Just For My Own Amusement

I saw this online and found it amusing. As I read through list of procrastination methods I found myself thinking, "Oh yeah, that's definitely me."

I would venture a guess that most everybody procrastinates to some degree - except maybe Mr Nye - so which ones from the field guide below sum you up?

I've got four of them covered: The Cleaner, The List Maker, The Sidetracker and The Perpetuator

Comic illustration by Angela Liao, 20px. Published with permission; all rights reserved.

What a Jerk!

Mr X made Jerky. (I helped by tending to it while it was on the smoker.) But Mr X did all the hard work: research, chopping, trimming fat, marinading, etc. I knew we were going to try to make our own jerky with some of our beef and I was excited about it so I was antsy to try it. I told Mr X that I prefer my jerky to be thicker and chewier rather than super dry and pull-your-teeth-out-tough like some of the kinds they sell in the stores. He agreed. 

The meat was in marinade for about two days and then we smoked it using hickory chips for about 4-5 hours.

On the smoker.

The finished product.

This is how a torn up chunk looks inside.

I'm happy to say that it turned out chewy and scrumptious! Yay! I a bit of a jerky fan so I'm really happy to have a big ole' pile of homemade jerky on hand at home. Mr X is the greatest!

Mr X's Valentine's Day Dinner: Sweet & Simple

I loathe going out to dinner on Valentine's Day. Mr X feels similarly. So each year that we are lucky enough to spend Valentine's Day together I make him dinner. This year we spent Valentine's Day skiing so I didn't have time to do anything complicated when we got home. So this was what we had:

Seafood Cakes with Mustard Crema

These cakes (recipe from Cooking Light) are a somewhat regular dinner item at our house because they are so delicious and easy to make. By regular, I mean we probably have them a couple of times each year.

A green salad with maple-glazed walnuts, gorgonzola cheese and apples

Topped with a homemade oil & vinegar salad dressing.

For dessert it was a youthful indulgence - early in our marriage we used to go buy those lofthouse soft frosted sugar cookies from the grocery store and eat the whole pack. (*blush*) They were most definitely a terrible indulgence on our part. It's been years since we've bought them, but occasionally when I pass them in the store I think.....hmmmm....those would probably be kind of good. So I decided to make them at home. They turned out beautifully and tasted spot on - particularly those we ate a day or two later.

I didn't have these particular sprinkles on hand, but rather sanding sugars in white, red and silver as well as silver dragees so that's what I put on top. Recipe courtesy of Annie's Eats.

 [Photos courtesy of the interweb because, once again, I neglected to take photos. I swear one of these days I'll get my act together and start taking photos again.]

A New Mountain

There are 27 ski resorts in Colorado (I could be wrong on that, but I think I'm close). I told Mr X when we moved here that I want to eventually have skied or snowboarded at all of them. Then I found out that Silverton is for experts only and you have to have a guide and you use ski cats to get around and people die there every year. I'm not that brave. So I amended my original request and told Mr X and I'd like to eventually go to 26 of the 27 resorts in Colorado.


Here they are:

Ski Granby Ranch, Howelsen Hill, Durango, Sunlight, Beaver Creek, Keystone, Vail, Telluride, Eldora, Snowmass, Powderhorn, Loveland, Winter Park, Crested Butte, Copper, Aspen Highlands, Aspen, Buttermilk, Snowmass, Ski Cooper, Breckenridge, Steamboat, Wolf Creek, Monarch, Silverton, A-Basin,
and Purgatory

So far I've been to 9:

A-Basin, Monarch, Steamboat, Copper, Crested Butte, Winter Park, Breckenridge, Vail, and Keystone

I have a long way to go. Each year we try to go to one new resort. The first year it was a bunch since it was our first year here. The second year it was Crested Butte. The third year it was Steamboat. This year it was Monarch.

We spent two days there and the snow was incredible! The first day we had almost a foot of fresh powder. The second day we had 14 inches of fresh powder. That much snow was exhausting - and I mean that in the most exciting and fun way possible. My only two complaints about this place was that the crowd on Saturday was a little much (the mountain is rather small so it doesn't hold a crowd well) and that the runs are pretty short. Most are only about a mile and I think there's a couple that are 2 miles. Of course load of fresh champagne powder trumped both of those issues.

I didn't take photos (again, I know, I've been bad about that lately) so these are courtesy of the interweb:

This resort is 3 hours away from our house so we decided to stay overnight since we wanted to go for two days in a row. We like to try out hot springs here and there and we've sampled many here in Colorado. Pagosa Springs was our favorite to-date. But this place, Mt Princeton Hot Springs, took over the top spot for us. Great facilities, lots of soaking options, great water temperatures, very low on the sulphur-smell factor, beautiful scenery. Mr X especially enjoyed the natural pools nestled in the rocks next to the river. You can hardly make them out in the first photo but just look at the river and the rocks on the left-hand side of the photo contain some scalding hot pools of water. You can arrange the rocks so that more river water comes in to cool down the water temp.

My Valentine

Mr X loves me!

