The Egg Salad Experiment: Curry Egg Salad with Walnuts

Posted by Joelle on May 17, 2012 2 comments

Like many sandwich salads, egg salad is one of those that is in desperate need of a facelift…a new hairdo…something. In my New Fangled Egg Salad, I use carrots and jalapenos to give the recipe a kick and a crunch.

But you can only have the same thing so many times. So I decided to try something new. You may look at the ingredients and gasp, but trust me. The walnuts give the egg salad an earthy, soft crunch, and the kick comes from the onions and the curry seasonings. It’s nice; you won’t be basically eating eggs and mayonnaise anymore. If you think about it, eggs and mayonnaise sounds pretty gross.

Equipment

1 medium bowl
1 spoon

Ingredients

7 hard boiled eggs, chopped fine
1 1/4 cup mayonnaise
3/4 cup walnuts, dry roasted and chopped
1/2 cup red onions, chopped fine
2 tsp Garam Masala
1 tsp Thai Red Curry Paste
Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions

Mix everything together in the medium bowl. You can substitute the mayonnaise for greek yogurt or a low-fat mayonnaise. That’s the way I’m going to make it next time. If you miss that mayonnaise tang, try adding some lemon juice or vinegar. You could also add different kinds of mild flavored nuts. I think I might try pine nuts next time.

Inkling

Posted by Joelle on May 16, 2012 2 comments

Out of my head
spring the shapes
and colors of red
and blue landscapes.

Beasts and birds
trip and fall
like lips with words
too heavy to call.

They start as tear drops
and grow leaves
and stringy hair flops
into eyes that grieve.

Swords sprout
from sharp little fingers
and raise shields worn out
from fear that lingers.

They talk to flowers
and they breath the trees
hear the creak of hours
and eat the smell of leaves.

I want to water them
and make them grow
coddle them
and teach them how to sew.

But they can’t stay in my head
they must explore
they can’t stay in this pen
there’s an open door.

The flat wide blank
doesn’t know what’s in store
The ship that sank
knows not the depth of the ocean floor.

Best Tuna Salad Ever

Posted by Joelle on May 14, 2012 No comment

So you don’t like tuna salad sandwiches? I don’t blame you really. They’re kind of fishy, kind of squishy, and rather gray. It’s not even all that healthy with all that mayonnaise in it. Reinvigorate your classic tuna salad sandwich with the following recipe. It’s more like an ooey gooey grilled cheese than a boring tuna salad. (I found this recipe on reddit and have changed the amounts only slightly.)

 

Equipment

1 medium mixing bowl
1 spoon
cutting board
knife

Ingredients

2 6.4 oz vacuum sealed tuna packs in water
1/4 cup finely chopped red onion
6 medium leaves fresh basil, finely chopped
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar (to taste, you might want less)
1 tsp red pepper flakes
salt and pepper to taste
2 slices muenster cheese
spicy brown mustard

Directions

Mix all you ingredients in a medium bowl. Go ahead and eyeball the measurements if you want; you aren’t baking a cake here. Sure you can substitute dried basil for fresh, but it really won’t be the same. Serve in a tuna melt with muenster cheese and whole grain bread. Broil in the oven for a few minutes. Or you could eat it cold.

 

It Lives!!!

Posted by Joelle on May 14, 2012 No comment
DSC00306

After many months and thousands of dollars, the Laeta is now a complete sailboat.

We spent this past weekend cleaning her up, setting up an inventory, getting the motor running, and rigging the sails.

The previous owner of our boat had loaded the Laeta up with tons of stuff. He ferreted the stuff away in cubby holes and drawers, wells and shelves. We unloaded it all. There was a lot of redundancy. For instance, we have three swim ladders, three mops, tons of extra engine parts, five fire extinguishers. Keep in mind this is only a 30-foot boat. To say it is well equipped is a bit of an understatement. Even for all the stuff it has, most of it was covered in dirt or dust. Some of the items had rotted from age. Not surprising, since it’s a 40-year-old boat.

There was dirt, not just dust, but dirt on almost all of the surfaces. Elbow grease, Pine-sol, and about 4 hours solved that problem.

When we got there this weekend, the engine still wasn’t working. After many hours, and many consultations with the marina owner, Bill, Chris was able to get the engine working. And now it purrs. We were able to motor from one end of the marina to the front end with no trouble.

We spent Saturday night getting the sails up, again with a lot of help from Bill. I’ll be posting an in-depth procedure on how to rig a Cal 29.

All we have left to do is actually sail the thing. Bill has highly recommended that we get someone to tell us how to navigate the channel leading out of the marina. Word is it’s tricky. Lake Erie is also very shallow, so we have to be careful not to run aground while sailing. This means we’ll actually have to navigate. Navigating a sailboat in water is different from navigating a car from one point to another. The wind and current push the sailboat off course constantly, called leeway (vs headway, which is when the sailboat is going in the direction that you want to go) so you aren’t always sailing exactly where you think you are.  Which can lead to problems if the portion of the lake you are navigating has sand bars.

When navigating, redundancy is a good thing. We have a Garmin GPS, chartplotting and GPS on a tablet computer, and paper charts.

Soon we will be sailing.

The Laeta Arrives

Posted by Joelle on May 7, 2012 4 comments

It’s been a while since we talked about the Laeta, our new-old sailboat. This is because our situation with the Laeta until now has been pretty frustrating. We tried to motor it last October, only to discover that the engine has a few issues…mainly that it doesn’t run. Dirty gas got in the fuel pump since the boat sat on the hard for a few seasons.

Recently, we decided to get the Laeta shipped from Vermont to Erie, Michigan, near Toledo. This was an expensive decision monetarily, but we thought it would afford us more sailing time on the sailboat, be safer, and be a more reliable method of actually getting the boat here. We were right, for the most part.

We hired a shipper on Uship.com after receiving a few bids, and we’ve been really happy with the whole ordeal. Mostly because the boat ended up where it was supposed to much faster than it would have had we motored it through the Erie Canal or the St. Lawrence Seaway. There were some problems along the way. The boat was too tall for the trailer, so our first, second, and third attempts to get it on the road were delayed because the wrong one arrived to pick up the boat. Our marina in Vermont claimed they were too busy to remove the bow or stern pulpits or the stanchions to make the boat below the required 12 feet.

Finally we got a very cooperative shipper, Lee and his wife Lisa, who did all they had to do to get the boat on their trailer. They delivered our sailboat with perfection, they were super friendly, and they even stuck around to make sure the boat got in the water safely.

The Laeta Arrives at Lost Peninsula
Laeta on the Trailer
Following the Laeta back to the Lift

Lost Peninsula Marina also worked very hard and their talented crew had our sailboat in the water and rigged the same day.

Loading Area
Readying the Laeta for Lift
Troubleshooting
The Laeta gets a Lift
UP UP and AWAY
The Lift Moves
Laeta in the Water

The whole setup was pretty impressive, and rigged for much larger boats than ours.

It took four guys to lift the mast. Bill the owner of the marina, Lee the shipper, Fred the lift operator, and Chris all helped to lift the mast off the trailer and move it out of the way.

Stepping the mast was a bit hair raising. They lifted it with the same thing they used to lift the boat, and it was a bit wobbly. I got to hold the harken roller furling for a while and the stays. It was pretty intense. Bill, the new owner of the marina, said he was nervous about doing the whole thing. I think we are the first mast that he has stepped at this marina, but he and Fred did a marvelous job. Didn’t even scratch the fiberglass.

Finally the Laeta was resting at the dock near the lift after a long day of work. Though there’s still a lot of work to be done.

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