Friday, June 30, 2006

The tour is rocked!!

Big news about the Tour De France. Ullrich and Basso have been suspended along with 50 others. Wow!! I haven't heard if Hincapie, Lanids or the Crazy Kazak (sp??) are included but if they aren't they have to be the hands down favorites now. More than they already were I mean.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Summer eat local challenge-meal #1.

Liz over at Pocket Farm put forth a challenge to eat one completely local meal a week for the whole summer. I figured I would give it a shot so I signed up to be part of the group. (Free prizes for eating more healthy? OK) Check out the details here. This is coming on the heels of the eat local challenge for the month of May.

I hereby put forth a snapshot of my first completely local meal.



I used my grill pan to cook up 2 ribeyes (they're pretty big, we only ate one) from our recent cow purchase. Then I slid the whole thing under the broiler to finish up after they had a nice "grilled" outside.

At the same time I sliced some new potatoes in half and boiled them. Then I got the cast iron skillet nice and hot, threw in a little veggie oil and browned the bottoms (flat side). Sprinkled on some salt and those were good. Since the skillet was hot I threw in some frozen corn we had cut from some sweet corn ears last summer and fried that up. I usually follow an Amish recipe for the fried corn, but since I didn't have local butter or onions, yet, I just left those out and fried it with some salt. (Veggie oil and spices are on the exclusion list)

It was deeeliisssh.

FGLB

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Post Topics

Lately I've been mulling the idea of starting a second blog to help differentiate subjects and focus the discussion on specific subjects.

I wanted to solicit your inputs on this. The breakdown is as follows:

Fat Guy: This blog would remain a mouthpiece for random crap that spews out of my head, not to mention biking and living a life that focuses on reducing car use in the world. I imagine that this blog would be more free ranging and less focused on specific subjects than the second blog.

Blog #2: This blog would be mostly about cooking/food/eating local/eating fresh/gardening and other associated topics similar to those subjects. I imagine this blog would stay more focused on those specific subjects than FGLB would.

I know there are some bikers who read this blog and I wanted to solicit your input specifically. Would you like to have two separate blogs so you can kind of know what to expect when to visit each one? Or is it preferred to have one place that just ranges all over the place and no one cares because my writing is so witty and such compelling reading that it's must read internet?

What about those of you who are just reading because it's me and you want to see what I'm saying? (ie, friends and family) Do you care?

Post a comment and let me know what you think. Or feel free to drop me a note to bikingmatt at yahoo.com.

On another topic, my computer has been going haywire the past few weeks. It apparently has been taken over by about 6000 worms and viruses. I'm trying to get that cleaned up, and also get it to recognize my camera to post pictures, but the posts will be sporadic because of that. I'm about to go Luca Brasi on it.

FGLB

Friday, June 23, 2006

Holy Cow!

Ever wonder what 209 lbs of pure American cow looks like? Check this out.


Here is a pic of our oldest son, he's 4 and 40 inches long. This is so you can compare the size of the cooler to him and know how big it is. The cooler is huge.



The locker had our cow ready last Friday. I spent the afternoon in the car going to pick it up. (It's within the foodshed at 55 miles away.)

Total Cost: $2.15 per pound.

You can save money by eating local.

Had one of the roasts in the crock pot the other day and I'm fairly sure that it was the best roast I've ever had. The meat was crazy tender. I haven't had a roast that tender before.

FGLB

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Eat Local, Eat Well

This is a post to help explain to all my friends and family why I became interested in gardening this year and last year I could just as easily have said it was a huge waste of time, and most likely did.

Since I became really interested in Peak Oil, living sustainably and local food (and frankly, very worried about our unsustainable life style here in America) I made a couple of goals for myself for the future, and the future of the family, even if they weren't aware that I had done this to them. My two main goals are listed below, but also part of this package is the desire to eat more seasonally, and by that I mean, not expecting foods to be available year round. That means I enjoy them when they are available, stock up when they are available and then use them later when they aren't. This has forced me to expand my palette and cooking skills in order to be able to take advantage of produce as it arrives on our tables. This is a good thing. I'm not so sure the fam likes all the experimentation, but no one is starving yet. No more expecting to go to the store and get tomatoes or melons year round whenever I want.

The first goal was to get a garden started so that I can grow my own food.
This was a relatively simple thing to get going because there is plenty of information available about gardening in books and on the web, and living in Iowa I have plenty of resources to learn about gardening, so this was a natural first step. My family has a pretty long history of farming/gardening too so there is a lot of knowledge stored up in the family tree. Both my grandparents lived in rural areas and had gardens. My great-grandparents on my dad's side were actual farmers. My parents use to garden until my brother and I got old enough to destroy the garden and then they got out of it. We've got the skills, so to speak.

