House projects

Chris has finally gotten his lifelong dream of having a workspace big enough for a workbench. Although our garage is huge, it's really only going to be usable until, oh, late October and then it'll just be too cold. We plan on eventually insulating the garage, which will also help keep the house warm, but until then Chris is trying to squeeze all this high priority projects in now. He's already built an incredibly stable workbench (not even a millimeter of wobble on that baby), a DVD case, and some stairs for Harper to use to climb onto the window seat. The stairs have since turned into a plant stand because Harper doesn't like them. I made a window seat cushion so she would be a little more comfortable on the seat, but I think I've used it more than she has (my longtime dream has been to have a window seat, so Harper and I have been competing over it). The cushion turned out much better than I expected. Pictures below! I stained and poly-whatevered the DVD case. It looks even better in person, unless you get real close and then you can see streaks. All in all, though, pretty good for our first projects, I think.

I just got back from a two-hour bike ride around town. I'm no bike-ride connoisseur, but I would rate that ride, on a scale from 1 to 10, somewhere between 8 and awesome. I rode around the lake and along the river. Some of the leaves are juuuust starting to change, and the weather was nice and warm. Very nice.

The only hard part was a section going south on State Street where you have to take an underpass under Clairemont, which means you then have to go back up to get level with the rest of the city. Which is about 1/4 mile at, I swear, a 45 degree slope. I was cruising around on the north side trying to see if there was some other way across Clairemont (like some sort of intersection situation instead of an under- or over-pass), and I found a party of bicyclists and asked them. They laughed, knew immediately what I was talking about, and then I got mocked by the 80-year-old man who said that if he "could pull State Street," then I could pull State Street. This is not a phrase I'm familiar with, but I got the gist.

I could not pull State Street. However, in my defense, he was all decked out in riding gear with biking pants and those biking shirts, which I'm sure help when climbing hills.

Credit goes to Ed for finding this gem. In honor of its existence, I'm creating a new label: Bears.

Smoked Paprika Chicken

Ingredients:

* 4 skinless chicken breasts (about 200g each)
* 1 tablespoon smoked paprika
* 2 tablespoons olive oil
* 2 cloves garlic, crushed
* 1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil leaf
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Directions:

1. Mix together the paprika, oil, garlic, basil, salt and cayenne.
2. Massage this mix into the chicken breasts and allow to stand for about 20 minutes.
3. Heat a pan over medium heat, and saute on both sides until chicken is golden brown and cooked through-about 8 minutes each side depending on the thickness of your fillets.
4. Add a little more oil if you need to, though there should be enough from the marinade.
5. Slice on the diagonal and serve.

Results:
Pretty, pretty, pretty good. Even Chris liked the chicken. It was a little spicy, but that could be because I only bought three breasts and I didn't adjust the spices.

I decided I wanted a sauce to go with this, so after I finished cooking the chicken I deglazed the pan with some chicken broth and got up all the bits the stuck to the bottom of the pan.* Then I put just a little bit of butter in the pan to thicken it up a bit, and returned the chicken to the pan after I sliced it. Turned out well, one might say I kicked it up a notch.

* These bits are a constant problem for me. They're supposed to be "brown bits," but inevitably by the time whatever I'm cooking is done, they've turned into black or charred bits. Untasty. If I know I'm going to be wanting the bits on the bottom for something, I've been trying to remember to heat the pan a little lower than what the recipe calls for, so this chicken I cooked one side on medium and the other on mid-low/low.

To help fill up my copious free time until I find a job, I volunteered to write the occasional article for an EC publication. My first article is here.

We're not in Indiana anymore

Here's an example of the rather stark ways that Wisconsin is different from Indiana. You wouldn't think they'd be that different since they're so close in proximity, but you'd be wrong. This is under the "Get Moving" section of the paper, next to the Walk to Cure Diabetes and the Hike for the Homeless:

Beer and M&M Fun Run
Time: 9 am
Date: Saturday
Place: Owen Park
Cost: Free, but participants are encouraged to bring M&Ms and a six-pack of beer.
Other: The course follows the bike trail south along the Chippewa River half as far as the runner wants to run, and then the runner turns around and returns.

Note the time of the run: 9 am. I'm inclined to think the M&Ms and beer are not donations to the event organizer, but rather would be consumed in the park (a public place, mind, which would NEVER happen in Indiana) after the run, beginning hypothetically as early as 9:30 am.

As supporting evidence, the doggie daycare where we left Harper while we were at the bank the day we moved in had a potluck doggie fun evening one Friday. They had a keg.

It's a lazy, dog-dangling afternoon

Harper is plain worn out from all the confusion. Is Brett Favre retiring? Is he not retiring? Poor Harper, her fantasy football team is all in disarray.