Month: April 2004

Breakfast was three cups of coffee, half of a white grapefruit, two farm fresh scrambled eggs, a slice of Honeybaked Ham, and a glass of orange juice. I weighed 157 pounds.

Lunch was a cup of ham and bean soup and a Saranac Pale Ale while sitting on the front porch.

I had a handful of peanuts as an afternoon snack.

Dinner was pan fried haddock, oven fries with balsamic vinegar, and two glasses of Redwood Creek Pinot Grigio.

Rachael Ray did Cleveland on $40 a Day today. She started out in Coventry for breakfast, rode the RTA (I called it the “Rabbit Transit” when I was a kid), she went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the West Side Market, the Great Lakes Brewing Company, and ended up in Little Italy. Oh, the memories!

Gretchen and I got our first planting done today. The garden was tilled last weekend, and it was nice enough to get back in today. We planted an eight-foot bed of Burpee Gourmet Blend Lettuce — a blend of five different varieties of leaf lettuce in shades of green and red, consisting of Grand Rapids, Royal Oak Leaf, Salad Bowl, Red Salad Bowl, and Ruby. We’ll hopefully be harvesting this somewhere around June 8th to 13th. We planted another eight-foot row of Burpee Classic Mesclun Salad Greens. Finally in the lettuce category, we planted an eight-foot bed of Little Caesar Romaine Lettuce, which we should harvest around July 3rd. We should start thinning all of these starting around May 4th to 7th. Moving on to the non-lettuce salad greens, we also planted a six-foot row of Burpee Baby’s Leaf Hybrid Spinach, which we ought to harvest between May 24th and June 4th.

We planted a ten-foot row of Agway (Seedway) Dwarf White Sugar Peas, which should be ready to harvest in around June 13th, and a row of Agway Little Marvel Peas, which should be ready to harvest around June 26th.

We also planted three forty-foot rows of yellow onions. We’ll plant another row when we get more seed. We weren’t certain how much to get. It worked out to about a pound per row.

How much salt do you need? Here are some general guidelines:

• 1 teaspoon per quart for soups and sauces
• 2 teaspoons per pound for boneless raw meat
• 1 teaspoon per 4 cups flour for dough
• 1 teaspoon per two cups liquid for cooked cereal
• 1 teaspoon per 3 cups water for boiled vegetables
• 1 tablespoon per 2 quarts water for pasta [Trowbridge]

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Trowbridge, Peggy. “Salt of the earth Information and Recipes.” About Home Cooking. 14 April 2004. <homecooking.about.com/library/weekly/aa042202a.htm> (24 April 2004).

Breakfast was a bowl of pineapple and banana slices and two cups of coffee. I weighed 157 pounds.

I had a cup of coffee at the office.

For lunch, a bunch of us from the office went over to Panda Express at the HUB. I had mandarin chicken with mixed vegetables on chow mein noodles with hot and sour soup, a small sierra mist, and a fortune cookie.

Your destiny lies before you,

choose wisely.

Lucky Numbers 8, 12, 14, 16, 30, 43

Gretchen made a really terrific sautéed green pepper and onion pizza for dinner. We washed it down with two Saranac Pale Ales.

Gretchen took this picture of a Pileated Woodpecker rooting in the remains of the wood pile behind the cabin.

The butterscotch flavor develops naturally when you boil sugar syrup and butter together to a high enough temperature to make hard candy. It’s a combination of two flavors: browned sugar, otherwise known as caramel, and browned butter. The browning results from what chemists call the Maillard reaction, in which sugars and proteins react under heat to create roasted and browned flavors. This is why butterscotch has so often been combined with other roasted ingredients. Nuts, such as pecans, are typically roasted; rum and Bourbon contain caramel; maple syrup has undergone the Maillard reaction. [Perry]

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Perry, Charles. “Boss sauce.” The Chicago Tribune. 21 April 2004. <www.chicagotribune.com/features/food/chi-0404210083apr21,1,183784.story> (23 April 2004).

Breakfast was a bowl of pineapple and banana slices and two cups of coffee. I weighed 155 pounds.

I had two cups of coffee and three peanut butter sandwich girl scout cookies at the office.

I walked downtown to Subway for lunch and had a six-inch pizza sub — essentially a peperoni sub — a bag of baked Lay’s potato chips and a Dr. Pepper.

Dinner was a salad and three glasses of Vendange Pinot Grigio with a slice of pineapple upside-down cake for dessert.

I just bought a Penn State Faculty/Staff Fitness Membership for the Summer Semester (4/15 – 9/15). So now I’ll be able to take advantage of:

1. Athletic weight room in Recreation building during designated hours.
2. IM Fitness Center
3. White Building MBNA Fitness Center
4. Natatorium Fitness Loft
5. Recreational aerobic classes

Muscle burns more calories.

Breakfast this morning was a bowl of fresh pineapple and banana slices and two cups of coffee. I weighed 156 pounds. At the office, I had another cup of coffee, and three peanut butter sandwich girl scout cookies.

I walked to the HUB for lunch and had a salad from Picallili’s while sitting on the lawn out front. While I was there, I picked up a copy of the New York Times Dining Out section.

Gretchen and I had the honor of hearing Robert Kennedy Jr. give a talk this evening on the topic of “Our Environmental Destiny.” It was the keynote speech of the Colloquium on Environmental Initiatives at Penn State, presented by the Penn State Institutes of the Environment.

Before we went in, we each had an Egg Roll and a Fortune Cookie that Gretchen got us as a snack.

All your hard work will soon pay off.

9 12 1 44 33 4

Dinner was pan fried haddock, roasted winter vegetables, and some apple wedges, with a glass of 2002 Vendange Pinot Grigio with a hand full of peanuts for dessert.