blind" from my chest because I could barely move.

It went down to the seeds for a while and chased any smaller birds away while it ate.

Upon the Catbird's depature the smaller birds filtered back in.

At one point there were 3 White Crowneds but I only got a photo of 2 at once.

These lovely birds never stay very long so I love the few weeks they are around. I notice the White Throated Sparrows seem to have moved on already and these won't be far behind.

A Chickadee joined in and a Titmouse was nearby too.

Mother's Day

This note on my jewelry box means the world to me. I wake up looking at it every day.

Beaver Stadium Run 2011

One to Grow On

This year is coming across as a year to build on. I think I have finally accepted my rejection from the ING NYC Marathon and look at it as a stepping stone to eventual guaranteed acceptance. If I am rejected for the next two years of lottery applications, I will have automatic acceptance into the 2014 NYC Marathon.

Maypole is up, Beltain celebrated and we decided to add in a row of asparagus to the garden this year. To plant the dozen crowns required Jim to dig a trench about 6 - 8" deep and about 12' long. I got some Triple Super Phosphate to sprinkle in the bottom of the trench and added in the lightly soaked crowns about a foot apart from each other. I covered them with an inch of soil and now I wait.

I wait for them to sprout up a bit and cover them withe the rest of the 6" of soil. I wait for them to fully grow and when they are withered and brown this Autumn I will cut them back. I wait for next year and harvest next to none of them, only the largest and cut them back again in the fall.

I am thinking that the asparagus of 2014 will end up bearing a good crop so it will fuel me up for the ING NYC Marathon later that year. Thank goodness not everything takes 3 years to come to fruition. I look forward to watching these over the next few weeks!

Rose & Indigo

Yesterday in Roaring Springs pond I saw a HUGE indigo hued trout. I sound worried in the video because I was once foolish enough to let a trout latch itself onto the middle finger of my right hand and it wouldn't let go. I was hand feeding trout fingerlings that day. I have had a trout fear ever since.

This morning at the closest feeder to the house were 2 Rose-breasted Grossbeaks.

The Rest of my Week

We had a nice trip to NYC and back with a wonderful Thai feast, a run in central park and hike to a waterfall in the mix.

We came home in time to go to the public radio volunteer appreciation party. After a couple of hours in which I left my electronic communication devises in the car, I saw I had a text message on the phone. Amy had passed her NY bar exams!! BEST new of the week!

The next day was filled with too much anticipation for the ING NYC Marathon lottery. It took hours to finally determine that I had NOT been chosen this year and made for a crashing depression for the next couple of days.

Today we have put up the Maypole and now have a whole growing season to look forward to.

Happy 50th Wedding Anniversary!

Today Mom & Dad have been married 50 years. We had a meal last night with a bunch of the family together in Harrisburg at Melting Pot.

What to Say When the Ducks Show Up

"Do you know what you'll say when the ducks show up? I, for one, am going to know what to say when the ducks show up. I've made a list of phrases, and although I don't know which one to use yet, they are all good enough in case they showed up tomorrow. Many people won't know what to say when the ducks show up, but I will. Maybe I'll say, 'Oh wonderful ducks!' Or maybe I'll just say, 'Ducks, ducks, ducks!' I practice these sayings every day, and even though the ducks haven't come yet, when they do, I'll know what to say." ~ Steve Martin

Spring Flowers

April 22 and it's hard to tell but it's snowing.

Fourty-four Years Ago

Check out some newly scanned twinkie archives on my Easter 1967 blog.

Thanks Mom for scanning in the thousands of slides!

Garlic Zoom

For the kitchen gadget fans, here's the awesome Garlic Zoom that I used in making the artichoke recipe a couple of days ago.

Warm Corn Salad & Chocolate Ginger Chip Cookies

I am still inspired to share my food creations and photos today. Lunch was to be left over Red Beans & Rice but I rounded out the meal by making a Warm Corn Salad.

Red Beans & Rice with Warm Corn Salad.

We had purchased an ear of fresh sweet corn and I just started emptying out the veggie drawer and grabbed a few south western flavors to got along. I started with heating a pot and pouring in some olive oil to saute a couple of minced pickled garlic cloves with some whole cumin seeds and a half of a green bell pepper. When that was smelling nicely, I added in the corn I had cut off the cob along with a coarsely chopped gala apple that was just starting to get to the point of soft and not an ideal hand fruit. I soon added a chipotle with a little adobo sauce. They come a few to a can and we usually only use one so, like I do with tomato paste, I wrap them in single use portions in plastic wrap and freeze them. It didn't take too long for the corn to start to cook a little and the apples just started to get softer when I cut off the heat and added about a dozen halved cherry tomatoes and 1/4C chopped cilantro.

