10 years!

Holy crap, it is the 10th anniversary of my blog!  I started writing 10 years ago today in my Livejournal, chronicling random thoughts and college adventures.

And here I am today, continuing to chronicle random thoughts and adventures.  And also recipes.  Lots and lots of recipes.

What will this blog hold 10 years from now??

Lost Blanket

This morning when I got out of my car, I saw a crumpled up little pink blanket in the road.  I picked it up and shook out the dirt and debris it had collected, noting the torn satin edges and little embroidered bear on the front.  Now, it could have been nothing.  It could have been something someone snagged from Goodwill to pad some furniture they moved.  Or maybe it did belong to a baby and fell from a car while he was being buckled in, and the baby was too young to care or even notice.

But in my mind, all I could think about when I was little and forced my Dad to drive 2 hours back to the lake after our vacation because I had discovered, to my horror, that I had left Doggy behind.  And I’m pretty sure I cried desperately non-stop until I had Doggy back in my arms (thank you, Dad!)

So, this blanket…I was unsure of the best course of action, so I just folded it up and left it on the back of my car, so that it would be in easy view and out of the road.  When I left work, the blanket was gone.  Sure, anyone could have just strolled up and taken it, but in my mind I like to believe I saved a panicky parent from facing a child with the possibility that Blankie was perma-lost.

I hope it found its way home!

Wilderness Survival Class

For yesterday’s adventure, I went to a wilderness survival class with Josue and his wife.  It was essentially a 5 hour hike through a canyon throughout which we were taught a variety of survival skills – edible plants, fire making, etc.

Here is what I learned:

Nightshade berries are delicious – they taste like little cherry tomatoes, but don’t eat the unripe ones or they will make you sick.

Scavenged and ate a salad of watercress, lambs quarter, speedwell and mustard flowers.  Watercress was the most abundant but it’s really spicy, so you need some milder edibles to eat with it.

Identified poison oak.  Red berries and coffee berries are a laxative and will make you throw up if you eat too many.  Cherry holly leaves have cyanide, don’t eat them.  Was shown a few other poisonous plants which I remember by sight but I don’t recall their names

(one is this decorative flowered plant that they use on freeways a lot. They have straight stems that are tempting as marshmallow roasters, but the stems are poisonous too)

The stems and branches of the mule fat plant are really great for making bows and drills and other tools because they are so straight.  Willows look kind of like mule fat, but have medicinal bark.

Ragweed tastes terrible, but if you are starving, you can boil it and eat it.

Learned how to make a twine rope out of yucca leaf fibers.  It ended up coming in handy, too, because my ponytail rubberband broke at one point.  I used my yucca twine to tie up my hair.

Made soap from yucca leaves.  There’s really nothing to it, you just tear up the leaf into fibers and agitate them in water.

Roasted yucca fruit over a fire I helped start.  Yucca fruit are good to eat if you cut one open and it’s still white inside.  They taste too soapy when raw, but when you cook them they taste rather like summer squash or corn.

(If you haven’t gathered by now, yucca are extremely handy plants.)

Ate a prickly pear cactus pad.  It was yummy!

Learned to start a fire with flint/tinder and with a bow drill.  Though I got the coal started with the bow drill, I needed Josue to help me stabilize the bow.  Co-op for the win!

All in all, it was a really fun day and I learned a ton!  The worst part, of course, was the hike back up out of the canyon.  I got a bit too much sun and spent most of the rest of the day asleep.  For all my LA friends, if you’re interested in this sort of stuff, check out this guy’s classes.  They are affordable and good learnins.

Lemon pork stir fry

Stir fry is my go-to default meal,so I don’t usually share recipes since they’re usually just small variants of my standard stir fry.  Tonight, though, my experiments led to a different enough path that I think it warrants recording.  The lemony flavor is quite strong.

Ingredients

• 4 thin boneless pork chops
• 1/2 yellow onion, chopped
• 1 bell pepper, chopped
• 1-2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 3-4 fresh sage leaves, chopped
• 1 head of baby bok choy, chopped
• soba noodles prepared according to package instructions (I normally make rice or pure vegetable stir fries, but tonight I was feeling noodley.  Feel free to use rice if you prefer it)

For marinade:

• soy sauce
• olive oil
• rice vinegar
• a dash of sesame oil
• juice from one lemon
• (1 tsp corn starch and 2 tsps water for thickening into sauce)

1. Mix soy sauce, olive oil, rice vinegar into a shallow dish (I didn’t measure, sorry guys, do your best guess).  Add sesame oil and lemon juice and stir
2. Cut pork chops into strips and place in marinade.  Marinate for an hour or so
3. Heat some olive oil in a wok and brown the strips of pork on all sides.  Set pork aside and drain out some of the juices in the wok, leaving just enough to stir fry the vegetables
4. Add all vegetables and stir fry for a few minutes
5. Add the pork and stir
6. in the reserved marinade, add corn starch and water and stir briskly.  Add to the wok and bring to a boil until sauce starts to thicken
7. Add noodles, toss, and serve!

