Stuff

[howeird]

Decided to split the difference today and put the bike rack on the car, and the bike in the rack, and drive to work. At lunchtime I hopped on the bike and rode out to Baylands Park, and discovered the Bay Trail, which runs along 237 on what used to be a lane and a half of the Mountain View - Alviso Road. You can still see some of the yellow line and lots of round spots where they pried off the speed bump buttons.

It's a mere mile and a quarter from work to the park, but I put 6.5 miles on the bike following the trail until it became obvious that there is more trail than lunch time. Back at the office I looked it up online and one can ride all the way to Alviso and maybe Milpitas. And there's also a San Thomas Creek trail which peels off a wee bit north of the park, which I will definitely explore some other time.

After half an hour on the bike I found a series of picnic tables amongst the tall grass, and sat down for a light lunch. On the ride back it sunk in that while it's nice to have bike paths and trails near the new work place, it's a very noisy ride, because there are two freeways and a very busy frontage road to put up with.

During my ride around the park I saw a pick-up soccer game, about 20 cars in the parking lot for that. As the game broke up, I heard a small gang speaking Thai. No surprise, Thais are rabid soccer players. Next time maybe I won't be so shy and will talk to them.

At 4 we had an all-hands meeting at work. Lots of news, which I'll put in a friends-locked post.

Got home and had dinner, then called into the conference line for our weekly global tech support meeting, but no one else called in, which didn't surprise me since we haven't had this call in 3 weeks and the boss was in a meeting when I left work.

Made another batch of orange whiskey chicken and had a couple of pieces of that for dinner and froze the rest. Watched some TV and then made a batch of greben. Managed not to turn it into charcoal as I did last time. Will probably give most of it and the resulting schmaltz to the fat Israeli who sits next to me at work.

Comments

[edith-mf.livejournal.com]

great bike path. freeway noise, and smog, is really annoying though.

I just finished making a huge pot of turkey chili. I had shortages of different ingredients this time, so it should come out different. Every now and again, I wish I shopped at Costco. This time I would really like a couple boxes of cans of beans, though I should probably just get more organized and boil up some before I make these recipes . . .

[howeird]

One chili addict I know always keeps a bowl of beans soaking in the fridge.

[edith-mf.livejournal.com]

That seems very wise. My major depressing thing I found out about crock pots (which I dump the chili in to stew all night) is that they aren't hot enough to actually cook beans.

But if I switched to a pressure cooker . . . Don't know how to use them.

[howeird]

I've never thought to get a crock pot, always do the cauldron or wok on the stove. I wonder if crock pots would be good for curry.

I used a pressure cooker once - my mom had one - but I was always afraid I would blow up the kitchen.

[edith-mf.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't advise getting one, unless you do potlucks a lot and want to keep stuff warm for that.

They just don't cook things. If you want flavor you have to do high temperature cooking up front then dump it in the crock pot to finish after it is well on its way to being done. I'm just so pressed for time often that letting something stew overnight is better than letting it cook for another hour on top of the stove.