Snowshoeing in Rabbit Ears Pass

On our way home from Steamboat we stopped at the top of Rabbit Ears Pass to go snowshoeing. It was 9 degrees (F) outside. We had a bottle of water stashed in Mr X's backpack and about an hour or so into our hike we pulled it out to have a drink - it was half frozen already. Mr X had to poke a hole in the neck and then shake it up like crazy to break up the ice enough so we could actually drink from it. 

We were essentially making fresh tracks as you can see the previous tracks are nearly covered with new snow. It is exhausting to make fresh tracks.

When we started out we were both pretty chilly.

Once we got going we quickly started roasting

 

Mr X, catching his breath and waiting for me (I'm a bit slower, as usual).

 

 

Mr X trudging up, making nice tracks for me to follow.

Heading back the way we came, using our old track, thank goodness!

 It was fun, but maybe next time we'll try it with cross country skis instead. We'll see.

Snowboarding @ Steamboat Again

Mr X and I fell in love with Steamboat last winter. We have been eagerly looking forward to enjoying Steamboat again in the winter for nearly a year now. Finally last weekend we headed up there to play. And we got really lucky/blessed because it dumped snow before we got there and while we were there so we were, once again, able to play in fresh "champagne powder". Yay! 

I did a bad job of capturing the fun on camera. I was always either too busy or too exhausted to pull out my phone and snap a few pictures. This is really all I managed to get. Sorry! I'll try harder next time, I promise! 

You have to take off your board/skis to hike up to this spot, but it's worth it. We do it over and over again because it's so great. Every time I'm doing the hiking part I'm thinking, "I'm NEVER doing this again!" and then once I get to the top, catch my breath and float down the beautiful untouched powder I think, "I HAVE to do this again!"

Our favorite run is technically out of boundaries and therefore not really a run.

Mr X is antsy to get going here.

Since I failed to get good pictures of what this place looks like with my own camera I found some photos courtesy of the interweb of how beautiful Steamboat is:

A view of the slopes from the main street.

A view of the surrounding landscape from the gondolas.

So much powder everywhere!

Riding in Aspen trees is my favorite and there are loads here.

This is exactly what the aspen branches look like after a good snow storm here - it's beautiful!

 

I'm already looking forward to our next Steamboat weekend.

Adventures in Cheese Making

Last year for Christmas my MIL and FIL gave me a goat cheese making kit because they thought it was right up my alley. It was. Here's a recent attempt at making my very own goat cheese:
 

The cooking of the goat milk, after which you add the citric acid, which is the catalyst for the curdling process.

I was really skeptical as I gazed into the pot of simmering goat milk - it certainly didn't look like it would EVER turn into cheese. Then after I added the citric acid and let it sit 10-ish minutes, I came back, peered in again and decided that for sure this wasn't going to work. But hey, I might as well see it to the end, right? So I dubiously poured the contents into a cheesecloth lined colander and then left it to drain. I came back later and to my sheer delight I found a lump of goat cheese left in the colander. I then added the required amount of salt, mixed it in and then filled two molds with as much of the cheese as I could. just wrapped the rest in the cheese cloth in and let them both continue draining in the refrigerator overnight. This was the final result:

It made A LOT of goat cheese. It was sooooo delicious too!

I used some of the cheese in a lemon goat cheese pasta dish I made the next day. Mr X and I ate some plain and then the large round of cheese I've frozen to see how it fares in that state. I've frozen cheese before, but most don't turn out well once they are thawed, in my experience. We'll see how this does - I just couldn't bear to watch my precious homemade cheese mold from my inability to eat it fast enough. (I know, for those of you that know how much I LOVE cheese, the ideas of me not being able to consume large quantities of cheese in a short time is shocking. *shrug*)

The Verdict: Making Goat Cheese At Home Work And It Is Delicious!

Stock Show Excursion

In mid-January Mr X and I went to the Denver Stock Show to check it out. I guess it's a pretty big deal here in Colorado so we thought we should see what all the fuss was about. 

We watched a show with trained pot belly pigs - weird but amusing.
We saw a chainsaw woodcarving demonstration - interesting and loud.
We went to a big, fancy rodeo - always entertaining.
And we perused the show animals - my favorite part. You should see them groom these animals for the judging - it's like an animals spa complete with hot showers, hair cuts, hair styling (using giant blow dryers, some sort of hair spray stuff, etc) and brushing/combing. All of the animals really do look like they are really enjoying all of the pampering. It was funny. The best part though was seeing how impressively HUGE some of the animals were. Some of the returning champs even had plaques and ribbons hanging above their stalls.

I didn't get many photos of the animals but the guys below impressed me enough that I overcame my photography laziness and tried to snap a few: The Texas Longhorns and the Brahma Bulls. These were monstrously huge in person!

Even though the stock show & rodeo were interesting and well done, I'll probably not go again due to the sheer number of people there. It was maddening. Awful. By the end of the day there was nothing more I wanted than to retreat to the foothills and hide from all humans except Mr X. I couldn't get out of there quickly enough. That being said - I'm glad I attended this event once.