Memorial Day

After spending most of the weekend on the Cape with my family and acquiring a pretty nasty sunburn on my back and shoulders, I returned to Providence last night.

I really hadn't planned on any actual celebration on Memorial Day, but after a major grocery run to BJ's with my roommates and the suggestion of cast iron grilled burgers, a small celebration seemed to form.

Today FEELS like a celebration.  Maybe it's because when Maddie put out cheese, crackers, and strawberries for us while we watched The Blues Brothers, she put them on a snazzy platter.  Maybe it's because rescuing the feral mint plants from the front yard where the landlord is landscaping led to the impromptu mixing of some improvised mojitos (I'm calling them Faux-jitos).  Maybe it's just because it's a Monday, none of us have to work, and it's absolutely gorgeous outside.

In any case, with the prospect of home made burgers (my Dad's recipe) topped with home made black bean guacamole (my recipe) in my near future, a few more sips of faux-jito in my hand, and a blue sky up above, it's hard to feel anything but good about life.

Happy Memorial Day, everyone!

Sweet and Spicy Kielbasa Ramyun

In abandoning the trappings of college life, and the obligatory dining hall and cheap ramen based cuisine, I've found a few things difficult to leave behind.

One such cheap pleasure I have not been able to leave behind is Shin Ramyun. It's a super spicy Korean noodle dish, and fairly similar to your garden variety ramen. As mentioned in an earlier entry, while I find these noodles to be delicious on their own, the responsible and health-conscious adult in me recognizes that it is not in any way a complete, or terribly stylish, meal.

Thus has my quest to legitimize one of my favorite comfort foods culminated in the following recipe.

Things you need:
-1 Shin Ramyun package
-1 yellow onion
-half link of kielbasa
-brown sugar
-olive oil
-red pepper flakes (optional)

Place a largish pan on the stove at medium heat to start. Drizzle olive oil over the bottom of the pan. Slice your yellow onions (they can be big slices) and put them in the pan and up the temperature to medium high heat. Stir or toss them occasionally.

After they start turning a little clear, throw a few spoonfuls of brown sugar into the pan and allow it to melt into the olive oil. Stir the melting sugar into your onions.

At this point I break open the package of Shin Ramyun and open the spice packet. Sprinkle a little bit of the spice over the onions and stir up nicely. If your Ramyun came with a little packet of dried veggies, this is a good time to add them to the pan.

On the side, begin boiling a few cups of water and place the Ramyun noodles (and a bit of the spice packet) in a good sized bowl (preferably one that won't be tempted to melt when the boiling water is poured into it later.

Slice up your half link of kielbasa. When your onions start to look nice and caramelized, you can slide the slices in around them. Sprinkle some of the spice packet over the kielbasa and turn them over after a few minutes.

Once the water is boiling, pour it over the noodles in your bowl and cover with a small plate to trap the steam for at least three minutes. Then drain the water from your noodles.

Once the kielbasa and onions are thoroughly cooked, dump your noodles into the pan with them and toss the entire ensemble together (once again adding a little of the spice packet).

Unless you like your food extremely spicy, I would not use the entire spice packet in this recipe. It's best to go sparingly with this stuff.

Once your noodles, kielbasa, and onions are thoroughly cooked and mixed, throw the whole bit back into your bowl and enjoy!

Small Adventures: Fort Nature Refuge

A couple weekends ago Maddie and I went for another hike and, this time, Danny joined us.  This time, our destination was the Fort Nature Refuge located in North Smithfield.

The little maps which we found at the trailhead (and which are also available online at the link above) informed us that there were three major legs of the trail, each identified with their own color.  Impending evening plans led us to agree that we would limit ourselves to the Blue Trail (which would take about 1.5 hours to complete, according to the map).

It became obvious pretty quickly that this trail was significantly better maintained than the Veronica Geddes trail.  We also found colored markers nailed to trees spaced out along the trail, making this one also significantly easier to follow.

The first leg of the walk revealed a pretty standard forest-y area; very pleasant, very relaxing, with a few well-placed benches along the way.  Like on the Geddes preserve, we also found small patches of wet-land.

When we reached the spot where the Yellow Trail begins (half-way through the Blue Trail loop) we were a little surprised that it had only taken us about fifteen minutes to get there (as opposed to the approximate 45 minutes the map had led us to expect).  Our faith in the map's estimated times shattered, we decided that we could easily do the entire trail in the time that we had, so we marched on to the Yellow trail.

We were met with wetlands, giant ponds, and, most interesting to me, clear signs of the presence of beavers.  Along the banks of various ponds we found numerous trees that had been obviously chewed down in that tell-tale fashion.  We even encountered a few of what appeared to be beaver dams.

