New York cheese pizza

Dave surprised me one day with the book The Elements of Pizza, by Ken Forkish. It's full of pizza-making techniques and a variety of dough and pizza recipes. I've made pizza with store-bought dough, but I've never made a pizza completely from scratch. For my first one, I decided to go with something simple: a single dough ball for a New York cheese pizza. I used 00 flour and baked it on a pizza stone, but I couldn't get my oven past 525 degrees and I don't have a pizza peel or an instant read thermometer (to check the temperature of the water and the dough for proper yeast encouragement).

YUM!

Most of the dough recipes yield three balls of dough and take more than a day, but this one you can start in the morning and have pizza for dinner. You have to give the yeast time to work so most of the time that this recipe takes is waiting for the yeast to do its thing. It's actually quite quick if you just count the time you're actively doing something.

SO GOOD!

Kneading the dough was kind of fun and easier than I expected. When it was time to stretch it and shape it into a pizza, it did look more like a pizza than an amoeba...but it had a slight accident going into the oven so the shape changed a bit then. Haha.

DELICIOUS!

Okay, so how did it taste? HOLY CRAP. It was so good. So, so good. The dough was amazing, and this was the "quick" dough in the book, not one of the doughs the author considers the "better" doughs (that take longer). It wasn't just the dough- the pizza was delicious. Dave said it was better than the pizza from our usual pizza place.

It's time to get a pizza peel. I'll be making my own pizza more often.

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra

Last night we went to see the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at the Williams Center for the Arts in Easton. 

Dave really liked the Danish String Quartet so I figured I'd press my luck and see if he liked this. The performance was great! They started with something modern, then pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii joined them for some Chopin. After intermission, they played some Tchaikovsky. 

Tsujii was outstanding. Remarkable. So was the orchestra. I'm a big fan of Chopin, so it was great to see his work performed in person. It was a good time. 

Medieval Times

I've wanted to go to Medieval Times for years but never have. When I heard that they updated their show and a queen was in charge instead of a king, it was time to pull the trigger!

Oh yes. It's a castle.

Dave and I went to the one in Lindhurst, NJ. When you get there, they assign you a color and a table. We were in the green section, rooting for the Green Knight.

I was happy to see that everyone gets in the spirit and wears the crown of their section. I didn't really know what to expect, but I knew that you had to eat with your hands. They say it's because they didn't have utensils in medieval times. I doubt that's true...but you have to eat with your hands here. They give you wet wipes, but we brought extra napkins and needed them.

Yummy

The queen came out to say hey and the knights were introduced.

Long may she reign!

Then the feast was on and there was dressage and a falconry and drill team demonstration while we were eating. Pretty cool.

the Queen's Guard doing drill team maneuvers

Time for the games. The jousting was neat.

There was sword fighting, too, and a bad guy who had to be defeated.

It ended up being a lot of fun. Before we went, I was concerned that it would be geared too much toward kids, but it was a great time. There were a lot of adults there without children. It's definitely worth a trip if you have one close by.

Wyoming adventure

We went to Wyoming a year ago, so I guess it's about time I blogged about it. Here are some of the highlights. We flew into Montana and entered the park through the Roosevelt Arch.

"For the benefit and enjoyment of the people"

We checked out the terraces at Mammoth Hot Springs. This is where we got our first taste of the smell. Oh, the smell. Some parts of Yellowstone smell like rotten eggs. SO BAD. You get used to it. Thanks, supervolcano!

Mammoth Hot Springs

Yellowstone is huge, so we stayed in two different areas of the park. Also, we went during shoulder season but it was still packed. I can't imagine what it would be like during the summer peak. The next day we went to Norris Geyser Basin. There were bubbling lakes and smelly gas. In some places, you could hear the steam/smoke escaping from the ground. One of the lakes sounded like the crackling of rice krispies.

Porcelain Basin or Mordor?

The Porcelain Basin area was much more crowded than Back Basin. We did see this little guy disobeying the sign there.

This squirrel laughs at danger.

We also went to the Museum of the National Park Ranger because I love museums and I generally drag Dave into every museum we encounter.

me and Dave

Like all NPS rangers, the ranger in the museum was very friendly. She took this photo. I imagine she does this a lot. I made us drive all over so I could collect my National Parks Passport stamps...and we got stuck in our first bison jam. Bison are everywhere in Yellowstone. We saw them every day. They will stand around in the road blocking traffic. Dave said he got tired of them, but I never did.

Yellowstone bison

We saw all kinds of beautiful wildlife in Yellowstone- bison, coyotes, pronghorns, magpies, ravens, elk, mule deer...but no wolves. We drove around Lamar Valley up until sunset looking for wolves, but alas, they were not to be found.

Lamar Valley at sunset

I didn't expect to see mountains at Yellowstone. I thought there would be geysers and smelly bits, but not this majestic beauty in the northeastern part of the park. It was dark as we drove back to the hotel, and the bison were in the road again. I could have reached out and touched them. They were grunting and snorting and kind of intimidating up close!

Something else I didn't know- there's a giant canyon in Yellowstone.

