Biking Yellowstone 101

If you want to get into biking Yellowstone is the place to start.  All you have to worry about are wild animals, big bison on the road, elevation climbs from 7000 feet to 8391 feet, and big RVs the sizes of buses.  Other than that its a great place to learn.  We started in Old Faithful; this day was by far the best day of the trip with steep elevation climbs in order to pas the continental divide twice.  The best part was when we would do a hard climb up and then came down half the distance that we had just done, just to go up again.  After getting past the continental divide and riding our bikes about 17 miles we went to Grant Village campground set up camp.  That night was by for the coldest night we had and combined with sore legs and backs it made for the best night I have ever had (not).  I slept hard for the first four hours but after that it was off and on.  Bethany did have a great night because she heard something in the night- a deep low breathing sound that bumped the tent.  After having an exciting moment she couldn't get back to sleep but decided to sing songs and flash a light.  To bad for me I slept through all this.  I would have stuck my head out of the tent and greet the bear.  (But I think it was an elk, we had a lot of elk in the camp all day.)  The next morning we got ready and rode along the north side of the Yellowstone lake.  This was a simple ride going about 21 miles.  It was also our 1st year anniversary so we got a room at the Lake Hotel and got reservations at the Lake Hotel Restront.  Bethany got a buffalo stake and I got sword fish.  It was delectable.  We later went to the Lake lodge for ice-cream.  The next day we went 16 miles to Canyon this by far was one of our most beautiful days because we were not in a tone of trees but could see all through the valley.  The funny thing is that we didn't see any bison- in fact we had not seen any bison at all our whole trip.  This day being Sunday we went to church.  They had an LDS sacrament meeting at Canyon Village outside in the amphitheater.  It was fun to have church outside in the trees.  We slept in tents that night and then got ready the next day to do our longest ride of the trip.  We went from Canyon to Norris (12 miles) then to Madison (14 miles) and then back to Old Faithful (16 Miles).  The first 20 miles wasn't that bad but the last 20 miles was a little bit harder.  The sun was up and that day was the hottest on our trip but we made it back.  For biking that day 42 miles and for finishing our 102 mile bike tour we celebrated by having ice-cream at the Old Faithful Inn.

Well that is our trip!!

Back to school menu project

Hey Y'all,
 I know your all waiting on the edge of your seats for us to regale you with stories of our long long bike ride. But I'll let Todd do that. I just wanted to share with you all one of my goals as school starts- which is menu planning, so we spend less on food and I spend less time running around the kitchen. Each Saturday after we get our bountiful basket I'll be posting my my dinner ideas along with the places I got them from online. I remember a couple of you saying during the family reunion that you woulds be interested in something like this.

Culinary Choreography

Enjoy!

Granola

I keep telling my mother that I will get her my granola recipe-- so here it is!

Master Granola Recipe (adapted from The Traveler's Lunchbox)

Okay, so what exactly makes this granola different? I'm no kitchen scientist, but I can point out the things that seem to have the biggest impact. One thing is the addition of oat flour, which helps the grains and nuts stick together into those much-coveted clusters. Another is the use of sugar; as much I like liquid sweeteners like honey and maple syrup, they seem to produce a tougher, chewier granola. Finally, the right kind of oats are essential. For years I only baked with regular rolled ('old fashioned') oats because that's what recipes called for, but as soon as I switched to the smaller, thinner 'quick oats', the changes were remarkable—clusters formed, everything baked faster, and the texture became exquisitely light and crunchy. If you can't find quick oats where you live—and I have lived in a few places where oats come in one variety only—here's what I would do: pulse rolled oats in a food processor a few times to break them down to about half their original size. It won't be exactly the same but it will come close.
Yield : about 8 cups

