Ha-ha bunnies

I can finally post about a bunch of the crafts I worked on this past fall and winter (and gave out as holiday gifts). One of these little crafts that was really fun to make was the "ha-ha bunny." I got the ha-ha bunny pattern out of a book my sister gave me for my birthday: The Cuter Book. I modified the pattern a little to make a variety of bunnies: plain white, albino, siamese kitty-like, blue, and gray. I turned all of the little ha-ha bunnies into ornaments and gave them to friends and family as gifts. I kept the albino one to add to Carlos' and my Christmas ornament collection. Ha-ha bunnies are really fun and full of an energetic happiness!

Home for the holidays

Carlos and I are up in Washington state visiting with my folks for the holidays and we are having a great time! We are relaxing, working, playing, wrapping presents, and eating well. We have been pretty busy enjoying hanging out with my parents and seeing friends. I have also been able to visit my buddy Molly in Seattle and we had a blast thrifting, wandering, and murdering burgers (I had a burger called "The Fig & the Pig" -- burger with bacon, gorgonzola, and fig paste. It was SO good!).

I will post some pictures of all the festivities soon -- Merry Christmas everyone~

Charley Harper x-stitch for mama

I have been working on a bunch of crafts for the past couple of months, but I can't really post about any of them because they still need to be sent out as Christmas gifts and cards to people who read this blog! One crafty item that I can post about is the birthday present that I made for my mom (I made it back in October to send out before leaving for Costa Rica -- Carlos and I were traveling on my mama's birthday on 30 November).

I was inspired by a mural made by the awesome nature artist Charley Harper and I interpreted his tile-work into a cross-stitch: I call it the "Alaska Sampler." I stitched a black bear, musk ox, and moose (some of my mom's favorite mammals) and added little sparks of colorful stitches (Charley Harper also did this in his murals and I thought it looked cool and interesting). I really like the way this turned out and I think my mom also liked this little textile interpretation of Charley Harper!

Costa Rica -- Rara Avis

During our 1-month field trip to Costa Rica, Carlos and I spent 20 days at a remote location called Rara Avis. It is really more of an ecolodge than a proper biological field station, but there are a few biologists who still conduct research at this site (its heyday was back in the 80's and 90's). To get there is difficult. To get in, Carlos and I rode horses and hiked the final 2 km up the mountain while our gear was brought in on a big tractor. To get out, we hiked most of the way before getting on the bumpy tractor.

Rara Avis is nice and quiet. There is no electricity (except for a generator for a couple of hours at night) and there is a lot of rain (about 8 m per year!). The elevation at Rara Avis ranges from 600 - 800 m asl and is classified as tropical premontane forest. Carlos and I collected lots of beetle and plant specimens for his project. I even made a completely new discovery of a beetle-plant interaction that I plan to write up and submit as a manuscript.

The photo mosaic above shows highlights from the trip. Here are some short descriptions for each photo by row (starting at the top and going left to right):

ROW 1: Paca skull at Plastico station, Waterfall, Mosquito net covered bed, stained glass palm, Carlos collecting plants

ROW 2: Me on the bridge, hummingbird, waterfalls, pink coral fungus, me setting a camera trap

ROW 3: Tent bats (Artibeus), Carlos and Heliconia, eyelash viper (there were TONS of these at Rara Avis), red and black weevil, a new discovery

ROW 4: Cow weevil, spotted weevil, Rolled leaf, bromeliad inflorescence, canopy

ROW 5: Mot mot, tapir skull, view of the forest, river, Erythrina fruits

Fall Festival at Cox Farm

Before Carlos and I left for Costa Rica, we took a trip out to the Cox Farm in Virginia to attend a fall festival. It took about an hour to get to the farm from DC, but it was well worth it! This farm is huge with tons of cool farm animals to see, feed, and pet. There were also a lot of good snacks to eat (including all the apple cider you want), slides to ride, and large pumpkins to look at. I think my favorite thing at the farm was the hay ride: Carlos and I got into the back of a huge cart being pulled by a tractor and it takes you around the farm. There are lots of weird painted wooden cut-outs of rip-off cartoons posted along the route along with lots of other weird, but really fun things. At one point, there is a countdown (with the presidents next to signs of numbers) and when you reach the end of the countdown, people dressed as aliens run out of a space ship to give everyone high-fives! What?! It was really fun and kitschy -- if we are still in Washington next fall, we will definitely go to Cox Farm again. We even got a free pumpkin and squash when we left!

Back!

Sorry for the lack of posts for the entire month of November, but I was in Costa Rica working on some projects -- one of which is at a remote field site without electricity (so no internet either). Carlos and I are back in DC until 15 December when we fly over to Washington (state) to visit my parents for 2.5 weeks. It will also be great to catch up with some friends, eat tasty food, and watch TV with Remlington. I have one adventure to post about that occurred before our Costa Rica trip and I hope to download the photos from my camera soon -- Carlos and I went to a farm for a fall festival and it was a lot of fun~ More to come soon.

