Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

Crispy Onion Straws

February 11th, 2010

Last night, sick of all the soft food we’ve been eating, and with Holly nearly fully recovered from her gum infection, we decided to make a side of crispy onion straws along with dinner. The recipe came from an entry on ThePioneerWoman.com, one of Holly’s favorite blogs, and a place we’ve found good recipes before. I’m re-posting the recipe here with a couple of tiny tweaks and some notes on how to do things right.

2 cups milk	$0.38
2 tablespoons white vinegar	$0.10
2 cups all-purpose flour	$0.25
1 tablespoon salt	$0.05
Generous helping black pepper (Approx. 1 teaspoon)	$0.05
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper	$0.10
Approx. 2 cups canola oil	$1.00
TOTAL COST:	$1.93
PRICE/SERVING:	$0.97

First, start by mixing the milk and the vinegar in a wide, shallow pan. If you have buttermilk handy - and gee, what modern household doesn’t? - you can use 2 cups of it instead of the milk and vinegar. (Yes, I was very surprised to hear that you could substitute 1% milk and vinegar for buttermilk, but it works.) Next, slice up the onions as thinly as you can - as noted in the original recipe, you should be able to see your knife through the onions as you’re slicing them. Put the onions into the (butter)milk mixture, make sure they’re all covered, and let them soak for at least an hour.

While the onions are soaking, mix together the flour, salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper in a dish.

With that done, put your canola oil into a small pan and heat it on high on your stove top. I’ve noted that it’s approximately 2 cups because your goal is realistically to have enough of it that you can submerge your onion pieces in the oil and then later fish them back out without touching the bottom of the pan. I’ve bolded that bit because it’s a critical step in the process that I didn’t realize the first time around. Seriously, do not skimp here - another $0.10 of oil can make the difference between deliciousness and ruination.

When I first cooked the onions last night, I simply coated them in the flour mixture by hand and dumped them into the oil that way, fishing them back out with a slotted spoon. I noticed as I went that I was getting fairly large chunks of flour in the pot, but I didn’t think much of it - after all, it would just fall to the bottom, so what did I care? Well, this is what makes me care:

You see that black stuff all over the onion straws? It’s burnt flour mixture, and it is revolting. Honestly, straight charcoal tastes better than that atrocity. While the straws that were free of the black foulness were delicious, the ones that had been tainted by the stuff were just inedible.

Given how delicious the properly-done onion straws were, we went out today and picked up a flour sifter - not the kind with the handle that you squeeze and move a mechanism, but the simple basket-shaped kind that you tap the flour through:

…and went ahead and filtered the excess flour off of the onion straws through it, tapping out the vast majority of the flour. The difference was spectacular:

This time, every bit of onion was perfect; they were so good, in fact, that this picture came with half of them already eaten (I only just remembered to get a picture before we demolished the rest of them).

Not only were the onion straws good on their own; they also went excellently with burgers I cooked up tonight. The recipe there was simple: I took our standard zip-lock sandwich baggie full of beef, thawed it out, doused it in Worcestershire sauce and garlic salt, mixed things up, and let it all marinate for a half-hour at room temperature. Cooked into patties and topped with cheddar cheese, onion straws, and a bit of lettuce, they were heaven on a potato roll.

Posted in Cooking | No Comments »

Fresh Fruit Smoothies

February 8th, 2010

With Holly’s inability to eat solid food this past weekend, we’ve been relying heavily on our blender to eat. I thought I’d share a pair of different fruit smoothie recipes that have worked well for us. Note that, due to the wild variability in fruit prices around the country, your cost may vary significantly. Also, note that fruit quantities in the first recipe are approximate, and you can vary to your own taste.

First, the traditional variety:

8-12 medium strawberries	$1.00
6-8 raspberries	$0.75
1″ thick slice from whole pineapple (approx. 6 large pieces)	$0.75
1/2 cup applesauce	$0.10
Milk level with ingredients in blender (Approx. 1 - 1.5 cup(s))	$0.50
2 large glasses ice	$0.01
3 tablespoons Splenda	$0.05
TOTAL COST:	$3.16
PRICE/SERVING:	$1.06

Then there’s also the Brazilian variety (which I first sampled back in 2002, after my good friend Davy Johnson had returned from his LDS mission to Manaus, Brazil):

1 large avocado, peeled & pitted	$1.50
1 ripe banana, peeled (optional)	$0.25
Milk level with ingredients in blender (Approx. 0.5 - 1 cup(s))	$0.35
2 tablespoons Splenda	$0.05
TOTAL COST:	$2.15
PRICE/SERVING:	$1.08

Both should be blended on low until smooth. While the “regular” fruit smoothie looks like something you’d buy at a store in the mall, the avocado version looks like green slime. Trust me, though, it tastes much better than it looks - and it’s very good for you!

