I just got back from biking to Carbon Valley Regional Library. I didn’t work this Sunday but I wanted to try biking to work when it wasn’t essential that I actually get there It was a pretty nice ride to the library. It took me about 50 minutes which, considering it’s only 12 miles, isn’t great but I wasn’t pushing myself hard either.

I haven’t tried riding to the library before because I-25, which I need to cross, has been going through construction and all the underpasses are under construction. For the ride today, I choose a road that is technically closed but seemed a safer alternative to riding on a busy road with no shoulder. I’m not entirely sure the construction crews will let me get away with riding on the road on a regular basis but today I got through okay.

At the library, I ate a snack, dropped off a DVD, picked up another one and started back. The ride back was not as pleasant. I think I might have been going slightly downhill much of the way there. That, combined with me being a little tired and a head wind, slowed me down considerably. It took me 1 hr 15 minutes to ride back home.

Overall, I’m fairly pleased with the results. Once I figure out some IT logistics for working at Carbon Valley rather than up in Greeley, I think I’ll try biking to work on Sundays. My next step is to buy a different set of tires for my bike and proper riding shorts. While my bike is a hybrid, more than half of my route is on dirt roads and my tires are still too thin for really good traction.

When eating out, I strongly prefer eating at restaurants that provide calorie information so I know what I’m eating. It’s shocking the number of calories some “healthy” alternatives such as salad have in them. In case anyone else is interested, below is the list of restaurant and fast food venues that I was able to find some nutritional information for. Unfortunately, the healthiest places to eat often don’t provide nutritional information because they are small local restaurants.

Applebee’s (Nutritional Info)

Arby’s (Nutritional Info)

Beau Jo’s (Nutritional Info)

Camille’s Sidewalk Cafe (Nutritional Info)

Chili’s Bar & Grill (Nutritional Info)

Dairy Queen (Nutritional Info)

Daphne’s Greek Cafe
Nutritional Info “coming soon”

Domino’s Pizza (Nutritional Info)

Einstein Bros Bagels
Nutritional info is available but can only be accessed through flash website.

Global Chili Co
Nutritional info allegedly coming soon

Goodtimes Burgers
Nutritional info is on the website next to each menu item.

International House of Pancakes
Lists selected menu items that are under 600 calories.

Islands Restaurant (Nutritional Info)

Jamba Juice
View nutritional information by choosing specific items.

Jimmy Johns (Nutritional Info)

Kentucky Fried Chicken (Nutritional Info)

Mad Greens
Nutritional info for some items at the bottom of the page.

Masalaa
No nutritional information but does have “smart meal” items.

Noodles & Company (Low calorie dishes.)
Calorie information is also available for the standard menu items.

Olive Garden
Nutritional information for selected items

Panda Express (Nutritional Info)

Panera Bread (Nutritional Info)

Pei Wei (Nutritional Info)
Watch out for the “servings per dish” information.

Pizza Hut (Nutritional Info)

Quiznos
Nutrition info for selected items.

Rumbi’s Grill (Nutritional Info)

Spicy Pickle (Nutritional Info)

Subway (Nutritional Info)

Starbucks (Nutritional Info)

Taco Bell (Nutritional Info)

Tokyo Joe’s (Nutritional Info)

VG Burgers
Nutritional info for burgers but not for buns or toppings.

Wahoo’s Fish Tacos (Nutritional Info)

Wendy’s (Nutritional Info)

I love my newest kitchen appliance. Last week I bought a 6 Quart Slow Cooker. I had been thinking about it for a while and I’m not exactly sure what pushed me over the edge. However, I woke up Sunday and decided to buy it. The main reason I was interested in buying one was so I could cook dried beans without paying too much attention to the process. Even though it’s just Jaeger and I at the moment, I got a 6 quart slow cooker so I wouldn’t have to go out and buy a larger one later once we had kids. I was a little worried that it would burn the small quantities I was cooking but so far it’s worked great.

I soak one cup of beans overnight. In the morning, I put them in the crock pot with 3 cups of water, 1/2 onion and 2 small bay leaves. I then set the time to cook on high for 6 hours and then it automatically switches to the “warm” setting until I get home from work to turn it off. This makes around 2 1/2 to 3 cups of beans.

While dried beans are much cheaper than canned beans, I wasn’t sure how much the electricity was costing. This morning Jaeger attached his Kill-A-Watt to the crock pot. Based on our electricity bill, I was able to determine that cooking one batch of beans costs us approximately $0.10 in electricity. Obviously, the initial cost of the crock pot out weighs any immediate savings using dried beans versus canned. However, I believe I can use it for other things such as soups which will probably make up the cost in convenience.

I’m having great fun experimenting. However, Jaeger is probably having less fun washing the crock pot bowl every night

Some kind soul donated four boxes of romances to the library last week. Donations very rarely get put into the library’s collection (costs too much to process them). Instead, they are sold to the public to raise money for various library programs. Today, I had a chance to go through the boxes and was thrilled to discover sixteen historical romance books that I was interested in.

I didn’t start reading romances until around 2003. It’s one of the newest genres I read so I haven’t collected as many romances as I have other genres. In general, I don’t buy books until I’ve read them at least twice but I made an exception today since $0.50/paperback was too good of a deal to pass up. I limited my selection to books that got good reviews on Amazon from writers I’ve read before and liked. However, I still ended up with more books than I meant to buy I now have them all cataloged in LibraryThing. Tomorrow is my day off so I’m hoping to get my housework done early so I can start reading my new books

When buying processed food in the grocery store it is fairly common for what appears to be one serving to actually be two servings. Thus, I always check how many servings there are per container before assuming I know how many calories it contains. However, until tonight, I did not realize it was necessary to do this with restaurant food also.

I’ve started a science fiction book club at the Erie library. It meets at 6:45 which doesn’t allow time to go home and eat before coming back for the book club. Because of this, Jaeger (who also comes), usually picks up take-out for us to eat before the meeting. Last Monday, I asked Jaeger to get take-out from Pei Wei. I’ve eaten there once before and thought the food was pretty good. More importantly, they provide nutritional information on their website. Before giving Jaeger my order, I perused the nutritional information looking for a non-mushroom vegetarian dish that seemed to have a good calorie level. All the dishes seemed low on the calorie side but I assumed that the portions would be relatively small.

Jaeger arrived and I was quite surprised by the large amount of food I received. It seemed way too much food for the amount of calories that was purportedly in it. However, I shrugged and started eating. About half way through I was full. Normally, when food is in front of me, I continue eating until it’s gone. I know it’s not a good habit but I’ve had a hard time breaking it. For some reason, I was able to stop eating that night once I was full. Jaeger ate a little bit of it and then we took the rest home for leftovers.

Thursday night Jaeger is either at BLUG or Hacking Society so I have the house to myself (I love my husband dearly but it’s also nice to be alone sometimes ). On these nights, I rarely bother cooking something for myself and instead have leftovers. I saw the Blazing Noodles from Pei Wei in the fridge and decided that it would make a good meal. I have a nutrition program that I fanatically use to enter in everything I eat. I hadn’t decided what to eat Monday until I was away from the house so I had never entered in the Pei Wei food. Tonight, before eating it, I pulled up the nutritional information and started entering it in my program. I had already noticed that the noodle dish did not include the calories for the actual noodles and so knew that to get the true calorie count of the dish I had to combine the calories for “Blazing Noodles” as well as the calories for plain “Rice Noodles.” That is a little sneaky but it allows for more flexibility if you decide to customize the order. I entered the nutritional information column by column until I got to the very last column which I had missed on Monday, “Servings (per dish).” Suddenly, all was clear. My portion size seemed too large because it was actually two servings, not one. While I applaud Pei Wei for having nutritional information available, I feel that including two “servings” in one “dish” is deceptive.

Today I tried out my new bike for the first time. The bike itself was very nice to ride. It actually was more comfortable than I expected having last ridden more than a decade ago. My hope is to eventually be able to ride to the Firestone library 2-3 days a week. It’s about a 10 mile ride one way.

Today I rode about 7 miles in 35 minutes. I definitely need to get use to riding the bike more before I attempt a work commute. I exercise a fair bit (usually 1 – 1 1/4 hours/day). However, riding the bike I suddenly felt completely out of shape. Even though I rode 7 miles I didn’t have any baggage (i.e. computer, lunch, work clothes etc.) weighing me down. My current plan is to try substituting bike riding for my normal exercise 2-3 days a week and see how it goes from there.

I’m also a little nervous about my understanding of biker/car relationships. According to Colorado’s Bicycling Manual it’s safer to ride on the shoulder of the rode than in the sidewalk (not that the sidewalk is an option on CO-119). However, I’m a little fuzzy about what the correct procedure is when suddenly there is a right turn lane. I think technically, the bicyclist is suppose to continue straight so the turn lane is to their right (assuming they aren’t turning). At least, this is how it appears when there is a designated bicycle lane. However, this doesn’t feel particularly safe to me on 119. I think I probably just need to get a little more use to being the smallest thing on the rode. I’m also dubious about left turns as I’m not nearly as fast as other bicyclists at this point and I’m afraid I’ll get in the way of cars.

Hopefully, I figure this all out before I get run over by a car. If I do end up getting hit by a car, it would at least be nice if it wasn’t my fault. And yes, I was feeling paranoid enough today to make sure I had my phone, ID and insurance card with me

I’m currently sick and incredibly bored.

Wednesday I wasn’t feeling very good but I had a very busy schedule so I went to work anyway. My last scheduled activity of the day was teaching a report class to staff. Normally I’m pretty energetic when I teach classes but I felt barely coherent by the time I was finished. I felt that was enough usefulness for the day and so wrapped everything up and tottered home. At home, I took for temperature for fun. I never run fevers so I was shocked when the thermometer claimed I had a temperature of 101.5. I tried it again and this time it said it was 101.7. I truly do not remember the last time I ran a fever that hot. It’s been years (possibly a decade?).

Based on the fever, I decided I probably should take Thursday off. I still had a fever Thursday night but it wasn’t so high so I figured that I would probably be better by Friday. I woke up this morning and had no temperature (well, it was 98.5 and I normally run 97.7 but still with normal bounds). I still had all the other cold symptoms but that normally wouldn’t prevent me from showing up to work (or at least working from home). However, I decided that I should probably take the day off to make sure my recovery stuck. Well, it didn’t. I’m once again running a fever.

I think there are few things more boring than being really sick. Within the past 2 days I’ve read 3 books and watched hours of online TV episodes (we don’t have broadcast/cable). It’s incredibly mind numbing. Since I thought I was getting better today, I decided it would be a good time to clean house since my parents are coming on Sunday (yea! ). However, I only got the kitchen moderately picked up before collapsing into bed for the rest of the day. Yes, bed is also boring, particularly when you can’t sleep because you can’t breathe.

Okay, that’s more than enough of me whining

The last couple of months have actually been pretty interesting (both in a good way and the Chinese curse way). We spent Christmas at Jaeger’s parents place and had lots of fun. We then came back and Fested for several days which was also lots of fun.

Early in January, I got contacted to see if I was interested in another library job. It was tempting but after a lot of thought, I decided it really wasn’t the right fit for me right now. Too bad the job couldn’t have waited another 5 years or so, it would have been perfect then.

Jaeger also had lots of job excitement. Namely, his employer had to lay him off due to lack of projects. This obviously caused us some stress but my obsession with creating an emergency fund made the process a little easier for me. Jaeger did find another job which sounds very interesting but it’s a start-up so they don’t pay as well as we’re use to (at least right now). Hard to say how things will turn out but as long as Jaeger’s happy, I am too.

The Weld Library District opened up a library in Erie in January and I’ve spent quite a bit of time down there making sure everything is working smoothly. It’s been interesting watching a whole new library come together. We’re also opening another library in Firestone in March. At the moment, the district is considering having me work at one of the two new libraries 3 days a week and spend the other two in Greeley. While I don’t have an office at the new libraries, the commute is almost half of what it takes to get to Greeley so I’m enjoying the change (though I miss all my friends up in Greeley).

After looking at Google maps, I came to realize that the Firestone library is only about 10 miles away from my house. This, in combination with pretty good roads*, made me think that it might be feasible to bike to work instead of drive. It’d be better for the environment, less expensive than driving — at least in the long run, and a great form of exercise. I started researching bicycles and last Sunday Jaeger and I went to Niwot Cycles and I bought a bike! I haven’t had a bike for at least a decade and this one isn’t like any of the mountain bikes I’ve owned before. It’s a Giant FCR3. I’m hoping it’s a good beginning bike for me to try commuting on. I still don’t know if my idea is feasible or not. I left the bike at the shop because I ordered a bicycle rack for panniers so I can carry my bags with me to work. Since I don’t have an office, I have to carry my office with me which can be a little awkward. The bicycle shop called this week to let me know that the bike was ready but I haven’t felt well enough yet to go pick it up. Anyway, it should be a great adventure

*Erie is closer but doesn’t have good roads for a novice bike rider.

