This one's got a bald spot.

And then we saw the people carving a butter sculpture. It was a bit weird, actually…

butter sculptor in air-conditioned cage

And then we came across another of the wacky fair highlights – the pigeon collection! Who knew there were so many types of fancy pigeons? Not I…

white pigeon with ruffle

black pigeon with fan tail

brown and white pigeon with curly hair

this one dreams of being a peacock

Check out the foot-feathers on this one!

We then headed back outside for an afternoon snack – deep-fried s’mores, which were fun to try although the execution could have been better, I think  – the chocolate seemed to be just syrup instead of real melted chocolate bars. They were definitely as messy as the real thing though, and I’m already planning to try the deep-fried Klondike Bars next year.

deep-friend s'mores

Final deep-fried snack stop complete, we wandered over to the Purina Incredible Dog Challenge arena, were we watched dogs (and their humans) compete in a slalom run and a trick-frisbee routine:

doggie-slalom

Good catch!

After the champion dogs were named, we found our way back to our little school-bus shuttle and headed home – a good day at the fair!

Getting the camel ready for milking

Yes, the camel dairy demonstration gets its own post! I had seen the camel dairy ranch from the road when we drove to Palomar Mountain for backpacking in May, and so was very excited to learn more about it.

Gil and Nancy, the owners of the camel dairy, had three camels with them at the fair -  a mother and baby, as well as another female to keep the mama camel company. Their dog was also there to keep them company and help with the camel handling.

mother and baby camels

The adult camels were in the middle of their shedding season, so we got to pass around some soft camel fur. We also learned that running a camel dairy is tough! A female camel will only give milk when her baby is nearby, so you have to have plenty of baby camels to keep the dairy going! Gil told us that nomads in the desert  have sometimes resorted to stuffing baby camels that die in the desert and carrying them along with the caravan to trick the mother camel into providing milk – that’s pretty hardcore!

Baby camel searching for some milk

Fortunately no such deception was necessary at the fair, and we got to see the super-cute baby camel up close as he waited for milk and had a feeding.

Milking the camel

Gil was able to get about a quart of camel milk fairly quickly during the demo; he and Nancy were stocking up for their Camel Milk challenge – living on nothing but camel milk, dates, and water for two weeks as a rehearsal for spending a month trekking through the desert next year with similarly limited provisions.

Cuddly baby camel!

We were disappointed to learn that it’s not possible to obtain camel’s milk form the dairy due to pesky laws concerning the sale of raw milk, but I’m hopeful that the ranch will eventually be able to get permits to sell the camel’s milk (and then we can make it into cheese! and cheesecake! and ice cream!). The camel demonstration was really fun, and I’m looking forward to heading out to Ramona on one of the weekends that they’re offering tours!

San Diego County Fair 2010

After years(!) of thinking, “Hmmm, we should go to the fair sometime”, and then managing to miss it despite the almost month-long engagement, I finally got to spend a day at the San Diego county fair.   One of the keys to the trip was transportation – freeway traffic approaching Del Mar during the fair is usually NOT FUN, so I looked at our transit and off-site parking options, and decided to use the satellite parking at Torrey Pines high school and take a shuttle bus to the fair. Other than learning how uncomfortable it is to ride in a school bus as an adult, this was a good option – it had the benefit of being free, compared with $10 parking at the fair or $12 for a transit pass, and the shuttles were running every 15-20 minutes, so the schedule was more flexible than transit.

Once we arrived at the fair, it was time for our mid-morning snacks! There was a wide variety of food to choose from – grilled turkey legs and deep-fried everything seemed particularly popular. Chuck chose a cinnamon roll for his morning snack, which I went for the fried cheese curds. This led to the serendipitous discovery of fried cheese curds dipped in cream cheese frosting – surprisingly delicious!