I reheated the plates heaped with leftovers and the Warm Corn Salad for 30 seconds in the microwave just before serving. It turned out really well, very tasty!

Cookies with blooming hyacinths.

I would have thought that would be enough to hold me for the afternoon but anytime I have a lot of garlic, pickled or otherwise, I start to crave chocolate. I saw a link on my FaceBook page that showed a photo of vegan chocolate chip cookies and I could not get them out of my mind. They were haunting my subconscious and I told Amy about my craving. She enhanced it with her own desire for chocolate chip ice cream! I got images in my head of perfect little ice cream sandwhiches and them went on a mission to figure out what started my craving all together.

When I came back across the photo, I linked out to the article and to my surprise it was a QuarryGirl post dedicated to Natalie Portman so she would stop waffling as a vegan because she could find any cookies! The cookie post link to a Vegansaurus rant about her and how she is constantly announcing her vegan diet status changes. HA!!

The cookies were in my brain so I walked to Nature's Panties to get a cookie and maybe heat it in the microwave. They had many different single cookies; peanut butter, snickerdoodle, gingersnap, but no chocolate chip. I wandered around and a woman asked if she could help me find anything. I assured her I was just looking for a snack.

I saw something that gave me an idea and the woman who had asked to help me said I had made a good snack choice as I bagged up some bulk dark chocolate covered ginger. I told her I had decided to use them to make cookies instead of chocolate chips and her eyes widened and she affirmed that she thought that was a great idea.

I only got a small portion because I intended on only making a 1/2 batch. I also bought some eggs and walked home to dig out the old Toll House recipe. All I did was substitute the chocolate ginger pieces for the chips (and forgot the vanilla) and made a half batch. They are wonderful and I had 2 while they are warm. Now what to do with the rest...

Vegetarians that eat...

fish, chicken... BACON!!?

I am a vegetarian and although I strive to cut out more and more animal products and eat vegan at home it never has completely worked. If someone wants to argue the finer points of rennet in the cheese products I eat and the fact that I step on bugs and worms when I go running, I will concede to them. I am, however, a vegetarian; I do not knowingly eat animals. I will even waste food and throw it away, or set it out for other animals to eat, if someone tells me there is animal stuff in it.

There are certain places and people I do not expect to understand vegetarianism. I am patient with many restaurants even though in this time in main stream USA vegetarianism should be understood by the food service industry. When making new acquaintances I have no problem in describing just what I will and won't eat because the many people's dietary choices are for different reasons. Health, religion and personal ethics can all muddy what is considered meat. The pork industry still describes itself as "the other white meat®" to try to blur the lines between what is real meat and what is not.


Take the observance of Lent as an example. One Lenten requirement is that all Catholics 14 years old and older must abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and all the Fridays of Lent. Abstinence, in this context, forbids the use of meat, but not of eggs, milk products or condiments made of animal fat. This chosen "abstinence" does not include meat juices and liquid foods made from meat. Thus, such foods as chicken broth, consomme, soups cooked or flavored with meat, meat gravies or sauces, as well as seasonings or condiments made from animal fat are not forbidden. So it is permissible to use lard and even bacon drippings which contain little bits of meat may be poured over lettuce as seasoning. These Lenten ideas on abstaining from eating meat are about as clear as the warm bacon dressing it is served up with.

A place I would expect to have a clear understanding of vegetarianism would be in a health food store. Our local store, Nature's Pantry, had a day where vendors came in to share samples and information about their products. They were very aggressive when it came to encouraging customers to try their products and even more so in bombarding us with their information. We avoided most of their tables after sampling a terrible cup of chicory coffee that was just as overpowering and obnoxious as the vendor was. We stood in line to pay for our regular purchases and had to walk by one last snake oil salesman. Actually she was pushing products with fish oil in them and was touting them as vegetarian. She demanded our attention as we stood in line and I cringed from her product and said, "No thank you, I am a vegetarian." This opened up the flood gates of her argument that there are all kinds of vegetarians and even some that ate fish. I now know they are actually called pescetarians, thanks to my post-argument research, but at the time all I could do was look nauseated and tell her that I don't eat ANY animals. She must have earlier over-dosed on her neighbor's chicory coffee because she would not shut up nor take any visual clues that we did not want to be involved in her argument on what vegetarians actually ate and what each of them are called. Jim pretty much ended the conversation by saying, "Yes, and I am sure there are vegetarians who eat cows and call themselves 'Bovine-vegetarians' but we do not."

