Pumpkin -- The Eye of Sauron

Oooooo, the other day I carved my Halloween pumpkin. I think it might be my best pumpkin yet! I carved the Eye of Sauron (the all-seeing eye from The Lord of the Rings series) and I think it turned out pretty great. This a big flaming eye and looks really cool and full of flaming veins when it is lit at night! I am sad though because it is already starting to dry out and get a little squishy so I have to keep the all-mighty Sauron in the fridge at night!

Carlos is in Costa Rica now (and will be there until mid-December) so I probably won't do anything special for Halloween, but I am taking a trip tomorrow to Plummers island with a couple of people for an annual oyster roast with the Washington Field Biologist's Club (one of those good 'ole boys clubs founded in 1901). It should be interesting!

Canadian cheddar cheese soup

A couple of nights ago, I made a recipe from the Canada restaurant Le Cellier in EPCOT, Walt Disney World. I had heard that this soup was really, really good and after finding a recipe online I decided to try it for myself! (If you want to make this be forewarned -- it makes enough soup to feed an army! Carlos and I have had this soup for dinner the past 2 nights and we still have leftovers)

Oh yea, I also had carrots in the recipe at first, but I didn't add them (even though you can see them in the ingredients picture). If you want to put them in the soup, use 1/2 a cup of finely chopped carrots and add them when you add the onion and celery.

EPCOT Canadian cheddar cheese soup

INGREDIENTS
½ pound chopped bacon (put in freezer for a few minutes then chop)
4 tbsp. butter
1 medium onion (finely chopped)
½ cup celery (finely chopped)
1 cup flour
3 cups chicken stock
4 cups whole milk
16 oz. white cheddar cheese (grated)
1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 cup warm beer (dark ale)
chopped chives or scallions to garnish

DIRECTIONS
• Render down bacon in hot pot (medium heat) until slightly browned. Add butter and heat until melted.

• Add onion and celery and sauté until onions are translucent and bacon is slightly crisped.

• Sprinkle in flour and stir constantly for 2 minutes. Stir in milk and stock, a little at a time, blending well to ensure that there are no lumps. Bring the liquid to a boil, cover and simmer over low heat for 15 minutes. Stir every once in a while.

• Remove from heat and slowly whisk in the cheese (a little at a time as it melts), Worcestershire sauce and beer. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

• Garnish with chopped chives or scallions.

El Hongito

A few weeks back, Carlos ordered a log online. This wasn't just any old log, it was a special log that had been inoculated with shiitake mushrooms! Once we received the log, we submerged it in a bucket of water, then chilled it overnight in the freezer to break the dormancy of the mushrooms (so the log thought he had just gone through winter and would start producing mushrooms).

For a while, we thought we had a dud log because we didn't see any mushrooms. Until one day about 2 weeks ago we saw signs of fungal life! We watched intently as the mushrooms continued to grow until we finally harvested them last night and ate them with some butter -- they were pretty good!

Last weekend

Last weekend was a fun and productive one. We made another journey out to Rockville, Maryland on Saturday to pick up our car and to treat our friend Diana to lunch in thanks for letting us stay with her/keep our car with her while we were getting all moved in to the city. We went to a Peruvian restaurant in Rockville called La Limeña. I had found it in the Washingtonian magazine and it was highly recommended. It turned out to be really nice! The food was good and tasted authentic, the service was friendly, and the atmosphere was comfortable. Carlos, Diana, and I all loved everything we had to eat and drink. Overall we had: ceviche mixto, papas huancaina, parihuela, tacu tacu, chicha, and jugo de maracuya. At the end of our (huge!) lunch, we shared a delicious bowl of lucuma ice cream. Lucuma was a fruit I had in Peru and is only found in the Andes -- the ice cream is bright orange and tasted like vanilla and pumpkin (sort of). Next time we are in Rockville, we will have to go back.

We also visited Eastern Market again (we basically do this every weekend) on Sunday where we bought some pickles and browsed the flea market. The days here have been so beautiful and autumnal -- the weather is clear and crisp~

Update

It's been pretty busy 'round these parts recently and that hasn't left me with much time for blogging. Boo. I also don't have any interesting pictures to show because I have mostly been working at the museum in the office and writing papers. Things on that front are going well and I am preparing a manuscript for submission in a top ecology journal. We shall see if it will be accepted! I am also working on ideas for a post-doc position that I want to apply for involving hyper-abundant native herbivores (in this case peccaries, which I worked with in Costa Rica for my Ph.D) and how they may facilitate plant invasions. I need to write up a project outline and get in touch with a potential advisor at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) and then start working on that fellowship application.

I am really liking Washington DC right now -- we are finally getting some nice, crispy cool fall weather -- time to break out the sweaters and coats! I can't believe that it was about a year ago now (last week in fact) that Carlos and I were here scouting out the place and visiting the museum -- we had no idea we would be living here then! It seems like that trip (and also the trip visiting with my UCSB friends here) was a ton of time ago...I guess I was pretty busy last year!

Squirrels!

I love squirrels. They are a lot like agoutis (and of course I love agoutis!). I especially love all of the squirrels that I see daily here in Washington DC. Sciurus carolinensis (the Eastern gray squirrel) are everywhere and they have a lot of color variation in their fur. I love seeing the black-colored (melanistic) squirrels, but I have also seen a bunch of white or really blond squirrels too (they might be more rare because they are more evident to predators). Also, the squirrels here are fed by tourists all the time because I make clicking noises at them and hold out my hand and they come right over -- close enough to pet! Maybe I need to start keeping peanuts in my pockets?

Crafty Bastards day 'o fun

This past Saturday, Carlos and I went to Adams Morgan for a craft show called Crafty Bastards -- it was awesome! We had a really fun time seeing all sorts of cool crafts and people and dogs. We arrived right when it opened (10 am) and there were already tons of people there. By the time we left (a couple of hours later), the place was packed and it was hard to walk around and even see what was for sale in all of the booths. We bought a few cool things and I will put pictures of them up in another post. It is so exciting to finally live in a city where creativity is appreciated and celebrated (so NOT Miami!).

After exploring crafts, we metro'ed to Cleveland Park and ate some delicious lunch at Lebanese Taverna -- one of our favorite food spots so far.

After a nice lunch, we walked a couple of blocks to the National Zoo to enjoy the fall weather. We stopped in the small mammal house and visited the maned wolf area -- everyone was very sleepy that day!