A Midwest Odyssey

[Somehow, this post got to be almost as long as Homer's Odyssey. Sorry about that.]

As some of you may have noticed (read: our mothers), we haven't posted in a while. Since we got back from Mexico, we've been busy with the garden and preparing for school, which starts in exactly a week. I've also been traveling all over the Midwest.

Two weekends ago, I was invited to play in a weekend Ultimate Frisbee tournament in Madison, Wisconsin with a team from Des Moines. I knew most of the people who were playing on the team, and had never been to Madison, so I decided to go. While the 4-1/2 hour drive was a little tedious, the tournament was a lot of fun. The weather in Madison was perfect, the team I played with was filled with some really talented players (including the best male and female players in the State of Iowa, as regarded by people who know more than I do), and everyone was really fun. We crashed at a friend of a friend's house, covering almost the entire floor space and spent a night eating and hanging out in downtown Madison, which is the state capitol and location of the University of Wisconsin. I could see us living in Madison some day. We ended up finishing 5th in the tournament, which was a pretty good outcome for us, based on the competition.

Two days after I returned from Madison, Kimberly and I drove to Kansas City, where the Red Sox were playing the Kansas City Royals. One month ago, if you had asked me, I would have had almost no opinion of Kansas City; I just never thought about the City, nor did I think I would ever visit it. I remember when I was little, I was always scared of the Royals because they had George Brett and Dan Quisenberry, but that's all I knew of the City.

We were very pleasantly surprised. KC is a pretty old city that is going through some urban revitalization. There are cool, funky, Portland-esque neighborhoods, with good restaurants and cool old buildings. The housing stock was cute, and a lot of the old warehouse buildings are being converted into apartments and condos.

The quantity and quality of the restaurants was also surprising. Of course, KC is known for its BBQ, and it didn't disappoint. We ate at Arthur Bryant's, which is considered one of the 2 best places in the City. I wanted to buy some BBQ to take home, but Kimberly nixed that idea.

Additionally, a chef I worked with here used to be a chef in KC, and gave us some great restaurant recommendations. In one place, we drank real coffee (not Iowan coffee, which can best be described as strong tea) while eating one of the best brunches we've had since leaving Portland at a place called Rm 39. It turns out that the 2 waitresses at this place also were thinking of moving to Portland, so they kept coming by to refresh our coffee just so they could have an excuse to keep asking us questions.

The Royals stadium was also a nice place to watch a baseball game, which is a bonus. As seems to be the case for most Red Sox away games these days, the stadium was over half full of traveling Red Sox fans. This makes sense: the price of airfare, a hotel, and tickets to all 3 games in KC is probably cheaper than going to 3 games at Fenway these days.

Kansas City has some glaring negatives, like the lack of public transportation and the lack of bike-friendly streets, but I could see us living in Kansas City some day.

To add to the insanity, two days after getting home from KC, we drove to Chicago, where one of Kimberly's friends from Portland was visiting her in-laws. Additionally, my brother-in-law-in-law (alternately, my brother-in-law once removed. He's my brother's wife's brother) lives in Chicago, so we visited him as well.

We spent a brisk 36 hours in the City, having a wonderful lunch with my in-law and his girlfriend. He gave us a tour of his downtown apartment, which was pretty awesome, and we walked along Lake Michigan on a picture perfect day.

Later on, we met Kimberly's friend and husband at The Original Gino's East, a legendary deep dish pizza place located kind of near Wrigley Field. They have just recently returned from living in Chengdu, China for a year, so we spent the time catching up and listening to some pretty crazy 'living-in-China' stories.

We really enjoyed our short time in Chicago; it's a great City that seems really livable. With the perfect weather and good company, it was a great weekend. I could see us living in Chicago some day.

Finally, this past weekend, I went to another Ultimate Tournament, this time near Milwaukee, a short 6 hour car drive. I played with team of random people, most of whom were from Denver, but who also came from Seattle, Indiana, and Chicago. While still a good time, this tournament wasn't as fun as the first in Madison. But I did get to experience some beautiful countryside outside of Milwaukee, and more perfect weather.

