Shrimp Palak Masala

Here is a wonderful recipe that I made up, using a combination of techniques I learned from some Indian friends. You could substitute chicken or other protein for the shrimp, but then you would have to change the name of the recipe.

Ingredients
onion 1 whole fresh onion
red bell pepper 1/4 to 1/2 of a large pepper
tomato sauce 1 can (15oz)
water 1 can (15oz)
sliced almonds 1/4 cup
garlic 5 cloves chopped fine
fresh ginger root 1 tsp chopped fine

seasoning mix:
garam masala 1 tblsp
coriander powder 1 tblsp
turmeric powder 1 tblsp
red chili pepper 1 tsp

Basmati rice 2 cups
olive oil 3 tblsp
frozen shrimp 1 cup
fresh spinach (palak) 1 large bag (4 quarts)

Instructions
Chop up onion and bell pepper into medium large chunks and set aside.
Chop up garlic and ginger root and set aside.
Combine seasoning mix and set aside.
Rinse rice in cold water, repeat until rinse water is clear.
Add four cups of water to rice and bring to boil, covered, then simmer for 15 minutes (or put it in the automatic rice cooker)

Put olive oil in large (4 qt) saute frying pan and heat to saute temperature.
Saute onion, turning frequently until it begins to turn translucent.
Add tomato sauce, then add bell pepper, almonds, garlic, ginger and seasoning mix. Stir to combine the ingredients.
Rinse the frozen shrimp in cold water until ice crystals are washed off the surface, then add them to the mix in the saute pan.
Watch mixture in saute pan for boiling. When it boils, turn the heat to simmer.
Rinse and inspect the spinach.
After the saute pan mixture has boiled, add spinach and cover. Check the mixture frequently and stir the spinach into the sauce as it shrinks.
When all the spinach has shrunk and is mixed in, the sauce is ready to serve.

Serving Instructions
Spread a layer of rice on a dinner plate and add the sauce on top of the rice.

Sunrise in Bellevue

This past week we experienced the autumnal equinox of 2009. I enjoyed watching it so much that I decided to bring my camera the next day. Of course, since I had my camera the clouds obscured the sunrise. So I took time-lapse video of the clouds and waited until the next day to capture the sunrise.

The sunrise video is fairly crude, but not bad considering the camera was duct-taped to the window. The light level changes dramatically so my amateur efforts at adjusting for it are obvious.

Grape Harvest

Today, Sep 20, I picked the rest of our grapes. None of them were green, or even red. The inside of the grape is green and the skin is dark purple. They taste good when eaten fresh, but the skins are bitter and the pulp is chewy. And there are lots of big seeds in them. So we're making grape jelly out of them this year.

Lots of the grapes had already fallen off the vine to the ground. Some of them shriveled up and looked like dehydrade raisins on the vine. So this is a late harvest. I want to remember that for next year and be ready to pick them sooner.

The attached photo shows my picking setup. Each bowl like this was about 64 ounces, or one batch of jelly. I picked eight batches today and one last week, so our total harvest was 36 pounds! I read the other day that 2009 has been an exceptional year for grapes, and our vine seemed to be happy too.

I think these are Concord grapes, but I'm not absolutely certain.

Lief's New Bike

Last Sunday Lief and I went for a five hour bike ride, to break in his new bike, in endurance mode. I brought my camera so we could get some photos of his new bike, and play around with motion photography...the kind where the subject is in motion. We ended up with some rejects due to improper camera settings. Then Lief surprised me by picking out one reject that has an artistic appeal.

So here is Lief on his new bike, and me following on a cloud.

SharkBite Plumbing

Monya saw an episode of "This Old House" where they described a new type of plumbing connection. It's called "SharkBite" and it works sort of like the Chinese finger trap toy. You simply slide a pipe into the fitting and it holds. No clamps, no solder, no sweat! It works with copper, or Pex, or even PVC (not that I recommend PVC). Best of all, if you make a mistake, there's a little plastic ring you can use to disconnect it, so you can reconnect it again later. No parts are consumed in the disconnect/reconnect.

It took me a whole day to remove the iron, PVC, and Pex combination shown in the first photo. Most of that time was extracting the iron pipe from the wall. Then it took four hours of measuring and fitting to assemble the copper/SharkBite combination in the wall, and about 30 minutes to measure, cut, and assemble the Pex/SharkBite combination shown in the second photo.

