Free Thing for November

So I slacked off in October for the Free Event for the month.  Partially because Blizzcon and Halloween-themed activities ate up that time.  Time to forge ahead and look at November!

Tuesday, Nov 2, 6-10pm Day of the Dead Festival.  I know it's tough to get people rallied to go out and about on a weeknight, but I really love Dia de los Muertos stuff and would really enjoy checking this out.  If anyone would be up for a middle-of-the-week adventure, please let me know!

Saturday, Nov 12, 2-3pm Family Origami Day.  Who doesn't love origami!

Saturday, Nov 12, 3:30 - 5:30pm Myth-busting Bats.   I love bats so much, they are the coolest critters ever.  I also like nature lectures a lot.

Saturday, Nov 19, 2-5pm Yarn Bombing Los Angeles Collective.  Just a meeting of a local knit group that's open to the public and free.  I'm secretly a knitter.

If any of those sound intriguing, please let me know and I'll get an event organized up!

Tasty breakfast recipe

(serves 1)

1/2 bell pepper, sliced into thin strips
2 radishes, thinly sliced
handful of arugula chopped
2 eggs
olive oil
black pepper
soy sauce

Heat olive oil in a skillet. Saute the peppers and radishes for a few minutes, then add arugula and stir until it is wilted. Beat the eggs and dump them in the skillet. Add some pepper and a dash of soy sauce, then stir the mixture until the eggs are cooked. Serve and enjoy!

Singing in the Car

Tonight I drove out near LAX to meet up with Jesse while he was in town and catch-up on life and the universe. On the drive back there was some accident on the 405, so I took the non-interstate route, which was no faster but at least I was moving. It made me realize that I miss singing in the car very much. These days I live 5 minutes from work (and am FINALLY getting my bike repaired this weekend, so will be in the car even less!), so I don't get too much car-music time. I rather miss times when I drove to Louisville from Pittsburgh, and had 6 full hours of car singing.

Anyway, the hour I spent weaving my way through LA to get home was actually quite pleasant, from the singing but also because I was in no hurry to get anywhere, so I could take my time.

For your listening pleasure, I've made a playlist of some of the songs I sang on my evening drive home (predictably, there's a lot of Bryan Scary in there). Enjoy!

http://grooveshark.com/playlist/What+I+Listened+To+On+My+Drive+Tonight/62485448

Chicken Marinade

A quick discovery when I was throwing together random things in the kitchen.

juice of 1/2 lemon
juice of 1 orange
some rice vinegar
ground ginger

Marinate for 1/2 an hour to an hour. Zing!

Books

It's been awhile since I've made a book post, hasn't it?  Here's what I've been reading recently:

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: A story told from the perspective of an autistic savant boy, mostly about the mysteries and adventures in his daily life.  I found it a good read from an interesting perspective.

Our Tragic Universe: A story about a writer which gets a bit meta from time to time, but has just the right touch of magic to keep me interested.  I found that I kept coming up with plots that would help the main character solve her problems.  Interestingly, there were two anecdotes in this book that also appeared in the previous book, even though the two are completely unrelated.  One was The Cottingley Fairies, and the other was the joke about the economist, the logician, and the mathematician on a train who see a cow and derive various conclusions based upon what they see.

Anna Karenina: This was referenced several times in Our Tragic Universe, and piqued my interest, so I checked it out.  I'd never read anything from Tolstoy before and I *think* I enjoyed it, though it did have sort of a depressing portrayal of how jealousy in relationships destroy people.


I'm looking for more books to read, so send suggestions my way!

Mashed Potato Empanadas

Rather than my usual strategy of making a huge batch of mashed potatoes and gorging myself on them, I wanted to use my CSA potatoes and veggies to make something I could bring to work as a lunch meal. This was very experimental, thus there was a lot of winging it on measurements and simultaneous saucepan wielding and such.

These turned out great! I will say, though, that if I’d had cheddar cheese on hand, I totally would have loaded up the filling with that. Next time!

Ingredients
- Pie crust dough (I just made my usual recipe, but you could use pre-made ones or whatever recipe you prefer)
- 6-8 yukon potatoes, cut into chunks, with skins
- 2-4 Tablespoons of butter (i wasn’t paying attention, I just used a big ole chunk)
- milk (maybe like ½ cup ish?)
- handfull of fresh green beans, cut into chunks
- 2 stalks of celery, chopped
- 1-2 cloves garlic, minced
- handfull of cherry tomatoes
- schmaltz or stock or oil or something to saute with
- ½ a lemon
- salt
- pepper

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F
2. Make piecrust dough according to whatever recipe you prefer, or use pre-made pie crust. Set the dough aside in the refrigerator
3. Boil the potatoes in a medium saucepan for 10 minutes, until soft
4. Meanwhile, heat up schmaltz (what I used)/stock/oil/whatever in a skillet
5. Add garlic to skillet and saute
6. Add celery to skillet
7. Bring water to a boil in a small saucepan, then drop in the green beans and blanch for 2-3 minutes, until bring green. Drain, then add to skillet and stir.
8. Squeeze juice of ½ lemon over the saute
9. When the potatos are done boiling, drain, then return to saucepan. Add butter and mash with a potato masher. Add milk until the consistency is quite gooey
10. Add salt and pepper to potatoes
11. Add the contents of the skillet to the potatoes and mix
12. Add cherry tomatoes and mix
13. Break dough into 6-8 balls, roll a ball out flat, add a blob of the potato mixture, then fold the dough over and seal the edges with a fork.
14. Place the empanadas on a cooking sheet with parchment paper.
15. Brush the empanadas with remaining milk for glaze
16. Bake in oven for 20-30 minutes, until the crust is golden brown