Roller Skating, Baby!

On Friday I took my daughter and her friend roller skating at Oaks Park in SE Portland. Before we went, I wasn't sure if I was going to actually skate or not. After all, it had been about 5 years since I had skated last (once) and a long, long time prior to that. Who knows how my body would function on wheels. I could sense the potential for pain. But I wasn't about to sit on my butt watching the girls have fun and not participate. Especially when I could be wheeling around, happily falling on said butt instead. So I strapped on a pair of musty rental skates and went for it. And it was AWESOME.

Oaks Park is one of the oldest continuously operating amusement parks in the country. It has a lot of vintage charm, illustrated by the large black and white pictures around the rink showing crowds of skaters enjoying themselves in the early part of the 20th century. It also has, according to Wikipedia, the largest remaining pipe organ installed in a skating rink in the world. It is really quite amazing to see. And it wasn't even being played when we were there - I would love to see it in action! Apparently the rink floor has an interesting feature as well. Being so close to the Willamette River and thus prone to flooding, the floor is mounted on floating pontoons which can be separated from the foundation when there is a flood threat, allowing the floor to ride out most floods and be reattached afterward. Pretty ingenious, I think.

I didn't bring my camera, and I really wished that I had. We will have to make another trip soon, camera in hand, so that I can capture some of the kitsch that makes this place so awesome. The roller skates in the photo above have their own vintage charm, they belonged to my mother when I was little, were passed on to me, used by my daughter, and now that she has outgrown them, I suppose they are mine again.

Wheeling around the shiny rink floor on 8 wheels was so much fun, we skated for 2 1/2 hours with just a short break for Icees and fries at the snack bar. I didn't fall on my butt at all, thank goodness, and it totally took me back to my middle school years when my best friend and I would skate for hours, fueled by Nerds and Red Vines candies. By Friday evening, though, my quadriceps were beginning to cramp. It took a combination of heat, Epsom salt soaks, Arnica montana, acetaminophen, walks, and two days to fully recover. But I'm not complaining. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I'm even thinking about having my birthday party there! It can't possibly hurt as much the next time, can it? Besides, where else will you hear MC Hammer songs played with no sense of irony at all?

Chocolate Covered Cherry Cookies

Ohhh, yeah, I did. I totally made chewy chocolate cookies with whole maraschino cherries in them and a blanket of sweet chocolate goodness over the top. Sweet, sweet chocolate covered cherry cookies. Yup, they are every bit as good as they look.


Of course, if you aren't a chocolate-covered cherry person, you won't like these. More for me. And if you are a cherry purist, and won't let an artificially everything maraschino cherry touch your lips, well, I can't say I blame you there. Use your home-canned-in-light syrup-local, organic cherries, then. I'm sure they will be even better. But I just happened to have a large jar of maraschino cherries in my fridge that needed to be used up. What a shame.
Perhaps you do as well, so here is the recipe so that you can try these, too!

CHOCOLATE COVERED CHERRY COOKIES

1 1/2 c AP Flour
1/2 c Dutch-processed Cocoa Powder
1/4 tsp Baking Powder
1/4 tsp Baking Soda
1/4 tsp Salt
8 Tbsp (1 stick) unsalted Butter, softened
1 c Sugar
1 large Egg
1 1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract

Adjust oven racks to upper- and lower- middle positions and heat oven to 350 degrees.
Whisk Flour, Cocoa, Baking Powder, Soda, and Salt in a bowl; set aside. With mixer on medium-high speed, beat Butter and Sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in Eggs and Vanilla until incorporated. Reduce speed to low, add flour mixture, mix until dough forms, about 1 minute. Set aside while you prepare the topping:

1 c Semisweet Chocolate Chips
1/2 c Sweetened Condensed Milk
2 - 12 oz jars Maraschino Cherries, drained and stemmed,
Reserve 2 Tbsp of cherry juice.

Heat Chocolate and Milk in a heavy-bottomed sauce pan over low heat until chocolate is melted, about 5 minutes (should be the consistency of mayonnaise). Remove from heat, stir in cherry juice. Cover and keep warm.

Roll dough into 1" balls and place 2 inches apart on rimmed baking sheets. Using thumb, make an indentation in the center of each cookie. Place 1 cherry in the indentation, then top with 1 tsp of the warm chocolate mixture. Bake until cookies are just set, 10 - 12 minutes, switching and rotating sheets halfway through baking. Don't overbake; cookies should be chewy.

Make sure you have a glass of milk nearby when you eat these, you'll need it!

It's Shedding Season

. . . Can you tell?

