jcc fair and rollercoasters

lawn mower races

So with summer comes the fun of the local fairs and carnivals, and the James City County Fair was held this past weekend at Chickahominy Riverfront Park. This was the first time I’d been to a “real” county fair, with a petting zoo, alpacagoat vegetable, fruit, jam, <insert name of any baked good here> judging, tractor pulls and lawn mower races, and it was a lot of fun. A bunch of us rode our bikes to the fair because 1) good exercise and 2) didn’t have to pay for parking. We watched the tractor pull for a while then wandered around the various booths, had some fair food, watched a few lawn mower races and finished off the afternoon with a funnel cake. A most excellent way to spend a summer afternoon.
first place jam
On a similar train of thought with fairs and carnivals, I remember that it was at the Dalton, Pennsylvania carnival that I rode my first “real” roller-coaster (albeit a very small one) with my grandfather when I was 5 or 6 (he loved riding roller coasters, even into his 70s). Of course I’ve been addicted to roller-coasters ever since (Busch Gardens season pass anyone?) but some of the other rides at carnivals are really great too. Anyone remember (and I think they still have) the ride that’s one big open cylinder that spins around really fast and it’s just centrifugal force that holds you in place while the ride tilts around, that one’s pretty fun especially when you try to lift your arm or leg against all the force. loch ness monsterThey used to have a similar ride at Kings Dominion years ago called Time Shaft that was indoors and as it was spinning the floor would drop from underneath your feet and you’d just be kinda suspended in midair, pretty cool (apparently the technical name of that kind of ride is a rotor ride), but it’s long gone unfortunately.

Man, now I want to go ride roller coasters…maybe this weekend.

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three layer jello

Ok, time for a poll, does anyone remember the “Jello 1-2-3” dessert from Kraft? It was this great Jello dessert that was out in the 80s and early 90s that you would mix in a blender and then pour into glasses and it would separate into three distinct layers, a regular Jello bottom, a mousse-like middle, and a lighter frothy mousse top. It was SO GOOD! My mom used to make it in the dark blue Pfaltzcraff wine glasses she had (which I think was the only time we ever really used the wine glasses until a few years ago). They had strawberry and orange flavors and strawberry was by far my favorite. One day in the mid-90s my mom came home without the coveted Jello 1-2-3 saying she couldn’t find it anywhere at the grocery store and summertime desserts haven’t been the same since…until now!

Trio treatWhile browsing a grocery store in northeast Pennsylvania my mom came across, not true Jello 1-2-3 unfortunately, but a pretty close approximation…Trio Treat. When my mom called to tell me she had found this three layered gelatin dessert I told her to buy a few so I could try it out (and prove to everyone here that it, or something like it, really does exist), and in true mom fashion she does not buy one, or even one of each flavor, but since I reminded her strawberry was my favorite flavor of Jello she bought nine boxes of it, seven strawberry, one orange and one lime (to make sure we had all flavors represented).

So last night I decided to try out this Treat to see how it stacked up, of course I don’t think of this until 9pm and the dessert needs to set for 3 hours minimum, so I made it last night and tried it tonight. I had a few blender issues so I don’t think I got quite enough frothy-ness in to really separate all three layers properly but the result was pretty tasty. It wasn’t quite the same consistency that I remember (but I may attribute that to faulty blending on my part), and the strawberry flavor was a bit different (maybe Jello has a patent on that or something) but it was still good and definitely worth making again (perhaps with a more cooperative blender).

Being the photo dork I am I decided to document my recent tri-layer gelatin dessert attempt, here are the highlights (all the pics are on flickr)

three layers
digging in

top layer
frothy top layer

first bite
first bite

all gone
all gone

Amongst my friends I’m the only one who has heard of or remembers this wonderful dessert, but I am not alone, the internet remembers everything, and there is even a petition to Kraft to bring Jello 1-2-3 back to store shelves, here’s hoping it succeeds.

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behold, the results

So I finally managed to get some pictures taken of the courtyard yesterday, so here are the highlights (all the pics are on my flickr page)…

top view (note all the pipes and stuff behind the screen):

top view

onlookers:

onlookers

the patio furniture (“conversation set”):

patio furniture

the planter box (and hosta):

the planter box

the trellis:

the trellis

begonias:

begonias

impatients:

impatients

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cultivating my green thumb

So, much to the pleasure of the government, I did not end up saving much of the money I got from my tax reimbursement. Instead, I decided to invest it in my house, in the courtyard to be exact.

In between the house and garage there is a small, 14×17 space (with all but 8×5 of that taken up with stairs going to the garage), with one side being the wall under the window of my kitchen/foundation of the house which is full of pipes coming out of the wall and an access door to under the house and various electric boxes,view of courtyard from kitchen not very attractive. (The pic here is looking out from the kitchen window, directly below is the said 8×5 space). But with the weather here being pretty gorgeous lately and seeing all of my neighbors with patio chairs and flowers in their courtyards made me decide I’d like to enjoy the same thing, just had to figure out the right way to arrange things.

Over Mother’s Day weekend when my parents were visiting my mom and I went out plant-scouting to figure out what would work best with the amount of sunlight I get in the courtyard (get maybe 3 hours of midday sun total, so pretty much everything would need to be a part-shade or shade plant). We decided on hosta, impatients and begonias. While we were at the Pottery we found these really great wrought-iron panels with hook/ring things to hang pots on it, so we put those up along the house-wall to cover all the pipes and stuff. Unfortunately, with the panels being a pretty open grid, they didn’t really cover very much, so I was back to more pondering on what to do with that.

