Friday, December 28, 2007

White Owl Closed

Some TNT mates and I gave some thought to hosting a New Years Eve party to raise money, but we thought we might have too much competition. If only we'd known!!!

I heard on NPR this AM that the White Owl is getting shutdown from Dec 31 to Jan 4 for serving a minor. According the Herald Journal, the White Owl has an incredibly strict underage drinking policy and the minor was let in by mistake.

New Years Snow!

Woo hoo! I leave for a week and boy does it snow. When I got back to the Salt Lake City International (International? Really. I noticed a flight from London was on the same baggage claim carousel as mine), my trusty Moondoggie (X-terra) was a car-cicle, covered in snow and ice.

The Beav is open, but I'm headed to Park City for the weekend. I just tried on new socks, this mask, and my ski boots and tromped around my apartment for a while loading the dishwasher and brushing my teeth. I'm pretty sure that my downstairs neighbors loved it. I have now given up because my shins kill. Think it's a bad sign? Think I should dress like that all the time, so I'm prepared for the door-to-door salesmen?

TNT shout outs: Between Marmalade and Wildernesse, I'm over $400 - reaching my goal of $400 for the month of December. I've got to raise $400 a month until April. Thanks guys!!

Sunday, December 16, 2007

More TNT Shout Outs

A big one to KJRM who shocked me with a $100 to the cause. Wow!

Snow Pics




So, it's been snowing pretty regularly. In the valley, if it sticks, it tends to melt within a day -- except for this resistant icy patch behind my parking place, determined to see me slide into a metal pole or a neighbors car. It does seem as though it is collecting in the mountains though.


There was enough snow for some decent early season skiing last weekend at SnowBasin. Did I post on that? I had to rent skis because Al's is consipring against me, but I did get to try these Stocklis, which I really liked.


In any case, I did finally get around to taking a couple pics in front of my apartment the other day.


Holiday Cooking - Brigadeiro

Last night JW of Logan Newcomers hosted a games night and chocolate potluck. I left myself about 3 hours to prepare something. I ran to Allrecipes.com, my favorite online recipe source and found a recipe for a Brazilian treat I'd never heard of, brigadeiro. It has three basic ingredients and looked like it wouldn't take that long to prepare.



I tried coating them in four different ways. 1. Hot Cocoa mix - I thought this would be easy and tasty, but I didn't like how the flavors and textures mixed. 2. Coconut flakes - it was harder to get the mixture to roll on, but the flavor was the best, I'd only attempt this when you're rolling the candy as it's still slightly warm. I left half of what I made in the pot overnight and rolled them this morning in 3. Powdered sugar - easy, elegant. 4. Powdered sugar mixed with cocoa powder - probably the best combo of flavor, coating ease and appearance. As long as you don't let the warm candy balls touch, you wouldn't actually need a coating, it develops a bit of a shell as it cools, but for appearance and taste, I would add some sort of coating.



I did couldn't find mini cups at the store yesterday, just pastel regular size, so I arraigned them as a trio in the cups. "Trio" makes me think of Top Chef. They do trios all the time.



I didn't make it to the game night last night because some fellow newcomers and I decided to hit up another party first. You know, just pop in, say hi, meet some new people. But by the time we left, the game party was over. So I have a plate of candy in my fridge staring at me.



Candy review: Easy of making: 8 out of 10 (rolling by hand is a little time consuming, but I was able to get a batch and a half made in under three hours including the trip to the store). Appearance: 10 out of 10 (it's so easy to make these look very elegant, and vary the appearance). Taste: 7 out of 10 (tasty enough, but no English toffee or pralines).

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

All I Want for Christmas



A "No Solicitation" sign for my door. This one's only $7.50. I have no color preference. This one is nicer, but $20.00. Check out this one with a cat. Oooo maybe I can get this (pictured), the small one is okay.


Anyways the point is that I get a ridiculous number of door to door sales men and various other solicitations at my apartment in Logan. It's quite annoying.


If you'reworried that someone else might have gotten me a sign already, you can always donate to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Shout outs to JH and EH for recent contributions. My goal line is showing $155 out of $1,700. In truth I have an extra $100 that I put in myself to cover the cost of my participation in the race, so there's $1445 to go.

Monday, December 3, 2007

More Awesomeness

Wildernesse gave me a plug on her blog for TNT. Thanks!
Plug love: Read Wildernese to see how someone else is exploring her new 'hood (Raleigh, NC) and general adventure seeking.

Update: I think that I must attribute a $25 contribution from FL to this plug. Thanks again!

Local Art

So I completely forgot to update on a CV local outing last Friday. I stopped by the art gallery walk (I don't remember the official name). I loved the snow. That was the best thing (are you catching a theme here?). It was so gorgeous and just added to the whole affair. The next best thing was how neat it was to see that we have a population of local artists. There were paintings, a band, prints, ceramics, and poetry. I only stopped into the Italian Place which looked pretty good and had a great cozy feel. It was all very nice. I should make a point of doing the full tour next year, but I got distracted by the Owl. Bad Owl.

The other art that I noticed was a series of the coyote prints at the Cafe Sabor (presumably always there). It's the same coyotes that are on the Common Ground gift cards that have been around town for a couple months. Anyways, I like the print of the coyotes with working on their Ponzi Scheme and asset allocation. Who's a dork? The chicken taco was also good. BTW, for the beer matrix: Cafe Sabor - Negra Modelo real, Dos Equis not.

Who rocks the house?

LM. It's true. Holy-quick response to my appeal for TNT funds-batman!

Also the peep's at Alkaline. They've volunteered to make some of their one of the kind items for sale and raffle at the Logan February TNT fundraiser.

Any locals want to weigh in on when the fundraiser should be? Thursday Feb 7th or Sunday Feb 10th. FYI: The annual chocoalte festival is on the 9th. We can get a restaurant to ourselves on Sunday. Thursday, we'll have a max occupany of 95.

Sunday, December 2, 2007

So Much Snow

We've gotten quite a bit of snow the past couple of days. If I can pick myself up off the couch, I'll take my camera out on a run.

I meant to take it to our Team in Training run yesterday. We decided to continue running on the river trail. There was quite a bit of snow, which made it pretty and really hard running. It was fun, but I don't think we're going to make a habit of it. We ran into people cross country skiing.

All the snow made me realize I should finally get my bindings mounted on my skiis. So I took them to Al's where a kid told me that they can't mount bindings unless I have a boot. So asked them if they have a demo package (I don't want to buy yet because I want to test them out first), and they don't. I hear I may have better luck at the Sportsman.

Rock Paper Scissors Tourney

I was recently telling some CV peeps about a Rock, Paper, Scissors Tourney I had been to. Maybe it was a TNT fundraising idea. I was beaten to it though. Apparently this is what we have to do for fun in Cache Valley (Sorry for the ad, I couldn't find it on You Tube).