I decided I was going to go the raised bed approach and have used square foot gardening as my main guide. Really, I went this way because I didn't really want a huge bed of dirt to take care of. I didn't see that as being productive, and with kids, it would be too inviting to them to get into it. Square foot gardening is also less tool and labor intensive, not to mention extremely productive from small spaces. I'm pressed for time like everyone and didn't want to spend all my time working soil and pulling weeds and such. I also wanted to be as organic as possible and thought this would be easier than a big traditional garden. I've been able to build 5 separate beds for my "garden" and fit them into our yard in a way that is fairly pleasing to the eye (except for all the chicken wire to keep out the rabbits) and it doesn't take over the yard like a traditional garden. I plan to build more going into next year. It's also very easy for my little ones to help me plant the seeds using the square foot methodology. This is great because it gets them involved and let's them play with some dirt (who doesn't want to do that when they are 4 and 2? Or 30...). I really want to make sure they grow up with all the skills and knowledge they will need about growing their own food so they will be better prepared for the world we will face in the future.

So far I've been able to get things to grow even though I'm learning as we go, and no garden space was ready early in the season. We've eaten spinach, arugula and lettuce from the garden. Lost my peas to something, not sure what, and so far rabbits have helped themselves to 2 eggplant plants, a jalapeno plant and one tomato plant (I hope you bastards get indigestion from the peppers) but the rest have survived. As the summer goes along we'll have carrots, corn, beans, broccoli, zucchini, squash, cantaloupe, basil, parsley, oregano and tomatoes for sauce and salsa. Then the fall crops will go in and we'll have peas and spinach, arugula and lettuce again, and probably some bok choy. (I'm not sure what else at this point) I would recommend this style to others interested. I knew that with my knowledge base and lack of garden space I wouldn't be able to completely fulfill our food needs from the garden, and that is where goal #2 came in.

The second was to frequent the local Farmer's Markets, or possibly join a CSA, as well as find local meat producers to replace my trips to the meat section of the grocery store.
I am pleasantly pleased by how satisfactory this has gone on both fronts. When my wife started back to work we stumbled across a local farmer (his wife worked in her building) who raises mostly grass fed cows that he sells directly to the public. It has been a lot of headaches to get this going, but right now it is about ready to come to fruition. Our cow is at the meat locker being butchered as we speak and the final price per pound is going to come in at a price that is less than we would pay per pound for ground beef from the local mega-mart. I can't wait to see how it all tastes. This same farmer also sells free range eggs, which are flat out delicious and so nice looking it's hard to make yourself eat them, but I've gotten over that. So I was able to start getting eggs there too, which is great. I'm not sure if the egg thing will work out in the future as my wife just moved to a new job, but the Farmer's Market has egg vendors so I'll be able to backfill that need. I also stumbled across a local pork producer who raises pastured, antibiotic free heirloom pigs. This was just a lucky chance meeting at a Farmer's Market and it turned out good. We have his information, and even though his stuff is rather pricey, the taste is amazing. I imagine we will selectively purchase items from him as needed in the future. (I'm not sure about the freezer space with a quarter of a cow in there) There are some local people that raise and sell chickens but we haven't gone that route yet.

I've been visiting the local Farmer's Market for our produce (which requires that I rise out of bed on Saturday morning at about 5:30) for the past few weeks. Yes, even in Iowa in early spring it's possible to obtain all your produce needs at a Farmer's Market, if you eat seasonally. For the past few months I've been so eagerly anticipating the opening of the Farmer's Markets that I could barely wait for it. I was like a kid on Christmas Eve. Now it's here and it's better than I expected. I've been buying peas and green beans, basil, potatoes, spinach, asparagus, rhubarb and I'm not sure what else. I was surprised how much was available at this time of the year, and even more surprised by how it tastes. It's amazing. The market has too much artsy fartsy stuff and way, way too many people selling baked goods, but I don't spend any time at those tables.

I've been shocked at how reasonable the prices have been for the produce I've bought. I didn't expect to be actually buying things for less than at the stores, but in most cases I have been, and even the ones that were more expensive had so much more flavor and taste that they were worth the price difference. Right now I can't wait to go back to the Market and get more peas to cook for the next week. Even better, I'm going to start buying twice as much of everything and freezing half of it for the future. Then we'll be eating from that in the winter. Oh yeah!