1 lb. (450g 0r about 5 cups) quick oats
3 cups (750ml/about 300g) coarsely chopped raw nuts and/or seeds (I usually use a mixture of almonds, hazelnuts and pumpkin seeds, but use whatever tickles your fancy)
1 cup, packed (200g) dark brown sugar
1/2 cup (115g/1 stick) unsalted butter or ½ cup oil
1/3 cup (80ml) water
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2-4 teaspoons spices of your choice
dried fruit, at your discretion


Preheat the oven to 300F/150C. In a food processor, coffee grinder or blender, grind half the oats to a fine powder. In a large bowl, combine the whole oats, ground oats, nuts, seeds and spices. In a microwave-safe bowl (or in a saucepan over medium heat), combine the brown sugar, oil and water and heat just and the mixture is bubbly. Stir the mixture together until smooth, then stir in the salt and vanilla. Pour this mixture over the oats and nuts, stirring well to coat (I usually do this with my hands). It should be uniformly moist - stir in another tablespoon or two of water if it isn't. Let stand for about ten minutes.

Spread the mixture out on a large baking sheet, separating it into irregular clumps with your fingers, and allowing space between the clumps for the hot air to circulate. Slide into the middle of the oven and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the top is golden brown. Remove from the oven and stir, gently breaking up the mixture into small-to-medium sized clumps. Return to the oven and bake another 15 minutes or so before stirring again. Repeat the bake-and-stir until the mixture is a uniform golden brown and completely dry; this usually takes 1-1 1/2 hours. Cool completely, then stir in any dried fruit you want to use.

Store in a covered container at room temperature. Serve with milk or plain yogurt and fresh fruit as desired.

 And some of my favorite combinations

Cranberry Almond- cranberries, almonds, raw pumpkin seeds, almond extract, vanilla extract, cinnamon

Blueberry Pecan- blueberries, pecans, raw pumpkin seeds, vanilla extract, poppy seeds, cinnamon

Ultimate Health Nut Granola- walnuts, flax seed meal, quinoa, millet, vanilla extract, dried sour cherries

Spring!!

I thought I would write a ridiculously long post of all the things we've been doing since we last posted half a year ago, but it would be more entertaining broken into chunks. But lately life has been very relaxing. We are both off from school and just working, which is a very nice change of pace. We also just moved in the last month which means I now have a kitchen that is an actual room rather than a hallway with an oven in it. Today I made a couple pints of blackberry jam we got this week with our bountiful basket and a quart of dulce de leche ice cream. Yum. Luckily there is also daily (and sometimes two or three times a day) yoga classes to keep all the food at bay. 
Todd is enjoying my cooking spree immensely, though he is getting tired of doing dishes and scraping bread dough off the counters. He is also getting back into fencing and goes to fencing club a couple nights a week. And we've actually began social dancing again! Now that dancing has cooled off and is no longer at the center of everything we do.  So far spring has treated us well!

Blackberry Jam (Adapted from Food in Jars)

makes approximate 3 pints

6 cups blackberry pulp (8-9 cups of berries- I mash them in the pot-- I prefer chunky jam)

3-4 cups sugar

a pinch of salt
2 limes, juiced and zested
1 box pectin

Prepare your jars, start your lids to simmering and bring your canning pot to a boil.

In a large, non-reactive pot (stainless steel or enameled cast iron), combine the sugar, salt, and fruit pulp and bring to a simmer. Add lime zest/juice and stir to combine. Let the mixture reach a boil, stirring frequently to prevent it from boiling over. When the mixture appears to be thickening a bit, bring it back to a roiling boil and add the pectin. Let it boil vigorously for at least five minutes to activate the pectin.

Fill your jars with the hot jam, wipe rims, apply lids and rings and process in a boiling water canner for fifteen minutes.

Remove from canner and allow the jars to completely cool on a dishtowel-lined counter top.

Once the jars are cool, check the seals, label them and eat jam on toast!

New Happenings in Married Life

Firstly, it's really hard to have any old happenings when you've only been married two weeks. Everything is new. But we've been having fun! Here's an update:

• We were married (finally!!) on September 3, 2010! Hooray! The next couple days we spent moving in, getting ready for school and playing. 
• Since then we've both been getting into the full swing of school again. We both have pretty rigurous schedules and we're both also working on campus. Todd works in the Horticulture Gardens and I work in the Dance Costume Shop and insturuct one section of DANCE 170- Intro to World Dance.
• We both tried out for Dance Allience (the top touring dance team at BYU-Idaho) last tuesday and made it onto the team. It takes quite a commitment of time and energy, but we've already made some great friends and had a lot of fun. And it doesn't seem like it's such a huge time commitment because it's time we get to spend together. We've already had 3 rehearsals and it's going to be a great show. And it looks like we're both going to have to become modern dancers for the time being, which is good for both of us. ;)

And a sampling of what we've been eating. I've been working on getting a word document cookbook together for myself with the recipes I use the most, so hopefully as I work on it I'll share some of my favorites. I like that these cookies have oil instead of butter and I added 3 types of ginger to make them zippy. Not as zippy as I planned, but very warm and definately gingery. They would be really good with dried canberries and lemon zest added.

Triple Ginger Cookies 

Ingredients

• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon garam masala (or any mixture of warm spices, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, cardamom, etc.)
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 4 tablespoons minced candied ginger (almost to a pulp unloess you want bites of candied ginger in your cookies)
• ¼ cup turbinado sugar with a dash of course salt (to roll cookies in)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
2. In a large bowl, mix together the brown sugar, oil, molasses, fresh ginger, and egg. Combine the flour, baking soda, salt, garam masala, cinnamon, and gingers; stir into the molasses mixture. Roll dough into 1 1/4 inch balls. Roll each ball in sugar before placing 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in preheated oven, or until center is firm. Cool on wire racks.

5 things Todd Loves about Bethany

1) Her excitement to learn.
Bethany is a researcher by heart. Has a question and she looks it up, wants to cooks something new she figures out how to do it. Some of the things that I am impressed to see her do is make cheese. Although she is not that good at it I think it is really cool that she tried.

2) Her Love for dance.
The first time I heard of Bethany was from her brother Seth. From him I learned she was a clogger. Having some opinions of clogging Bethany and I easily got onto a talk about clogging where she learned I was a ballroom dancer. To keep it short we both had negative opines about each others genera of dance. But debate was easily set aside as we further got to know each other and loved to dance with each other.

3) Her green eyes.
As I have been in CA for the last 4 months Bethany's green/brown eyes are one of her fetchers that stands out to me most. I log to look into these eyes.

4) Her love for me.
To win her love was all but easy, but is was worth it.

5) Her love of the Gospel.
In her own words she is a Gospel nerd. Her need to understand the Gospel has inspired me in more ways then one. Her testimony is strong and her trust in the lord is strong.

5 (Really quite funny...) Things you didn't know about Bethany

1. I don't have a favorite color. Colors are tools; I prefer different colors depending on what I am trying to convey. Same goes for music. I do have a favorite movement plane. It's horizontal. :)

2. I have an extremely long tongue. In fact I can touch the tip of my nose.

3. I eat my popcorn with chopsticks. On the other hand pie is not meant to be eaten with chopsticks. I found this out when I tried to go a whole month eating with only chopsticks. It took me a whole hour to eat the slice of pie. The ice cream did not help.

4. I failed to touch the end of the sit and reach thingy up until my junior year of high school. It was so embaressing, I was the least flexible girl in my grade. But it was a good lesson. Flexibility is like strength or cardiovascular endurence, it is gained through hard work and is not soley based on genetics.


5. I hate skirts. Not because they're girly, but because my feet invertably find their way above my head. This is the same reason I hate desks. And kitchen chairs. I'm too wiggly to sit like a normal person. At one time I considered filling my living room with large boulster pillows and pilates balls to solve this problem. I wonder how Todd feels about that....