Yellowstone Falls

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is pretty cool. This view is from Artist Point, but we did hike down to the brink of the Lower Falls to get an up close look. Now it was time to leave this part of Yellowstone and head to the geyser part. The next part of the trip felt much more touristy. When we stayed in Canyon, we felt like we were in the wilderness. Staying right next to Old Faithful felt overrun with people.

Old Faithful

Old Faithful was neat, and we saw it erupt A LOT. It goes off every ninety minutes or so, and since we were staying right by there, it was easy to catch it when we were walking around or coming and going. It wasn't my favorite, though. Grand Geyser was my favorite.

Grand Geyser

I told Dave that time passes more slowly when you're waiting for a geyser to erupt. The National Park Service has a great app that shows the predicted eruption times of some of the geysers around the Old Faithful area. However, Old Faithful is called Old Faithful for a reason. The margin of error is very small. The margin of error for the others is pretty big. We waited over an hour and a half for Grand Geyser to erupt. WORTH IT. We saw Grand Geyser erupt in the distance when we were waiting for Castle Geyser to erupt and thought- we have to see this one up close.

Walking on the boardwalk by the Grand Prismatic Spring

I had been looking forward to seeing the Grand Prismatic Spring, and it didn't disappoint.

detail of the Grand Prismatic Spring from above

You can walk around the boardwalks right next to it, and you can see it from an overlook. It's pretty neat. Even the steam is multicolored. And you can feel the heat coming from the water.

See the tiny people?

A lot of times when I see photos of this, the saturation looks too dialed up. But this is what it really looked like. Dave's dad recommended we hike to Fairy Falls. The bad weather that would plague the rest of our trip was moving in, but we managed to hike to the falls before the rain hit.

Fairy Falls

Fairy Falls was beautiful. It's hard to capture in this crappy iPhone photo (didn't bring my big camera on this hike). This hike was through grizzly country, and it was the only time I was uneasy hiking the whole time we were there. We had bear spray, but still.

And here is where I tell the story that embarrasses Dave. We were hiking along, and all of a sudden Dave jumped in front of me with his arms out to cover me. He thought he heard a grizzly and instinctively moved to protect me from it. AW. That was nice since otherwise he couldn't stop joking about how he didn't have to outrun a grizzly if we saw one, he just had to outrun ME. Haha.

On to Grand Teton National Park! I liked Yellowstone, but I loved Grand Teton. It's too bad it rained or was overcast most of our time there. Sometimes we couldn't even see the mountains.

stormy view of the Tetons from our room

It didn't even matter. The Tetons were the most majestic mountains I've ever seen. Breathtaking. And we saw so much wildlife! I desperately wanted to see a moose, especially a bull moose. We talked to one of the rangers, and she took out a map and circled areas around the park where they had been seen lately. She was SPOT ON. I think we saw moose every day, at every place she mentioned.

It was fantastic. We drove around looking for wildlife everywhere and found it. We even saw baby moose investigating a great blue heron. We saw female moose more often than males, but we did see a couple of bulls.

bull moose

There were elk all over the place.

elk

We saw a lot of elk right near our room. One morning a couple of mule deer were hanging out a few feet from our window. One of the times we were driving around, we saw a solitary elk, and he bugled! They sound like tea kettles. You don't expect that sound to come from an elk. We heard a few more bugling during our trip. Another time we stopped to see a pronghorn who was standing right by the side of the road. I didn't even get out of the car.

pronghorn

He was gorgeous. I kept waiting, and he finally looked right at me. We saw a couple of black bears, too.

Look at those claws!

He wasn't as close as he appears in this photo. This one was hanging out eating berries, but one ran right in front of the car another time. We saw a fox in a parking lot, too. Animals everywhere! I think I startled Dave when I yelled STOP THE CAR!!!!! because I saw moose right next to the road. We were the first ones there, but soon a crowd gathered. That's what happens- either look for a crowd and you'll find animals, or if you're the first, soon a crowd will appear.

The weather kept getting worse, and it even snowed.

cloudy, snowy Tetons...and Dave

Those mountains, wow. Our flight was so early that we had to get up and drive to the airport in the middle of the night. The sky was clear for the first time during our trip so we pulled over to look at the stars. So many stars! We even saw the Milky Way. We saw a fox, too. See, animals everywhere. I'm completely in love with the Tetons, and one day I have to go back.

If you want to see more photos from the trip, check them out here.

Doctor Who: The Sea Devils

The Whoathon starts again. People make fun of this episode because of the Sea Devils, but I like the Sea Devils. They're fun. Plus, the Master! Remember, the Master was captured by UNIT. Now he's being held captive in a castle on an island, and the Doctor and Jo go to see him. The warden claims that they're all immune to hypnotism and the Master hasn't tried to escape, but we all know the inmate is running the asylum, right?

the Master

The Doctor suspects the Master has something to do with the vanishing ships in the area. But it's the Sea Devils...hee!

a Sea Devil

They look crazy, they wear fishnet dresses, and they have those weird flat guns. They're fantastic. The Doctor immediately connects them to the Silurians and says they must have been woken up by the work at the old sea fort. He also points out that the Silurians aren't from the Silurian era. Nice.