Ants and Aphids

There’s a short wall behind my apartment complex where Mr. Davis likes to perch, and there’s often a line of ants coming and going up and over it that I like to watch.  Today, as I watched the ant line disappear under some ivy, something caught my eye.  It was several ants tending diligently to a flock of aphids!

Now, I’d known before about the relationship between ants and aphids, and seen it before on nature shows, but somehow stumbling upon it in my back yard made the phenomenon 100% more awesome.  I watched with wonder as the ants harvested honeydew from their aphid herd in wee little droplets.  Nearby, a large group of baby aphids was clustered on an ivy stem under the shelter of a leaf.  At the base of the stem, two ants were just hanging out, which was weird to see as one tends to encounter ants on the go.  Guard duty, I suppose.

Meanwhile, during my observation, Mr. Davis had hopped down and found where the line of ants picked up through the grass.  He was lapping them up by the tongueful.

Petting a New Cat–A Guide for Cat Noobs

Mr. Davis is quite popular with the neighbors when we go out on our walks, and when people come to pet him I can always tell right away if that person is experienced or not in dealing with cats.
For my friends who are inexperienced with cats but still would like to pet them, here are some tips for cat-petting to make a better experience when meeting and greeting a new cat for the first time.
1. When you meet a new cat, let him sniff your hand before you pet him.  Stick your finger out towards his nose, stopping a few inches away, or offer your hand palm-up for him to investigate (coming in palm-down can seem threatening to some cats.  Dogs, too, for that matter)
2. Let him finish sniffing!  This is often where I see people mess up.  I feel like the “let a new animal sniff you” rule is pretty commonly understood, but lots of times a person will offer their hand, then after one sniff immediately go in for the pet.  Usually the cat is still trying to sniff, and cranes and arcs his head accordingly so the person can’t reach to pet.  It can be very awkward.
Just be patient.  The sniffy investigation can take several seconds, even longer for wary cats.  Keep holding your hand still and wait for the signal.

Cat has initiated sniffing. Let him finish! Be patient!

Not finished yet!! 

3.  After a thorough sniff, the cat will generally give a clear signal on how to proceed.  If the cat backs away or does not move towards you, he doesn’t want to be petted.  Don’t press the issue, maybe next time.

Cat is not interested, do not proceed with pet.

Other times he will initiate the pet, which is very easy to follow up.  He may rub his face against your outstretched hand or finger, which which case, just scratch that cheek or under the chin.  Just make scratching motions with your hand and hold it in place, and the cat will apply the appropriate pressure that he wants by how forcefully he pushes his face into your hand.

He also may move towards you and turn his side towards you, in which case this is a good signal to stroke his back.  It may be helpful for inexperienced cat petters to keep the strokes short across the shoulders or at the base of the back near the tail.  Like the cheek rub, most of the time the cat will lean into your hand at the part that he wants to be petted, just pay attention.

4.  On petting the head: I find that most inexperienced cat-petters want to pat the cat on the top of the head, like you do with dogs.  This can be fine, but I recommend avoiding going in to pet the head straight in front of the cat.  Having your arm looming right over the cat’s face and obscuring his vision can put him on the defensive.  Instead, go in from the side of the cat’s head, or from behind, over the back.

When petting the top of the head, avoid going straight in over the face like this 

Go in from the side, like so 

Or so

5.  Look for the signal to stop petting.  Mostly this is just when the cat moves away from you, but sometimes a cat can be mischievous and get riled up by prolonged affection, leading him to view your hand as a play toy.  Watch for a vigorously swishing tail, or for the cat to start sharply turning his head towards your hand, or for his eyes to get really big.  Those are generally signs to stop petting.
That’s all for now!  I hope this guide is helpful.  I feel like a lot of these can apply to meeting new dogs as well, but I am most familiar with cats so I’ll stick to that.  Good luck!

Chocolate Chip Marshmallow Icing

Just a super quick recipe post…yesterday I baked a chocolate cake for kicks, and wanted to figure out how I could use up some leftover chocolate chips and marshmallows.  I couldn’t find an icing recipe that I had all the ingredients for, but I used them for reference and made this cake frosting that turned out wonderfully!
Unfortunately it was sort of “throw a bit of this and a bit of that” into a saucepan, so most of these measurements are shifty.
Ingredients

• 2 TBs butter
• 1/4 – 1/2 cup of chocolate chips (I had like 1/4 of a bag leftover)
• Some water
• Some vanilla (maybe 1/2 teaspoon)
• 1 TBs of sugar or more (I literally grabbed several pinches of it)
• Handful of mini marshmallows, maybe 1 cup

1. Melt butter in a small saucepan.  stir in chocolate chips and keep stirring over medium low heat until they are melted.  Add some water if needed to keep from scorching.
2. Stir in vanilla and sugar.
3. Stir in marshmallows and keep stirring until they are melted.  Taste for if you need more sugar (but don’t burn your tongue).
4. Remove from heat and continue stirring until mixture thickens slightly as it cools.  Frost cake immediately!  (it gets pretty stiff when it cools completely)

Edit: I should add: this made enough frosting to cover a 1 layer 8 inch round cake.