The 96-Hour Bubble

It's nearly a given that my work travel picks up shortly before a vacation. I was at a conference in Scottsdale during the days before our 2006 trip, had a few days in California before the 2008 trip, and now just spent two weeks out for work. The good news is I've learned to take it easy, get a lot of things done, but make sure I get solid sleep, eat well, and drink lots of water whilst traveling. (Ryan would laugh at that since I'm notorious for not drinking water...)

But as our plane descended yesterday evening down into Austin, I felt the oncoming checklist of the 96-hour bubble...that period of time where you ramp up, fret, pack, remember, gather, and relax. The latter being the more difficult thing to do, but the most important. No one wants to go on vacation mad.

The upcoming breeze-of-a-trip (if you compare it with the 2008 whirlwind) is 8 days in Southern England. Three cities/areas of focus: Bath, Bristol, and London. The middle city, which always gets a kind of head-yank that says "huh?" from my co-workers who live in London, will be certainly exciting as it's where I'll officiate the wedding for my best friend! I'm very honored and excited - and it adds an interesting element to our travel: carrying the one-off outfit.

I'm notoriously picky about packing. Rick Steves taught me all about traveling as lightly as possible. I mean, seriously, who is going to know or care if you where the same socks three days in a row? And "Rei in der Tube" makes the most awesome handwashing detergent you can imagine! Thank god for radiators!

But packing formal shoes, a jacket, and formal pants adds a new element of challenge in my light-packing process.

So, the bubble is here, time to lock down. We will be taking the iPhone for blogging convenience, so we'll update here as we go!

Tschüß!

Vegetable Paella

We loved this dish, a quick-and-easy Paella that is full of great summer vegetables, but empty of fish or meat.

I remember seeing Paella for the first time on Globetrekker, one of my favorite shows ever. They were in Spain and a community was having a town-wide competition on making the best paella. Which is neat, because that means it's a food like Spaghetti sauce...everyone has their favorite, best, most trusted, and it's a handed-down recipe that also gets tweaked along the way to suit modern tastes, adjust to conditions, etc.

At it's base, Paella is regional Valencian cuisine (no, not the national dish of Spain - I think Spain's cultural complexities are such that a national dish would be impossible...they'd probably settle for official regional dishes and let the idea of a national dish be the big elephant in the room), and some versions include meat and snails, while others just focus on seafood. But it's all the vegetables that make it special...along with a few threads of saffron and doses of paprika.

The recipe I used comes from Robin Miller; this is one of my first recipes I've used from her, and was really happy with it. Squash, asparagus, Zucchini, peas, wild rice, broth, tomatoes...mmm...



Herb Garden Update: It died. Seriously, we're on our 50+ day over 100 so far this year. We'll revisit that later in the year.

Squirrel Update: Romeo is still around, but has been absent the past two days. Grete's waiting for him. I think he's starting to get greedy with our ever-ripening pecans...while he's been busy scraping the hotter top layers of soil in our pots for cooler layers to rest on, he's soon going to be doing that to store his winter cache of pecans. Should we game the system? Store extras and periodically lay them around the yard for him? Hmm...

Tschüß!

Sachertorte

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, Ryan decided to make Sachertorte for this month's supper club dessert. Everyone always quickly claims all the other parts - appetizers, main, sides - and leaves desserts wide open for Ryan to offer up a new concoction. Sachertorte, this time.

We have a funny history with Sachertorte: even while we travelled to Vienna (2008), walked by the Sacher cafe, and read about it in guidebooks, we kept walking past because the cafe was full of American tourists. It's like we have a radar in our hands that starts to electrocute us if we get closer. You can pick out the brands on their fanny packs (Polo or Kirkland) or the common color selection (blue umbrella, red windbreaker). Nowadays you just look for a gut and sloppy clothing.

I'm being overly-dramatic, since in intimate situations we've made neat connections with other Americans - like the two sisters we met in Triberg (2006), the only other room taken in our ancient hotel, and they were so excited about their schedule of Black Forest city hopping, seeing more and more churches, and checking off the sites on their guidebook. We all picked out our Cuckoo clocks together, hugged, and said goodbye.

But on that cold evening in Vienna, seeing the bright lights of the Sacher hotel, the gorgeous black dots of cake on everyone's table alongside coffee, it all wanted us to come in and try out the famous 1832 torte...but alas, no, we boogied across the street, around the corner, and out of sight. (We did end up somewhere much more local, with hilarity ensuing.)

So...Sachertorte...Ryan surprised me with the selection, but I was super excited to watch him build his masterpiece. I guess I never realized that the key to the yumminess is the layer of Apricot jam in between the cakes. He bought Hero brand, the best, and he went to town.









More history on Sachertorte.

The result was loved, adored, and eaten by all.

Tschüß!!

Squirrel Craziness

On Friday, I caught our friend taking a dust bath. Or having a psychotic wig out. Either way, he's so cute, even though he has destroyed our plants trying to hide pecans.

Tschüß!!