I don't exactly know why the concept of having beavers about surprises me so; perhaps I just never thought of Rhode Island as beaver territory.  Either way, the signs were interesting to see.

It wasn't long before we reached the far end of the Red Trail, a journey which didn't take up much more than 45 minutes, and we were heading back towards the trailhead.

Along the way, a piece of the trail branched out with a sign at the outset saying "Pond Overlook".  This little path brought us out to the edge of one of the larger ponds.  The view was actually quite lovely.

A little tromping into the surrounding area revealed a stream that fed off from the pond, partially curtailed by another (fairly impressive) beaver dam.  The area along the stream looked like it would be fun to explore, but perhaps on another adventure.

The water level in the pond had somehow risen significantly, stranding the convenient viewing bench some ten feet out in the water.

Of course, Danny saw this and thought, "Challenge accepted," resulting in the following picture.

Once we were back at the trailhead, I saw that the entire trail (rests and meandering included) only took about about an hour and a half and we covered something like 2.5 miles according to my iPad's little GPS tracker.

The trail was very easy to follow, easy to hike and, while very pleasant, not exactly physically challenging.

To see all of the photos I took on this hike, go here.

I've added a similar link to my entry on the Geddes hike.

Small Adventures: Veronica Geddes Wildlife Preserve

Inspired by my long walk in the city, an overall enjoyment of nature and, in some part, my friend's most excellent adventure, I decided to make a go at taking regular hikes in the scenic parts of Rhode Island.

Finding trails to hike near the Providence area is no small task. Most websites that cover the subject are either poorly built or provide fairly limited information. That being said, I did eventually locate a promising trail on AllTrails.com in Cumberland. My room mate, Maddie, joined me for the hike.

The Veronica Geddes Wildlife Preserve is a good 20+ minutes from Providence. The trail head is marked by little more than a smallish, and partially hidden sign. We drove past the spot a few times before Maddie finally spotted it. There was just enough room to pull off of the road and park.

Not far down the trail, our path was partially blocked by the branches of a downed tree. We had to get down, almost on our hands and knees to crawl under and progress down the trail. Our way was occasionally blocked by other smaller inconveniences, such as small streams.

A little farther up, Maddie noticed that someone had scratched an arrow in the dirt pointing up to the left. As we looked around that side of the path for what the arrow could be pointing to (there was nothing but a steep hill covered in foliage and a large rock) a little, black snake wriggled up out of the leaves and hurried away from us, hiding himself again.

Maddie, who is known for being irrationally scared of things like mice and moths, seemed unusually unconcerned with the proximity of a snake. For me, the presence of one little snake indicates the possibility of other larger snakes, so I was a little bit nervous. Even so, the rest of our walk was blissfully lacking in potentially dangerous fauna.

Another five minutes or so up the path, we found ourselves approaching the backside of a chain link fence. An entire section had been removed where the trail went through. Once we'd passed the fence, we turned around and were presented with the following sign:

Seeing as how the trailhead and a fairly used public road were a pretty short, straight shot on from this fence (and given that the fence had been so neatly removed for the convenience of the trail) we decided that the sign and its warning were old and harmless news.

Another few minutes, though, provided some explanation for the sign. In one other place, the fence was pulled aside, allowing a cliff side view of what appeared to be a (possibly no longer operational) quarry.

The view was interesting and actually quite stunning, a fact not conveyed terribly well by my iPod's little camera, I'm afraid.

Now the trail description had come along with a rough sort of map which led me to expect one or two forks in the road which would eventually loop back around to bring us back the way we came. After about four divergences, though, we figured out pretty quickly that there was no one real set path. Eventually, when we started encountering these two and three way forks in the trail, we started guessing and were officially "lost" for a bit (well... as lost as one can get with 3G access and location services, so I wasn't terribly worried).

Eventually, we ended up on the following semi-paved road.

From the marked difference in the road quality and the sudden influx of elderly joggers and female twenty somethings in yoga pants (whereas before we were almost completely alone on the preserve) it became obvious that we'd wandered onto a completely different path.

This one brought us past some sort of recreational area, a lovely little pond, and some random meadow.

Eventually we encountered an opportunity to take a much less well manicured path, which we took in hopes of finding our original trail and getting back to the trail head. After much winding, walking, and some basic directional assistance from my Maps app we found....

...a motor bike in a tree.

It was pretty perplexing but also pretty cool to look at. It's the sort of visual encounter that I suspect my friend Hayden would have all sorts of fun shooting.