And I've learned to cook new things. Last Sunday we had creamed new potatoes with peas. I've seen this a million times and never really thought to make it, but when I looked at my fridge and saw 2 pounds of peas (unshelled) and a big sack of new potatoes I thought I'd give it a try. Turned out amazing. None of us could get enough and I ate it the next day too, and wished I had more leftovers. I've also figured out that you can bake slices of new potatoes in the oven and get a fairly good chip replacement (I learned this by accident when I overcooked them, but they were pretty good, and that isn't a bad way to learn). If I had kept cooking the old way using the old standard stuff I wouldn't have learned these two things. Or how about learning how to wilt spinach into dishes for a nice colorful tasty addition to a vegetable serving? When my garden was producing spinach and arugula I had to figure out how to use it so I cooked up a frittata with broccoli, spinach and arugula. It was great. If I hadn't made a garden, planted early crops and then forced myself to use them I probably wouldn't have cooked a frittata, even though I've seen them made on the Food Network a million times, and I wouldn't have realized how good something like that could be because I wouldn't have been pushed out of my comfort zone to do it. I'm now mulling over making a quiche. Isn't it great to force yourself out of your box?

I'm not perfect by a long ways. I still eat at restaurants without worrying about the local content of their food. I still use spices and things that aren't local. I still have prepackaged foods and store bought veggies in the freezer. I still use sweetener in my iced tea, neither are local. But I'm taking baby steps here. That's really the thing, take baby steps, make a goal and move towards it. Don't you want locally raised fresh and great tasting food? Then go to your local Farmer's Market. I'm sure there is at least one in your town (my city, 120K, has one every day of the week, I'm not kidding, and sometimes two a day) and support those local farmers. When you buy your food look the grower in the eye, ask how he/she is doing, learn about how they grow the food. It's great. They will even let you touch it in the containers and bag it yourself. Nothing is prepackaged. They know great ways to prepare it, how to store it, and how to treat it. It sure beats asking the pimply faced kid at the mega-mart a question, to which he responds "Uh, I don't know", or most likely, just ignores you.

FGLB

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

What's in a day?

Well, the day has finally arrived. Yes, today is the day. I've finally reached a milestone today. Today is my 30th birthday. Yes, it's official, I'm officially getting older. No wait, I am old. Soon I'll be joining AARP, asking for discounts when I eat and prepaying my funeral services. Oh yes, today is the beginning of the end for me. How much longer before I start forgetting things or watching PBS? Wait a tick... Or how much longer before I decide to !!GASP!! get a recumbant?? The times they are a changing.

When you age aren't you supposed to become wiser? Where is that at? When do I get some of this wisdom? If anything, it seems like life is more confusing now than it's ever been. Aren't I supposed to have this thing figured out at some point? How long do I have to stumble along like a freshman on his first day on campus? The freaky thing is that I have kids of my own and I still haven't figured life out? How are they going to grow up not screwed up?

And what happened to the birthday parties? This year we went out for pizza (I had a gift certificate and we splurged for cheese bread and drinks), came home and had some cake, opened my present (a cast iron grill pan, yeah!!), and then did some work, put kids to bed and wrote this blog. 5 years ago I'd still be out at the bar downing drinks and not even wondering what time I will get up tomorrow (6 by the way, I get to sleep in tomorrow). Actually, a lot has happened in the past 5 years. I moved to a different state, bought 2 personal houses (remodeling both extensively), about 5-6 rental places (remodeling most of those too), sold about 4 rental places, had 2 kids (well my wife did but I did the important stuff like buy the taco bell after the delivery and feed the cravings during pregnancy) and who knows what else that I've forgotten.

Man it's been a crazy ride. It's been a good 30 years though. Let's hope the next 30 are as good, and the 30 after that...and hopefully the ones after that...

FGLB

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Say it ain't so

If you have any small inkling of baseball fandom in your gut you need to fight this with all your might. If you grew up watching Cubs games on WGN in the summers (in the days before night games) then you need to fight this even harder.

Sir! Thy name is stupidity!

FGLB

Much ado about nothing

I haven't had much to post about lately.

We spent most of this past weekend swimming in the pool. We are lucky enough to have a pool in our backyard. (It came with the house) Having a pool is mostly against my ecological & social beliefs. Mostly because having a personal pool is one way to flaunt the excess comsumption that is America. But, life is full of compromises and having a pool is one of them. Besides, we actually were going to fill it in when we first got the house (the pool was in disrepair, like most of the house) but it was more expensive to fill it in than fixing it and using it. (It's amazing how the city can get involved and do things like that) Since most of my decisions revolve around whether I'm going to spend or make money we decided to keep it, which is great for a wife who loves to swim and children who love water of any kind.

You'll be surprised to know that my swimming specialty is making cannonballs and displacing the maximum amount of water possible with my pool entries. At least I'm kinda good at it. The profile pic is a lovely pic from this past weekend of me in mid-air with pretty good form. I'm unable to completely tuck my legs under my stomach and do a full cannonball (something about a belly being in the way) but my water displacement comes out good anyway. Notice please my great farmer's/cyclist tan on the arms.

For all you McGyver freaks out there. Want to know if his tricks are possible? Follow this link which I stole from here.

FGLB

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Softball Update

I had told myself that I wasn't going to talk about my softball games here because I was getting a little too braggartish for my liking, but I just had to post the results of last night's effort. I was too tired to do it last night though so today it is.

Our team won again, 32-2. Yes, 32-2. That score is obscene. It really is. I don't feel too bad knowing that after the 1st inning we weren't really trying that hard and at the earliest point the game could be called for the mercy rule it was 26-1, so it isn't like we kept piling it on. We just kept playing and that is what happened. We borrowed two players in order for us to even have enough to play. We took one girl from the stands and the other team lent us a player. He swore that he wanted to be on our team going forward.

We were visitors so we batted first. By the time the inning was over we had scored 15 or 16 runs and had batted through the order twice. While it was fun, it was also extremely tiring to be running that much. :-) One time I was tearing around 3rd base for home and when I got back to the bench they asked me if I was bored running around the bases. I was like "Not really" with a strange look on my face. They said "Well, you were running around 3rd blowing a bubble while you were running." My response "No way, I wasn't doing that." Then everyone responded "Yes you were." Me: "Oh, well I guess I can run, chew gum and blow bubbles all at the same time and not even think about it." I didn't even realize I was doing it.

In the last game we scored 15 or 16 runs and the week before that I think it was 9 or 10. So we are really scoring a lot of runs.

I was trying to figure out what has been making us play so well lately and I think it's a few different things.
1.) We play for fun. While we want to win none of us get upset with other people for errors or things that happen. We are just kind of laid back like that. I think that helps everyone feel comfortable playing and doing their part. It helps not to have that one guy on your team who is too serious and when mistakes happen he throw a little fit. I hate that guy...
2.) We have a good core at the top of the lineup, and even though those players are the "good" ones, they aren't selfish about playing all the time or trying to make a big impact. We take what is given. For example, in co-ed softball there is a rule to force people to pitch to the men. If a women follows you in the lineup and you (a guy) walk on 3 straight balls then you walk, advance to 2nd (it's like a double) and the girl behind you walks also. Basically a punishment for not pitching to the guy. Well, our team leads off with a girl, then guy, then girl, then two guys, then girl and so forth. This forces them to pitch to our "good" players to avoid letting two people on, but these "good" players are also disciplined enough to take a walk to fill up the bases when necessary. After the first time through the lineup the pitcher has pretty much resigned himself to pitching to us as carefully as he can because he knows that we won't swing at a pitch unless it is a good pitch. Case in point, I walked last night, the girl behind me got on. Next batter drives the guy in front of me in and me. (If I had hit the ball most likely I would be on first, not second.) The next batter drives in the girl who walked and the guy from behind her who hit me in. I think things like that are really helping us out. (Walking like that also helps minimize the impact a female at bat will have also) Another example of unselfishness is when we are platooning players we (the "good" ones) volunteer to platoon too. I think that makes everyone happier than otherwise because there are more spots for everyone to move around in.
3.) For some reason we have been lucky and have been stringing together hits with walks with errors and our girls have played well and that has led to a lot of points. It seems that if you can score more than 5 runs you are about assured of winning.
4.) It also helps that we have a super solid right side of the infield. SS and 3rd are very good, and since we have a girl who is good enough to play 3rd (as well as a guy or better) that gives us a definite advantage over other teams. (You have to play two girls in the infield. It's almost always catcher and 2nd) Having good players here keeps a lot of balls in the infield and turns them into outs when they complete the throw over to 1st. That forces players to try to hit it over them to get hits and then they start popping out.

Anyway, it's been a lot of fun so far. We have a month and a half left I think so there is a long way to go. Right now I believe we are 1st in our division so we'll see if we can keep it up.

FGLB

Monday, June 12, 2006

Manic Monday

I was able to get out today in the fantastic weather and enjoy a little bike commute. Child #2 is staying with his grandma this week so my shuttle service is closed down for the week. The weather was a little brisk this morning when I hopped on the bike (I think it was around 45) but I warmed up quickly. Especially since I had a low back tire that I had to overcome until I got to the free air place. (I can't get over why people pay $.25 for air from an air pump. It's air people. If you are desperate, OK, but otherwise find a free place.) Then things rode a lot more nicely. On the way to work I noticed someone in front of me on their bike so I gave chase. (I thought it was my buddy from work riding in.) I couldn't catch them though. No surprise really, I'm as slow as molasses on my bike. (Turned out not to be him anyway so I don't know the mystery person was.)