Bless the vegan blogger Quarrygirl for recently calling out a popular vegan magazine, VegNews, for being so ridiculous as to using Photoshop on iStock photographs of meat entreés and trying to pass them of as vegan meals! Check out her original post, RANT: VegNews is putting the MEAT into vegan issues, and the New York Times coverage of this backlash, Vegan Promoter Uses Photos of Meat and Dairy Items, and Fury Follows.

My personal rant started to come to a head over the past day when, for the second time, I was served chicken at My Thai. The first time was in December for my pre-race pad thai when I ordered tofu as my protein choice. The older woman waitress had the audacity to argue with me that I had ordered chicken. It has taken me over 4 months to relent to Jim's, "How about My Thai for supper?" suggestion/requests for me to set foot into the restaurant again. We had purchased takeout for guests a couple of times but yesterday was my first sit down visit, the first time I didn't wait in the car.

The same matron waited upon us and we clearly stated our curry and veg/tofu choices. Jim ordered Red Curry with tofu and I ordered Masaman Curry with vegetables. We listened carefully as she repeated our orders back to us but upon it's arrival mine looked distinctly like chicken and I questioned it even before she had removed her hand from setting the steaming bowl in front of me. She looked carefully at it and although I bristled and was ready to have it out with her she apologized that it was an order for another table and whisked it away before the folks who had ordered it noticed me looking at it in disgust. She apologized again when bringing our correct bowls but I just couldn't bring myself to being sympathetic toward her.

In typical true indigo fashion, to try to bring something positive out of all of this frustration, I decided to take some photos of an artichoke dish I am making for lunch. It's not iStock photography so the surroundings have that look that shows I love and use my kitchen a lot.

Although I didn't photograph the use of it, I am really pleased with how well my melon baller works for taking the choke out before steaming the artichoke for about 25 minutes. I rinsed it in cold water to stop the cooking process and drained it well before topping it with a nice drizzle of sauted garlic and lime juice then topped it with feta cheese. I popped it under the broiler for a quick melt and served it up with some left over risotto.

Other than the melon baller, I am pleased to feature some of my other little gadgets used today. The super fast garlic mincer (with wheels and blades!!) and the metal bar of soap for washing onion and garlic scent off my hands. Both were given to us by the ever-savvy, lusciously-geeky, gadget-oriented Lukens-Chens. Although not a gadget, I love the usage of foil on my baking trays for broiling. It might seem a wasteful use of foil but clean up is less of a headache and I cram the used foil into a cat food can when I take out the recycling.

Mine is not professional quality nor vegan photography but definitely shines with my love of creating vegetarian meals. For some awesomely scrumptious vegan food photos, visit the vegan selections at Food Gawker.

Thoughts from the Road - #41711

Two Races in one Weekend



Yesterday Jim and I ran a 5k race in Mifflintown and today we ran one here in State College. I am pretty tired and will update this post later but I promised my sister I would make a video of our race today since we ended on the field of Beaver Stadium.

Beaver Stadium Run is a new Blue White Weekend tradition. Runners and walkers of all ages and abilities took part in the second annual Beaver Stadium 5K Run/Family Fun Walk at Penn State University to benefit Special Olympics Pennsylvania. We ended through the Beaver Stadium Tunnel and onto the Nittany Lions’ home turf to the finish line.

Dad allowed me to wear his Special Olympics media cap. It was so windy I was afraid it would blow off but it stayed firmly on my head the whole run.



After filming our entrance into the stadium, Jimmy the Eye sat down to stretch out his sore calves and shared this sentiment:


He has every right to be sore with an amazing finishing time of 26:38 from yesterday's race! That is almost 3 minutes faster than his best 5k time! Today we stayed together and finished (as you probably heard in the first video) under 30 minutes for a clock time of 29:48. Not too bad for 2 slow and tired soles, just 10 seconds slower than my time yesterday.

Yesterday had a whole other series of challenges. The main one was a cold pouring rain.

Today's race ended with a lot of snacks set out in the cold wind.

Bananas for tomorrow morning!

Waters in a row!

Eat & Park man face cookies!!

Subway sandwiches usually mean none for us.

Cheese subs from Subway!

Very happy for all of the food!