Also, note that both smoothies should work well with soy milk or another milk substitute, if you’re either a) concerned about fats/calories or b) dealing with a milk allergy.

Posted in Cooking | No Comments »

GE/Wal-Mart Brand Appliances: Warranty For The Win

February 6th, 2010

About six months ago I picked up a blender at Wal-Mart, since Holly and I had a few things we wanted to do in the kitchen that a blender was the most logical choice for. I went with a $39 GE blender on the basis that it wasn’t the lowest-priced model, it had the features we wanted, and it wasn’t anywhere near the high end of the cost scale, either. Over the course of maybe a dozen uses since then, it’s been precisely what I’d expected: a perfectly solid, totally unremarkable kitchen appliance.

That is, it was until this past weekend, when we made hummus in it for the first time. The recipe calls for blending on low for 3-5 minutes, and the blender stopped blending a few times during that period; each time it did, I simply pushed the “salsa” button again to kick it back into action. By the final blending cycle, I smelled some nasty electrical smoke, and decided that the hummus was done whether we liked it or not.

A couple of days later, when I went to make an avocado shake, my worst fears were confirmed: I’d blown the motor out making the hummus. The lights came on, but no one was home, as the blades didn’t even try to turn. Irritated at how easily the blender had died, I looked on the bottom of the base for a phone number I could call, to see if there was a way I could try to repair it.

After a minimal hold time, I had a customer service representative on the line. I explained where I’d purchased the blender, how old it was, and what was currently happening with it. Without any further questions, the representative told me that because it was a GE appliance sold at Wal-mart, it had a 2-year warranty on it, and that I could simply take it in to my local Wal-Mart and have it exchanged for an identical model at no charge. I asked if I would need a receipt to do so - I’d long since tossed mine - and he cheerfully told me that a lack of receipt was no problem at all.

Pleasantly surprised by this development, yesterday morning I made it in to Wal-Mart and headed over to customer service. I explained what I’d been told over the phone, and got the predictable response of “oh, you don’t have a receipt, we can’t help you.” When I insisted that the representative on the phone had told me I needed no receipt, the manager asked me to hold, and got on the phone for a few minutes (presumably to the GE center). Looking thoroughly annoyed, the manager returned and told me that I could indeed go find one of the same blenders out on the floor, and that they would simply pull the parts I had brought out of its box and swap them for the busted ones I had.

I walked right over, found the identical blender on their display…and suddenly realized that they were changing the model, because all of the boxes below my blender had a slightly different model in them, and there was no sign of the display model in a box. When I came back and explained this to the customer service manager, he came over, checked UPCs, and told me that the display and the boxes were the same UPC, so I could go ahead and continue the swap. As it turns out, this meant an upgrade for me - the new model had a digital display, extra settings, and a shorter, wider blending glass (which makes for better mixing anyway). A few minutes of swapping hardware and signing for the return later, and I was out the door with a fully functional blender at no charge at all.

As strange as it may sound, from here on out, I’m buying all of small kitchen appliances at Wal-Mart, specifically the GE-branded ones. After all, with a warranty like that, who needs to mess with the competition?

Posted in Product/Service Reviews | No Comments »

Snowpocalypse 2010

February 6th, 2010

For most of the week DC has been gearing up for what the locals have been calling either “Snowpocalypse” or “Snowmageddeon” - a classic storm where a bunch of warm, wet air coming up from the Gulf of Mexico collides with a cold blast coming down from Arctic Canada. The stores were packed even on Wednesday night - for a storm that was supposed to start on Friday morning - and the hype was reaching epic proportions by the time Friday rolled around.

When the flakes first began falling around 10:30 Friday morning, I started to wonder if the storm might have been overrated - nothing was sticking, and the temperature gauge on the Mini was reading 38 degrees (I was on my way to the pharmacy to get antibiotics for Holly, who’s had a rapidly spreading infection in her gums that required an emergency trip to the dentist that morning). As I went about my errands that morning - all of which were necessitated by Holly’s rapidly deteriorating condition - the temperature slowly dropped towards freezing, but still, nothing stuck.