Water Bottle Rant

Hullo, I am going to let fly a wee bit of a rant today. It's about water bottles. I am not going to talk about the evils of plastic, one time use water bottles, because hopefully by now we all know how utterly stupid and wasteful it is to use these. If not, please click here for a really nice, simple info-graphic that explains it. You can also read about it on Fake Plastic Fish, one of my favorite blogs about plastic. No, the rant I'm going to make goes behind the issue of these disposable water bottles, to the culture that created the market demand for them.

My problem is this: why in the heck, in a country where clean, safe, drinking water is readily available in every civilized corner of the land, do people need to constantly carry around portable, personal bottles of water in the first place? In other words, why is our perceived need to hydrate so great that the readily available sinks, drinking fountains, cafes, and faucets aren't nearly enough to keep us adequately hydrated and we simply MUST have a flask of the elusive elixir on our person at all times? Last I checked, people were not dropping dead from dehydration left and right prior to the water-bottle carrying trend. Not to mention the fact that the myth saying we each need to drink 8 glasses of water a day was debunked quite a few years ago.

So where does this desire to tote water with us, like miniature urban pack animals on some rugged adventure, come from? Like most trends, it is a bit of a status symbol. Although, instead of saying, 'I'm rich!' like we think of most status symbols as doing, the ubiquitous water bottle says, 'I'm athletic! Watch me hydrate while I'm keeping fit!' Specifically, the water bottle is a symbol of the healthy lifestyle that we are all beholden to maintain lest we become fat, the ultimate anti-status symbol in our body-obsessed culture. Carrying around these miniature trophies of health makes a statement to the world that we are doing our part daily to maintain our bodies' health and beauty. Water bottles are to today's fitness culture what legwarmers were to the 80's dance culture.

So what, it's a silly trend, why the rant, you say? Well, it's this silly water bottle trend that, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, paved the way for the plastic, disposable water bottles that have become a huge problem for the environment. Not to mention these plastic, one time use bottles are one of the dumber things that modern culture has created and latched on to. It really isn't doing anyone any good, except for the bottlers who are getting rich selling us something that is often quite inferior to what we already have.

Now, I will be honest and say that I have owned and used water bottles, and I think I even have a couple today. However, I no longer carry them around. If I feel the need to bring water with me, say, on a long car trip or something, I fill up a mason jar at my kitchen tap, screw on a lid, and toss it in my basket. Presto! A multi-use, easily obtained container rather than a one-purpose-0nly, overpriced, trendy bottle.

So the next time you are about to fill a water bottle for the day's arduous journeys, stop and think for a moment.

Ask yourself the following:

* How far away will I be from drinkable water? (In most cases, it is literally just down the hall from us.)
* How long will I be away from drinkable water? (Stuck in a meeting that you can't leave? I can't imagine it going on for 3 days, causing you to die from dehydration.)
* Will the water be available only in a one time use cup? (If so, toss a half pint mason jar in your bag to use for a cup.)
* Do I really want to look like some tool who has to show off my healthy lifestyle via a portable hydration flask? (Haha! Couldn't resist, but it doesn't hurt to stop and think about why we do things.)

Keep in mind that if you are going into the wilderness or any place where clean drinking water is truly not so ubiquitous, you really should carry your own water, or some way to access or purify what is available.

I believe that by tapping into some basic common sense, we will all find that burdening our busy lives with yet another thing to clean, fill, carry, and remember is not the best way to meet our hydration needs. Go easy on yourself. Use the water that's already there. Everywhere. Because a lot of time and money goes into making it clean and available in our country, and we look like real asses to the millions of people around the world who have NO access to clean drinking water.

And thus ends my rant. I hope you find it useful, because I feel much better, thank you!

Don't They Know It's January?

These little guys have been popping up all over our yard during the last week or so:


In my experience, bulbs pushing their way up towards warmth mean spring has begun.


Granted, it's been warm lately. Today is supposed to be 51 degrees, and last week the thermometer in my car said it was 60 out.



I'm always happy when spring comes; I love the changing of the seasons, and spring is always such a bright time after the gloomy deadness of winter. But I'm pretty sure that these bold little bulbs missed the memo that it's still only January. It was less than 3 weeks ago that we had several inches of wet snow on the ground for a few days.

It may be a little early, but, well, I don't want to tell them. Let spring come!

Just Made These . . .

. . . Rosemary Maple Glazed Nuts and they are super good. I dare you to make these and not eat them all yourself. The blog this recipe is from, Food in Jars, is one of my favorites because I love food in jars, and she posts lots of great recipes and canning ideas. Check it out, make some stuff, thank me later! Yay!