The Daily Special (Stuffed Shells)

These aren't something in my regular repertoire - I imagine them to be a bit bland and boring, but my dinner a few nights ago surprised me.  I had some odds and ends in my fridge that demanded I make stuffed shells - ricotta left over from another project, a half used jar of my tomatoes, lots of greens (the spoils of my friend's fridge - she was leaving for Malaysia for two weeks so I took a few things off her hands.  If it were me I would have cooked and frozen stuff before departure, but hey, in this case, I win!) and some super fancy Italian artisan bronze die pasta (Maestri Pastai Lumaconi) I found on sale quite some time ago.  I kind of grumbled about this particular demand being made upon me by these ingredients at this point, because I was feeling pressed for time, about which I've recently complained.  Surprise!  Making and freezing a batch of stuffed pasta is really quick when you're not making your own pasta, nor hand forming individual ravioli!

If you're comfortable multi-tasking in the kitchen, you can have the spinach and ricotta prepared in the time it takes the pasta water to boil.  If you want to eat sooner rather than later, and you're making your own tomato sauce from scratch, get it on the stove first, especially if it's a recipe that needs to cook down for a while.

Recipe:
Cook Spinach
Cook and squeeze dry a bag of spinach or Swiss chard or green of your choice.  I think I used about 12 ounces uncooked and untrimmed.  By "cook," I mean wash it, and just toss the wet spinach in a saucepan and wilt away.  This takes only a couple minutes, so don't leave it unattended if this particular procedure is new to you.  Let it cool, then squeeze it really, really dry and chop it up.  Yes, I mean that you pick it up by fistfuls and squeeze out all the excess moisture.  Alternatively, use a box of frozen spinach.  Don't cook it, just thaw and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze...  You'll need less (by weight) if you're using frozen spinach.  I don't know what a box of spinach weighs, so you're on your own for the math.  But when I picture a box, it doesn't seem all that far off.  In either case, you want enough so that when you add it to the ricotta (in the next paragraph) the filling looks like my picture.  Unless, of course, you want less.  Or more.  There's surely a point at which you've used too much, though, and the filling won't hold together.  You take your chances.

Prepare Filling
Take a tub of ricotta (about a pound, more or less - don't freak out if the tub reads 15 oz., please, it's close enough) and mix it with a lot of finely grated parmesan cheese.  1/2 cup isn't enough parmesan.  Use a lot, I said.  And not the stuff in the green can, either.  Add in your choice of seasonings: garlic (mashed up to a puree or the granulated sort), Italian herbs, onion (again, the granulated sort, or fresh minced very very teeny tiny), pepper, salt (but parmesan is salty, so watch that.), whatever.  Keep adding stuff til it tastes good, but don't turn it into the culinary equivalent of plaid by using too many different seasonings.  Just be generous with the quantity.  This is the moment when you make the difference between yawn! and something really tasty.  Stir in the spinach. Taste again.   Last chance to tinker unless you're okay tasting it with raw egg.   When you're happy, mix in a beaten egg.

Boil Pasta
Cook your shells until they're almost done.  Maybe one minute (or less) short of being perfect.  Take them out when you find yourself thinking they'd be edible as is, but could use just a wee bit longer in the pot.   I had really big ones, and this recipe filled about 20 of them.  I was proud of myself for guessing that exactly right. Drain and rinse with cool water.  Shake 'em around so there's no water hiding in them.  Easy there, don't break them.  Better still, you might pick up each one and pour the water out, once they're cool enough to handle.  Like I said, you take your chances.  Stuff 'em with your stuff.  No need to be tidy; you're getting hungry, after all.