Another week goes by, I’m trying to plan everything out on graph paper to figure out exactly what I can fit in the space and finally last weekend I decided, ok, let’s just get this done and stop trying to plan everything out so much. I recruited some help from Jeremy who has access to fun power tools and we built a 2x4x3.5 foot planter box out of 1×6 pretreated lumber to go underneath the upper walkway of the deck, that was Sunday’s project. During the following week I got 14 bags of dirt to fill up the planter box, as well as packing peanuts to put on the bottom layer so I wouldn’t have to buy as much dirt, and it would give me more drainage. With a holiday weekend last weekend I decided everything was going to be purchased and finished before the weekend was out. So I put all of the dirt and such in on Saturday, and Sunday I went back to the Pottery and got a bunch of clay pots and flowers to put in the planter box and on the lattice. Sunday afternoon I recruited Jeremy’s help again and got everything planted and, on a whim pretty much, decided to swing through Bed, Bath & Beyond to try and find patio furniture. I’d looked at Home Depot, Lowes, Target, and online a bunch of places and hadn’t found anything that was in the right price range that was a style and material that I liked (wanted wrought iron or metal so it wouldn’t deteriorate quickly, no woven seats, no ornate designs, not-bar-height, not a giant 5 or 8 piece set). Happily we walk into the BB&B and right in the front is a “conversation set” of 2 chairs, 2 ottomans and a side table, perfect! so with the ubiquitous 20% off coupon (I think at this point I have about 15 of them) I bought that set and assembled it that afternoon.

Monday morning I got my first chance to sit out there with a cup of coffee, and it was great. I’m sure I’ll find more little things to nit-pick at but I really love how things turned out. It’s like I added another little room to the house (although the cats read me the riot act from the upstairs windows when I’m sitting out there, pretty sure they’re jealous). But I’m definitely looking forward to sitting out there in the (hopefully cool!) summer evenings with a nice beverage or in the mornings with a cup of coffee.

P.S. Pics of everything will be posted soon!

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best ways to cook veggies

So I just came upon this New York Times article on the best (ie. most nutritional) ways to cook vegetables. It says

The amount and type of nutrients that eventually end up in the vegetables are affected by a number of factors before they reach the plate, including where and how they were grown, processed and stored before being bought. Then, it’s up to you. No single cooking or preparation method is best.

So first, that’s real helpful right? an article that is titled “Finding the Best Way to Cook All Those Vegetables” that then concludes there’s no “best” way.hot wok But in a way that’s good, it avoids supporting the “everything must be steamed” craze we had a few years ago (not that I’m anti-steaming, just please put a little salt, pepper, herbs, butter…something on them when they’re done, otherwise bo-ring). One of the things I found most interesting in this article was that eating raw vegetables is not always the best way to get the vitamins and nutrients and phytochemicals (yes, scientific word, Alton Brown would be proud) out of the food, which is great, since I’m not particularly a fan of raw vegetables (except carrots, celery and cucumber I’ll take those with ranch dip or hummus anytime). The article concludes that any way we can get people to eat veggies is good, and having a little fat with the vegetable, butter with the broccoli, or mozzarella with your tomatoes, can actually help you absorb more nutrients. As long as people think something tastes good, they’ll eat it, even when it’s actually good for them. The study only looked at boiling, steaming, microwaving and pressure cooking…wonder how grilling affects the nutritional value (aside for the token bit of added carbon from the lovely grill marks) or sauteeing (in a wok perhaps ;)).

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Hello world!

Ah yes, the title for this post (provided automatically by wordpress for the first post, btw) is the age-old default text used by computer scientists when writing a new program. Whenever I would learn a new language, or was trying to test out something, the first thing was always to make a program that printed “Hello world!” to the screen. So here it is, first foray into the blogging world, might as well follow tradition…Hello (blogging) World! 🙂

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farmers markets

summer farmer's market yieldSo I just received an email that New Town Williamsburg is going to host a farmers market every Thursday in June, how cool is that? Although they’re from 3-7pm, so that doesn’t leave much time to go after work. Are there really that many people around that can go at 3pm? Hopefully I’ll be able to make it there at least one or two times next month, I love farmers markets. You get to support local farmers and businesses, interact with the “locals”, people watch, act like a foodie, and come across all kinds of cool and unusual produce and foodstuffs (btw, a very good book on how America got interested in all that cool and unusual produce is The United States of Arugula by David Kamp, highly recommend it).

Another interesting thing about farmers markets that I’ve found (and read on various travel/food sites) is that one of the best ways to get a feel for a city is to go to their markets. You will learn what’s currently in season (and thus what you should tendency toward when you select your dinner that evening), what focus the city or area has (is everything organic? are there lots of craftspeople there in addition to the farmers? do they have local bands playing there? is there a lot of seafood?). But more than that you feel like you have gotten a taste of insider knowledge that not every tourist walking through the city gets, and at least for me, that is always a highlight when I’m traveling.

Of course, it seems like every time I go to the Saturday market they have in CW I have grand plans of finding lots of inspiration from which I will make a fabulous dinner that evening, then I go and never come back with anything. It’s not from lack of selection most of the time (although the past few have been rather slim picking for veggies, but that’s just because we’re not in season yet for most things), maybe I just get intimidated by all the choices.

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