Our mid-morning snack

After our snack, we were energized for a morning of animal-watching. First stop was the pig racing arena, where cute little piglets raced around a track in hopes of winning an oreo cookie prize (in reality, I think the prize was getting back to their comfy indoor pens, as several winners ran straight into their trailer and left the cookie for the runners-up!). There was also a cute “swimming pig”, who was coaxed to jump into a tank of water and then swam to the other side, or maybe bounced – he looked like a skipping stone going over the water.

Cute little piglet about to go swimming

After the pigs, our next priority destination was the camel dairy demonstration, but we had some time to kill…so we visited the pygmy goats! The fair is just full of cute animals (I’m pretty sure the cats would love to have both piglets AND pygmy goats as companion animals…well, Zephyr would like it; Athena would just hide under the bed.)

grey goat

Baby goats!

Another cute goat!

There was also a sheep shearing demonstration going on – the sheep had very very long (and soft!) wool:

A little more off the top...

Rastafarian sheep

We also saw some cows:

cows!

Including a really big one – see how small the people are in comparison?

Giant monster cow!

After our foray through the livestock barn it was time to head to the infield. During horse races this is accomplished by taking a tunnel under the track, but for the fair they constructed a temporary bridge, so we got to go over.

The track is fast and the turf is firm!

We had a few minutes to walk around the gardening exhibits (giant swiss chard and squash, lots of herbs, etc), the horse exhibit, and the beekeeping tent.

Miniature horse

And then it was time for the main event…the Camel Milking demonstration! (To be continued…)

Zephyr explores the veggies

Our neighborhood farmers market, the Little Italy Mercato, has been going strong for over a year now, tempting me every Saturday morning with just-harvested fruits and vegetables, fresh eggs, cheeses, jams and even sea salts. Even though I don’t quite make it to the Mercato every weekend, I’ve tried quite a few new fruits and vegetables since the market began – pineapple guavas, rainbow chard, cherimoyas, several eggplant varieties, green garlic and Kalamansi limes to name a few. In the spirit of continuing to explore new flavors and add more veggies to our lives, Chuck and I recently joined the CSA program from Suzie’s Farm, one of the Mercato vendors.

Broccoli, dill, chard, lettuce, radishes

Every other week we’ll get a box of 8-15 items, depending on what’s ready for harvest at the farm. Our first box contained potatoes, strawberries, summer squash, broccoli, radishes, chard, micro-basil, red lettuce, wild arugula, chard, and a gigantic bunch of dill. That’s a lot of veggies!

Athena and Zephyr love our CSA!

Our first CSA box was definitely a success – for $25 we got enough vegetables for five nights of dinners for two people, three lunches plus some snacks for me, plus three nights of strawberry desserts, and we tried several new recipes and preparations. The Suzie’s Farm blog helpfully tells us what to expect in our CSA box, and local blogger Stacy at Little Blue Hen is also a CSA member and blogs about her box and great recipe ideas as well, so we had an idea of the items and amounts that we’d be receiving and planned a week’s worth of meals around them.

We also picked up a few supplementary items at the Mercato:

Tomatoes, butter, jam, Zephyr

Mini-tomatoes for my lunch salads, European-style butter to go with the radishes, and habanero jelly because Chuck wanted some. Did I mention that the cats really really liked our CSA box and everything else we brought home from the farmers market? They wanted to sniff everything! And Zeph liked chewing (and then spitting up, unfortunately) the ends of the Arugula. It was quite an enrichment activity for them.

Zephyr Loves Arugula

(Really, I didn’t mean for all of the CSA pictures to include Zephyr, he just wouldn’t leave them alone.)

As we put the veggies away, I did some sampling of the strawberries, basil, and dill. The bunch of dill that we got was big, and the freshness made me start dreaming of things to do with dill – I felt like everything we made should use some, since we had much! In the end that didn’t quite happen, but we found quite a few good ways to use it.

I mixed up some butter and chopped dill, to be enjoyed with some of the radishes.