Over the 2 weeks, I spent approximately 38 hours traveling around by car, covering approximately 2500 miles. That's far.

The one thing I learned/realized these past couple of weeks is that the Midwest is a place of 2 extremes: the City and the Country. The whole state of Iowa is definitely 'country', despite the best efforts of Des Moines (in my travels, this is also true of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and South Dakota). Iowa is 90% cornfields, with a few small cities that are decent but isolated (Iowa City, Ames, Dubuque, Des Moines). The places we visited are capital-C Cities, with a lot to offer, even Madison; although they are surrounded by farm lands, they don't feel so isolated, because the City is big and vibrant. Considering I grew up in a place where the City didn't really ever end until you drove a few hours, the capital-C city model seems more comfortable.

One down, three (?) to go

So today's the day. Today marks our one year anniversary of rolling into Iowa.

Maybe you remember our first month, me complaining about the weather, Peter looking for work, the State Fair.... It's been an adventure ever since.

Now, we are enjoying our last two weeks of quiet relaxation before new adventures begin. What's in store for us? Well, this year, I'll be helping Peter go off to school for the first time in 8 years. I'm sure you'll get to read lots of posts detailing "those undergrads", "people in the Middle are crazy", "food on a stick", "the weather", and updates from Miles. Although, as I reread that list, that's what you got last year too. I'm sure it will be as funny, enlightening, and wacky as ever.

Thanks for following along with us. The Middle isn't half bad.

Reproduction

Along with all of our many gardening projects, we also have two "accidental" plantings to contend with. The potatoes came up from some sprouted, wrinkly, forgotten potatoes that we had over the winter. We tossed them in the ground and voila, potato plants!

We were fascinated to discover not only potatoes but also potato fruit (see here). While googling these, I discovered that you can keep potato seed and use them to plant in the spring. Even cooler, I discovered that you can make your own breed. That's right, in a couple years we'll have our very own Stuck in the Middle TM breed of potatoes. We just need to plant several varieties we like and allow them to cross pollinate. By planting those seeds each year, we'll end up with new varieties of potatoes, and can pick the ones we like.

So today, I picked the little potato fruits, diced them, and covered them with water. In a day or two, the seeds will sink and the fruit will float, making it easier to separate the two. Then we'll dry them and put them in the tornado shelter to wait for next spring, when the breeding adventure will really start.

And in squash news, that squash plant is going nuts. Peter weeded around the plant, exposing more of the seeds from the rotten shell. We now have a gazillion teeny plants.
I'm thinking I might try to save seeds from the squash as well... it just sounds like fun. And I'm sure the Irish and Italian ancestors would be proud.

Garden Photos

our loot, originally uploaded by pmauro2001.

Kimberly and I have finally gotten around to uploading and renaming all the photos we've taken of our various garden projects.

The photo stream for our current garden, which we are now calling the Somerset Garden, starts at the original planning party and traces all the way through planting and the current state of affairs. It's fairly amazing to compare the old pictures to the current garden, especially the squash pictures - they have grown from seeds to gigantic plants bearing fruit in just over a month. I will always be amazed at how fast things grow.

The first garden we had, which was destroyed by the floods, as well as the plants in our front patio (sunflowers, potatoes, hot pepper), are documented here. Some of the post flood pictures are particularly sad. The sunflowers in the front yard are doing very well, so I'll try to take some new pictures and upload those.

The Best Drinking Water in the Country

Growing up outside Boston, we used to get our water from the Quabbin Reservoir. I remember hearing on more than one occassion that this was considered to be the best drinking water in the country, so why spend money on bottled water?

When I moved to Portland, they have a series of public drinking fountains known as Benson Bubblers, which provide free drinking water on the streets of the City. Of course, these are available because Portland has the best drinking water in the country.

