the commuter

May 29th, 2008Tags: ,
| bike, green living, just stuff | chris | 0 comments


cartoon by jim borgman

a full house

May 26th, 2008Tags: , , , , , ,
| beauty, beer, farmers market, friends, fun, good stuff, life, oregon coast, portland | chris | 0 comments


last monday our good friends gabriel & jaclyn arrived in portland. they are in the middle of a grand road trip to alaska and are stopping in portland via the “long route.” first they stopped in denver to stay with a friend, then los angeles to go sailing for a few days with a friend, and now here in portland for the last week. they leave today to finish the last leg of their trip through british columbia and on into the great frontier. gabriel will be a guide in the alaskan backcountry while jaclyn nanny’s for a family for the summer.
on friday night, our good friends ren & rebecca flew in from iowa city. just before that, however, our old buddy pete found out the gang was going to be in town, so he jumped a train down from seattle. so friday night we went to bailey’s taproom for a tasty brew, hit up the farmers market saturday morning, then a hike in the sun up by the rose and japanese gardens. (we also cracked open my homebrew, but that post will be coming later) yesterday we rented a van, piled in in road trip fashion and hit the coast. after spending time at haystack rock in cannon beach, looking at the abundance of life in such a small area, we walked through town in search for a kite. then we drove further down the coast to find the right spot to put some wind under our stringed rainbows.
now, pete has boarded his train and is safely home, gabriel and jaclyn will be packing up and heading out this morning, and ren and rebecca will be here until this friday for some more portland shenanigans.
(p.s. if you didn’t put it together, that is 7 people in our 550 sq. ft. apartment. :) )

intro to garde manger

May 21st, 2008Tags: , ,
| good food, just stuff, school | chris | 0 comments

as i said before, garde manger is mainly just a fancy word for the cold kitchen, however that is not how it is literally translated. that said, intro to garde manger was a great class. we learned the basic components of salads, appetizers, and hors d’oeuvre.

overall it was a fun class with a lot of opportunity for creativity and experimenting. i’m really looking forward to the challenge of advanced garde manger. that will come around next cycle after i finish this current one. for this cycle we are in our first baking course. everything i see and hear in this class is new to me. i don’t know much of anything about baking, so i really look forward to getting my hands dirty and taking it out on some dough. this first week we’ve been strictly working with bread dough and in the coming two weeks we’ll be doing some pastries, cookies, and all other sorts of baked goodness.

stay tuned.

unscrewamerica.org

May 5th, 2008Tags: ,
| beauty, good stuff, green living, other sites | chris | 0 comments


this could very well be the coolest, most well thought out website i’ve been to in a long long time. it’s loaded with all kinds of fun graphics and sound effects, and the info they give doesn’t seem to stop. they have done their research and then some. check it out. and while you’re at it, change a few light bulbs.

(thanks, ren, for reminding me of this link. roar!)

bottling some beer

May 3rd, 2008Tags: ,
| beer, good stuff, school | chris | 2 comments

i have finally come around. it’s something i’ve wanted to do for awhile and being in a city where it’s hard to find anything but a local brew, i gave in to the itch to make my own beer. i can’t remember if i posted about the batch i started and don’t really want to go looking for it. sorry. either way, there was no better opportunity than to join the brew club at school and start learning. thankfully, a guy in my class, neil, is crazy beer smart and really knows his stuff.

we started this batch in mid-march and finally bottled it a few days ago. so now the beer is undergoing the bottle fermentation stage where for the next 3 weeks the residual sugars ferment, generating CO2 which is trapped in the bottle and allows for a natural carbonation.

i now have around 4 gallons of beer in my apartment that i can’t drink. in the meantime, i’ll be handing bottles out to my friends. beer makes a great gift. :)

[school pictures]