SharkBite fittings are a little expensive, but they don't leak, and they snap together with a click, saving a ton of time. This assembly job would have taken me three days and a call for help from a sweat-joint expert (Dad) if I did it the old way.

The ony drawback is that SharkBite fittings do not hold the pipe rigid. So our bathtub and shower fixtures wobble. I left the wall open on the back side so I can still do something about that if I can think of how.

Bowl of Tomatoes

The other day I picked a second (or third?) batch of small but delicious tomatoes from Monya's tomato patch. It is a wonder that we got any tomatoes at all since the only thing anybody did with them was apply water. There was no pruning, no tying up, and no pest removal. We didn't apply any bug repellent or fertilizer of any kind, so I guess these are organic tomatoes. I can only credit the excellent location, in full sunshine, against a southwest facing wall.

Fashion Tennis

When I was a kid, we were lucky to have our $1.50 tennis racquets. We wore whatever we had, like cut-off jeans, on the tennis court, and we considered ourselves fortunate if we could keep the ball inside the 15 foot high fence surrounding the court.

These days, you must dress fashionably, with a color-coordinated outfit, and matching pink tennis "shoes" too. Emma shows us how it's done...guardin' the net.

Big Sister is more the action type, although she is also very fashionable. She actually reminds me of a high school girl I used to watch on the tennis court about forty-three years ago. That girl was fashionable too, with very quick reflexes.

Beach Vacation

We spent a week at the ocean during the record-breaking heat wave in the Puget Sound area. It was a mild 85 degrees for the high during mid day. The sand burned the bottoms of my bare feet, and the sun burned the tops of them. Here's a photo of all of us on that hottest day.

The boys and I dug a pit at the top edge of the surf and tried fruitlessly to drain the water out of it. We built sand towers to protect our pit from the waves, then decorated them with discarded shells from molting crabs.

The boys body-surfed in the cold waves, then needed to warm up quickly. I buried them in the hot sand.

At a remote beach that doesn't allow motorists, we found more sand dollars than we could carry. The last time I remember finding sand dollars like this was about fifty years ago.

On our last day at the beach we dug a pit that could stop a 4X4. We decorated it with a dragon, to entice some wild sandcastle-smashing vandals into the trap. We'll never know what happened to that dragon (or the pit behind it).

Kayak Paddling Again...at last!

My friend Sunil has only paddled a kayak once, many years ago. So I invited him to go paddling in mine. He was apprehensive at first. My boat is more temperamental than the typical rental kayak. I was cruel and didn't help him get right back out. That Cedar River water was very cold. In this photo, he is balancing the boat with the "ripple" technique.

No more than five minutes later, he was out in the open lake, heading for Mercer Island. Sunil encountered his first wind waves on a lake. We went aground in some gravel, and I was temporarily hung up on a sunken log. We intentionally steered away from the anchored speed boat with the sunbathing beauties aboard.

We took a break from paddling to walk around on the river delta. We checked the bottom to make sure it was sand, not mud. Six years ago I took Kevin W. out there and we came to shore with a boat load of leeches. Look ma, no leeches! Aren't waterproof cameras wonderful?

Returning to the river, Sunil was very much more confident and stable.

In fact, he was confident enough to put down the paddle and take a picture of me.

Note that my new blog header photo was taken by Sunil.

New Coat of Varnish

After about four years of procrastination, I finally put a new coat of varnish on the kayaks. Hopefully I will get a chance to use them this summer. I want to take some under water photos, in shallow salt water, of marine creatures, while paddling in the kayak.

Sticking to the Theme

From now on, this blog will revert to my Renton Kayaker theme. It may not always be kayaking, but at least it will be mine.

No more pottery, no more china, no more jewelry, no more antiques, no more furniture, and no more wedding photos.

If you would like to catch up on the above subjects, please check out Monya's new blog at http://monya-momsie.blogspot.com/

Teacher

We went to see the mermaids in their ballet recital last weekend. We met the kindergarten teacher there.

Amboy Quick Visit - Revisited

Finally, I may have figured out how to make a video upload properly.

This short sequence had Monya laughing so hard she couldn't hear what the boys were saying. I had to play it over four times.

Livestronge Challenge

Today Lief rode 116 miles to support the Livestrong Challenge. So yesterday BeeBoo and Arthur helped me paint a sign to encourage Lief. Arthur is polishing up his signature here: a set of traced hand prints.

