Andy and Darcy’s Blog

May 16, 2009

This year we found out about the Standstill Parade in Whalan, MN, about an hour somewhere south of Rochester. It was great!

Tractors…

Old cars…

Segways…

May 8, 2009

Adam and Andy challenged themselves to install some finicky software that really didn’t want to be installed on a netbook. In the end, they were successful. Oh the drama! See the angst in the picture below.

I’m starting a series of blogs. The theme of the series is “Blogs I started last summer but never posted.”

Friday, June 28, 2008

Last Friday we went to the Rochesterfest parade, also known as the longest parade in the world. Below you’ll see my favorite float! Also, it started raining during the parade, and we saw a very cool rainbow.

As Darcy alluded to in a previous post, we played cards on Christmas (which I can remember winning one game of) and I also took some pictures. I was taking pictures of the many birds outside in the backyard, but then we spotted a fox romping around. I wasn’t fast enough the first time but he came back twice. On the final time he decided to stop in the perfect spot, so I snapped some pictures. Click the picture for all of my pics.

As you read in my previous post, we had quite a busy Saturday. Sunday was a bit more laid back, but still busy in some ways. I kept myself busy in the kitchen.

I failed to mention in my previous post that on Saturday night, I made what is called a poolish. It is basically a starter (flour, yeast, water) for a set of breads from a good bread book, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. The poolish is for the ciabatta recipe in the book. I love ciabatta, it is a very rustic bread with a good taste (slightly tangy, but not quite sourdough). The poolish needs to age overnight and develop its flavor.

After church and weekly grocery shopping in the morning, we got back and it was time for me to start the long breadmaking process. If there is one thing I have to say about the book, it is that no bread recipe is simple. Most take more than 3 or 4 hours and multiple days. This is all fine and good, but sometimes I like a faster bread and it restricts these recipes to the weekends.

Well it did take all day pretty much but it came out very very nice. As you can see below.

Tasty.

The next thing on the menu was dinner. Tonight we chose something called a Pissaldiere pizza. This pizza has a crisp but not thin crust and carmelized onions, olives, thyme and anchovies. I found the recipe in Cook’s Illustrated, which I recently subscribed to. They do a very cool thing, they rigorously test the recipes and taste them each time, to find the best version.

This is the first pizza that I’ve had anchovies on, and it turned out to be very good. It gave it a saltyness that offset the sweetness of the onions nicely, we both loved it. I did modify the recipe slightly and add a bit of feta cheese to it, but other than that it is verbatim.

Pizza nirvana.

I’d have to say I’m impressed with Cook’s Illustrated. In the issue I have, it has peach cobbler, pork chops, brownies and potato salad, all tested to find the best version. I’m eager to try them out.

This weekend was a busy one. We attempted to get another composter, went to the Lanesboro Rhubarb Festival, attempted to listen to music in the park, made a couple of loaves of ciabatta and made the best pizza I’ve had in a while. Again, it was a busy weekend.

We started Saturday morning by going to the mall to get a subsidized composter and requisite tools. However on our arrival, we found that there were a couple hundred people that had the same idea. There was quite a line! The event officially opened at 9:00am, and we arrived there around then. It seems we should have showed up a wee bit earlier. So seeing the masses, we decided it would be a good idea to just skip it. We thought we’d just come back later and see if there were any compost tuners or kitchen pails left after the rhubarb festival.

Now that we were thwarted in getting a composter, the next thing on the schedule was the rhubarb festival in Lanesboro, MN. This is a small town festival, and it is basically just an excuse to tool around Lanesboro and get some rhubarb. They have a farmer’s market, rhubarb olympics (stalk toss, rhubarb golf, etc), a recipe competition and a bake sale. Half of the fun is going around Lanesboro, which is really a cute little rural town, with fun shops and a good German restaurant, complete with an old guy that plays an accordian. Fun stuff. We even found they had free kittens. One which we almost went home with.

See more pictures from the Rhubarb Festival.

After a couple of hours and 5 pounds of rhubarb heavier we decided it was time to go home. I should say now that the weather all day on Saturday was a bit iffy. It had rained hard with some thunder and also sprinkled.

The next thing on the agenda was to go to Jim and Pam’s concert in Central Park. We arrived there around 4:00pm, just as they were starting to play. The song was Olympic Spirit and was pretty good. Just as I was about to get up to get some popcorn, they announced that that was the last song and the concert was over. This was because there was a tornado warning and didn’t want to risk having people be outside. So that was over. Too bad too, because it sounded pretty good.

After that, we went home and it rained quite a bit. Although, it was not as bad as the rain in Northern Iowa and in Mower county. Hopefully everyone there is safe.

More later on our Sunday activities.

Last Wednesday, February 20th, there was a total eclipse of the Moon, that was visible from most of North America. Just for some history, a total lunar eclipse was last seen on March 3, 2007, and will next be seen in December 2010. So I figured it would be a good idea to brave the frigid temperatures (I’m talking ambient of -3 degrees, here) and take some pictures.

The operation was basically this: leave the tripod set up on the deck and jump out real quick with my camera, take some shots and duck back inside. I repeated this about 6 or 7 times, until it was at full eclipse and then I retired for the night. It wasn’t as “cool” as the total solar eclipse we watched when I was in middle school, but still pretty neat. Here are some photos from the event:

So tonight, Nikon released their D300 digital SLR, and boy let me tell you, it’s sweet… I’ll just let you read on.

Nikon D300

Now all I need to do is recoup from the TV purchase and sometime next year I will own that beauty. Oh did you see it had 51 AF points, 100% viewfinder, dust reduction system, live view, HDMI out AND 3″ lcd with 900k pixels, thats friggin nuts. Just making sure you were paying attention.

Oh if you really want to drool, take a look at the D3, which was also released today, a bit out of my price range though at $5k, but still full frame and lovely.

Well ta-ta for now, it’s way too late.

So last night we had a pretty fun storm, it really lit up the night. I decided to go out and try and take some pictures of lightning. I equipped my trusty tripod and went out on the deck. Here is a sample of what I got:

I found that it was easier to just set the camera to manual focus, and a relatively long shutter speed 1/2-1.3 secs and about f/5.6-7.1. Then I would just constantly take pictures, eventually I got lucky. Out of about 230 pictures, I got the ones you see in my gallery.

I also found that I need to clean my DSLR, cuz there was a dust spot on most of the pictures (note to self: should clean my sensor soon), and that I have dead pixels on it, too. Just have to wait until that rumored announcement happens, whenever that is….

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you… Yesterday our nation celebrated it’s 231st birthday. It all started with a Declaration and now these 231 years later for a lot of us it means grilling out, fireworks and a sense of patriotism for our great nation. We may have our rough spots on the road along the way, but America is still the best nation in the world. It has offered and still offers opportunities for millions seeking freedom of speech, freedom of religion and pursuit of their dreams.

In celebrating that spirit, we went to go view the fireworks at Silver Lake Park. I got some pretty darned good pictures, maybe my technique for fireworks is finally getting good. Well I’ll let you be the judge.

God Bless America.