In fact, it wasn’t until about 4 p.m. yesterday that even a fine powder started to stick to the roads. Wondering if we’d missed a chunk of the storm due to the warmer temperatures, I pulled up the weather radar, and realized that the storm was dumping a contiguous belt of snow and rain…all the way to the western edge of Missouri.

Let’s put that in perspective here. According to Google Maps, it’s 1,073 miles from my house to Kansas City, MO; if you make than an “as the crow flies” sort of route, it’s probably about 1,000 miles even. Given that it’s 3,078 miles from Ocean City, MD to Sacramento, CA, we’re talking about a storm that covers a full 1/3 of the country. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a storm front that large in my entire life.

By that point, I realized that the calls for record snowfall from the Washington Post weren’t just a scare tactic to sell more papers, and that the 18″-24″ prediction from the National Weather Service was probably conservative. After shoveling my walkway and sidewalk last night around 9:30 - which had a good, solid 6″-8″ of snow already - I was really grateful that we’d stocked up at the store and still had power to the house.

After falling asleep watching the flakes drift outside of our window last night, I went out to shovel again this morning, and found easily another 8″-10″ had come in overnight. At the rate we’re going now, with snow scheduled to continue throughout the day, I’m expecting even the larger of my two pawpaw trees to be completely buried in snow:

…I’m clearly not going anywhere any time soon, either:

But most disheartening of all is the condition of my walkway, no more than an hour after I shoveled it:

The one positive thing to come out of this disastrous storm, though, is a reaffirmation of how good people can be at heart. During last night’s shoveling, I was out with my neighbor to the north, Adam; as we finished up our respective houses, we both agreed to go dig out for Alice, our 81-year-old neighbor who lives just to my south. This morning, after I finished my house, I figured it was time to dig Alice out again, since she lives alone, and clearly couldn’t get out herself.

As I shoveled my way up her walkway, inch by excruciating inch (my back and shoulders screaming at me to quit the whole time), I kept telling myself that I’d want someone else to do it for my grandmother, so it was only fair that I do it for Alice. Mid-way up, her front door suddenly opened, and as I looked up to say hello, she greeted me with a set of words that made the pain worth it.

“I can see your halo shining from here!”, she exclaimed, beaming from ear to ear.

With those simple words, I went from a begrudging sense of duty to a feeling of perfect warm happiness, and all of the pain in my muscles melted away. We chatted a bit as I dug the rest of her walk out, and she told me how her kids and grandkids were so thankful for her neighbors, since none of them lived close enough to come over and help her out. By the time I made it home, I wanted to make sure to get this written up as a reminder to people that sometimes doing the right thing is its own reward.

Posted in House | No Comments »

Homemade Hummus: Looks Terrible, Tastes Great!

February 1st, 2010

Holly’s recently gone on a hummus kick, and I’ve been happy to go along - I didn’t start with a palate for the stuff, but we’ve found some really good hummus here in DC, and if you do it right with some pita bread, the stuff is delicious. Since it’s ridiculously expensive in the stores - around $8/lb - Holly decided to see if we could make our own for less money. We’ve succeeded spectacularly!

1 29-oz can chick peas	$1.49
1/2 cup liquid from can of chick peas	$0.00
6 tablespoons lemon juice	$0.25
3 tablespoons tahini	$0.50
4 cloves garlic, crushed	$0.25
1 teaspoon salt	$0.01
4 tablespoons olive oil	$0.50
TOTAL COST:	$3.00
PRICE/LB:	$1.50

Preparation is as simple as it gets. You just toss all of the ingredients into the blender and mix on low for 3-5 minutes. Our blender has a “salsa” setting that worked nicely - it stirred everything into a little whirlpool and mixed it all evenly. Do note that you want a somewhat heavy-duty blender, as ours had a nice electrical smell by the end of the process (if it’s been destroyed, I guess this was really expensive hummus - though I doubt it).

We added a dash of paprika to a large scoopful of hummus, and it gave it an excellent bit of flavor without much kick. We’ll also be trying rosemary, Italian seasonings, and a variety of other additions (obviously, one at a time).

One thing I will say: if you’ve never had hummus before, you should go buy some from the store first, and make sure you like it - hummus can definitely be an acquired taste. Oh, and in Holly’s defense, all hummus looks horrible - like “wall paste,” as her Aunt Linda put it - so it’s not like hers is alone in its awful visage.

