Brownies. Sort of.

I wanted to make something easy for a treat swap tomorrow night, so I asked my mom for suggestions.  She came through with three options.  Two of them involved a tool I do not have readily accessible at the moment (a kitchen mixer), so I went with the third option - brownies.  The fact that I've never made brownies before didn't faze me at all.

Nor did the fact that I didn't have unsweetened baking chocolate, regular flour, Crisco, or an 8x8 pan.  Instead, I used a 60% cocoa chocolate bar with crystalized ginger; a mix of whole wheat pastry flour and buckwheat flour; butter; and 1.5x all the ingredients to fit the pan I had with me.   So that was yesterday.

Today, I invested in few new items for a second batch.  So for the chocolate, I used a mix of bittersweet chocolate chips and a Lindt dark chocolate/orange bar; for shortening, I used applesauce; and I baked it in my cupcake tray using my brand new cupcake papers.  I also added a teensy bit of nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves.  

Based on my preliminary taste tests, I think both batches may have come out OK, but I'll see what my friends say tomorrow.   I think I can pitch the cupcakes and the regular brownies as "chocolate gingerbread cupcakes" - and they will probably be amazing with heavy cream.

I'm kicking myself now, though.  After I made my cupcake batch tonight, I looked more closely at my pantry and realized I actually had regular flour all along and could have used it in either or both batches.  Sigh.  

25 Hours in D.C.

I'm not sure what instinct made me say yes to G's 14th annual vegetarian potluck Hanukkah party (I have only rarely attended), but it turned out to be exactly the right choice.  This Hanukkah party was a very special one indeed - G's last as a non-mom! She is due in February and is expecting twins; I suppose we can say she doesn't do things by halves - or no, that would be far too corny, so let's not say that. Forget that I mentioned it.

In any event, it was the perfect time to visit, because I could be helpful to G and get to hang out with her before the joy and madness of the parental juggling act starts. The party itself was perhaps more sedate than in previous years, in keeping with G's energy level. (In fact, a guy who is usually among the first to throw in the towel found himself - to his great surprise - the last one out the door! And he didn't even have to change his bedtime to do this.) After we put away all the leftovers, G and I watched The Muppet Show (season 3) until our brains started oozing out our ears. This was still all very efficient; I think I was in bed by 11 pm.

The next day, as G headed off to her baby shower in Baltimore, K graciously stopped by to take me on a tour of DC. Luckily, K has mad face-recognition skillz, and so he spotted me right away as I started wandering vaguely around the corner of Walk and Don't Walk, wondering how I was going to pick his car out from perhaps hundreds parked in the area.

We enjoyed lunch at Cafe La Ruche in Georgetown, selected - I believe - not only for its French cuisine and friendly vibe, but also for its proximity to Lock Zero (not to be confused with Prisoner Zero from Dr Who), the C&O Canal, the start of the Capital Crescent Trail, and the steps from The Exorcist. (I trained for this particular expedition by watching the Exorcist on the bus ride down to D.C.  Creeeepy!)

K and I had not seen each other since college (a lamentable oversight), but you can judge for yourself by means of these amazingly high-quality photographs whether we've changed for the better over the years.

College photo (in doorway of student office):

Life in black-and-white

Post-college photo (at the base of the Exorcist steps):

Life in full color

OK, maybe these photos aren't quite the bee's knees, but I'd still say yes.  Good times!  Perhaps we'll be able to join forces in a non-urban setting (hiking expeditions, anyone?) in the future.

DC is a lot more accessible (and fun) than I remembered; then again, my last few visits were all work-related, and featured grim luncheons at fast-food institutions, complete with all the thrills of paper and electronic document discovery.  But I'm glad I came back.

Birthday Bash

Enjoying the view, mid-climb. 

It went thataway!

Exploring the sine function?

A dramatic reading of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Good habits! 

One giant leap for girlkind!

Monarchs of the mountain.  Or rock.  Whatever.

Darth Vader in her gentler years.

Tree #20.

I think we can see who's in charge here.

An intrepid hiker! 

Pawtuckaway State Park

My dad wanted to try this park.  We loved it, and ended up going two days in a row.

On Day 1, we explored the east side of the park, near the campgrounds.  This was a there-and-back-again trip.  We didn't have a lot of time, so we didn't bother to pack a lunch, or water, or anything really.  Just went and walked.  It was rather flat, but quite pretty.

A close-up of pine needles and various lichen on a rock.

Ho hum, another beautiful forest scene. Note the two different shaped blazes marking a single trail.

On Day 2, we set out to do a loop around North Mountain and a boulder field on the west side of the park.  We decided to do it counter-clockwise, starting with the North Mountain Bypass trail.  We had a map (kind of - it was not very detailed, since I'd forgotten the real trail map at home) and written instructions on how to do the trail clockwise.  All we had to do was follow the instructions backward, and voila!

I loved the root system rising out of the pine needles.

We stopped in the boulder field for lunch.  It was truly surreal.

The area is very popular with climbers.

Supposedly, all the rocks in the boulder field were plucked up by glaciers eons ago, but there were some strange rock-tree interactions.  In many places, it looked like the rocks had been merrily rolling along until they ran into a tree.  Other places, it looked like the trees were growing into the rocks.  Pretty cool any way you slice it.

After the boulder field, we walked over to what we thought was Dead Pond, and followed a trail we picked up near there.  We got disoriented (I blame the stones) and went through the Devil's Den.  We saw plenty of evidence of beaver activity in the area.