Dill butter: serve with salt & radishes

And then I made what I’m calling a modified “Green Goddess” dressing, despite its tenuous resemblance to the original: mayonnaise, sour cream, dill, caraway seeds and vinegar, which I used in my lunch salads with the lettuce, arugula, basil, tomatoes, and some blue cheese. This dressing was SO good, I could eat it on just about everything! The caraway and dill flavors worked really well together.

Creamy dill-caraway "Green Goddess"-like dressing

I also made a batch of quick radish pickles by boiling some dill in a vinegar-water mixture and then simmering with sliced radishes. I used cider vinegar, but I think plain white or white-wine vinegar might have worked slightly better. I’d never actually cooked radishes before, and I wasn’t that fond of the smell as I was simmering them, but after a day in the refrigerator the pickles tasted OK. They’re my first-ever pickles and not a complete disaster, so I’ll try some again sometime!

Quick-pickled radish slices

When I think of dill, I also think of salmon, and so I tried a new-to-me salmon preparation on Saturday evening: salmon en papillote, or salmon cooked in parchment. I spread some butter on the parchment, then added salmon (seasoned with salt and pepper), dill, and lemon slices:

Preparing the salmon

I then sealed and tented the parchment, placed on a baking sheet and baked for about 12 minutes, while Chuck sauteed the squash with olive oil, garlic, and red pepper flakes.

Delicious salmon and squash dinner

We used our potatoes and chard in an Indian-style Aloo Sag spin-off – I sauteed onions, garlic and ginger, added turmeric, saffron and two sliced serrano chiles (although one would have been plenty!), then added the potatoes and covered until they were tender, and added coarsely chopped chard and sauteed until tender. We served this with chicken cooked in Penzeys Balti Seasoning and fried queso fresco (left over from chicken tacos and standing in for paneer).

Indian-style dinner using potatoes and chard

After two nights of our Indian-style dinner, Chuck made a beef and broccoli stir fry that lasted for two more nights – it was the first time in years that I’ve eaten broccoli voluntarily, and I was quite happy with the results – the broccoli was tender and mild, and soaked up the delicious stir-fry sauce. I still won’t be eating supermarket broccoli, but I’ll happily eat the stuff from Suzie’s Farm!

Chuck also made a strawberry dessert from our Nick Stellino cookbook: strawberries marinated in spiced rum (Nick Stellino’s version used marsala), served with a honey-sweetened vanilla-scented mascarpone/ricotta cheese mixture and topped with shaved chocolate. This preparation really let the flavor and natural sweetness of the strawberries shine!

Strawberry goodness!

We get the next box is on May 29th (a week late because we’ll be in LA watching the Tour of California next weekend), and I can’t wait to see what goodies we get next!

Grand Prix Racers

Chuck and I ushered in the month of May with bikes! I read about the Barrio Logan Grand Prix a few weeks ago and thought it would be fun to watch, and we had a Groupon for Lil Piggy’s BBQ in Coronado, so we decided to bike to the Grand Prix in the morning, then continue on the Bayshore Bikeway over to Coronado. We checked the race schedule the night before and discovered that the men’s pro race was starting at 1:30 pm, so we decided to head back to the Grand Prix after lunch as well.

We woke up bright and early on Saturday morning, biked south on Harbor Drive for about two miles, and got to the race course shortly after the start of the first race – the riders were already speeding around the corners as we approached closed-off streets.

Chuck stands along the course

Before we got to the race, we weren’t quite sure how the whole thing worked, but we quickly figured out the important parts. The race course was a very curvy .8 miles with two main loops, and each race ran for a set length of time. An announcement was made for the last five laps, and then the real race to the finish began.We walked around the course to a few different vantage points – it was impressive to see the riders flying  through the curves.

Men's Cat 5 race

Lining up for the Masters Race

We stayed for the first three races in the morning, the men’s category five, masters, and category four races. I thought it was funny that the music changed from Chariots of Fire-style inspirational music during the Cat 5 race to Oldies for the Masters start, even though the guys in the Masters race were probably too young to remember most of the Oldies from their original release. I also liked how the winners of the races were each given a bag of tortillas in addition to their trophies – where else but Barrio Logan does that happen?