Posted in Cooking | 3 Comments »

A Whirlwind Day In Chicago

February 1st, 2010

I spent this past Friday in Chicago for work, meeting with a number of clients and presenting at the Chicago Snort Users’ Group. While most of the day was relatively uneventful, I did manage to get a few entertaining pictures I thought I’d share.

First, a warning to anyone who might be flying through O’Hare airport: if you’re thinking about taking drugs before you get on the plane, you’re in for an entertaining ride through the tunnels between terminals, which were described very aptly by the sales lady in Chicago as “the paint chip tunnels”:

Heck, they’re entertaining tunnels even if you’re sober. It makes me wonder who came up with the idea, and how they got it implemented…

Of course, no trip to Chicago is complete without a picture of the Sears (er, Willis…whatever) Tower:

…especially since I spent the bulk of my day literally a block away from the Tower. Yes, I know, a million other people have taken that exact picture…but I bet I’m one of a very select group to have taken this next gem, of a newsstand on a random streetcorner in downtown:

Vandalism? Certainly. Hilarious? Most definitely.

Perhaps the most entertaining part of my day, though, was the hotel I ended up at that night. I had opted to just take care of the arrangements myself (it’s generally easier than booking through corporate, and the company is good about expense reports), and so I’d picked a hotel close to the airport (given my 7 a.m. departing flight) that had free Internet, free breakfast, and looked like a solid balance between price and amenities. I had no idea that, by picking the Aloft Chicago O’Hare, I’d stumbled across the most pimpin’ hotel I’ve ever stayed in.

The place looked sort of trendy from the outside, and the lobby had techno music going and an entertainingly neon-lit bar off to the side. That didn’t really catch my attention, though, because a lot of hotels try to be hip downstairs. This place, though, went the extra mile - which I could tell as soon as I stepped into the elevator:

The hallway was a dazzling splash of color, from the lights above:

…down to the rug below:

Even my bedframe was trendy:

Given that it was midnight by the time I checked in, the most important thing was that the bed was comfortable -and, pleasantly enough, it was very nice. The Internet service was fast and easy the next morning, and I was able to literally grab a pre-made sandwich and go before getting on the shuttle to the airport. I’ll definitely stay there the next time I’m in Chicago, if for no other reason than to chuckle at the decor.

Posted in Product/Service Reviews, Travel | No Comments »

Shedding A Little Light On The Situation

February 1st, 2010

Newly reinvigorated by our recent kitchen overhaul, Holly and I have started tackling a bunch of little projects that we’ve been meaning to deal with for a while. Before I get to those, let me just take a moment to point out another piece of awesome that’s the result of Holly’s Aunt Linda and Uncle Glenn helping us organize: our silverware table now has our very nice, very expensive pieces of Jon Kuhn art on it, instead of a bunch of clutter:

While those are nice, they’re not the main reason I’m writing today; I’m here to talk about three new lights we put up over the course of a couple of days.

The first of these was in our kitchen. The existing light, which appears to have been installed some time in the 1950’s or so, had its specialty halogen bulb burn out, and we had no idea a) how to get it it, b) where we could get a replacement bulb, and c) why anyone would have ever thought it looked good. With that in mind, we took it right out:

…and found ourselves some more original wiring in the process. At least this time, the previous owners had had the good sense to install a workable box that we could simply attach the new light to:

The new light was a $25 pickup at Wal-Mart (a surprisingly good price, given that a comparable light at Home Depot ran $45). Was it cheap Chinese metal that bent the second you even thought about breathing on it? Yup. Were the screws so pathetically short that it took us nearly an hour to hook it up right? Definitely. Did it look a zillion times better than the old light once we actually got it hooked up? Damn straight:

Our next step was to install the light on the side of the house, atop the herb garden (and next to the trash) - a very useful light that hasn’t worked at all since moved in some 18 months ago. The reason we’d not already installed it was that the light we’d purchased needed a mounting kit to fit on the wall, and once that was in place, we had literally no more than an inch of electrical wire available to hook into - so little, in fact, that it proved essentially impossible to attach wire nuts with the new light. We hemmed, we hawed, we tugged as hard as we could trying to get more wire to come out of the wall…and we got nowhere. Add that to the fact that I’d accidentally thrown out a couple of relevant parts when I’d tossed the box for the light, and we gave up and went back to Home Depot to find a cheap, workable light - after all, we just wanted illumination, not something pretty, since no one but us ever really sees that part of the house anyway.