Last Summer we were in Rome, where people fill up water bottles and drink straight from the public fountains and other water features, because, of course, Rome has the best drinking water in the world.

When we moved to our current home, people were surprised we had a Brita filter: 'We have the best drinknig water in the country, why would you use a filter?'

This weekend, I was in Madison, WI. When I drank some water from the tap and commented on how bad it tasted, someone from Des Moines remarked how the water in Des Moines was the best water in the country. This actually led to an argument between some Des Moines people and some of 'My Town' people over whose water was tastier.

Does everyone think that the water from their town is the best in the country/world? Or is it just a marketing ploy by town/city governments to boost local morale and to attract new residents? Is there any way to actually test this?

All I know is that the best water I've ever drank is from the tiny village that my mother's family is from in Italy. It's a tiny village located in the central portion of the Apennine mountains in central Italy. All over the town of 500 people there are fountains that run 24 hours a day, pouring out water straight from a mountain spring. It's cool, crisp, and clear. Man, that's some good water.

Hot

It's currently 95 degrees out, but the heat index is 111. I'm not actually sure I've been this hot before. There's a heat warning until dusk. Don't worry about us, Miles and I are staying inside.

Can you imagine living here without AC? How did the pioneers do it?

Otros Gringos

To my surprise, there weren't many foreign tourists in Mexico, especially in DF; most of the tourists were other Mexicans checking out there own country. I imagine in the coastal cities/areas (Cozumel, Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Cabo San Lucas, etc), this is different, since those areas often cater to Americans from North of the Border or Spring Break students. Every once in a while you would see another gringo wandering around, but it seemed like they were few and far between.

[For the most part, Mexicans were pretty dark and short, due to their ancestry of Mayans, Aztecs, Zapotecs, etc, so most gringos stood out like sore thumbs; I was often the tallest person around and Kimberly was almost always the whitest person around. There is some Spanish blood in Mexico, which resulted in some additional height and lightening of skin, but it was a lot less than I suspected before arriving.]

Then we arrived in Oaxaca, and all of a sudden, we were surrounded by gringos. Everywhere: in the restaurants, at museums, in the markets. You name it, gringos were there. But the interesting thing is that barely any of them were USA-ers. I would say 90% of them were French. The other 10% were German or Dutch or English. I suppose that July is vacation month in France, so a lot of French are traveling, but it was pretty amazing seeing some fancy dressed people sitting in the cafes, smoking their cigarettes all French-cool like.

I'm not sure what the point of this post is. I just thought the number of French in Oaxaca was impressive, as was the lack of USA-ers traveling in some of the most culturally interesting cities of Mexico, our closest neighbor (tied with Canada). I would write it off as a microcosm of the traveling attitudes of Europeans vs Americans, but I know there are lots of Europeans that are xenophobic, so I'm not sure this fully explains it.

I guess to sum it up, I think more USA-ers should travel to Mexico since it's close, friendly, has good food, and is packed with interesting history.

Wabbit Season

Look at him sitting there, five feet away from me, all smug and content, chomping on grass like it's his. Doesn't he know that that is MY grass? I eat it, come inside, and throw it up on the carpet. That is how things work around here. He's stealing my food, right from under my nose.

If only this invisible wall wasn't in the way, I'd get that rabbit. And I'd make him pay: we'd cuddle until he couldn't cuddle anymore. Then we'd play. Then nap. Then cuddle. Then I'd make him leave so he wouldn't take away any of my attention.

Murdered

We came home from Mexico to the pleasant surprise of sunflowers growing in our backyard (as Peter described here).

Well, we came home from errands to find an unpleasant surprise.



Apparently in their efforts to mow and shop down weeds, they annihilated our beautiful sunflowers. It's very sad.

