Pumpkin Bread

I don't know if it's too far past Halloween and Thanksgiving for another recipe with pumpkin in it, but this one is too good not to make again.  Plus I still have one remaining can of pumpkin puree in my pantry, so why not?

The recipe is from here, a site that has become one of my go-to sources for recipe inspiration or instruction.  I have been making this bread for a couple years now though, and now I have it down pat in my head.

 Pumpkin Bread
Slightly adapted from Simply Recipes

Serves 1 hungry baker  Makes 1 loaf

Preheat oven to 350°

1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup pumpkin puree
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup water
2 eggs
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon nutmeg*
3/4 teaspoon allspice*

*You can substitute pumpkin pie spice for the nutmeg and allspice

Mix together the flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda.
Stir together the puree, oil, water, eggs, and spices.  Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, but do not overmix.

Pour into a greased 9x5x3" loaf pan.

Bake 1 hour or until a toothpick comes out clean.

This bread normally doesn't last too long when I bake it, so enjoy a slice or two before it's gone.

Home Sweet Home

I wrote about the sale of our old house a couple weeks ago.  Well, this past weekend we had a housewarming party in our new apartment, so I guess we can consider ourselves settled into the new place now.

We're lucky to have a number of high school, college, and grad school friends already here in San Francisco.  So it was just a matter of getting moved in and sending out an evite.

Saturday night brought together lots of friends from different times in our lives, and we had a great time introducing them to each other and catching up with everyone.

Several friends asked for a tour, which seemed funny to me.  As opposed to our old house with two stories and several bedrooms, a den, dining room and office, here in our new apartment, you can pretty much see each corner without moving around too much.  So my first instinct was to tell them, what tour?  Can't you see everything?

After some practice, I figured out how to stretch the tour into a minute-long segment, which seemed to satisfy the curious guests.  Here's a virtual tour:

The bedroom with funky sliding doors

The dining nook next to the deck

The already-shared funky red kitchen.  Funky is the theme.

The deck!  I love this feature.

Living room, fireplace, built-in bookshelves, and the second patio outside those windows

I left most the prep and baking to my friend, Trader Joe, but we did bake our favorite cookie recipe, which seemed to go over well.  The other two things that went over well were:

My birthday present (which I declared had to be installed before any housewarming party could occur!):

Wall-mounted bottle opener

And our State cheese boards.  California is from my sister-in-law when we found out about the job offer and our move.  North Carolina is from my wonderful coworker, as a way to remember my old stomping ground and our friends there.

States on the left/front end of the table

It was a fun evening, and now we are officially settled in!
Home Sweet Home.

Victory

Two small victories to report today:

1) It is a week into December, and I am still able to run outside in shorts and a t-shirt.  I missed this the past 9 years when I was living in a much colder climate!

2) Someone stopped me today while I was running and asked me for directions.  I was more than a mile from home but I still knew how to direct him, even the names of the streets to turn on.  I'm learning my way around and am feeling very confident navigating here.

Yay.

Road Trip 2011: Part 4

To catch up on our Road Trip: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

After leaving Grand Tetons National Park the morning of Day 5, we continued on the road and soon entered Yellowstone National Park.  Though I think seeing the moose so close was probably my favorite wildlife sighting, we had yet to see any buffalo up close.  But today was our day.  This guy was just walking through the clearing as we were checking out the geysers.

I find their shape so funny: big shoulders and rather slender hips!

Yellowstone's roads look like a figure-eight, and the easiest way to see all the sights is to drive around the perimeter, getting out of the car and taking short hikes to each of the exciting features along the way.  The first attraction of the day was Old Faithful.  We lucked out timing-wise, arriving only 20 minutes before the expected eruption time.  Pretty impressive and certainly louder than I had expected.

The water spurting out is almost as high as the tree line in this photo.

We took in all the sights off the figure-eight path: hot springs, huge water falls, fumaroles, geysers, and bubbling mud pots.

The hot springs were really clear and colorful.  Doesn't this one look inviting?

Mammoth Hot Springs Terraces

As long as you know your cue--pull off the road if you see lots of other cars pulled off--you will see interesting sights.  We pulled off here, where some other park visitors were expecting to see a young pack of wolves crossing the hills, based on the patterns they had come to understand after their two week stay in the park.  One visitor showed us his video from the night before when a bear and her two cubs had come up over the hills on their way home for the night.  If we had unlimited time, I would have loved to participate in a 2-week long wildlife watch.  But that will have to wait until retirement!

A buffalo crossing the river

"I'll just have grass: I'm watching my figure."

After wildlife spotting and observing the beautiful views until well past sun-down, we set up the tent once again.  This time we were a bit smarter and had booked a campsite earlier that morning, as we entered Yellowstone.  So day 5 of the road trip came to an end with our tent quickly assembled and eyelids rapidly closed.

Day 6 included over 12 hours of driving, without much to report.  More road games, interesting book-on-tape stories, and lots of small towns.  We finally ended up in Reno, Nevada, our final stop before pulling into California the following day.

We were able to book a hotel room in a casino while on the road, thanks to technology, which made for a pretty fun reward after a long day of driving.  I experienced my first true buffet (could barely walk afterwards), and I began the evening at the blackjack tables as merely a spectator, until I finally gained the confidence to try my hand.  Without much good luck, though, we called it a night.  The next morning we needed to leave Reno before 5am in order to pull into San Francisco in time to meet the mover (or so we thought....)

Leaving at 4:45am on Day 7 was a bit painful, but we were about to cross our final state line, and we could rest up at the finish line.

Still pitch black outside by the time we crossed into California.

A little over 4 hours of driving (and Sacramento traffic) later, we arrived at the storage unit to meet our moving truck driver, where we had agreed to unload.  Except, the moving truck was nowhere to be found, and our mover was conveniently ignoring my phone calls.  After several hours, we gave up and drove around San Francisco; at least we'd take this opportunity to get a feel for the different neighborhoods while we waited for any news from our mover.  Finally, a returned call confirmed our driver was a flake...a rather poor excuse for a big mixup (he was down in LA, unloading someone else's stuff that day.)

Almost three months later, I was still a bit annoyed at the unprofessional communication with the moving truck driver and the delay in our unloading.  However, last week I noticed a several hundred dollar credit to my card from the moving company.  I can only assume it is a refund for their mixup?  Whatever--I'll take it!

Anyway, the road trip ended with us in our brand new city.  We spent the next week apartment-hunting and house-sitting (well, I did, at least.  One of us had to start the new job the next day!).

Road Trip 2011: Part 3

Part 1
Part 2

After maintaining a relatively direct west-ward route, we veered off quite a bit after leaving Denver.  Our next destination was probably what I was most anticipating: Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Parks.

Day 4 took us through some beautiful terrain, though we didn't have much to report before finally hitting Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Our plan was to eat an early dinner at Snake River Brewery (are you catching on to the pattern yet?) and then find a campsite in Grand Tetons National Park.  Well, dinner was great, once again.  The trouble came when we went to find a campsite.





Labor Day had passed, and temperatures were dropping below freezing at night, so with over 1000 campsites, we didn't figure it would be any trouble to roll in and find an empty site.  But upon entering the park, we were told that the ranger had just radioed in saying there were no remaining sites to be sold.  The only alternative he could offer was to double-check and see if an empty campsite had been overlooked or to seek lodging an hour further, into Yellowstone.

I wanted to watch this guy for so long!  Who needs a campsite?

Well...we were hoping to get lucky, so we drove past the closed ranger station at Colter Bay, hoping he had overlooked a few empty sites.  Voila!  We found one after searching a couple rows of sites.  It turns out most of our fellow campers were sleeping in RVs, so our theory that few people would want to bear the cold was misguided.

Sun setting over Grand Tetons (before we had any sense of urgency)

By now the sun had set, and we quickly set up our tent in the dark and unloaded the sleeping bags, pads, and clothes into the tent, when suddenly a pair of headlights approached and the passenger barked that we were in their spot.  Rather than make a scene or mention that there was nothing marking their site that would have indicated it had been claimed, we sheepishly threw everything back into the car, strapped the surfboard back on, and peeled out (but not after leaving them a "present."  Ask me in person about this; I won't be admitting it on the blog :)

So...bummer.  Now it was getting close to 9pm, it had been dark for a while, we didn't have a campsite, and even if there had been some open ones, surely they had been claimed during the time we were setting up our first site.  With our only other option to drive an hour (or--oh yeah--pay $800 for a night  at their fancy lodge, if there was vacancy), we drove through the remaining rows of campsites just to double-check.  And then we came to a row where we saw at least 3 or 4 empty sites.  We were a bit encouraged, and after asking some campsite neighbors if they had seen anyone at the sites that day, we were given the go-ahead to claim a spot.  Out came our tent, sleeping bags, sleeping pads, and clothes came, and that tent was set up so fast.  We were getting quick at this!  It took us an extra hour to fall asleep because every time we heard the sound of a car or saw lights shine through our tent, our bodies froze and we held our breath thinking we were going to be kicked out of our spot again.  Thankfully, we were finally able to sleep, and we woke up the next morning ready to enjoy the rest of Grand Tetons and head into Yellowstone.

Armed with coffee (me) and hot chocolate (him) we watching the sun hit the Tetons

Morning views

More to come.

To catch up on the Road Trip:
Part 1
Part 2