Ever Onward

2012 - My Conservation Land Year

One of my very first posts on this blog explained that I had stopped making resolutions and had replaced them with a "wanna" list.  That little change in wording felt right, and it turns out that even without the force of a word like "resolution",  I did some of the things on the list.  I also lost interest in others and forgot about them.  And then there was one that started off strong and then went into hibernation.  It's time for that idea to wake up.  

By the end of 2012 I will complete my plan to walk all 26 conservation areas in town that have trails.  The timing is fortuitous because the Lexington Conservation Stewards have completed a major effort to update all the trail maps.  These maps have been tested by volunteers and I'm eager to give them a try.  The old maps gave a general idea of where you were, but the print was so small and blurry that even if you used a magnifying glass it was illegible.   I'm hoping that these new maps will also make it much clearer where the entrances are to the trails; I've walked through more people's yards than I'd like to admit in search of a trail head.

I know I work best with deadlines and To Do lists, so I've added a list of the Lexington Conservation Lands (with trails) in the side bar.  If you mouse over the list and a blog post title pops up, it's a place I've visited and written about.  Clicking on the name will bring you to that post.  I'm hoping that the list will be helpful for anyone who is local or visiting the area. 

When I realized that I'd originally made this resolution two years ago, I was a bit upset with myself.  So much for setting a goal and sticking to it, I thought.  And then I remembered a  quote my dad had at the bottom of his outgoing email for years; "Persistence prevails when all else fails".   

I may be slow, but I'm certainly persistent.

 

 

Apples in my Pocket

Apples have been on my mind.  First came John Seabrook's article "Crunch" in the New Yorker, which I heard read enticingly on NPR.  Seabrook's description of SweeTango, the latest apple breed to hit stores, had me wondering if the experience of biting into its crisp glory, might be worth stabbing myself in the leg with an EpiPen afterward.  Read his words aloud and see if your salivary glands don't leap into action.

 "[The store owner] handed the apple to [the customer]. She looked it over, and then sniffed the calyx, the apple's bottom. It was a large apple, but not supersized, like the Fujis down the aisle. It had sunburned shoulders, yellow sides, and a splash of green around the stem bowl, and it was freckled with 'lenticels,' through which it was imperceptibly breathing." 

Nothing yet?  Read this.

"Like Honeycrisp, SweeTango has much larger cells than other apples, and when you bite into it the cells shatter, rather than cleaving along the cell walls, as is the case with most popular apples. The bursting of the cells fills your mouth with juice. Chunks of SweeTango snap off in your mouth with a loud cracking sound. Although a crisp texture is the single most prized quality in an apple--even more desirable than taste, according to one study--crispness is more a matter of acoustics than of mouthfeel. Vibrations pass along the lower jaw and set the cochlea trembling."

That paragraph deserves an award, and I may too for resisting its siren song. 

Then came a flurry of apple recipes in the blogs and magazines that fill my reading life: Apple Butter,  Roasted Apples , Cardamom Roasted Apples, Apple Pie Cookies, Apple Sauce, Apple Butter, Apple Pie Jam and the most adorable (can a New Englander say "twee"?) Apple Chai Pies in CraftSanity (issues 4 and 5).  I resisted them all on the premise that while I can eat cooked apples safely, these cooked apples were just too desserty at a time of year that needs no more desserts.

We rang in the new year and my apple longings faded along with the discussion of holiday baking.  And then I heard Spilled Milk's Apple episode.  I was a goner.  When Matthew read off a list of apple varieties,  an image of a road trip based on tasting everything from the Aunt Rachel to the Tarbutton flashed into my mind.  Then there was the audio of the hosts, Matthew and Molly crunching into apple after appple.  Seabrook knew what he was talking about when he wrote that the crispness of an apple is all in th ears.

Several cook books and recipe websites later, I had a solution.  The apples were cooked, but still maintained a whisper of crunch.  The recipe wasn't a dessert, in fact it was pretty healthy (see notes in the recipe).  I put one in my pocket (bagged, of course) before heading out for a walk tonight, and a half hour later it was none the worse for having  shared space with my cell phone and keys.    Did I mention they're really yummy too?

Apple and Cinnamon Muffins

This recipe is a modified version of the one Rachel Allen provides in her excellent book Favorite Food at Home: Delicious Comfort Food from Ireland's Most Famous Chef.