"Too much is never enough"

This, I believe, is my husband's motto in life. Perhaps his farming ancestors are part of this but Peter firmly believes that one must always have more rather than just enough. He already has a family story about him. You see, while Dad was in the hospital during one of his operations, Peter kindly offered to bring us all dinner. He picked up some Chinese food and brought it to the weary group at the hospital. You could smell the Chinese food wafting down the hallway as Peter got off the elevator, and we were all blown away by the number of boxes that he unpacked. They just kept coming and coming. Kung pao and General Tso's mixed with some Happy Family and several boxes of potstickers with rice and veggies and more and more. All to feed three stressed out and scared women and one cancer patient. We took most of those boxes home.

I tell you this story to stress that Peter is WELL known for this behavior. But, it still came as a surprise to me when I showed up at THE GARDEN Tuesday morning. He told me it was big. He described the number and variety of plants. But, somehow, the true scale of the garden was lost on me.

We are so screwed.

The garden is really huge. Like crazy. There are at least 60 squash/cuke/melon mounds without an exaggeration and each mound has two or three plants. We'll be sneaking around the neighborhood and leaving squash presents on people's doorsteps in a month or two.
The white marks on the lower right aren't fungus, rather it's a melon variety called Moon and Stars. The Fruit are also supposed to have green with yellow dots.

There are 20 or so tomatoes putting out fruit. You can see them here tied to stakes.

You can start to see the scale of the garden in this picture. The lettuce, radish, carrots, basil, and weeds are in the foreground. Tomatoes and beans are in the middle and the squash are there in the back. We still have at least 100 radishes to pull, and I have two bunches in the fridge. The beans are going to go crazy any minute and the zukes are putting out babies fast. There's an entire "field" of basil. We harvested three zukes already as well a few different types of peppers. Our farming companions took home the few peas that managed to grow (it was past their season when they went in the ground). The beans have tiny beans growing (just thicker than a pencil lead) but by next weekend I'm sure they'll be huge. I'm hoping we get enough to can!

The farm project is intense and crazy, but incredibly enjoyable. Of the garden gang, I'm the only one with actual growing knowledge and it's great fun to watch them learn about plants and figure out who needs what. (Although they all need to learn to harden their hearts and THIN seedlings. By the time I got home it was too late and we have so many little two headed radishes).

And we're rather well known now. On Wednesday I went in to campus to lesson plan a bit and say hi to various profs. German prof asked how Peter was doing since his garden had flooded. I explained that he had a new garden project going and that it was a little ambitious. We talked for a while and then I mentioned that it was near PEter's old job. German Prof's jaw hit the ground as he exclaimed, "You mean that's YOUR garden?" He and his kids apparently have walked by regularly. We also get visitors from the gym and the restaurant and people drop off gifts as well (farming tools, hay etc).

I never would have wanted or planned a garden on this scale... but it sure is fun!

Tornados

Well, we're not even home for a week and the storm season is starting. They just interupted NPR with a severe tornado storm warning for our county. This means that they haven't sighted an actual tornado, but that the weather conditions are right to produce one. I've canceled my plans to head out and look for a new laptop and we're staying downstairs near the "tornado shelter" (aka the space under the stairs).

It's not particularly scary, more crazy than anything else. They just announced on the tv of visibility at near zero on the freeway and cars blown off the road.

Interested in following? Put our zip code into weather.gov

Updates to follow

5:00 pm-
Well the rain and excitement have passed safely. No tornadoes were spotted and the cat is coming out of his secret hiding place. We're supposedly in for a week of rain and excitement! Wanna come visit?

Gardening

Peter and I have been working hard these past few days, getting our various garden projects under control. Not only do we have the giant garden... but we also have a few side projects at our apartment.


Today, we worked on our little patch of dirt. We weeded around our volunteer squash which seemed to have sprouted from a rotten squash that Peter tossed outside this spring. So far, it only has male flowers, so we don't know if we'll actually get any fruit from it. This isn't too surprising as it was a commercial plant and probably some sort of freaky hybrid anyway.



We also harvested potatoes. Yep, just as before in the Rose City, Peter and I are doing our heritage and forefathers well and planting potatoes. We picked these beauties that we'll have lightly boiled with butter and thyme for dinner tonight.