After the Cat 4 race we cast a wistful glance toward La Dona, a tempting Mexican restaurant right near the race course, then rejoined the Bayshore Bikeway and made our way to Coronado. The ride is a mostly flat 20 miles, and the biggest challenge was the wind – with the bay on one side and the ocean on the other, there’s no natural wind break, and it felt like we were battling a headwind pretty much the whole way to Coronado. We reached the Ferry Landing shops and made our way to Lil Piggy BBQ for some pulled pork sandwiches. I was impressed by the beer selection and the tenderness of the pulled pork, and intrigued by their array of sauces – a standard sweet sauce, a spicy BBQ sauce with bold red chile flavor, and , and a honey-mustard style sauce. I think we’ll definitely be repeat customers!

BBQ

After lunch we bought our tickets for the ferry back to downtown San Diego – biking the 20 miles back along the bay wouldn’t be much fun after a big BBQ lunch! I took in the view while we waited for the ferry:

Waiting for the ferry

Coronado Bridge from the ferry landing

Ships at North Island Naval Station

After the ferry ride (I didn’t get TOO seasick, although I felt a little woozy while we were waiting at the dock), we retraced our early morning path to the races. We got back in time to watch a few of the kids’ rides – only a one or two half-laps each, but it looked like they were having fun! The crowd had grown since the early morning hours, and there were a good number of people on hand to watch the Pro/Cat1/2 race.

The announcer's stand

Lining up for the Pro race

They were fast! This was the longest race, at 75 minutes, and there were several lead changes and breakaways and chases, including a big breakaway that just barely got caught right at the finish line – it was pretty amazing to see all that happen as the race unfolded over the successive laps of the course. I also had fun playing with the multi-shot mode on my camera, both at high ISO to capture the riders in more detail, and then at low ISO to get a blurred image effect:

Close to the Action!

High-speed racers, low-speed ISO

We had a lot of fun at the race! I think Chuck wants to get in on the local racing action after watching the Grand Prix. I think it might be fun too, but I’d need to upgrade both my speed and bike handling skills – otherwise I’d go crashing into the hay bales!

Honey Whole-Wheat Bread

Whether due to pure tastiness or a boost of nostalgia, this is probably my favorite bread recipe. I learned to bake bread by helping in my Grandma’s kitchen on the weekends when I was young, and this is the whole wheat recipe that we made. I think it can be enjoyed even by people who don’t typically like whole wheat bread – only about a sixth of the flour in the original recipe is whole wheat, and the honey and sugar give it a pleasing sweetness.

The recipe also has a distinctive secret ingredient: Cottage Cheese!

Cottage Cheese!

The original recipe, which makes two standard-size loaves of bread, calls for:

• 1 1/2 c water
• 1 c cottage cheese
• 1/2 c honey
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 1/2 c whole wheat flour
• 5 1/2 c all purpose flour
• 2 packages dried yeast
• 2 Tbs sugar
• 2 tsp salt

Since both of my loaf pans are larger than standard size, I multiplied the quantities of everything but the yeast and egg by 1.5 so that I had enough dough to rise above the tops of the pans. (I probably could have done *1.33, but 1.5 was easier.)

Recipe Card

First, combine the water, cottage cheese, honey, and butter in a saucepan. Heat over medium-low heat until the butter is just melted.

Butter, honey, cottage cheese and water in sauce pan

To avoid killing the yeast, you’ll want to make sure the temperature of the cottage cheese mixture is below 115 F. If you keep the heat low enough so that the butter melts gradually, it should be fine – mine came out at 108 F.

Testing the cottage cheese mixture's temperature.

While the cottage cheese mixture was heating, I put together a mise en place with the remaining ingredients:

mise en place

I wanted a slightly higher percentage of whole wheat flour than the recipe called for, so I increased the whole wheat flour by 1 1/2 cups, and decreased the all-purpose flour by the same amount. In the mise en place I’ve set aside a quarter of the of AP flour for kneading; the rest of the flour (whole wheat + AP) is mixed together in the large bowl.

