Rain, Round Rock, and Random foods
Catching up...
Friday night was the end-of-year party for my office, so we all went to Round Rock to see the Express play. I went last year, too, but I'd only been here a few weeks, and didn't know anybody - and very few people came. This year we had lots of people, little kiddies, and... RAIN!
It was hot and muggy, and we saw the dark clouds, but we kept hoping the rain wouldn't bother us. We were mistaken. [At least the girls got a chance to make some chalk flowers before the rain started!]
Right around the time that the game was supposed to start (7:05), it started to drizzle. We thought we'd be ok under the tent, but it turns out a shade tent doesn't stop the water coming through.... particularly when the water is coming down in sheets! :( Rebeka and I used her quilt (a lovely American flag quilt that she made herself, btw) as a tent to cover ourselves and Giana and Nic. Lesson learned: four year old girls shriek a lot when they're getting wet! Eventually, the Dell Diamond staff came and invited us to move indoors. Fortunately, my knitting bag (you think I'd go to a baseball game without a
sock to knit?) is waterproof, so when we went inside I had a dry towel.
The rain finally let up around 8:30-ish, but by then we were so wiped out, all I had the energy for was a quick trip to the souvenir shop. I got a beer coozie shaped like a RRE shirt. Made it home in time to watch some good tennis from Flushing Meadows. Yay US Open! One of these days I'll get back to NYC.
Another pic I took and forgot to post... Last week was the Summer Supercomputing Institute. One
of the students came from our partner institution in Mexico, and brought me a gift. He tried very hard to get something that couldn't be found in the States - and he succeeded! As you can see, it's "Queso de Tuna." This threw me for a loop, until I went on the Internet and looked it up! Turns out, it's a sweet - sort of jam/paste like - made out of prickly pear or cactus fruit.... which you could sort of guess if you looked at the picture on the package. (If you're paying attention, Spanish speakers, it's certainly not tuna fish, as the word for tuna is atun.) I tasted it, it was ... interesting. Sort of like apple butter, in a more solid form. Anyway, it was a lovely and original gift.
And finally, last weekend was Supper Club. Our theme was "foods that remind us of home" - or some variation thereof. I remember eating artichokes every summer, with Durkees dipping sauce, and teaching other people how to get the yummy artichoke meat off the edge of the leaves with your teeth. But individual artichokes for each person was going to be a) expensive,
b) time consuming to eat, and c) messy at the dinner table. So instead I made Rachael Ray's baked artichoke hearts, which are easy and very tasty. I also made mint chocolate chip ice cream - green, with Nestle chips - because that was my favorite thing at Baskin Robbins. (well, other than the pink bubblegum ice cream with the multicolored pieces of gum in it, that we always kept in our hand until we were done with the ice cream so we could chew the gum.... but I digress.) It was a very random buffet - potato salad (w/o mayo -very yummy), crabmeat dip, blackened catfish pieces, vegetarian lasagna, eastern carolina vinegar pulled pork, rosemary corn bread, cinnamon apples, and key lime pie and my ice cream for dessert. YUM.
So that's it, I think I'm caught up. For now. :) Happy Labor Day Weekend!
Friday night was the end-of-year party for my office, so we all went to Round Rock to see the Express play. I went last year, too, but I'd only been here a few weeks, and didn't know anybody - and very few people came. This year we had lots of people, little kiddies, and... RAIN!
It was hot and muggy, and we saw the dark clouds, but we kept hoping the rain wouldn't bother us. We were mistaken. [At least the girls got a chance to make some chalk flowers before the rain started!]Right around the time that the game was supposed to start (7:05), it started to drizzle. We thought we'd be ok under the tent, but it turns out a shade tent doesn't stop the water coming through.... particularly when the water is coming down in sheets! :( Rebeka and I used her quilt (a lovely American flag quilt that she made herself, btw) as a tent to cover ourselves and Giana and Nic. Lesson learned: four year old girls shriek a lot when they're getting wet! Eventually, the Dell Diamond staff came and invited us to move indoors. Fortunately, my knitting bag (you think I'd go to a baseball game without a
sock to knit?) is waterproof, so when we went inside I had a dry towel.The rain finally let up around 8:30-ish, but by then we were so wiped out, all I had the energy for was a quick trip to the souvenir shop. I got a beer coozie shaped like a RRE shirt. Made it home in time to watch some good tennis from Flushing Meadows. Yay US Open! One of these days I'll get back to NYC.
Another pic I took and forgot to post... Last week was the Summer Supercomputing Institute. One
of the students came from our partner institution in Mexico, and brought me a gift. He tried very hard to get something that couldn't be found in the States - and he succeeded! As you can see, it's "Queso de Tuna." This threw me for a loop, until I went on the Internet and looked it up! Turns out, it's a sweet - sort of jam/paste like - made out of prickly pear or cactus fruit.... which you could sort of guess if you looked at the picture on the package. (If you're paying attention, Spanish speakers, it's certainly not tuna fish, as the word for tuna is atun.) I tasted it, it was ... interesting. Sort of like apple butter, in a more solid form. Anyway, it was a lovely and original gift.And finally, last weekend was Supper Club. Our theme was "foods that remind us of home" - or some variation thereof. I remember eating artichokes every summer, with Durkees dipping sauce, and teaching other people how to get the yummy artichoke meat off the edge of the leaves with your teeth. But individual artichokes for each person was going to be a) expensive,
b) time consuming to eat, and c) messy at the dinner table. So instead I made Rachael Ray's baked artichoke hearts, which are easy and very tasty. I also made mint chocolate chip ice cream - green, with Nestle chips - because that was my favorite thing at Baskin Robbins. (well, other than the pink bubblegum ice cream with the multicolored pieces of gum in it, that we always kept in our hand until we were done with the ice cream so we could chew the gum.... but I digress.) It was a very random buffet - potato salad (w/o mayo -very yummy), crabmeat dip, blackened catfish pieces, vegetarian lasagna, eastern carolina vinegar pulled pork, rosemary corn bread, cinnamon apples, and key lime pie and my ice cream for dessert. YUM.So that's it, I think I'm caught up. For now. :) Happy Labor Day Weekend!
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