Pleasantly enough, we found a suitable light for all of $11; since it needed no mounting setup, we had it installed in about 15 minutes. With a few more minutes devoted to caulking up the siding around it, we now have both a functional light and a lack of holes in that side of the house!

Definitely the nicest of our new lights, though, came in our upstairs hallway. The old fixture was a crummy piece of 80’s era brass that looked completely out of place even before our renovations, let alone after we started adding Craftsman-style wood everywhere. The new piece was a vintage piece of stained glass that we’d picked up for $15 at Habitat For Humanity’s local ReStore, where builders and members of the community donate unwanted building materials that a re-sold at discount prices to the public, with proceeds going to Habitat. Installation was trivial, and the end result was beautiful:

It really is amazing how a very small amount of well-spent money, combined with a tiny bit of work, can make a dramatic upgrade to a house. I just wish we’d made these upgrades earlier!

Posted in House, Product/Service Reviews | No Comments »

Itty-Bitty Kitchen - Infinite Cosmic Storage Space!

January 25th, 2010

Holly’s Aunt Linda is perhaps the most Type-A personality I know - I’d rate her as an “A+++, would organize again” sort of a lady. Every single aspect of her life is organized to a tee. The contrast with Holly and I couldn’t be more striking - we’re both a pair of absent-minded professor types, and organizing things in our house has never really been a priority (certainly nowhere near as much as fixing and upgrading all the things that need doing).

The reason I mention Linda, who lives about a half-hour west of us, is to set her up as the hero of this post. After all, if it weren’t for her, the awesome that I’m about to show you would have never happened.

Unfortunately, until very recently, Linda has been quite ill - suffering from the impact of Lyme’s Disease, which essentially wiped out her immune system. As you can imagine, that’s kept her from doing a lot beyond the minimum necessary to get by. Thankfully, within the past couple of months she’s got a lot of her myriad medical issues under control, and a few weeks ago, Glenn and Linda offered to come over to our house and help us organize things. Knowing what wizards the two of them are when it comes to keeping a clean, well-organized place - I swear, their apartment is close to imploding under its own mass, yet it’s always spotless, and everything is in its place - we gladly accepted their offer, and they came over the next day.

After a Sunday spent reorganizing our front room - which was useful, but not all that exciting - they agreed to come over the following weekend and help us with our kitchen, which is woefully undersized, and was frankly a disaster. The idea centered around a radical idea: putting all of our dishes in the pantry, and moving our food to the cupboards and some new wall-mount racks that Glenn and Linda were familiar with.

We started the project by going out to The Container Store. For those of you who may not be familiar with it, The Container Store is an abomination unlike any other on the Earth, where a variety of products for OCD people who need to organize their socks according to color are sold at prices 3-4 times higher than you would expect for a comparable item in a regular store. I detest it with a passion, because it’s impossible to get out there for anything approaching a reasonable amount of money. Unfortunately, it’s also the only place on Earth that a number of potentially useful products are sold - including the shelving we were looking for.

The concept was pretty simple: we needed shelving that took up minimal floor space - specifically, we had about 4 inches we could come out from the wall before things got tight (since these shelves were destined for the wall that goes between our kitchen and the stairs to the basement). We wanted to use as much of the wall within that piece of floor space as possible. The Elfa wall rack system is designed to do exactly that - it’s essentially an 8 foot tall pole that you can hook a variety of differently-sized baskets to without tools (that is, once the rack is wall-mounted). After having measured the space, we realized we could fit a pair of 13.25″ baskets at each vertical point along the wall, so we bought two poles, eight of the 4″ tall baskets (they were all 4″ deep), and four of the 5.25″ tall baskets. Even with the annual 30% off sale in place, the total rang up to nearly $170.

When we got back to the house and put the system up, though, we quickly realized that it was money well-spent. A huge portion of the food from our pantry fit into the new system, and they looked really good on the wall, too:

In fact, they worked so well that I ended up going back for a couple more of the short baskets (to fill out our existing poles) and an entire new pole worth, since the space on the other side of the door (above the first few steps down into the basement) could accommodate their wider, 17.25″ baskets. While that cost me another $120, the end result was such a spectacular addition of workable space to the kitchen that I wasn’t grumpy about the cash at all:

They’ve made the kitchen so much more workable that we should be able to postpone redoing the cabinets essentially indefinitely - which will save me thousands and thousands of dollars.