Every year around Thanksgiving time my mother starts making “Christmas Candy.” We had some when I went home to Washington for Thanksgiving. In fact, mom had expanded her normal candy selection to include three new recipes, one being a yummy variation on Butterfingers. However, I felt the need to make my own Christmas Candy this year.

Yesterday, I spent most of the day making Christmas Candy. I made Almond Toffee, Coconut Balls, Peanut Butter Balls, and Frangoes. I think they all turned out good. In my opinion, the Frangoes didn’t turn out quite as good as normal but still decent.

I also tried making Caramels and this was my downfall. Apparently, high altitude not only affects baking, it also changes candy making. However, I didn’t realize this when making the caramel and so closely stuck with the recommended candy temperature. I poured it in the pan and left it to harden overnight. Well, it did harden. It hardened enough to make it inedible.

It was only after researching the problem that I learned that you should drop the candy temperature 1 degree for every 500 feet above sea level (due to the faster evaporation at higher altitudes). For most people, this probably doesn’t make a huge difference. However, living at around 5,000 feet above sea level I should have dropped the temperature by about 10 degrees. Even though it’s a similar process, I didn’t have this problem with the Almond Toffee because I paid more attention to the Cold Water Test instead of the candy temperature. Oh well, I’ll know for next year

I divided the successful candy up into 5 batches (one for each branch library and one for Jaeger’s work). I delivered Farr’s candy today. I think the Almond Toffee is the most popular of the bunch.

I like the Almond Toffee but the Coconut Balls and Peanut Butter balls have more Christmas memories associated with it. We didn’t watch many movies growing up but mom would usually let us watch movies either when we helped her with canning in the fall or rolling peanut butter and coconut balls for the candy. I love Christmas time

More tomatoes!

• 3 lb 2 oz tomatoes (5)
• 9 lbs 3 oz white sweet corn (12)
• 3 lb 1 oz yellow watermelon
• 5 oz basil (1 bag)
• 6 oz green beans
• 2 lbs 12 oz white onions
• 10 oz eggplant (1)
• 11 oz cucumber (1)
• 2 oz banana peppers
• 4 oz green bell pepper
• 1 lb 3 oz carrots
• 2 lb 13 oz potatoes

This past week, I’ve been subjecting Jaeger to all sorts of food experiments. However, I suppose this isn’t really abnormal behavior on my part. Surprisingly, I think most of them either turned out good or with potential.

Friday night I made Pasta Caprese, a recipe I found in the July/August 2007 issue of Cook’s Illustrated. It’s a basic fresh mozzarella, tomato and basil pasta dish. However, the magazine recommended freezing the diced mozzarella for 10 minutes to prevent it from getting stringy when combined with the warm pasta. I neglected to seed the tomatoes with the result that the sauce was a little runny. However, Jaeger conceded that it was quite good even with the runny sauce.

Friday, I made a soybean soup and a Greek inspired sandwich with a Tzatziki sauce I found in Cook’s Illustrated. I was planning to make pitas from scratch but this part turned out a disaster. So, instead I used store bought pitas. I think the sandwich was good but I would have preferred to use fluffier pitas. The soybean soup was also good but was probably more appropriate as a winter soup.

For Sunday lunch, I decided to make a Grilled Mozzarella Sandwich with Roasted Peppers and Basil. This plan went a little awry when I had to go up to Greeley unexpectedly. However, I put the ingredients out for Jaeger and he reported that it ended up being pretty good.

Tonight, I made Spicy Carrot soup with Roasted Garlic, Tomato and Pesto Crepes and roasted beets. Jaeger didn’t seem terribly enthralled by the carrot soup but neither did he find it appalling. The crepes were good but as Jaeger pointed out, the filling tasted too Italian for what we expected to be in crepes. Jaeger thinks the crepe filling would be very good as a pasta filling and I would tend to agree. This means that I need to continue my quest for savory vegetarian crepe fillings. Currently, the only one I have really liked is for crepes filled with ratatouille and topped with swiss cheese. Oh well, I’m sure something good will turn up eventually.