1. I'd had the bones of a whole chicken sitting in the freezer for a few months. Finally, on Sunday, I put them in the crock pot with onion, celery, carrot, zucchini, parsley, cilantro, and some salt and today I decided it had bubbled long enough and I strained the stock and filled three quart containers.
I have this one quart of crab stock that came out really dark. I don't quite understand why, but I'm going to try reducing it and then adding tomatoes, sauteed garlic and onion, fennel seeds, thyme, tarragon, a bay leaf, some dry vermouth, and cream and see how it tastes served over macaroni.
2. When I lived in Maryland, not too long before we moved back west, I started an account at meetup.com and had a really good time on a couple of outings -- one was a walking tour of labor history in Washington, D. C. and the other was a tour of the Teamsters' headquarters -- ha! regular readers of this blog might remember that, lo and behold, the Teamsters' president, James P. Hoffa, (Jimmy's son) happened to stroll in the building as our group was gathering and he made a few welcoming remarks and shook hands with each of us participating in the tour.
Well, today I logged back into my meetup.com account. The other night, Kathy and Mary mentioned that they had recently attended a meet up of French speakers in Spokane and I wondered if there might be meet up groups doing things I'd like to do.
I joined a couple of groups -- one a hiking group, the other a longevity activity group (sometimes this group has walking meetups). If I lived in Spokane, I would join the hiking group this Saturday on a short trek from Pallisades Park to Riverside State Park. It sounds kind of perfect for my current state of conditioning. It's a two mile hike with very little elevation gain. Although I won't be joining this one, I'm now aware of Pallisades Park, a place that has completely escaped my notice over the last, oh, forty-five years or so. I'll look for other meet ups, but, definitely, once spring weather comes back around, I want to check this place out. Byrdman and I are always looking for spots to go hiking. We went on a really good hike this past fall in Riverside Park and want to hike at Painted Rocks (it was closed last time we went there) and I could see us adding Pallisades Park to our rota.
3. The Iowa Hawkeyes are proving to be an interesting basketball team. Tonight they hosted the short-handed Wisconsin Badgers and came from about twelve points down with around five minutes to play and surged to a 68-62 victory. The Hawkeyes have a balanced and versatile attack on offense and this evening, as they mounted their comeback, their three quarter court press rattled Wisconsin, forced the Badgers into turnovers, and caused them to by out of sync as they set up their offense, once they crossed the ten second line at half court.
On Thursday, Iowa travels to Maryland. The game will be on the Big 10 Network and I'm eager to see if the Terps can hold serve at home and just how they will deal with the inside strength of Iowa's Luka Garza and the way Iowa loves to have their other players both drive to the basket and look for open three point shots. Tonight Iowa shot poorly from three point land, but often they are dangerous from distance.
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