We also noticed these. They appear to be potato fruit. After some googling, it seems that they are indeed the fruit of the potato plant (as the tubers are just the roots). Wikipedia says they are highly toxic. We'll probably follow the directions for harvesting the seeds to see what happens. I've never planted potatoes from seeds before, but since it's the International Year of the Potato , I figure we'll give it a try.

We also rescued the chives and a pepper plant that survived the floods from the old garden plot. They are safely replanted up here at the house.

Quick Notes on Mexico

Some things I learned in my short time in Mexico, and which you should know which will make all the forthcoming posts easier to understand:

• In Mexico, Mexico City is called DF (pronounced de-effe), as in Mexico DF. It stands for Distrito Federal. It's like the DC in Washington DC. It also easier to say/write DF than to say/write Mexico City all the time;
• If a store in Mexico makes churros, it's a churreria. If it sells perfume, it's a perfumeria. If it makes shoes, it's a shoeria. If it sells crickets, it would be a chapulineria. Add -eria to anything, and you make it or sell it;
• The Mexican Peso is currently valued at approximately 10 pesos = 1 US dollar. This makes conversion really easy; just move the decimal point over one place to the left. Things in Mexico are cheap, except McDonald's, Coke, and Starbucks. Let me know if you see a trend in those three things.

El Moro and the Magic Churro

You should immediately stop what you're doing, board a plane to Mexico City, and head on down to the Churreria El Moro and get yourself a cup of Chocolate Espanyol and 4 churros con canela (basically a cup of melted chocolate and churros covered in cinnamon). You will never view dessert (or even breakfast) the same again.

Kimberly, her mom, and I were hanging out in the Historical Center of Mexico City when we were approached by some Mexican students who wanted to interview us for their english class. After some questions from them, we decided to ask them where to go eat. One of the kids (who, judging from his portly size, has eaten a churro or two in his lifetime) first asked us if we wanted Chinese food. After a laugh on our part, and a quick explanation that we were hoping for something more Mexican in nature, he told us about El Moro. I'm glad we didn't go for Chinese.

Short, middle-aged Mexican waitresses, dressed in mint-green outfits straight from the 60's, buzz around this diner-like, 24-hour a day, beehive of activity. All they serve is churros. Solo for 6 pesos. Or with chocolate, coffee, or milk for about 30-40 pesos. I think that's it.

It was packed every time we went there. And in the 10 days I was in Mexico, 5 of which were in Mexico City, I visited El Moro 4 times. Almost 5 times, but I expressed some self restraint, which is strange for me.

So what is a churro? It's fried dough, dropped from a star-shaped extruder straight into hot oil, then removed, sprinkled with sugar and/or cinnamon, and dropped directly in front of you. I preferred mine dipped into hot chocolate.

[Chocolate will be covered in more detail in a later post. I look forward to that one almost as much as this one]

I had a churro once in Portland, and I was not excited. It was cold and kind of soggy. I was not excited about going to the churreria in Mexico City. As often is the case, I was wrong.

The churros at El Moro were hot and crispy on the outside, and warm and soft on the inside. The first time we went, we had 2 each; the next 2 times, we had at least 4 each (the sugar coma I went into after the first 3 makes the experience a little hazy); the last time I think we held ourselves to only 3 each.

And if you really go all that way just for a churro, you should probably stay a little longer and check out some of the Azten and Mayan ruins. We'll cover those things in later posts, but for now we're concentrating on the important stuff: food.

Surprise, you're eating a churro!

Chapulines

Or as they're known in English, Crickets.

Kimberly ate them in tacos when she was traveling, where the true flavor could be masked by things like salsa and tortilla. I ate them solo when we were in Oaxaca, where the true flavor of the cricket could come through.

Either way, you get legs stuck in your teeth.

I was a little hesitant about eating the little critters. But really, how could I pass up eating such a different and new thing - when was the next time I would be somewhere that crickets were part of the everyday fabric of life and literally everywhere. I'm all about trying everything at least once. And sometimes twice, just to be sure.