WEIRD AL CONCERT!!!

On October 19, Carlos and I went to my first ever Weird Al Yankovic concert (despite trying to see him in concert for at least a decade!) and it was the best concert I have ever been to (of the three total concerts I have seen).

I had such a great time and I think I now have to become a Weird Al groupie. I will DEFINITELY try to see him in concert again. He was such a fantastic showman and all of the music sounded just as good or BETTER than it does on CD! There were tons of costume changes and Weird Al played some GREAT songs; these are the ones that I think were on the set list:

- Polka Face (a polka medley of current songs)
- TMZ
- Smells Like Nirvana
- Skipper Dan (I like this song about the skippers on the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland)
- Party in the CIA
- CNR (a cool song about the awesome Charles Nelson Reilly)
- Canadian Idiot
- Wanna B Ur Lovr
- Money for Nothing / Beverly Hillbillies
- Medley (included tons of great older songs like 'Eat It')
- Amish Paradise
- Perform This Way
- White and Nerdy (LOVE THIS SONG!)
- Fat
- The Saga Begins
- Yoda (played as encore)

Here are a bunch of pictures that I took during the concert (no flash) and Al is pretty washed out in all of them. We had great seats pretty close to the stage!



I also tried to put together a little video of the clips I recorded at the concert with my little point and shoot camera. The sound quality is not the best, but you can see bits from: (1) Smells Like Nirvana, (2) Money for Nothing / Beverly Hillbillies, and (3) White and Nerdy (look at Al's Segway skills!)


I HIGHLY recommend checking out a Weird Al concert and if I'm visiting you, we should go together!

Crafty cards for friends

I made a some cards a while back for a couple of my friends. I made the Donkey Kong card for my buddy Julia to thank her for the radical birthday present she sent me and I made the Emerald Honeycreeper card for my buddy Christina for her 30th birthday goal of receiving at least 30 cards in the mail. I was really into making little watercolor cards at that time and I like the way the colors in both of these cards turned out!

Vegetable tarte tatin

Well, Disney blogging is over (for now!) so I should return to blogging about the random things that go on in my day-to-day adventures!

I recently tried out a recipe for something completely new to me: a vegetable tarte tatin (a kind of French upside-down tart). I think this is usually made with apples and butter, but my version is made with roasted potatoes, sage, onions, garlic, and gouda. First, you roast some potatoes, then make a carmelized sugar mixture with vinegar, with which you coat the bottom of a glass pan. Sprinkle on sage, potatoes, onions, garlic, and gouda. Top with a rolled out piece of puff pastry, coat with an egg wash and bake until delicious! I LOVE this meal -- surprisingly, it tastes like "France" to me! It is savory and sweet, pretty, and fairly easy to make. Yay for trying out new things~

Here is the recipe for the vegetable tarte tatin

Ingredients:
- 3 or 4 red potatoes, cut into ½ inch-thick rounds
- 4 or 5 small purple potatoes, cut into ½ inch-thick rounds
- 1 medium sweet potato, peeled and cut into ½ inch-thick rounds
- 1 small onion, cut into ¼ inch-thick rounds
- 4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
- 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
- Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
- ½ cup sugar
- 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
- 1 small bunch fresh sage or taragon, chopped
- 6 ounces gouda, shredded (about 1 cup)
- 1 8.5-ounce sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed
- All-purpose flour, for dusting
- 1 egg, for egg wash

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Toss the potatoes, olive oil, 1 teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper in a bowl. Spread in a single layer on a baking sheet; bake until tender, about 20 minutes. Let cool slightly.

Meanwhile, mix 3 tablespoons water and the sugar in a skillet and bring to a boil over medium heat. Cook, swirling the pan, until amber, about 7 minutes (Watch carefully. Once the caramel turns amber, it burns very quickly.) Remove from the heat and stir in the vinegar and ¼ teaspoon each salt and pepper. Quickly pour the caramel into a 9-by-13-inch glass baking dish and spread with a rubber spatula. Sprinkle the sage on top.

Arrange the roasted potatoes and parsnips in a single snug layer on top of the caramel and herbs. Scatter the onion and garlic over the roasted vegetables; sprinkle evenly with the gouda.

Roll out the puff pastry on a lightly floured surface into a 9-by-13-inch rectangle. Pierce the pastry all over with a fork, then lay it on top of the gouda, folding the edges under to fit, if necessary. If making ahead of time, cover securely and refrigerate until baking. Before baking, use a pastry brush to brush the egg wash over the crust.

Bake 20 minutes, then reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees F and continue baking until the dough is cooked through, 15 to 20 more minutes. If the crust turns golden brown before the baking time is through, cover the baking dish loosely with foil and continue to bake.

Let the tart cool 10 minutes in the baking dish. Then carefully invert it onto a cutting board. Replace any vegetables that stick to the dish, if necessary.

Cut the tart with a pizza roller and eat!