Equally important, though, was the re-work of the pantry. After pulling everything out (and tossing a huge amount of expired, nasty food that we’d basically forgot was there due to the disastrous prior organization), we went to flip over the wooden shelves, which were bowing from the weight of what had been sitting on them. Much to our horror, we quickly realized that they were presswood - and not even painted on both sides! The worst-bowing cabinet actually had cheap, 70’s-style wood laminant on the bottom; it looked like what would happen if tacky and ugly both were incarnated here on Earth and had an illegitimate, unwanted love child.

Glenn made a brilliant suggestion for a fix: he said we should just get 3/4″ plywood sheets at Home Depot and re-do the shelving. The two of us headed on down while Holly and Linda worked at cleaning and organizing, and we quickly found a huge sheet of plywood that had very nice grain on the outsides of it; in fact, if you didn’t look at the edges, you’d have thought it was solid birch. With dimensions in-hand, we decided to have Home Depot do the cutting for us, since the sun was already down, which meant that we’d have had to use the table saw indoors if we wanted things cut that night. A total of four cuts produced three shelves, at a cost of $1 (two cuts free, each extra $0.50) - which was perhaps the best money I’ve ever spent at Home Depot. The total cost of the shelves - including the wood itself - was about $36, which fit nicely on the stack of Home Depot gift cards we got this Christmas.

With the new shelves in hand, we headed back and installed them. Not only were they a perfect fit - they looked beautiful!

All of our dishes were now perfectly organized - and most important of all, I’d never have to fight to get plates in and out of a cabinet again (since the plates are just a hair wider than the opening to our cabinets, I had to twist them sideways to get them in and out, a huge pain when a full stack was in place).

The final piece of the puzzle was a better solution for the shelving next to our fridge, which was…well…a junky, rusty shelf we picked up for free off of the neighborhood mailing list:

Luckily, Home Depot had sets of plastic shelving (which hold up to 242 pounds each) that fit perfectly into our space (and were, again, well within the limit of our gift cards). With some very simple setup, we suddenly had storage to the ceiling beside and above the fridge:

The end result of all of this organization was stunning: instead of having things scattered all over the kitchen without an inch to spare, we suddenly had empty cabinets and a place for everything. Sure, it’s a little weird having our dishes live in the pantry, but it’s totally worth it at the end of the day.

Posted in House, Product/Service Reviews | 2 Comments »

Crock Pot Feijoada

January 3rd, 2010

Ever since returning from Brazil last month, I’ve been meaning to make feijoada, the Brazilian national dish. It’s taken a while, since I was nervous about getting it right - but now that we’ve eaten it, well, I shouldn’t have waited!

2 lbs pork roast (i.e. shoulder, butt, etc.)	$3.78
1 lb black beans	$0.99
1 large onion	$1.00
1 large green bell pepper	$1.00
2 cloves garlic, finely minced	$0.10
1 tbsp. salt	$0.05
Approx. 5 cups water	$0.01
TOTAL COST	$6.93
PRICE/SERVING	$0.87

Begin by rinsing the beans and then putting them on the stove, covered with water. Bring to a boil for 2 minutes, and then allow to set for 1 hour wile the beans soak.

In the crock pot, combine the pork, onion, pepper, and garlic. Once the beans have finished soaking, place them in the crock pot, and use sufficient water to cover the mixture (5 cups worked for me, but your amount will vary). Stir the salt into the mixture, and then cover. Cook on low for at least 10 hours, but up to 24 (if cooking longer, ensure all liquid does not boil off, as you want a moderately soupy final product).

Traditionally, feijoada is served over rice. We served the initial portion in sourdough bread bowls, which worked very well - at least to our American palates.

Note that beef can be substituted for pork, and other meats can be added to the mixture depending on your personal preferences.

Posted in Cooking | 1 Comment »

ZOMG Monkeys!!1!1!!!

December 6th, 2009

One of the primary attractions of Ariau Towers for Holly and I was, of course, the wildlife. While the dolphins were our all-time favorite creatures there, the monkeys came in a pretty close second - and had the dolphins beat spectacularly when it came to their sheer numbers and the amount of time we got to spend with them.

We arrived at the hotel around 3:30 p.m. the first day of our stay in Manaus, and we really didn’t see any monkeys that afternoon and evening; by the time we got up the next morning, I was starting to wonder if all of the pictures of monkeys we’d seen on the hotel’s web site were just playing up what were actually rare visits, in order to attract more tourist dollars.