Our curiosity over the bike sated, Maddie and I continued on the trail in the general direction of my car, only to find ourself coming over the crest of a hill... and staring into someone's backyard.

I realized that we had passed the older couple and the black Labrador that we were now staring at somewhere along the trail, and before Maddie and I could agree to go back and figure out where we'd gone wrong, the woman was waving us down.

"Every once in awhile we get someone coming over the hill looking around like, 'How did I get here?'" she said. Her husband figured out where we had parked and gave us directions out of the neighborhood and to the road where my car was patiently waiting.

One way or another, we had ended up on the wrong side of one of the small residential areas that skirted the edge of the woods.

Overall, we most likely walked ("wandered" might be a better adjective) somewhere between three or four miles and had plenty of pretty things to look at, fresh air to breathe, and got some good exercise while we were at it.

To see all of the pictures I took on this hike, go here.

Small Adventures: City Walk

So while my friend is off on his grand Appalachian trek, I've found myself enjoying simpler adventures. 

The ball really got rolling in my head about a month ago when on an unusually pleasant day I enlisted my friend Hayden in taking a walk around my city without any real plan of where we were going. We acquired two other friends of mine (who didn't quite get why we were walking around without any real aim) and set off.

The photos of this adventure were all taken by Hayden James, for the record :).

Photo by Hayden James

Providence is actually a very pretty place. It's something I forget easily, but walks like this one serve as a good reminder. It helps that Hayden is brilliant with photography.

Photo by Hayden James

Our walk took us initially along the river where they do Waterfire in the summer, but eventually ended us up on the East Side among the buildings and grounds Brown University. Having spent a number of summers working at the Brown iD Tech Camp, the area is both familiar and comforting for me. I took my group to one of my favorite spots--the Brown University greenhouse.

Photo by Hayden James

The greenhouse is small but chock full of interesting and beautiful plants and even sports a small koi pond. Being there is always enjoyable and relaxing for me. We spent a little time on Thayer Street getting frozen yogurt or pizza before heading off to find a quiet place to sit and hang out for a little while.

Photo by Hayden James

Brown has some truly beautiful outdoor spaces. It provides a number of relaxing settings to kick back and enjoy conversation.

Over the course of the afternoon we easily covered at least four miles (some of which were pretty steep hills on the East Side). So, overall, this adventure was both physically and emotionally beneficial.

Since then I have indulged in a few other small adventures which I am sure I will add another day.

Judgement Free Zone

Though most of the items from my most recent To Do list have gone untouched, there is one item that I have checked off: joining a gym.

When I discovered that there was a Planet Fitness within easy walking distance of my apartment, I stopped having an excuse not to join. So, I took myself down there one Sunday in March, signed up, and have been attending regularly for about a month and a half.

I've been pretty pleased with the experience. Planet Fitness is almost exactly what I need in a gym. The facility includes somewhere around 150 elliptical, step, treadmill, and weight machines, all available to their membership 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Even at their busiest (with an easy 80-90 people in the building), I can walk in and find more than one open elliptical to use for as long as I like without bothering anyone.

Another aspect that I enjoy is the Red Light Circuit. There's a room in the back with ten weight machines (which cover all the major muscle groups in the body) and ten step stations set up in an alternating loop. On the wall they have a set of lights that periodically switch from red to green and back again. You can choose any open station in the circuit to start. When the light turns green you start (either doing 12 reps on a machine or a minute of step depending on where you started). When the light turns red, you clean up, move to the next station, and prep til the next green light. The entire circuit takes 30 minutes and doing the step stations in between each weight machine ensures that you keep your heart rate at a fat burning level throughout the loop.

The one downside to the room is (despite being set aside specifically for the above purpose) there are people who will come in and sit on one machine for ten minutes even though there's 50 other machines in the building they could be using for that. It's kind of annoying to be progressing through the circuit like you're supposed to and to find your next station occupied by the same guy who's been there for the past five green lights.

Ultimately, I can take the annoyance for the price.

Planet Fitness is best known for its $10 a month, no commitment membership, but they also offer something called the Black Card membership. It's about $20 a month and requires a 12 month commitment, but definitely has its perks which include free tanning (which I will never use), free use of the massage chairs (which I use on almost every visit), and the ability to bring a friend for free any day (which my room mate uses on a regular basis).

Perhaps most importantly is the fact that my Black Card allows me to use Planet Fitness locations other than my home club up to ten times a month for free. So, while I'm at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas this summer for camp (have I mentioned that yet?) I can bus the five minutes to the nearby Planet Fitness... If I ever get the free time and energy to do so.

Overall, the membership has been a good investment. I'm healthier, I'm stronger, I feel better, and Planet Fitness' jarring purple and yellow color scheme is starting to grow on me.

Sun-dried tomato, artichoke, and kielbasa pasta

There are a lot of foods that my parents have tried to make me eat over the course of my youth to the point where I would never eat it on principle. One such food was artichokes or, more specifically, my mother's artichoke dip.

I have discovered in recent years that I will, as a mature and curious adult, try such foods (but only if they're presented to me by someone other than my parents). In such a way I have grown to enjoy sushi, avocado, caramelized onions, and many such other things.

And such it was when my roommate first handed me a plate of pasta mixed with sun dried tomatoes and artichoke hearts. I was wary, but willing to try it; and to my surprise I found the combination absolutely delightful. I have even endeavored to modify the concoction into the following recipe, which I would like to share.

Things you will need:

Per serving-
Sun dried tomatoes - 5-6pcs
Artichoke hearts - 2 quartered chunks
Kielbasa (optional*) - about a quarter link
whole wheat pasta (I'm a fan of rotini for this) - 2oz
parmesan cheese (optional) - to taste

*Omitting the kielbasa makes this a pretty awesome vegetarian dish; it can definitely stand on its own. If you're not a vegetarian, the kielbasa is still a great addition. I really enjoy the flavor combination when you get all four major ingredients on your fork at the same time :D


Set a good sized pot of water on a back burner at high heat to boil. If you add a little salt and olive oil to the water I find that it boils a little faster, adds to the taste, and helps keep the pasta from sticking together later on.

Slice up your sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, and kielbasa. I like to go pretty thin on the kielbasa slices. Throw the tomatoes and artichoke into a large pan with some of the oil from your jar of tomatoes and cook for a few minutes on medium heat.

Once your water is boiling, toss in the whole wheat pasta, return to boil, and boil for whatever time is noted on the package (probably around nine minutes).

Add your sliced kielbasa to the pan to cook with the tomatoes and artichoke. At this point I like to throw some parmesan cheese into the mix, but that's 100% optional.

Once your pasta is done cooking, drain the water and add it to the pan with all the other ingredients. Toss and cook for about another two minutes, then serve. You can sprinkle a little more parmesan cheese over the top if you like.

Toasted Turkey Times Two Sandwich

As a kid, I always liked one very specific sandwich.  This was because pretty much every time I went to visit my grandparents, I would go grocery shopping with my grandmother for ingredients, come home, and then my grandfather would make me a turkey sandwich on rye with Grey Poupon.  As a result, the combination is as emotionally comforting as it is delicious.

I've grown up a lot culinarily since then and in the hustle and bustle of adult, working life, I found myself turning back to that old favorite for lunches, but with… enhancements.  After about two years of playing with it, I've settled pretty happily on the following construction, which I would like to share.

What you'll need:

-Rye bread (I prefer light, seeded rye)

-Sliced turkey (pretty much any deli-style turkey will do)

-Turkey bacon (just as tasty as real bacon, but only half as bad for you)

-Mustard (Grey Poupon is best :D)

-Sliced provolone cheese

-Baby spinach

Before I do anything else, I put four slices of turkey bacon on a microwave-safe plate and pop them into the microwave for a minute and a half. Turkey bacon is pre-cooked and thus safe to eat without cooking (just tastes like ham uncooked), but I like it a little crispy.

Next, lay out two slices of rye bread and spread your mustard over them. Pop one of them (the designated "top" slice) into the toaster oven for a light toast.

On the other slice, pile on your turkey. You can go a little crazy with the turkey (at around 10 calories a slice, you can afford to be a bit frivolous here). Lay your cooked turkey bacon over your deli turkey. Top it off with a slice of provolone cheese. Switch your "top" slice out of the toaster oven and pop your "bottom" one--meat, cheese, and all-- in for a light toasting cycle. At the end, your turkey will be warm, your bacon will be a bit crispier, and your provolone will be all nice and melty.

Remove your "bottom" slice to a plate, pile the baby spinach on top (once again, completely guilt-free sector in which to go crazy since spinach has only about 10 cal per cup!), top off with your "top" slice and voila: delicious sandwich!

All said and done, this sandwich is pretty good for you, too. All told, you've got:

-About 380 calories

-17g of fat

-27g of protein

-and 21% of you daily dietary fiber

Notably, if you take out the turkey bacon, it loses 120 calories and 12g of fat, which is a significant difference.  You also lose 8g of protein and some good flavor, and turkey bacon is still WAY better for you than regular bacon. If you're REALLY concerned about calories and fat, knocking off the provolone will lose you an extra 60 calories and 3.5g of fat.

