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.