I shouldn’t have been so concerned.

As we made our way to breakfast around 8:00 the next morning, we saw our first monkey, just wandering around the roof of one of the shops:

There were a few more wandering their way around the area near the breakfast hall, and we asked one of the other guests if they knew why the monkeys were out this morning, and hadn’t been the day before. Their answer made perfect sense: the monkeys were smart enough to go sleep during the hottest parts of the day, so you tended to see them the most during the mornings and the evenings.

Encouraged by this news, we set out about the day’s activities. After the morning jungle walk (more on that in a later post), we made our way back to the room to cool off a bit, and then head over to lunch. As we came out of the room and down the stairs to the main floor of our tower, we were immediately met with…more monkeys!

We were amazed at how friendly the little critters were - while they did have a healthy fear of us humans, it didn’t actually kick in until you got within a foot or so of them, and they were mostly content to just play around and ignore you so long as you didn’t get too close. Given that it was past noon, we felt like we were just ridiculously lucky to have even seen this group of monkeys at all - they should have been taking a siesta, after all!

As it turned out, things just kept getting better as the day went on. During the time we had before our piranha fishing expedition, we decided to take a walk around the broader hotel property, figuring that we might run into more interesting wildlife. No more than a few minutes into our walk, we found - surprise, surprise! - another monkey, this time in a somewhat more natural habitat:

The rest of the walk was nice enough; we certainly saw our fair share of wildlife. There were weird birds aplenty:

…and massive termite nests:

…and even the first wild bromeliad I’d ever seen:

…but none of those came even close to comparing to the monkeys we ran into on our way back to our room. There were wrestling monkeys:

…there were relaxing monkeys:

…monkeys by the pair:

…and even monkeys fit to be continental soldiers:

They ran, they jumped, they wrestled…they ran right over the top of our hands on the railings like we weren’t even there. We spent a half an hour just watching them play, and could have easily spent longer if we hadn’t needed to go catch our boat out to the fishing expedition.

Far and away the funniest monkey of all, though, was this “little” guy:

Talk about letting it all hang out! He’s on par with the Fark squirrel (mascot of Fark.com, one of the better sites on the Internet), and possibly even better given that he’s in no way been Photoshopped (whereas the squirrel seems to have been altered - I can tell from some of the pixels and all that).

That night, after a long day of catching piranhas, cayman spotting, etc., we made our way over to dinner, and had a nice pleasant meal. As we came out of the food area, we saw a man who had decided to violate the most blatantly posted rule of the entire hotel: Do Not Feed The Monkeys. Normally, Holly’s a real stickler for the rules - something about being a lawyer and all that - but when she saw the results of monkey feeding, her willingness to follow that rule melted away faster than an ice cube facing the midday tropical sun.

After all, if you fed the monkeys, you could get them to come and hang out - not just with you, but on you.

The technique was simple. First, you start with a group of interested monkeys - which we already had, courtesy of our new friend:

Next, you extend one arm out to them, creating a platform that they can walk along in order to get the bread you’re holding in your other hand:

This will allow the monkeys to come and acquire the bread:

…at which point you get to enjoy yourself with friendly monkeys!

As soon as Holly finished her chance to have monkeys crawl all over her, she grabbed the camera and gave me a shot - after all, we had no idea if the monkeys would get full and become fickle little things. Again, we shouldn’t have worried; they were rapt little creatures, intent on nothing more than getting themselves more food:

I started out doing just as well as Holly on my technique:

…but something about me made the one monkey I had nervous, and he was off with the bread before Holly could even snap a shot of him on me:

A little bit of persistence paid off, though - and soon I had the picture that inspired the title of this post:

…along with several other great monkey shots, including gems like “Crouching Monkey, Stolen Bread”:

…and “Monkey Phone Home”:

…the latter of which even included a Part II:

The next morning, we saw our monkey-charming friend again before breakfast; it turns out that he was there at Ariau as part of the crew for an upcoming movie named “Brasil Animadu” (”Brazil Animated”), which will be the first Brazilian 3D movie, and will feature animated characters on top of live-action backgrounds. We’re eagerly awaiting a copy, even if it is only available in Portuguese.

Of course, having figured out how awesome the monkeys were the night before, this man - whose name we never got - was busy playing with them again - only this time, he’d brought bananas: