I really liked a lot of things about this cookbook. There are beautiful pictures and a bunch of recipes I am excited to try.
I also like the seasonal section which gives you ideas about how to modify the recipe for the freshest ingredients each summer.
There are some things I don't like. Some of the recipes have pictures that don't really show the recipe. The lamb kofta has a picture of hands squishing ground meat in a bowl. The boeuf bourguignon has a top view of a box of onions.
I also don't like how it's organized. The chapters make some sense. Weeknight dinners, great for leftovers, make ahead... But, there isn't all that much difference in what is offered. I would prefer it to be organized by dish type. Like meats, veggies, grains... When cookbooks are organized like this I tend to not use them. They would be most useful if I wanted to take that cookbook and make something from it. I don't tend to use cookbooks that way. I usually decide I want something, say chicken, and go look for a chicken recipe.
Despite the minor things I don't like, I really like this book. Next time I have people over I plan to make some things from it.
I found out how to volunteer at the Maker Faire this year. I signed up to teach people to knit. This means I got in free! I also signed up Steven to teach people to knit. Free is nice. The last time I went to Maker Faire I thought it was overrun with poorly monitored children acting like everything was a toy, even the things clearly set up for an older audience. This year, it was probably also the case, but you can't complain about free. Also I signed up for the noon-4 shift, so the busiest time I was hiding in the knitting booth.
Getting there early was great. We were allowed in I think 90 min early, but arrived just under an hour early. A lot of the things weren't set up yet, but the bigger art exhibits were. Even better no one was at them.
Steven jumping to get to a higher high five.
Giant ball of yarn at the knitting booth. The only time it was empty...
Stilt lessons. For obvious reasons I did not partake.
About 10 min before the public was allowed in we walked by the main entrance. I was very happy to not be in this mob. Going to the Maker Faire as a maker is so much easier.
Tape.
In the darkroom they had really cool things. Too many to take pictures of. The one picture that came out well is this light sculpture. It is made of plastic cups, and christmas lights. I might need to make one.
A robot playing chess.
Automatic marker.
There was a little booth where you can make light up monsters. I made this one. If you squeeze it's tummy, it's nose lights up. I had it in my pocket while teaching knitting. I showed it to the children that were far too young to learn knitting and were just getting frustrated. Then directed them over there. Excellent solution.
The teaching went fairly well. I signed up to teach both crochet and knitting. I hadn't expected to teach both at the same time... But, it all worked out. It still amazes me how many people don't know a slip knot. I've know this since I was a child, and always thought it was common knowledge. Most people got the basics down. One little girl was far too young to learn (she wasn't coordinated enough to hold the sticks) so I taught her finger knitting instead.
Steven teaching.
My wrist was full of things by the end of the day. I was amused with the Safety First band. With so much Burning Man like things around, it's a different priority than their "Safety Third."
Mushroom Jerky
Free yarn from volunteering
The booth I was working in had knitting, crochet, needlepoint, spinning, and weaving. Three of these I can do well. Those three were very well staffed, and came with free take home supplies. You get to start a project and take it home to finish it. After I was done with my shift I wanted to try out the spinning and weaving.
The spinning didn't have take home things. You could just try it out for a while. The only one teaching it was a 12 year old girl. She was a very competent spinner and teacher, but still odd to be the only one.
The weaving was on a little hand loom. They only had about 5 of these, so you couldn't take them home to finish your project. I spent about an hour on mine, and I got tired of sitting and I was hungry. I finished it early. It's a tiny and cute thing, and I made a fancy design. The woman who taught weaving lives near me, so I may learn more weaving from her in the future.
I first attempted this pattern when I was still a new knitter. It did not end well. I got frustrated because I couldn't keep the increases and decreases straight and frogged the whole thing. Since then I have done much more complicated things successfully, but I still thought of this pattern as difficult.
At my knitting group a few weeks ago I was given some very nice Noro yarn from a friend who had been given it from a different friend who didn't want it. I love bulky yarn, and I love the colors of Noro. I had planned to make a different scarf, also a simple pattern, but it wasn't looking like I wanted it too. I searched for projects other people had done with that yarn, and this pattern came up. It had been written specifically for the Noro Iro yarn, taking the exact amount that I had been given.