Beg, Borrow, or Steal Tomato Sauce
Procure some tomato sauce.  The amount you need depends directly on how many of those shells you plan to eat tonight, vs. how many are destined for the freezer.  (Freeze them on a tray and when frozen, toss them in a ziplock.  Don't freeze with the sauce, although I suppose you could freeze sauced ones in little TV dinner trays...)  Use your favorite tomato sauce recipe (maybe there's already some in your freezer!), open a store bought jar, or take that open half quart of  Richcrest tomatoes that you canned last summer that's in your fridge, run them through this thing directly into your saucepan (or just mash 'em up as they cook - potato masher is fine), throw in a big pat of butter and a quarter of an onion (not chopped) and cook it down, cook it down.  Cook it until it's only a little more watery than you like.  (The almost cooked pasta shells will absorb a little extra water when they bake.)  Remove the onion.  Or not.  This made exactly enough sauce for me for one dinner.  If you use really good tomatoes, this simple sauce will make you swoon.  I've never made it with any other sort of tomatoes, and probably wouldn't.

Assemble and bake
Find a pan or dish (do I need to say oven safe?) that will snugly hold the shells you are going to eat tonight.  Put a bit of sauce on the bottom, put in the shells, then pour the remaining sauce (which is most of it) on top.  Cover and bake at 350 for about 30 minutes. Ouch!  They're hot!  Now all you need is a red and white checked table cloth, a straw bottle of Chianti and an accordion.

There are endless variations on this theme. I did it this way, because that's what the contents of my fridge offered at the moment.

I'm not really going to proofread this all that carefully before posting.  If you read my last post, you know why.  Maybe I will later, and at that time, I'll delete this little paragraph.  Until then... you take your chances.

These shells await entry into my freezer.

A Quick Note

Lest I lose one of my, oh let’s say ten readers, I thought I should post something up.  Yes, I am supposedly in the midst of a “12 Days of Christmas” series, but I’m also in the midst of the busiest three months of work (possibly about to become four months) I’ve ever had in my life (why is my wallet not correspondingly full?), and although I have been doing some behind the scenes work on this series, you already know that I’ve still only put up the first two installments.  Perhaps I’ll get them done by May, at which time I can start telling you about what I did last summer.  Sound familiar?

Anyway, here’s what I haven’t been doing:

• Posting further installments of “The 12 Days of Christmas.”  Although I swear I am working on them in a piecemeal sort of way…
• Posting recipes like so many of you have requested.  I haven’t forgotten you.
• Riding my motorcycle.  My butt has touched the seat exactly twice so far in 2011.  Once on my 12th Day of Christmas and the other over a month ago.  To add insult to injury, the weather has been, oh, perfect.  This pains me more than I can possibly say.
• Cooking, aside from basic subsistence needs (if that).  This is when  my once fully stocked, but now beginning to dwindle somewhat freezer really shines.  I had prepared for The Rapture.  One exception to subsistence cooking is noted below.
• Spending any time whatsoever getting the spacing between photos of this post to look right.  Deal with it, okay? 
• Taking many photos.  Most of these are archival, and those that aren't were constrained to a 10 minute work break. The archival ones probably were, too, come to think of it.
• Geocaching, hiking or any other stuff I like to do for fun.

Here’s what I have been doing:

• Working and practicing like mad.  10-15 services a week for numerous organizations (that's music talk for "a whole heck of a lot"), plus students (every musician has a least a few), plus meetings for various things (some good, some eye rollingly awful), plus some frequent and recurring appointments.  And that doesn't count actually learning all that music (brand new stacks for each week!), most of which, by pure chance, happens to be new to me.  You do know I’m a flutist by trade, right?  I can’t remember if that’s come up or not.  Work is a good, good thing, I keep reminding myself.  But a little balance (or at least that correspondingly full wallet) would be nice about now.*
• Icing down my overworked chops sampling fancy ice cream at The Hub, the new ice creamery/meatery/boozery that recently opened a short walk from my house.  I efficiently combine this task with walking my dog.   I love this place.  I may move in and sublet out my house.  Open 'til 2am every day. 
• Drinking caffeinated beverages to get me through the day and through insane high speed make it to the next gig on time commutes.  Actually, that’s a lie.  The caffeine part, not the crazy commute part.  I’ve got another one of those tomorrow, and have posted Facebook messages seeking out a helicopter in order to do what even a Ducati can not.  Anyway, I do very much enjoy my morning latte, but that’s typically about it as far as caffeine goes.  I just said that so I could post this photo.
•  

 



For the record, this is my morning coffee set up.  It’s a “Brikka” pot, which is basically an old fashioned stove top moka pot (no, I don’t care what anyone says, espresso can not be made stovetop, not even by Jesus), with a funny little pressure valve inside that somewhat approximates the crema of an actual espresso.

