Having fun at Seaside, OR!

It was a windy day on the coast and we had as much fun as we could.

Army of Applesauce

Mott's can eat it! I've been making my own applesauce recently and here are the results of my latest effort. I feel that this beats out any pre-packaged applesauce any day. It's delicious, fresh, natural and comes in cute, reusable, single serving containers.

Also, I'm getting married in 1 week! I'm getting kind of nervous for it, there's a lot to make sure I do. It's a lot of attention. Andy and I are starting to pack for the trip to Indiana and our trip after to Portland, Oregon. It's going to be a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to seeing everyone who is going!

Today is my first big day of October, I will be running in a 5k as part of the Twin Cities Marathon. I couldn't do a marathon, the 5k seems hard enough. Andy and I have been training for the past 3 weeks though, so I'm in lots better shape. When I was putting lotion on last night, I found a muscle that I didn't have before! That's quite exciting. Here's hoping it doesn't rain too hard this morning!

Adventures in Canning

Hello!

Andy and I have spent a lot of time this summer picking food out of our garden and perusing the aisles of various farmers markets. Which means that we get a lot of fresh produce, very often. We have more peppers and tomatoes than we know what to do with. So what do we do with them? We can them!

So far we have made dill pickels, canned tomatoes and salsa! We've eaten some of the extra salsa and it was delicious! It's really exciting to have a supply of food if armageddon comes. Canning is exciting and easy once you get the basic steps down. Laura was nice enough to get us a wonderful canning book that explains the steps in basic language.

Here is a photo montage of our pickling and canning tomatoes efforts.

Consulting the canning literature while the pickling spices steep.

That's a lot of cucumbers! Turns out, it was too much cucumbers.

Andy looking pretty with our fresh dill flowers.

Canning tomatoes all shiny and clean! Ready to be skinned and chopped!

Andy filling jars and adjusting headspace.

Out and About

Andy and I have recently joined a club, the Twin Cities Bicycling Club. It's a lot of fun. So far we've only gone on 3 rides, but it's been a great time. The first ride was a bit slow, but the second ride we went on last weekend was perfect! We went on the same ride again today and I learned a good lesson about the speed at which I ride. The thing about this ride, is that the group is large and it tends to split up into a few groups going at different speeds. Last week we stayed in the back bunch at went between 14 - 16 mph. This week, Andy wanted to keep up with the first group going the fastest. I can't ride as fast as Andy, but I still tried. I was sort of able to keep up with the group as they did their warm up of 20 mph, after that I was toast.

After awhile Andy was dropped from the fast group and we maintained with the middle group. I was pretty tired though. Andy determined that I do pretty good until 17 mph, then I fall back. It'd be neat if I could keep up with the fast people at some point. Right now, I know what pace I can ride at and I will try and keep up to that. Usually when I ride I'm pretty poky, so I know I can pick up the tempo if I want.

Also today Andy and I visited the best bike shop in the Twin Cities, Freewheel Bike. I've thought Freewheel was a great shop and the place I felt most comfortable, but today really solidified that feeling. A couple years ago Pete (from Ireland) got me a gift card from Freewheel, which was really store credit. I didn't use all of it up, but kept my receipt which showed the $9.52 I had left over. Today I went to Freewheel to make some purchases and I remembered I had that receipt, but I wasn't sure if it'd still be valid. So after we shop around a bit and make our picks someone from Freewheel approaches us to check out and I show her my faded receipt from 2007. She recognized it was her handwriting that marked how much I had left and honored my $9.52! It was great, I couldn't believe either!

Freewheel is great for many reasons. They have awesome customer service, they're friendly. They know and love bikes without being pretentious about it. I'm the type of person that doesn't have a type of person, so I feel weird when I don't fit in somewhere, like many bike shops in the Twin Cities. But at Freewheel, I don't feel uncomfortable, I feel welcomed. Not to say other bike shops are bad, but that Freewheel is awesome.

Anyway, off of the bike topic. The garden is doing great. We've harvested all of our bush beans and our crazy pole beans have finally flowered. I made a delicious dinner last night with tomatoes, summer squash, carrots and thyme from our garden. It felt good to eat all that and know we grew it ourselves. Plus it was tasty.

BWCA Videos

I recently discovered that I can do time lapse videos on my camera, and I think that's pretty neat. So on our recent trip to the Boundary Waters I made use of this new discovery. Here are the results.

In this one you can really see the wind go across the lake. Tony and Dad are paddling.

Tony is taking his time getting into the lake.

I'm on a boat!

As I have mentioned before, Andy and I got a canoe from my parents for a wedding gift. Andy and I have taken the canoe out for many trips. We've gone out on Lake Nokomis, Andy likes to fish. We paddle around slow and watch the fish jump out of the water but not bite the line. We've gone out on the Minnesota river a few times. We even paddled around Pike Island where the Mississippi and Minnesota meet. That was a rough day.

Today we went out again on the Minnesota at Fort Snelling State Park. This time we launched from the canoe launch, which has seen better days. Here are some pictures from our trips!

Andy was so excited that we got a canoe!

On the maiden voyage of the HMS Tanashoe (temporary name).

The canoe sitting pretty on a sandbar in the Minnesota River.

This is my graduation picture.

Andy conquers all.

Andy caught a fish today! We're guessing it's a White Bass.

Andy is responsible for steering the boat.

We're really close to the airport here, so airplanes on their descent went right over us.

Happy Birthday to Me

It's not my birthday for a few more weeks, but it's never too early to show off the awesome early gifts I got. From my parents, I got new bike shoes. From Andy, I got new clip less pedals so that I could use my new shoes. Here's me in Oakdale yesterday after Andy and I stopped for lunch. That tube is from my Camelbak, it works really well rigged up like that. I'm pointing at my awesome shoes.

These are my new pedals!

The ride was a tough one, I haven't gone on a long ride in a while. We traveled up the Gateway trail to a pizza place in Oakdale. Then back down the Gateway Trail, along Lake Phalen then Bruce Vento trail back to Summit to Minneapolis. It wasn't a tough route, I was just out of shape. The trail through Swede Hollow was really pretty and full of cool old buildings. I'll be enjoying more rides this summer. Possibly even some bamping (bike camping).

I'll post canoe pictures later!