Exhibit A in People v Beaver 

This tree was still clinging to life!!!!

A dramatic re-enactment of the arboreal feeding frenzy.

We saw a lot of people enjoying a large natural climbing/rappelling wall (it looks like a great place to learn!) and many more scenic sights....

These are not slabs of concrete, but natural rock formations.

This is where we should have had lunch - the perfect sunny spot, just off the boulder field.

Fissures in the rock.

A natural pulpit or balcony.

After following the trails to enjoy all these sights, we ended up (to our surprise) on Round Pond Road.  Eep! Not part of the plan!

Luckily, the locals knew the area quite well and helped us get oriented again.   As it was getting late, we simply walked down Round Pond Road all the way to Reservation Road.

Reflections in a pond (which we believed to be Round Pond).

The vegetation growing on this rock looks a lot like hair, doesn't it?

Round Pond featured a number of very large mud-holes or small lakes blocking the path, so I think next time we will stick to the regular route.

We did notice one very cool thing about the mud -- it seemed to dye the leaves black. These leaves weren't visibly coated with mud, and they weren't wet, but instead appeared to be truly dyed or stained.  And it wasn't just one type of leaf, either - we noticed oak, beech, and others all stained alike.

Our wildlife sighting for the day - a small, nearly tailless mammal.  A shrew, perhaps?

On the way back to the car, we took a look at the old cemetery on Reservation Road (headstones dated circa 1825-1890).

There were gentle climbs and descents throughout the day, and plenty of soft leaves and pine needles underfoot.  The scenery was both gorgeous and incredibly cool.  Definitely worth another return trip!

Thanksgiving

Dave graciously hosted again, for a wonderfully boisterous Thanksgiving with 19 people from two families.  The place looks great, and everyone seemed to have a lot to be thankful for.  There was good food, Apples to Apples, a beach expedition and plenty of running around outside for the younger set, and even a great slideshow/travelogue of R's parents' trip to southeast Asia.

Mount Taurus Hike - New Path!

I took the train up to Cold Spring and walked up to Nelsonville to a new (for me) trailhead.  I think I may even prefer this approach; it provided a change of scenery and a sidewalk the entire way rather than road walking. Very civilized.  Especially as it gave me time to enjoy a cappuccino from the bright, cheerful and friendly Go-Go Pops establishment en route.

My original plan was to take Nelsonville to Notch to Breakneck, and I'd left open whether I would cross over to Beacon or return to Cold Spring.  Let's just say things did not go exactly according to plan.

Initially, the plan was working just fine, thank you very much.

The vehicle is nearly picked clean.

As I walked, I listened to a series of lectures on Ancient Greece from the Modern Scholar series, which was interesting in between car wrecks and other scenic points of the Nelsonville Trail.

JK Rowling's website confirms she earned a French and Classics degree from Exeter, and based on the lecture series, it would seem that the name "Draco Malfoy" is not only drawn from the French (mal foy looks like Olde French for bad faith) but also from Classics.  That is, in 620 BC, a Greek named Draco wrote down the laws (yay!) but chose death as the penalty for most violations (boo!).  According to Plutarch, when asked why he had fixed the punishment of death for most offences, [Draco] answered that he considered these lesser crimes to deserve it, and he had no greater punishment for more important ones. So there you have it, the genesis of the word "draconian" - and the much-despised Malfoy.

I think this is where I heard the lecture about Draco.

There were many downed trees on the Nelsonville path, but the light and the landscape were very pretty.

When I tried to turn on to the Notch Trail, however, something was wrong.  I just couldn't put my finger on it, but things didn't look like I expected them to based on the map.  So I forged ahead, and things started to look oddly familiar.  Of course, I decided that was because I was so familiar with all the trails in the area.

Not because I had no idea whatsoever where I was.  Nope, not at all.  In the mean time, I continued on, confident that I was on the correct trail.  The white trail.

Raptor's wing tip catches the glint of sun

This view -- and the viewpoint on the rock
marked * NYC -- looked very familiar.

As did this pool, though I'd approached it
mostly from the other direction before.

So it seemed like I was recognizing point after point on the trail, but was somehow going in a different direction than usual.  The afternoon wore on, and I started to get a little nervous that maybe it was a little late to be pushing on to Beacon after all (which I thought I was doing when I turned right on to the yellow trail).  

But it wasn't until I reached the oh-so-familiar and utterly unmistakable junction with the Brook Trail that I was finally forced to admit that I was way, way, way off base.  In some ways, this was good, because it meant that I could easily get back to Cold Spring before dark.  

I followed all the way to the tail end of the Cornish Trail which more or less tracks 9D on the way back to the trailhead.

The bare trees looked like cilia on the
hills on the other side of the Hudson River.

A few trees on our side clung to their leaves.

I liked this part of the Cornish Trail a lot - and it was new to me.  Of course in some ways, this misadventure was an incredibly embarrassing reflection on my map reading skillz.  I had taken the Washburn Trail up and over Mount Taurus.  Which was not part of the plan.  But that's not important right now.  What's important is that there were stepping logs to help you get across the mud puddles:

These trees fell into the form of a giant jack!

Golden glow on the Cornish Trail in the last rays of the afternoon.

An arch cut through fallen trees.

The vines give this a Southern Gothic feel.

A tangle of roots.

The red sign says: "Emergency Road - Do Not Block"

I set off along 9D back to the train station.

Canada geese by a pond.

Turkey vulture at rest?

Cool mailbox!

All in all, I liked this route - especially Nelsonville and the Cornish Trail.  Good times.