I am not going to mention the specific pattern name. The pattern is awfully written. It has a chart that is far more complicated than it needs to be. I personally prefer charts when knitting, and the knitting on this scarf is so simple it doesn't need a chart. This is probably why I had so much trouble the first time around. I more or less ignored the chart this time.
Falcor getting in the way while I was blocking the scarf.
It is possible I was a little excited about Harry Potter land. If you want to go here, go on a weekday at 8 am. We did the whole thing including the rides twice each before breakfast.
Apparently it is always winter here. This might be odd in the summer. When you first walk in there is the Hogwarts train. They have an inside the train where you can pay to have your picture taken as if you were on the train. We did not, maybe if we had costumes...
Us at the entrance to Harry Potter Land
Hogwarts Express
After the train are a bunch of shops. Some real, some fake. There is the joke shop (left), the candy shop (right), a wand shop, and a 2 big souvenir stores. After the stores you see the castle! So exciting.
Castle!
The first ride we did was the Hippogriff roller coaster. The line was said 5 min. Most of that was actually walking there. The ride was fun, but very short. We went on it a second time and walked a lot slower through the line to actually look at all the neat things.
Hagrid's Hosuse
The beginning of the roller coaster.
Selfie at the end of the roller coaster.
The next ride was in the castle. I don't remember the name, but it's a 3D ride moving on an actual track. Like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride meets roller coaster meets 3D movie. I liked it. The path to the ride was long, the line was nearly empty, but so far. We went on this one twice too, the second time we let a bunch of people past us just so we could look at everything. The castle was very well done. I loved how they did the talking paintings. I tried to get a video, it isn't the best due to lack of patience.
Sorting Hat
Mandrake Root
At the end of the ride there was a shop. I finally found a snowglobe with a castle in it. It was absurdly overpriced so I didn't buy it. I took a video instead.
After we had finished all the rides we started looking at the stores. I tried on official wizarding robes from Ravenclaw of course. We also looked at the wand shop. The wands are interactive in the park. So at certain places in the park they actually do things. Might have to try this out someday. You can get into the wand shop normally though the door, or you can do the "wand experience". When we got to this point the wait for this was 55 min, so we didn't wait. Later we came back and decided if it was less than 20 min we would wait. It was exactly that, but ended up being more like 10. I wouldn't consider it worth it. You go in a room with a crowd of people, and only one person gets to go through the picking experience.
At this point I was regretting not eating breakfast. We got a Butterbeer to share while we made our way to the Three Broomsticks. I was expecting lunch, but they were still serving breakfast. Lucky! I didn't even know they had breakfast. I got the full English breakfast, which was surprisingly good for theme park food.
After eating we decided to look at the rest of the park. There was a 60 min studio tour. I thought it would be nice to sit for an hour, so we did that. The 3D rides on the tour were not that good; mostly the car just jerked around a lot and hurt my back. The tour itself was interesting. We saw a bunch of sets where movies were made.
Oh no! A Plane crash!
Universal Studios has a lot of shows. Which is nice because you can rest a little. We tried to see all of them. There was a special effects demonstration during which they lit a guy on fire. There was a Hollywood animals show that had trained chickens. I didn't pictures of those, but they were both enjoyable. I took one picture of the set of the Waterworld stunt show. The plot was ok, but the stunts were fun. We sat directly behind the wet zones seats hoping to not get too wet. It worked. The area to the left of the picture has no dry zones... The people in the show were very good at spraying water with their jet skis, mostly over there. Towards the end of the show a fake plane crashes in the water and soaks everyone over there.
Next we headed to the lower part of the park to go on The Mummy roller coaster and the Jurassic Park water ride. The Mummy ride is great. The souvenir picture timing on it is perfect. They don't let you take pictures of your pictures, but my expression was of complete shock. We went on it again right away trying out the single rider line to avoid the 15 min wait. We ended up getting seated right next to each other anyway.
After this we went over to the Jurassic Park ride. On the way there I was followed by an Anubis guy on stilts. Steven tried to video this rather than warn me that I was being followed... We did the single rider line again. This time I was right in front of Steven. This was also a good ride, the end is mildly terrifying.
There are a few more rides mostly 3D movies in a moving seat, not worth mentioning. I doubt I would go on them again.
