Garlic soup continued...

Well, I did it. I made the garlic soup. I also made some chicken to go with it. Right now I'm waiting on Jesse to get home so we can eat dinner. Come home faster!!!!

Garlic Soup Wanted.

I was snooping through other blogs and came across this recipe, which is in turn from here. It's for a roasted garlic soup that has 44 cloves of garlic in it.

I love soup. I do. I could eat it all the time and in every season. Seriously. I think my only problem is that I get bored with the same flavors...because every restaurant seems to serve the same 3 soups. Or that I'm afraid a meal of soup wont fill me up and I'll be hungry within 10 minutes of finishing my bowl... Which is silly since I never feel that way, well unless it's chicken stock or something...

Anyways, I was thinking of making this delicious sounding soup but maybe adding chicken to it. A bowl of creamy, garlic-ey, smooth soup, with an island of tender chicken floating within. That should curb my fear of the soup not filling my belly...

It being August and all, though, it's been crazy hot. The valley has been riding a major heat-wave, well the entire southern California region has. It has actually been a very mild summer up until now. I was starting to wonder what the hell was going on... Stupid me... I should have known better. Summer shows up even if it's late, and moves in on Fall. Or maybe it's just that our seasons are like a month off or almost a full season off. I guess that's what happens when you follow calender dates instead of earth changes...

Today, however, I woke up and the world outside was cold, overcast, and gray. The perfect day to make soup. Except I had to go to work. Boo. As I was sitting in my cold, isolated, little kiosk I searched the previously mentioned sites and scribbled down the recipe. Maybe, just maybe, the weather would stay cold enough to warrant soup making. Alas, I searched the weather forecast and it confirmed my suspicions. And then, before noon, the sun peeked out from behind the clouds and the day became warm. A rather mild day in comparison to even yesterday but still a bit too warm.

And, I was tired. By the time I got home, I crawled into bed and I haven't really moved since. I'm laying here, watching a movie, and petting my puppy. Getting nothing done. Eh, what are evenings off for? Maybe I'll give that recipe a try tomorrow. I'll be off much earlier and I don't have to go to bed too early since my co-baker opens Mondays. I guess we shall see...

On park work news, I totally had these two guys walk up to my kiosk around 1 p.m. They looked exhausted and one was dragging one of those wire carts that people take to the farmer's market or whatever. It was filled with crap, well, not un-named crap. It was filled with camping crap. Turns out these two fellows had walked, yes, walked from Los Angeles all the way to me in Calabasas. And, they were trying to get to the creek, to the campground, which was a good mile, mile and half, from me. I guess they'd left at 8 p.m. last night to make the trip. They took a break at the step of my kiosk and just chilled for a good half hour before taking off the finish their trek. They were very nice and I chit chatted with them for a bit. Me, mostly asking why would they decide it was a good idea to do such a thing. Apparently one of them had made a walking trip to Santa Barbara before and the other was thinking it would be a fun little adventure.. Obviously, not as fun as he expected but I'm sure he'll tell the story and it will, in hindsight, be worth it and be the trip he'd hoped for.

Camping Vacation

I'm back from my camping adventure. Coming home is sometimes just as good as getting away. We got a late start coming home yesterday and didn't get here until almost 2 a.m. After a nice long post-camping shower, Jesse and I crashed for like 10 solid hours. Well, almost solid but I'll explain that at the end.

I rushed home after work on Thursday so I could help Jesse finish packing. I had packed my clothes the night before but we still had to get all our camp stuff together. The plan was to leave by noon but by the time we got everything together it was after 3. The drive to Mono Hot Springs is almost 6 hours and we were hoping to get to the crazy 1 lane mountain road before it got dark. So much for that plan. We finally left the valley after 4:30, which means a rough arrival time of after midnight.
The drive was pretty uneventful. I read to Jesse until the sun went down, then we drove listening to music and chit chatting. We stopped in Clovis to get some In-n-Out and then began the ascent into wilderness. I got a wicked headache from the climb in elevation. The last stretch of the trip is a 12 mile 1 lane mountain road, which takes about an hour. Not only is it scary for the possibility of running into another car but there are sheer drops off the side of the road. We realized it was almost better to do the drive at night. At least that way we could see headlights and not be able to see the terrifying drops.
To get where we were camping you have to drive up a rough road, which is totally possible with the right vehicle. Unfortunately, Jesse needed to rotate his tires and his front tires' treads were pretty low. We did not make it up there this year. Jesse tried but there was squealing and sliding. So scary. Then we had to back down the hill. Can you say terrifying? I was freaking out complete with distressing noises and covering my eyes. Jesse needed my help guiding him down so we wouldn't fall off the hill. Ugh.
Mike came and helped us bring up the necessities for the night. Tent, mattress, blankets, pillows. We trudged up the hill and across the dark, uneven dirt road to our campsite. Jesse set up the tent and got everything settled while I tried to keep the dogs quiet. Besides Mike, there were 2 others already there (Karen and Aaron) and they were already asleep. At this point I had been up for like 23 hours. Mike went to bed and so did we. I pretty much passed out with slight memories of the boys showing up (Johnny, Dennis, Blake, and Mark).