• Gazing fondly at my motorcycle stuff, since I don’t actually have time to ride the thing.  Special ride coming up March 21, about which I’ll get around to writing probably some time next fall.

• Making my own thin mints.  That’s the cooking exception I mentioned.  I did this over about four different kitchen sessions (during which I listened to recordings of music I was working on) since I didn’t have the time to make them in one sitting, (or standing, to be more accurate).  Aside from the batch I burnt thanks to my kitchen timer that sporadically stops timing, they came out pretty good. Next time I’ll put a little more mint in them.  And make them a wee bit crunchier.   And not use Ghirardelli chocolate.  I'm not a Ghirardelli fan, but this was an experiment - not something to use the expensive stuff on - and besides, it was on sale.**

• Coming to terms with the fact that, on top of everything else, I have to do my taxes next week (hah!), because of the old wiring in my house (don't ask).

Here's a photo from one of the days I was stocking my freezer for this very moment.  A double batch of ravioli - some pumpkin, the other mushroom.  Now you know what I'm having for dinner tonight.  But you don't know which variety, do you?  A girl has to have some secrets.

Okay, this post took all of ten minutes.  That constitutes my work break for the day.  Back to it.

* I should say I am really, REALLY grateful to have all this work, and am finding it quite rewarding.  Just so you know.
**Incidentally, my nails are rarely (that means never) long, much less red.  It was a colliding set of unusual circumstances that led to this state.  I kept looking at them with a strange sense of fascination, both good and bad.  In any case, I find them so odd, and to be such a gross mis-representation of myself, that I couldn’t post these pictures without mentioning it.  For the record, the nail polish has since been removed.  The nails will likely break before I hit the "publish post" button.

The Twelve Days of Christmas

Days Two and Three: Floods and Astronomical Phenomena
Chiricahua National Monument and Mount Graham

Well would you look who the cat dragged in? My touring partner of years past landed some work here in Tucson.  I learned to love motorcycles from the back seat of his two-wheeled BMW (since replaced by a KTM 990), and although I have my own bike now, you already know that I still enjoy being a passenger from time to time.  Even so, it's been a number of years since we've been on a proper tour together.   The timing could not have been better, since for the first time ever, I was staying home for the entirety of my Christmas break.  I just spent any money I would have used to fly back east on a monumental shopping spree.  Turns out, I was going to put my newly acquired motorcycle jacket and cold weather gear to use sooner rather than later.  We decided a tour was in order, after our work for the year was complete and, once again, it was unseasonably cold weather.  Not without some doubts, I decided to retake my role as pillion (passenger) and leave the Ducati at home.  It seemed like a good time to get its nagging little oil leak looked at, plus the days are short in December and you know I can't ride after dark.  In addition, the KTM's pilot put some real street wheels and tires on his machine (it's a dual-sport bike, meaning it's designed for both on and off road riding), and was eager to convince me that his KTM would be just as fun on the street as his BMW had been.  I am a very discriminating sport-touring passenger and to date, I've been less than awed by the KTM's value to this particular pillion in regards to the sporting end of sport touring.   I must be fair and add that it is, without question, a great motorcycle for its particular owner.

Our goal was Death Valley National Park.  And though it's known for its extreme heat, it can get plenty cold there, too.  We needed to be prepared for subfreezing temperatures (good thing I just bought that EN tested zero degree sleeping bag, huh?).  Less common is rain.  Surprise!  All of southern California, including Death Valley, was under water, thanks to rains that were severe enough to make national news.  I'll ride in the rain if need be, but it seems silly to point yourself in the direction of bad weather on purpose.  Our strategy?  Go east (the only dry direction) until the bad weather reached us there, then go west!   Chiricahua National Monument, here we come!