Hiking in Yosemite was about 15,000 steps, Disneyland was over 20,000. That was without staying the entire day. The thing I was most looking forward to on this trip was riding the Matterhorn. I have no memory of riding this ride, only of it always being closed. I even check before getting tickets, and it was open. Apparently, I did not check enough, because it was closed. Doing some research while waiting for the park to open Steven discovered that it is only open on busy days. Since it seems silly to go to Disneyland on a busy day that makes sense why I never see it open.
We made excellent use of the Fast track tickets, and never had a line much more than 20 min. Our goal when we first got there was to go to the new Tomorrowland rides. This was also everyone else's goal. The line to just get a fast track ticket for Hyperspace Mountain was huge! We bypassed that line and went to the regular line, which only took 17 min for the front row. Here is a picture of our picture from the ride. We managed to get this one in twice.
Another Tomorrowland ride let's you take a trip underwater in a submarine! Getting in some underwater photography is important on every trip...
Castle Selfie
60th Anniversary blue Mickey ears!
One of my favorite rides is "It's a Small World". Unlike most people the song does not get stuck in my head, and the ride is so happy. This picture demonstrates very well our respective enthusiasm levels... If you want to enjoy the ride too, I made a video!
Another Fanstasyland favorite is the the teacups! I could ride this all day! (If it wasn't in the sun...)
Steven making use of our underwater camera on Splash Mountain.
It was a fun, but exhausting day. We probably should have taken more breaks. I think we made good use of our time, we managed to get every ride we wanted done, and a couple twice. :)
As we were leaving Disneyland a duck flew right near my head. Steven saw this happening and yelled, "Duck!" Then spent the next 20 minutes being ridiculously giddy that he finally had the chance to shout that and mean it both ways.
Since we got a National Parks Pass in Yosemite we wanted to go to as many as we could this year. My friend was getting married in Los Angeles, so we added a few hours to the drive to go to Joshua Tree National Park.
Since we finalized our plans very last minute we did not have a chance to reserve a campsite. Our plan was to get up really really early and get there as close to the check in time as we could. It worked out well enough. I wish they had a street view tour of the campsites so you could pick out which you wanted ahead of time. We stayed in Belle Campground. It was supposed to have very dark and clear skies. This was very true.
The campsites are very tiny. Some would only fit one very small tent. We got a decent spot, with two of our own personal huge rocks to climb. We liked this spot because it had a wide open not camping spot behind the huge rock that made it look bigger.
Street view of our campsite
Street view a little to the left to include the funky yucca.
Plant life near our site.
View from our tent.
We got settled around 4pm, and started to explore the rocks nearby. A lot of the rocks near us were very easy to climb and not very high. The one across the street you could almost hike up.
Steven climbing a big boulder.
A few campsites down we found this easy climb. If you go up the right side is very easy to climb, no rope needed. Going up the front would probably be easy, but if you fell it would not be safe. There was a really good looking rock to set up an anchor on for top roping. Steven climbed up there to check it out. It ended up not being a good rock, so we gave up and went to make dinner.
We had a very simple dinner consisting of leftover food we could cook on a fire, sausages and potatoes. Cooking sausages over a fire always makes them so tasty. After dinner we had to move our tent. The wind was crazy, so we tried to get it as close to the big rock as we could. It helped some, but not perfectly. Luckily since we packed light for camping we were able to just pick up our tent with everything in it and set it down in the new spot. The stuff even stayed were it was supposed to.
We brought a nice camera in case we wanted to take star pictures once it got dark. We were too tired to bother. I did get this shot of a Joshua Tree with my phone.
The next morning we got up very early, packed up our camp and headed out for hiking. Just up the road at another camp area, was short hike to see Arch Rock. Despite being a guided trail complete with informational signs the trail wasn't very obvious. The ground all looked like the same sandy texture, we didn't get lost, but it was a big difference from the very obvious forest paths that we are used to.
After that hike, we headed over to the ranger led hike to learn about rocks. It wasn't a long hike, but it felt like walking in sand. There were lots of desert plants in bloom, but it was too windy to take pictures of most of them.
We had planned to do more hiking after the Ranger walk, but it was cold and windy and we were tired. Swimming at our hotel seemed like a nice option. After a quick stop to get my National Park stamp, we headed to Anaheim. There ended up being a lot more traffic than we had planned for so we didn't have enough time to swim before our dinner plans. Afterwards I was too tired.