As we were walking in one of the markets, a tiny little Mexican woman came up to me with a basket of chapulines and just dropped some in my hand. After a moment of contemplation, I threw them back. They were really salty and kind of spicy. And soggy. I was expecting them to be crispy and crunchy. She wanted to sell me 5 scoops of chapulines for 20 pesos (about $0.20), but I wasn't about to buy a whole bag full. They weren't terrible, but they weren't very good either. Maybe they're better fresh out of the fryer.

[ps after reading that wikipedia article above, specifically the parts about the nematodes and lead content, I kind of wish I had eaten them in a restaurant instead of on the street. Ce le vie!]

[pps I left the pictures really big, so if you click on them, you will get a super-up-close view of the fried little critters - especially that top photo]

Back from Mexico

We are back home in Ames. We arrived last night, after a fairly lengthy flight for Kimberly [she was routed through Washington DC and Chicago because she used frequent flier miles to buy her ticket], and a mad dash through Chicago-O'Hare by me [I landed in the International terminal at 705, was able to get through the passport check and customs without any hassle (shocking in its own right), take a train to the opposite side of O-Hare, go through security again, and run down the domestic terminal to get on Kimberly's flight at 805 - I didn't have any checked bags, so that helped].

Miles is pretty damn happy to see Kimberly. He greeted us with a series of vomitting and hacking up of hairballs throughout the night.

We were also greeted by these cool sights:

In the ten days I was gone, some of the sunflowers in the front of the house have opened to reveal big heads

and some have gotten about 8 feet tall

In the back of the house, we apparently have an army of volunteer sunflowers from our birdfeeder seed. These have grown from 'unnoticeable' to 'sunflower' in the ten days I was gone.

And our front patio pepper plant is in full fruit production.

As we get settled over the next couple of days, we'll have updates on the mega garden (apparently, they've been harvesting radishes while we were away) and stories of Mexico, including lost Mayan cities (just like Indiana Jones!), the mega-lopolis that is Mexico City, and of course, the food (because, really, isn't this blog just an excuse to talk about food?).

Welcome back, us.

¡In Mexico!

Mexico City is kind of crazy. If you combined the chaos of Italy with the congestion of Hong Kong, you'd be somewhere close.

So far it's been great. We've eaten lots of street food, including tacos al pastor and quesidillas (not liek your mom used to make them).

Kimberly and I are heading to Oaxaca tomorrow, which is the cultural capitol of the country. Also, they make lots of mole and chocolate things. Needless to say, we're excited.

More to come in the future.

Triste...

Well, Friday was my last day at the Tec. And my last day with Gabriela. I'm pretty sad, because we became good friends during our 5 weeks of talking each day. We've exchanged email addresses and offers to come visit (as well as offers to help with our respective languages over email and Skype). And Friday, we discovered that we share a love of Italian food! She's incredibly jealous that I live with such a fantastic cook, and I'm supposed to mail her recipes for gnocchi and pizza dough when I get home.

Although I'm happy to see Mom and PEter and to get to travel and see new parts of Mexico, I'm very sad to be leaving the wonderful friends I've made here. My teacher, Suzie, is absolutely incredible and was wonderful to learn from (both Spanish as well as teaching ideas).

Being back in Queretaro has been a wonderful experience and I'm so sad that my 5 weeks are already over.

¡Miles!

Miles,


I've been hearing that you aren't treating PEter very well. I want you to know that even though I'm gone, you still need to behave appropriately. This means that you shouldn't be howling all night and morning. I know that you are especially scared of the lightning and thunder that's been going on in the Middle. But, remember that you are inside and that the weather won't get you. You shouldn't pee on PEter's stuff just because you're scared. Instead, try snuggling with him. I know he's fidgety, but I'm sure that he'll sit down long enough for you guys to snuggle.


And, if you don't shape up?

I met a very nice cat in Patzcuaro...

Happy Fourth!

And happy special day to a special someone.

-wifey