Thoughts from the Road - #41011

8 Miles in Poe Valley

Jim dropped me off where the Milheim/Siglerville Pike intersects with Poe Valley Road and drove on to Poe Paddy State Park. Our idea was to run toward each other and upon meeting Jim would turn back around and we would get back to the car together. That would be about 5.5 mile for me and depending on how far he ran before we met it would be about 4 for him.

It was a great idea because next to no one was out on the roads. I am so familiar with the stretch of road that goes from the Kinzer's cabin to the state parks that I had no fear of what or who I would meet. The draw this morning was to enjoy a longer run along the beautiful streams in Poe Valley. It turned out to be a bit of a "walk" down memory lane.

It didn't take too long before I was jogging past Kinzer's camp. I looked up, took a picture, said, "Hey Glenn," and loudly said, "You old goat!" No one was anywhere close enough to hear me and it somehow cheered me to say that as I saw his memorial bench in front of the cabin.

My next memory was juts around the bend on a lovely "S" curve that I had to photograph. The road is more scenic than my memory of wrecking on my skateboard. The length of my one shin was skinned and probably one of the most painful accidents I had as a kid. Healing in the summer, sunburns and scraped knees, can lead to long sleepless nights.

I saw plenty of trails that I hiked and overgrown stretches Missy and I had cut through to take "short cuts" back to the cabin from the lake. It's along that stretch Jim, Arron, Evan, Missy and I also hiked up and over Little Poe Mountain. We came from the Boiling Spring on an old unblazed trail which dropped down onto an old logging grade. Some guy near Boiling Spring took us for a bunch of tender foots and said we would never find the old logging road. I think we were all pretty pleased when our little bushwhack went off without a hitch and we stepped onto it without a worry.

Just after I trotted onto the boundry of Poe Valley State Park, I could see the trees thinning ahead over the lake. It had been about 30 minutes of running and snapping random photos and I could see the lake just through the trees. I then caught a brief flash of a white wedge of tail feathers from near the far end of the lake. I never got to positively identify it but I am pretty certain it was a mature bald eagle soaring over the quiet Poe Valley Lake.

I stopped for a few photos and gave a careful look up and down the valley for the eagle but had to keep moving. I saw the new buildings along the beach and in the camping area and am excited to check them out this summer. The lake was so still and looks ready for warm weather visitors.

After running past the dam the road took a decided grade downhill and went from paved to gravel. Across the creek to my right, I saw where a group of us has hidden a geocache back in 2004. Poe Valley State Park had approved the location and a group of us came in after the first weekend of fishing season to clean up the park of any trash that was left.

The next miles were so scenic with old trees and curving streams. I surprised a turkey that was a distance ahead of me on the road. It ran for a few yards before taking off and flying low around the bend in the road. I knew I could meet Jim and anytime and imagined the turkey flying around and meeting him face to face. It didn't happen that way though and I saw Jim about a half a mile farther down the road.

Jim saw me coming and had snapped some photos. We had a cheerful reunion and he told me about an osprey that he got to see up close about a mile before we met. He wasn't sure if the photo he shot of it flying away turned out. It turns out that you can see it!

I told him of all I had seen and the couple of miles to the car went quickly. We stopped for quick drinks of water where he had parked in Poe Paddy State Park and decided to continue running the mile to the old tunnel. We remembered when we had brought some hot stew out to our friend Jan while she was camping and letterboxing.

Penns Creek was swollen and flowing with power. Jim joked that he was glad we hadn't brought our inner tubes along today. The emerald green waters were churning and raging. It seemed like no time at all before we came to the rail road grade and the wooden trestle that the Mid State Trail crosses. We snapped photos of each other crossing Penns Creek on the bridge then did the same near the old tunnel.

We had intended to run through the tunnel but it was very wet and some of the puddles covered the trail from side to side. Hiking shoes would have been perfect but wet running shoes are a different thing. I really didn't want cold wet feet for my last mile. Another reason I turned back was that progressing at more than a slow walk wasn't enough time for my eyes to adjust inside. Normally I have time to adjust but running felt too dangerous. We turned back and snapped more pictures.

The last half mile I slowly put the hammer down. I was pushing out of my comfort zone but the song I had on the iPod allowed for me to push to keep that rhythm and run less than a 9:00 MM for quite a length. It was a nice way to end the long run; I ended strong.

Jim and I changed clothes in the outhouse and freshened up for brunch at the Elk Creek Café. They had our favorite Creamy Mushroom Soup with Truffle Oil and Smoked Tempeh Sandwich on the menu! We got refreshing sparkling raspberry drinks and water to hydrate. It was a great morning to share in Poe Valley.