This afternoon, Monya and I waited, holding the sign at a "power stop" in Renton.

Lief arrived an hour later, after riding about 100 miles, fighting off leg cramps, and climbing two of the "stoopidest" hills in the area. After this photo, he endured the downpour of a thunderstorm. Notice the tributes to cancer victims he posted on his windshield.

Quick Visit in Amboy

Yesterday I spent a whirlwind day in Amboy. I arrived in time for breakfast, played a round of tennis, helped paint a sign for Lief, helped set up a huge swimming pool, and filmed some amazing trampoline techniques. I slept in the car, then drove home at O-dark forty-five. I needed to be home by 0700 so I could see Lief in Newcastle, riding 100 miles for the "Livestrong Challenge" bike ride.

So check out the cat tail sticking out from under the flattened toy tent.

I have an excellent trampoline video, but that will have to wait until I can edit the original into a reasonable upload size. (The cat tail video took 30 minutes to upload.)

In Memory of Pompi

Pompette Kartoffelpuffer, aka "Pompi" aka "doodle" was an unsociable cat. You were only allowed to touch her on the head, neck or back. Never, ever touch her tail. She would scratch or bite anybody who violated that rule, and especially knew when she could get away with scratching children. Children were fascinated with her, probably because she was so fluffy and soft looking.

She preferred to stay outside all the time, except when it was freezing or heavy rain outside. She would come inside only to eat, then meow a request to open the door so she could go back outside.

She was always finicky about eating, and was always skinny under all that fur. When I gave her a flea bath once each summer, I was always surprised at how thin she was.

Over the last two weeks she was more finicky than ever. She seemed to be thirsty all the time, and only wanted to sleep in one of her hiding places in the yard. I found her several times, picked her up gently and carried her to the water and food dishes. She would drink some water and then wobble off to another hiding place.

About four days ago she disappeared. I have searched all of her known hiding places to no avail. The last time I saw her I didn't understand how she had enough strength to wobble away like that, so I'm certain she died in her sleep in some secret hiding place. She was about 18 years old.

When I Am Grown and Can Have What I Please...

Last night I came home from work starving, and in desperate need of a bath. This has frequently been a problem for me since I like to soak in the bath for an hour or more, coordinating with dinner preparation is always difficult. But last night was different. Monya suggested that she bring my dinner into the bathroom and let me eat it whilst soaking in the tub.

It sounded gross to me, but I was hungry, so I acceded to the offer. She brought a plastic plate containing three sausage patties, three pancakes made with coconut milk and drenched in home-made maple syrup, and a plastic sippie-cup full of orange juice. I quickly discovered that the angle of the tub back-rest made it difficult to eat neatly. The hot syrup was thin and easily ran down my chin. But I noted consciously to myself that I was not wearing a silk tie, or even a clean white ironed shirt, so I just stuffed the food into my mouth and happily let the drips fall where they may. When I was done, I simply scooted down into the hot water and rinsed off.

That was better than breakfast in bed! Sorry, no pictures.

Hauling Lumber by Bicycle

Last weekend I bought two 12 foot long 2x6 boards, two 10 foot long 4x4, and one ten foot 2x4. I needed to haul them from the lumber store three blocks away, and just refused to start the car to run that short errand. Besides, I have an XtraCycle now.

So I loaded up the bike with plenty of rope, and the kayak wheels for a trailer, and this picture shows how I got the load home.

It was a successful trip, but I don't recommend hauling this much weight with a bike. The inertia in the load made starting from a stop very difficult. Balancing the bike at the initial slow speed was the problem, and the toe clips did not help.

Two Movies

BeeBoo had a great idea: we should make a movie featuring two of his stuffed animals. We cleared out a theater on the living room carpet, set up the "movie" camera on a tripod, then set the stuffed animals into motion.

I named the first movie Attack of the Tiger then BeeBoo said we should make a second movie and call it Revenge of the Horse.

We had fun making these movies, and hope you enjoy watching them.

Missing Teeth, Bookshelf, Birdhouses and Bunny

Last weekend we had a wonderful time visiting in Amboy. We discovered that Arthur had lost both of his front teeth.

We brought a new bookshelf for BeeBoo so he can store his huge collection of books.

We built two bird houses.

One for a Robin...

...and one for a Flicker

We were sad when it was time to go. The bunny came out to see us off.