We found ourselves at the lovely Massai Point for the simultaneous astronomical trifecta of a complete lunar eclipse and the Ursid meteor shower, both occurring on the  the winter solstice.  How many people can say that?  I'll tell you.  Two.


Oh celestial enchantment!  Silvery, shimmery, liquid moonlight gently spooned by angels over earth, trees and rocks, over motorcycle tires, faces, and yes, even my heart - crisper and sweeter than a caramel coating, softer and dreamier than any meringue found here on our humble earth.  Now, a dark chocolate shadow melting across the moon, unstoppable, dimming its sugary light - do not despair!  Stars appear, ever more numerous, twinkling salt crystals on the tongue,  gasp!, chile pepper hot! - one obliges to streak across the sky.

 
Despite all the wonderful experiences I have shared with you, the year 2010 was a painful one on so many fronts.  I'll take this lifetime event in the sky as a convenient sign that 2011 will be better.  Why not?

We watched the entire show in the sky, and took a little nighttime photography, too.  I like to use my own photos on my blog, but when one of you has a digi point and shoot (my Canon G11 is nice and little more complicated than that, but...) and the other an expensive dSLR (Canon EOS 7D), and there is only one tri-pod between the two of you, guess which camera gets priority?  I can at least say some of the photos were to a certain extent, a joint effort.  "What if you shine the light more here, instead of there?  What if you change this setting to that?"  And so on.

The next day, a hike amongst the "hoodoos."

The the plan for the evening?  Ride to Bisbee, AZ (it's only 50 or so miles, right?) and check out Cafe Roka (about which I've been curious.)  Note to self:  it's more like 90 miles each way,  and Cafe Roka (along with practically every thing else in Bisbee) is closed on Tuesday nights.  The burger at Bisbee Grill was fine, I guess (most burgers are, especially when you're as hungry as I was), but not particularly notable.  The ride back to Bonita Canyon Campground was... cold.  Incidentally, if you find yourself really, really cold and you think absolutely nothing will warm you up, you can always push a 600lb motorcycle around a parking lot while wearing your awkward riding gear.  It's surprisingly effective, even for me.  We resorted to this tactic more than once over the week.

By the next day, we knew the aforementioned weather was approaching, so it was time to head west, via one night at home in Tucson.  But first, some playtime on the Mount Graham Swift Trail Parkway and a surprise drop dead run for your camera sunset like I've never seen in my life (as if the sky didn't serve up a five course dinner the previous evening).  We didn't quite get to the cameras in time, but other than that, our timing for the day was good.   The road up Mount Graham is closed in winter, and we may have been the very last up there for the season.  Not only was it the first official day of winter, but just as we reached the bottom, it started to rain just a bit.  No doubt that rain was snow higher up.

And how did the KTM fare in my estimation?  It earned a star, but...  Well, like I said, I'm very discriminating.   More on stars later.

The Twelve Days of Christmas

Day One - Shopping.  Blech.

Oh X Chromosome, why doest thou forsake me??

I think the shopping gene on my X chromosome is defective.  I really, really hate to shop.  In person or online.  For pretty much anything, even for toys for myself. If forced to decide between hitting the mall, waiting in line at the DMV or doing my taxes, I will happily dive into Forms 1040, 4562, 2106, 8853, and Schedules A, B, C, E, and M  (for starters) while sitting in the uncomfortable chairs of the AZ Motor Vehicle Department.  Shopping only happens during moments of true desperation.