Also, a note about the yeast – you’ll see various advice about how long yeast will last past the expiration date. I buy mine in bulk from King Arthur Flour and store it in the freezer. The package I currently have was originally purchased over four years ago – October 2005!  – and it’s still going strong. So even if you only use yeast a few times a year, buying in bulk and storing in the freezer may be more convenient and cost effective than buying individual packets.

My yeast - purchased in 2005!

I combined the flour mixture, yeast, sugar and salt into a large mixing bowl, then added the cottage cheese mixture and egg. I mixed these until combined, then turned out onto a kneading mat and added half the reserved flour:

Bread dough, first mixing

Bread dough - kneading in reserved flour

After I kneaded in the portion of reserved flour, I split the dough in hlaf to rise in separate containers. For the standard size recipe you can divide the dough later, and probably by hand instead of weighing the portions, but I had a large batch of dough and a fun kitchen scale, so I weighed it out:

Bread dough after first knead

As you can see in the next picture, my dough weighed 2.6 kilograms – about 5 3/4  pounds!

Weighing the dough

Half of the dough - 1.3 Kg

I put each half of the dough into a mixing bowl, covered them with plastic wrap, and let them rise for about 2 hours (until approximately doubled in size).

Dough covered for first rise.

After the first rise, I took each piece of dough, deflated it, and kneaded in its half of the remaining flour.

Dough after first rise

Half the dough after second knead

I then returned the dough to the mixing bowl, and let it rise again until doubled, about 1.5 hours:

Dough after second rise

I then shaped the dough into cylinders to fit the loaf pans, covered with plastic wrap again, and let rise a final time while I preheated the oven to 350F:

In loaf pans before final rise

After about 40 minutes, the dough was well clear of the pan rims:

I then put it in the oven at 350F; my large loaves took a little over an hour to bake thoroughly, but standard size loaves will likely finish sooner and should be checked after 45 minutes.

The finished bread had a rich brown crust – the dark spots are the cottage cheese curds – and the crumb was similar to a dense sandwich bread – not spongy, but soft and close-crumbed, with a thick, slightly crispy crust.

Honey Whole-Wheat Bread

The crumb shot!

The sweetness of the bread doesn’t pair well with some savory applications – I wouldn’t make a fried-egg or pastrami sandwich with it, for example – but this bread is perfect with peanut butter and jelly, or toasted with butter and/or jam.

This is my fourth submission to YeastSpotting, the inspirational weekly compendium of bread baking blogs hosted at the Wild Yeast blog.

Somali Wild Ass peering into the petting kraal, oryx in the middle of pen

the young giant eland

Visiting the feed trough, look at the fuzzy mane!

Check out thos striped legs!

Tagged: baby animals, Giant Eland, San Diego Wild Animal Park, Somali Wild Ass ]]> http://hoppyokapi.com/2010/01/21/bonus-zoo-baby-somali-wild-ass/feed/ 0 Amanda IMG_4111-1 IMG_4108-1 IMG_4116-1 IMG_4109-1 http://hoppyokapi.com/2010/01/19/two-minutes-in-the-life-of-a-warthog/ http://hoppyokapi.com/2010/01/19/two-minutes-in-the-life-of-a-warthog/#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 14:30:03 +0000 Amanda http://hoppyokapi.com/?p=1301 ]]> “Nothing like a nap in the sun to while away the daylight hours”

Warthogs in the sun

“Hmmm, I think I hear a noise! Better check it out…”

Warthog, awoken from a nap

“Ah, just that weird white bird dancing around again!”

Warthog watching the white bird strut

“Nothing to see here!’

Warthog decides to ignore the bird

“Zzzzzzz”

Warthog returns to her nap

Baby okapi at the Wild Animal Park

In mid-November, one of the San Diego Zoo newsletters announced the October birth of Uche, the latest baby okapi at the Wild Animal Park. Today we finally had a chance to spend a morning in Escondido to go see him for ourselves. It was a chilly but clear morning- probably 60 degrees or so when we arrived at the park shortly after 9am.

We first headed up to Condor Ridge, where the desert plants were awash with blooms.

Desert plants on the hillside

Porcupines nibbling vegetables - so cute!

Prarie Dog!

Unlike my trips to Anza-Borrego State Park, I can always count on seeing bighorn sheep at the Wild Animal Park:

Sheep at Condor Ridge

California Condor

Orange flowering plant, related to Ocotillo, perhaps?

On the path to Condor Ridge, we also saw super-cute owls and magpies, and I lamented the lack of a digital SLR  – without a manual focus function on my camera, I couldn’t focus past the wire cages to photograph animals well. I also considered getting a couple of owls for pets, but then decided they would probably nest in out sleeping bags on the top closet shelf, and try to hunt the cats..so probably not the best idea.

After Condor Ridge, we went to check out the elephants; I think the youngest one was born in Spring 2009, so it’s still pretty mini compared to the adults.

Elephant playing with food ball

Baby elephant headbutting the grownup

Then we saw two young tigers – they were still quite fuzzy and playful.  According to the WAP website, they’re just over a year old, born on my birthday in 2008!

Tiger cub

Flamingos

We then wandered into the Heart of Africa section of the park. The cheetahs were hiding somewhere, so we didn’t get to see them, but we did get to watch the warthogs basking in the sun:

Warthogs in the sun

And we admired more flowering plants:

Orange cone flowers

And then it was time for the okapis! The mother okapi was feeding in the center of the exihibit:

Adult okapi

And, once again, baby Uche! He was hiding away in the back of the exhibit, nestled behind a tree.

Baby okapi at Wild Animal Park

Uche!

Cutest baby okapi ever?

Mmmm, sourdough

The recipe recommends organic rye or whole wheat flour to start off with, as those apparently have the most wild yeast cells already and the least chance of contamination. My supply of rye flour (organic? not sure – got it from the bulk bin at Henry’s) was running low, so I supplemented with some pumpernickel flour (whole-grain rye, essentially) to get up to four ounces flour. To this I added four ounces cold water, then took my measuring cup outside and covered it with plastic wrap.

After two days, I brought the proto-starter inside to start the feeding schedule. The starter did not smell very good at this point – sour and fermented, yes, but not good; in the absence of any visible signs of spoilage I simply blamed the odor on the rye flour and continued with the feeding schedule, throwing away half of the starter and adding 2 ounces each of bread flour and water. The next morning, I was happy to see air bubbles – it might actually be working!

After three days: air bubbles!

I fed it again, with 2 ounces each water and flour, and the next morning I was rewarded with more signs of life – the starter had more than doubled in size overnight, so I was pretty confident that it would soon be viable for baking.

Day four - more rising power!

I fed the starter for three more days, discarding part of the original each time to keep the volume manageable, then poured about 1 cup into a quart-sized jar for refrigerator storage and gave it an extra feeding.

San Diego Bay Starter - ready for refrigeration

I had about 1.5 cups of starter left, so I started a simple bread recipe based on the San Francisco Sourdough recipe in Ed Wood’s Classic Sourdoughs. I added 1 cup flour and 1/2 cup water to the starter, then let it rise for about 4 hours at room temperature, at which point it had doubled in size:

Bread dough after initial rise

I then dissolved 1.5 teaspoons salt in 1 cup water, added this to the dough, and then mixed in 3 cups of flour one at a time. I then kneaded in one more cup of flour, and formed two round boules:

Sourdough Boules, after kneading & shaping

I let the loaves rise for about two hours before slashing and baking at 400°F, spritzing the oven three times in the first five minutes of baking to help the crust formation. After about 45 minutes, success! The first loaves from my new sourdough culture were complete!

Sourdough bread from new starter