It had warmed up for the ride home but it was still nice. I had to run an errand on the way home so I just went over there on my bike rather than go home and then drive. The ride home always goes more quickly than the ride to work. There are a few factors at work here:
1.) My muscles are a little more awake, and so am I.
2.) I'm usually more excited to go home than go to work.
3.) It's mostly downhill. (I think this factor is a big part of it)

Riding the trial home was a ton of fun. I was in a serious groove flying down the road and then the trail. There were tons of people to swerve around (but not so many to clog the trail down) and I was pumping hard and really moving. And on top of that I had a bunny in front of me to try to catch. It was great fun. It all came to a sudden end when I got to my destination and my tire went flat. It was kind of strange. I could hear the tire going flat when it happened and then the front tire got all squirrelly (word??) and then next thing I know it's history. After taking care of my business I head across the street to the QT for some free air hoping that I can fill it up and ride it home before it goes flat. No luck. As I'm pumping it I can feel the air leaving it as fast as it's coming in. I filled it up anyway and took off like my ass was on fire for home. I made it half a block. It was a long walk home.

I shouldn't be too upset. This is my first flat tire in the past 2 years that I've been riding a lot again. (I did one time destroy my rim that caused a flat tire but it also destroyed the entire rim, tire and tube, so I don't count that one) I think the leak is around the stem. Perhaps the stem came away from the tube. I don't know. When I got home I threw the bike in the garage. I'll deal with it later.

One of the blogs I read had a link to a story about Kent Peterson. I've read a lot about him. Check him out here. I thought this was an interesting new article about living car free, and having a family too. You can also do a Google Search for him because he has a ton of stuff on the net.

FGLB

Sunday, June 11, 2006

You Tube

I might be the last person in America who hasn't seen this video until now. But it's hilarious so I'm sharing it.

Evolution of Dance

After I watched this I checked out You Tube, which is a bad idea. This place is crazy addicting. A quick search for biking pulled up about 13K videos to see. Needless to say I wasted more time than I should have out there.

FGLB

Thursday, June 08, 2006

True dat

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." -- Mark Twain

This came to me recently in an e-mail. Wanted to share.

FGLB

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Update on rides

Did some mapping of the routes.

Friday's ride.

Sunday's ride.

Thanks for the mapping tip Pete!

Now that I have the routes and can actually see how far I went I'm not as impressed with what I did. Of course I was pulling 70 pounds of kid and trailer but it's still not that great.

FGLB

Sunday, June 04, 2006

I finally ride a bike

Well, I finally got on the bike a few times this weekend.

Friday afternoon I went to pick up child #2 at day-care on my bike. I hadn't ridden my bike over there before so it was an adventure finding my way over there. There are a ton of non-bike friendly streets between here and there, not to mention one huge corporate campus in the way. My friend and I devised a route that worked really quite well. (I'm glad our company has a big professional mapping software it subscribes to) I was on mostly low traffic roads for the whole thing. I did hit a snag riding across the campus when I made a turn into a dead end street that ended in the front entryway to their HQ building. I was a little freaked about this since I'm not there for a valid business reason, but I just rode across the main lobby and kept going and pretended like I didn't see any signs or hear anyone. It worked out OK. On the way back I found a road through the campus so I'll do that next time. :-) Now I feel like a real biking outlaw!

This morning I went out for a little ride. I set the alarm specifically so I could hit the road around 6. As I was getting dressed who should come out? But child #2, he decided that he had enough sleep I guess. (He was up at 5 yesterday so he must be an early riser) So, I decided to throw him in his trailer and pull him along. We went along the back roads by our house until I got to the city wide trail system. We circled a lake down there and came back. On the way back we needed to hit the store for some milk so while we were there we had a little breakfast. Nothing better than some ham and hashbrowns smothered in cheese. MMM--MMM

(There is some kind of mapping software available on the web where you can map out your route. I would appreciate it if someone could pass it along to me so I could start doing that. I would love to be able to figure out how long some of these rides are. Thanks)

I'm throwing up a few pics for your perusal.


Here is a pic of child #2 just as we are getting ready to leave. He's reading his Bob the Builder book if you must know.

Our child trailer does double duty hauling groceries whenever we can. It doesn't hold very much though.


We celebrated child #2's 2nd birthday on Sat. This is how you're supposed to eat cake!! And there was frosting on this, he just ate that first. Probably why he is so happy.

FGLB