Minus the turkey bacon and cheese, you're down to 200 calories and 1.5g of fat and you still have a nice sandwich.

If you're trying to avoid sodium, losing the turkey bacon and using regular yellow mustard instead of Grey Poupon will make a serious dent in the sandwich's sodium content.

Because an elephant never forgets

Evernote is a piece of software for your computer (Mac or PC) and mobile device that makes it easy to keep track of any information that you come in contact with during the course of the day.  It allows you to save and label websites, documents, files, and even searchable images that you take yourself from within the app, all of which is synced to your account and other devices for retrieval at any time. It has an incredible range of uses from informational organization in one's personal life to managing the sharing and development of information for entire companies or communities. And it's free.

I first encountered Evernote while searching for fun and useful (and, if at all possible, free) apps back when I first got my iPad 2.  A number of different articles I read at the time mentioned Evernote in their top ten as a great tool for storing pretty much any and all types of information in one searchable, sync-able app.

So I downloaded it, played with it briefly, but ultimately forgot it.

That is, until the camp season started.  In the hustle and bustle of running camp, I accumulated lots of To Do lists, drafts of rule sets for the kids, diploma drafts, scribbled bits of inspiration, etc. All of these things existed on white boards, notebooks and yellow legal pads, all of which were prone to be lost, misplaced, or erased within the course of a busy day.

I had discovered in my early play session with Evernote that you could take pictures right from within the app and store them in its digital notebook. Very quickly, I started snapping pictures of my lists to be stored instantly in the iPad that I took everywhere with me.  I even began drafting diplomas and newsletters in the app itself.

Capture and tag notes, sticky notes, dry erase boards, scribbles, etc.

But it wasn't until I started seriously thinking about and working on my book idea that I saw the real value of this program to me.  I've started working on and saving the individual bits of the book as notes in Evernote, all tagged according to what chapter (or issue) and section they belong in for easy organization and reorganization as my intended structure changes and evolves. It's made it so much easier to keep track of what I've done, and I can hop around from thought to thought as the ideas flow to me.

The syncing feature is especially useful.  For example, I started working on this blog post on my laptop.  Part way through, my dog came to my bedroom door and starting giving me the 'I want to go out' routine.  So I dumped what I'd written so far into Evernote, hit the "sync" button, and walked downstairs to let the dog out. When I picked up my iPad and opened the Evernote app, there was what I'd been working on upstairs.

Another neat little add-on is the Evernote Web Clipper.  It installs automatically in Internet Explorer and Safari when you install Evernote on your computer, and the extensions are available for Chrome and Firefox as well. What it does is allow you to clip websites and articles, send them to the Evernote notebook of your choice, add tags, etc., all without leaving the browser.

One of the coolest things to me is the fact that Evernote is searchable. No big deal, usually but, as I mentioned, Evernote allows you to take pictures of documents and store them. This includes hand written documents, all of which are searchable.

I can search my written documents!

So, overall, Evernote is a pretty cool, pretty versatile application for all your computing and mobile information organizing needs!

Expanding My Horizons

A couple of months ago I was contracted to build a website for my father's Mac user group (mentioned in a previous entry).  Actually, the job was sort of thrust on me unexpectedly.  I attended one meeting and my father not so subtly let slip that I was, among many other things, a graphic designer.  They said, "Great, you can be the one to finally build us our website!"

Having never actually built a professional website (everything I've done previously was for education purposes), this was a little daunting.

Still, two months later after trying a couple different programs, re-educating myself, and constantly consulting with my very web-talented room mate, the end product is this.

The site itself is not done.  There's still a lot of content that hasn't been generated or been given to me yet.  And I'm still working on a couple of options for making the news blog and Q&A experience better for the group membership.  But, overall, I'm rather pleased with the end product.  The rest of the group seems to be pleased as well.

With this complete, I feel much more confident about any future web projects I may take on.

There and Back Again

In a few short weeks, one of my closest friends will be taking his first steps on the Appalachian Trail.  The AT is a hiking path that runs 2,181 miles from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine.  It runs through 14 states and the thru-hike that he is attempting will probably take him at least six months to complete.

Here's a map of the trail (courtesy of the US National Park Service), just to drive home how incredibly monumental this journey is.

This week he's doing a smaller trial hike to try out his gear and get used to backpacking before he starts the trail.  By the request of his family, I've set him up with a Blogger account so that he can keep everyone updated on his progress (and continued state of being alive) from his iPhone.

Apprehension and affectionate worry and concern aside, I do truly hope that this experience will be legend-wait for it....

...-dary!