Ingredients

2 eggs - lightly beaten

6 tbsp skim milk

6 tbsp (roughly a individual pack) vanilla yogurt

1/6 cup oil

1/3 cup apple sauce - this takes the place of most of the oil normally called for

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 unpeeled apple cut into matchstick size pieces

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

dash of salt

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 cup wheat germ - high in fiber, iron, zinc and folic acid.  It adds a nice nutty taste too.

1 cup wheat flour

1/2 cup light brown sugar

3 hand fulls of your favorite raw (unsalted, unroasted) nut.  I used hazelnuts. 

Directions

1. Preheat to 350 degrees.  The recipe makes 12 muffins.  Use paper liners or grease your muffin pan.  These muffins retain their shape well, so the paper liners are optional.
2. In a large bowl lightly beat the eggs.  Add the wet ingredients: milk, yogurt, oil, vanilla, and apple.
3. In a second bowl mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.  Then add the wheat flour, wheat germ, sugar and most of the nuts.  
4. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ones.  The batter will become quite thick.  As soon as the ingredients are mixed stop, you don't want to overwork the dough.
5. Fill the muffin cups to the top.  The batter is thick enough that this step could even be done successfully by a young child.  Anyone who has ever had a child (or themselves) get frustrated as more cupcake batter ended up on the flat of the pan than in the cups, will love this.
6. Chop the remaining nuts and sprinkle them on top. 
7. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the dough offers resistance (spring) when touched. 

 

Moonscapes

Shorter days do have one magnificent advantage.

When else is your daily walk likely to include a light show like this one?

Do you see the traveler?

    




Gute nacht.

*************************

For the astronomically minded, the moon pictured is a waning gibbous, 99% of full.  I'd never heard the term "gibbous" until a month ago when a second grader explained it to me.  Does knowing the definition make it any more beautiful?  Of course not, but I've always gotten a thrill from being able to name things, especially in the natural world.  I think it might run in the family.

 

 

 

Taking Stock

I did a potentially foolish thing.  A week before Thanksgiving, I decided I needed to lose 15-20 pounds.  No specific "due date", it just needed doing.  The timing was not ideal, but this was not a rash decision.  Somewhere in my mind I'd been been aware that clothes didn't fit the way they used to and smaller clothes had even slowly made their way into separate piles that I'd stopped looking through.  The final straw however was seeing a photo that someone had taken of me at a Meetup event.  I thought to myself "So that's what I really look like".  Gulp.

Since then I have certainly enjoyed the tastes of the season (exhibit A - the Butternut Squash and Carmelized Onion Galette I made for Thanksgiving), but I've tried to adhere to two tenets of healthy living: moderation in all things and do more of what's good and less of what's bad.  In short consume more water and veggies, do less mindless eating and  get back into a walking habit.  The last one is the one that I want to talk about here.

Have you heard of gmap?  Apparently the website has been around for years, but I just learned about it from a friend who uses it and I'm Christmas-morning kind of excited.  The site uses Google Maps to let you plot your walk/run/ride.  It can then tell you (depending on how much information you type in)  how far you went, estimated calories burned and your pace.  I'm most excited about the distance since I can't tell you how many times I've had to retrace my steps to find my pedometer on the ground.  I remember years ago my mother started on a walking regimen for health reasons and wanted to track her distance.  She bought a map of our town, and after each walk colored in her route with red pen, measured it with a piece of string and then using the key, converted it to miles.  She was fastidious with her measurements, and often looked at her red veined map with pride.  She would have loved gmap. 

Another benefit of gmap, especially for someone like me who is trying to (re)create a daily walking habit, you can enter your excursions on a calendar.  This makes it  easy to keep track of how often (or rarely) you're getting out on the road.  I've found this visual helpful when my motivation is lacking. 

Last but not least, each trip gets a unique URL, so you can share routes with friends (or blog readers).  Time to lace up those shoes and layer on the woolens; this is going to be the Winter of Walking!

Committed

I'm over committed in projects, promises, memberships and expectations.

I'm under committed to giving myself time.  Time to float, arms out, carried by the current of one passion until I'm heavy with all I've soaked in.  Instead I'm always splashing about, from puddle to puddle, each calling out for me to stray a little longer, look a little closer. 

But (you all knew there was a "but" coming, didn't you?) how do I prioritize when each ought, must and should comes from something I believe in, want to do well and chose to bring into my life?  Maybe each activity isn't something I want to do, but they come as part of something larger that I do want in my life. 

I think I need to walk on it.