The Doctor finds out that the Master isn't really a prisoner anymore and confronts him, which leads to a sword fight.

Huzzah!

The Master plans on contacting the Sea Devils and helping them take over the planet. When the Doctor asks what's in it for him, he says the pleasure of seeing the human race exterminated. Ouch. That's cold, even for the Master. The Doctor is captured, but Jo rescues him. I like how they gave her such agency here.

Jo Grant

Check out the 3rd Doctor's sonic screwdriver. He's using it to trigger mines as they make their escape.

the Doctor and Jo Grant

The Master builds a machine to call the Sea Devils, and they invade the castle.

The Doctor travels to the sea floor and makes contact with the Sea Devils. They say the planet is theirs. (They went into hibernation, just as the Silurians did, but the catastrophe never happened.) The Doctor attempts to convince the Sea Devils to make peace with the humans. It seems to work, even when the Master shows up and tries to ruin everything.

Then a political minister arrives at the base and acts like a cartoonish buffoon. He orders the Navy to blow everything up. Bye, peace. Time for a Sea Devil invasion!

With the Master, they take over the military base. Soon the military takes the base back, but the Master escapes. Then there's a jet ski chase that looks quite fun. Roger Delgado's stunt double looks nothing like him, but it does appear that Jon Pertwee rode the jet ski himself.

Whee!

The Master leads the Doctor right to the Sea Devils. The device to revive the rest of the Sea Devils is activated, but the Sea Devils double cross the Master and lock them both up. The Doctor says not to worry, he reversed the polarity of the neutron flow when the Master wasn't looking. It's about to blow up! They get away, but the Master escapes custody in the end and is on the loose again...

THE RUNDOWN

Doctor: Third
Companions: Jo Grant
Episode: #62, "The Sea Devils," six parts
Adversary: the Master and the Sea Devils

Classic Lines: the Doctor, talking about the Master: "He used to be a friend of mine once. A very good friend. In fact, you might almost say we were at school together."

Tuck This Away to Impress Your Friends: The Master watches the Clangers, a puppet show for children. (Later, in a 10th Doctor story, he watches the Teletubbies.)
Next Up: "The Mutants"

Ricketts Glen State Park

I took off one day last week and headed out to Ricketts Glen State Park. It was about a two hour drive, out past Wilkes-Barre. I had heard good things, and I decided to do the seven-mile lollipop loop, hiking through woods and past over twenty waterfalls.

I started at the Route 118 parking area. The hike starts out as a level walk through the woods along the stream. There are several crossings over cool little bridges, and the sound of the water flowing over the rocks was soothing. 

 
As you hit the first three waterfalls before Waters Meet, it starts to get steeper.

Then you arrive at Waters Meet, and you have to decide- do you go to the left around the loop, or do you go to the right. 50 Hikes in Eastern Pennsylvania had said to go to the left, and I am SO GLAD that's how I went. Here's the thing. When there are waterfalls, there are steep trails. Going to the left meant I was going uphill toward the beginning of my hike. I got through the worst of it, then I recovered along the flat Highland Trail through the woods. The second half of the hike, along the second stream, it was all downhill. So I went uphill when I had the most energy and cruised the rest of the way.

See those steps? Uphill like that. Lots like that. It's much better to do that in the beginning than the end. There are giant waterfalls and small waterfalls and multi-layer waterfalls.

The tallest one is called Ganoga Falls. It was a pretty popular rest stop.

A couple in their 70s was sitting on a log looking at the falls. They grabbed their walking sticks and got ready to leave, but the man took out his phone and insisted that the woman go stand in front of the falls so he could take a photo. I couldn't help think of me and Dave. He does that all the time to me! I hope we're still out having adventures when we're their age.

walking up alongside Ganoga Falls

Dave wasn't with me this time since he had to work, but I'll go back with him in the future. I really liked Oneida Falls.

Oneida Falls

I think this one was my favorite of the park. It's the one that made me wish I had my DSLR and tripod. I was almost at the top, near the flat trail through the woods that led to the second stream, so I sat on one of those flat rocks for a little water break and a rest before pressing on.

Bye, Oneida!

It's worth mentioning that you should bring water, even if you're just doing the shorter loop around the falls and not the full seven miles starting down at Route 118. However, I really recommend starting at the southern parking lot. If you start near the campgrounds in the north, you'll go downhill first and you'll have to come back uphill. Also, wear boots if you have them because some parts of the trail are wet and slippery. I didn't have a problem with sturdy hiking boots.

Yep, that's a fallen tree.

The trails are clearly marked and well maintained, which is always appreciated. I was surprised at how many people were there on a weekday. I got there in the morning and a handful of cars were in the lot. When I left in the afternoon, the lot was almost full- and it's big.

I can't say enough how much I enjoyed this hike. It was the best hike I've done in Pennsylvania. You're mostly walking along water, and the views are beautiful.

You stop a lot to look at waterfalls, so that helps with recovery from all the steep inclines.

I felt great when I was done. It was a fantastic day.