Ultimately we spent 4 days and 4 nights there. Lindsey and her boyfriend Paul showed up either Friday or Saturday night, I can't quite remembered. We had to carry up all our crap in several trips and then back down on Monday. Blagh. Jesse did most of the work though so I can't really complain.
Here are some notable features of this vacation:



*We got to take Bo into the lake and he LOVED it. It was freaking adorable.




*Major shoulder sunburn. It made sleeping painful. It made sunlight painful. It was plain painful. This is 4 days later, finally starting to peel. I got a talking to from my mom, as per usual when it comes to health or sunburns. "That's 2nd degree. That's cancer right there." Thanks for the scare.




*Great company!



*Hot springs and cold rivers/lakes. No pictures for that. Haha

* Bear visit. Also no picture but extremely intense.
On Saturday night, something got into our, Jesse and my, foodstuff. I remember hearing some crashing but I guess I didn't wake up. Jesse said the same thing. When Jesse got up Sunday morning, Aaron told him our ice chest was knocked over and everything was spilled onto the ground and that he'd cleaned it up for us. (Thank you). There were also a clear but relatively small bite mark on our black dry-goods box. Later, I figured out our bacon and an ear of corn were missing. Mike said he saw something run off, something white and about Layla's size. Odd but sure, why not. We went about our day as usual since there was nothing we could do at that point.
A little after 4 on Sunday night we were awoken by loud crashing and everyone yelling. It would appear that Jesse, Mike, and Paul all starting yelling without knowing for sure who began it or if they were even awake when they started. Whatever it was ran off and everyone crawled back into bed. I, however, was terrified and couldn't go back to sleep. I heard people clapping at a different site, and then much further away, pots and pans being banged down in the developed sites. Ugh. When the sky started to lighten I finally fell asleep. Apparently Jesse was also having trouble sleeping and was staring out the window until the sun came up too.
When I got up in the morning I discovered how close the bear actually was from our tent. Literally 10 feet away from our "door", on the other side of a tree. There were even paw prints in the dirt! The black box had been dragged roughly 4 feet from it's original place. There were new bite/scratch marks in it. We decided that the bear had decided to try and sneakily drag the box away and then investigate it's interior once he'd gotten it away. Then, something happened where it realized it wasn't gonna be quiet and so it made a ton of noise, waking everyone up. When Jesse pulled the box back to our stuff his hand slipped on the slobber. Haha. I guess he's one of the few people who can say he's touched bear slobber and still has his hand.

*Skeeter syndrome.
My right hand swelled up pretty bad on Sunday. I was worried but it didn't seem to be getting any worse. My right tricep was really swollen too. Both spots had bug bites but since I had other mosquito bites that were normal in the amount of swelling, these spots left me confused on what kind of bites they could be. Dennis and Mark had found a freaking baby scorpion in their tent when they were packing up so I thought maybe it was a scorpion sting. When we got home last night, I was searching bites and swelling and eventually came across something called Skeeter Syndrome. It's an allergic reaction to a different breed of mosquitos than your used to. I'm not gonna get into all the information about it because I don't feel like it right now but suffice to say, it sucks. Itchy, sore, and swollen. Blagh.

So the story for this morning that broke our 10 hour sleep was this:
Apparently my mom knocked on our door and maybe came in because she didn't know we were home. Bo started barking and charged the door, which woke me up to myself yelling for him to come back, which woke Jesse up and he ran/jumped for the door. We both thought it was a bear because we were still on high alert from the camping nights. Needless to say, we scared the crap out of my mom. It was terrible but hilarious in afterthought.

Now it's back to the daily grind. Well, tomorrow anyways. Today, today was still my vacation. Ah... So nice to actually have one.

camping food

We're going camping next week and I'm trying to think of some tasty meals while we're out there. So far I'm thinking beef stew for one night, chicken and rice for another, spaghetti for another... I know we'll probably eat hot dogs for at least one night. What's camping without hot dogs? That's like not taking supplies for smores, even though I don't like smores...or hot dogs really....

Lunch ideas? Sandwiches, I guess. And leftovers. Cooking up there and in primitive settings is going to be interesting, I think. No water other than what we bring. I think I'm going to make the beef stew at home ahead of time. Maybe the spaghetti sauce too.

I've been so busy with work that I haven't had anytime to write. Plus, not having internet easily accessible only exasperates the situation. So a little update is clearly in order... But, maybe not at this current moment in time as I have some other needs for the internet....