Having an actual hole in your riding jacket qualifies as a moment of desperation.  Since local motorcycle shops generally carry one token woman's item (usually a too-large, pink, poor quality jacket, or perhaps a helmet with flowers on it), I knew I was going to have to go the internet mall.  After weeks of late night web surfing, discussion, phone calls, hemming, hawing, I opted to have this jacket made to my measurements and specifications (each of which added to the cost.)  But if I am going to have to go through the pain of shopping, I want it to be an item I will not have to replace for a long, long time.  My Motoport kevlar jacket* has a guarantee of seven years, and will even be repaired or replaced if I wreck it in a crash.  Already, that sounds good.  The replacement/repair bit, not the crash, that is.  Actually, I ordered it quite a while ago, but had not yet received it in time for this trip.

One of the main reasons I opted to abort that mission, was the fact that I did not have decent cold weather gear.  Here's another one of my charming idiosyncrasies:  I can't cope with being cold.  And I am almost always cold.  Not the "a little bit chilly, my hands and feet are a touch cold" kind of cold, but the "core temperature dropping, curl up in a ball, become absolutely non-functional" kind of cold.  Once (likely more than once, but I only bothered to document it one time), my body temperature dipped (ever so slightly) into the realm of actual hypothermia just from sitting in a 60 degree room, even though I was wearing more than a National Geographic photographer would while staking out penguins in Antarctica.  And I've spent more than one long night unable to sleep in my tent from being so cold, despite my so-rated zero degree sleeping bag.  In July, even.  So you can see I'm not making this up.

All of that qualified for another moment of desperation requiring research and shopping.  It was way past time to get some real gear.  I made countless trips to REI and Summit Hut (I lost count at 7, one of which was the Saturday before Christmas, a very, very bad idea) and their respective websites.  I purchased, returned, tried on, and exchanged untold amounts of merchandise, and in the end spent an ungodly sum of money for, among other items, a new sleeping bag (Marmot Ouray, EN tested as a real zero degree bag) and two base layers (that's cool speak for long underwear), one of Polartec and one of merino wool, since I couldn't decide between the two, and I'm going to wear them every single day until March, I'm sure of it.  Good thing the record for wearing Icebreaker wool non-stop is 196 days, supposedly without getting stinky (one of the selling points of wool).  I may break that record.   Notable:  I still can not find a pair of hiking boots that does not, in one fashion or another, maim my feet by mile three.  All hail hiking sandals.  I'd climb Everest in them before I'd hike in boots again.

Ironically, having only just now completed the last of my "12 Days of Christmas," although not necessarily all the posts in between, I am realizing, with a sinking stomach, that the shopping has not ended.  I need some riding boots.  (You'll see why in the fine print at the end of  "Day 12" of this series).  Given my success (?) with hiking boots, this will be quite a trick.  Ugh.  The late night internet research has already begun...

*I'll probably post a formal review of the jacket for those interested, but I'm not quite ready yet.  The heated liner is still in the works. 

Occasional Other Matters: Two Legged Adventure (Mount Wrightson)

If not for my inability to ride after dark, this day most definitely would have included my motorcycle. Alas a day in late fall is not long enough to comfortably confine all these activities to the daylight hours.

The activities, in order of appearance:

Drive to Madera Canyon, begrudgingly in the car.  Prior moto trip to the canyon discussed here.

Climb Mount Wrightson, the steep way up, the long way down.  (I know, I know...  "Stop.  Think.  There must be a harder way.")
Stats:
Ascend Old Baldy Trail - 5.4 miles to the top, over 4000 ft elevation gain.  Hear me roar, I made it to the peak in 2 hours, 45 minutes!
Descend Super Trail - 8.2 miles back to the trail head.  The prettier of the two trails, in my opinion.  Solve geocache puzzle at Josphine's Saddle.

Find actual geocache.

Drive home.  Yep, it got dark before I got home.  Good call on taking the car. 

Photographic evidence:


Bellows spring was frozen.

A teeny tiny perfect autumn leaf as opposed to the gigantic enormous perfect fall leaf I'm holding in this post.

My spaghetti squash sun-dried tomato herb muffin (savory, not sweet) contemplates the view at Baldy Saddle.  Who says you can't put spaghetti squash in muffins or bread?  If you can use zucchini, why not?  (Recipes still under development, but I'm getting darn close...)

Arrival at the summit!  The frozen spring surely tipped you off:  It's cold!  I wore leggings, hiking pants, silk underlayer, turtle neck, "soft shell" jacket, gloves and hat, and didn't find myself wanting to remove any layers at any time.  I even wore my boots, which I never do.  I'm a confirmed Teva hiker, regardless of terrain, since boots invariably leave my toes all bruised.  Turns out this latest pair of boots is no exception.  Maybe some day I'll get hiking boots that fit correctly, but I'm not into buying pair after pair, only to find out these too don't suit my strange (narrow at the heel, wide at the ball) feet.  I can ride in them without a problem, I just can't hike in them.

The summit offered gorgeous vistas in each direction, and none of my pictures really captured them.  Here's a photo from the top anyway.

Making my way back down via the Super Trail.

A commemorative sign at Josphine's saddle.  On the date shown (purely by coincidence I was hiking on the anniversary of the tragedy), a boy scout troop camping and hiking in the area was caught in a freak snowstorm that dumped several feet of snow in the Santa Ritas.  Three boys died.  No one hikes Mt. Wrightson without checking the weather anymore.  This sign is one of five I needed to locate to solve a puzzle that would yield the coordinates of the geocache I was hunting.

A pretty spot not too far from my geocache find.  (The geocache itself was not on the trail, but further down Madera Canyon.)

 

The moon rises over the Santa Ritas.  Good night moon.  Good night mountains.  How lucky I was to have this day!

Safety Gear - not just for motorcycles anymore!

I'm an ATGATT rider.  That means "All The Gear, All The Time."  Ya never know, ya know?  This means helmet, kevlar armored jacket zipped to armored leather pants, boots, and 'roo gloves. (Sorry, but kangaroo leather is da bomb when it comes to keeping you safe and alive.)  I'm grateful to never have needed my gear for its primary intended purpose to date, but I've found other good reasons to wear it.  Like Reason No. 573 - an off course vulture directed like a missle into my left ankle.  Vultures are big.  I was glad I was wearing boots.  The vulture was probably not nearly as glad.  Or Reason No. 1232 - hail.  Hail hurts.  I can't imagine riding through it wearing a muscle shirt and Do-Rag.  Ouch!  (I can't really imagine wearing those items in any circumstance, come to think of it, but I digress.)  And, more recently, Reason No. 1791.  Bees.  Not just one (although I have been stung more than once whilst riding), but an entire swarm.  I know they were bees, because my bike, helmet and jacket were covered with bee carcasses.  Glad the helmet visor was down!

And there are times when I'm not riding when I find myself wishing I was wearing my gear. It crosses my mind when bicycle commuting in urban traffic.  Or when hiking a trail on which a mountain lion had been spotted an hour earlier.  In an area where mountain lions have been actively stalking hikers and runners.

But I was really glad to have it on hand when I learned of this unique riding opportunity at a local Christmas tree lot today...


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We three kings, yo!  That's me hanging off a camel!  (The camel appears unimpressed.)

Thanks to C.Snood  for technical support.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

I recently did some more canning. This time, applesauce. It's probably a good guess that taking an attractive picture of applesauce is beyond my capabilities, so I'm not going to bother. I can tell you it came out a pretty pink color, because, thanks to my German Wheels, I was able to cook the apples with their skins, and strain the skins out after. Beats peeling 30 pounds of apples, hands (and peelers) down. When you preserve foods, you can use the jars and rings many times over, but since the flat lids will reliably vacuum seal only once in their lives, it's customary to use new ones each for each project. Who knew that the old ones would be so handy in a motorcycle tank bag?

Here the lid keeps the side stand from sinking into the soft ground, thus preserving my motorcycle from a tip over!  So much classier than a flattened Coors Light* can, wouldn't you agree?

*Coors Light is not my first (or second, or third, or fourth...) choice of beer.  Oh yeah, and I don't drink and ride, either.  Ever.