Endor Feast

There are eight of us in Rochester that are part of a Dinner Club. We rotate every two weeks cooking and have been doing this for a couple of years. As we've pretty much made everything possible, we started to have theme rounds. We had the "secret ingredient" round (a la cuisine!), a country round, and then we all just gave up and declared this round the "choose your own theme round". Last time, my friend Sara came up with the brilliant plan to have dessert for dinner and dinner for dessert. We had a cake (meatloaf with mashed potato frosting) with ice cream (mashed potatoes) and confetti (colorful vegetables) for dinner and then a burger (two sides of a vanilla cupcake with a brownie in the middle and frosting tomatoes/lettuce and fries (sugar cookies cut in strips) with ketch-up (strawberry dipping sauce) for dessert.

Dessert for Dinner

Dinner for Dessert

I had to think of something decent to follow this up and hence a Star Wars themed dinner was born. Invitations went out that started "A short time from now, in a neighborhood really quite close..." and ended with "So R2Detour over to Amber's for an 'Out-Of-This-World' dinner night".

The menu proceeded as such:

Appetizer
Obi Wontons w/TIE (thai) Fighter Sauce

Drinks
Jedi Juice (Crunchy Punch)
Bantha Milk (By Request)

Salad Course
Organakin Salad

Main Course
Ham Solo Burgers -or-
Millenium Falcon Filets
Vader Tots

Choice of Burger Toppings Included:
Pickled Lukecumbers
Empire Can't Catch-up
Mon Mustard
Gwalkermole (later dubbed 'Ewokamole' by Nathan)

Dessert
Princess Leia Cinnamon Rolls
Hoth Brand Ice Cream

A good time was had by all and we even drew Vader, Leia, and Ham Solo himself from all the way across the galaxy to the party!

Amanda (Vader) & Amber (Leia) with Handsome Ham Solo

May the course be with you!

Adventures of the Waning Days of Summer

Various people have started to wonder aloud why I haven't posted in three weeks and the answer is I can't keep up! Much has happened since the bat incident, which followed a perfectly fun weekend in Pipestone with my grandparents and parents. We spent a lot of time in Luverne, MN, visiting the Jim Brandenburg Gallery (he's amazing!) and Blue Mounds State Park. The highlight of that visit (besides seeing everyone) was hiking to the Visitor's Center, which is built right into a cliff with a beautiful look-out tower that used to house a writer's study. One whole side of the house is a quartzite wall, and that includes the bathrooms!

The Cliffs at Blue Mounds with some Contemporary Rock Art

The family - minus Grandma who is hiding behind the camera

The next weekend, ten of us headed back out to Split Rock Creek State Park for what promised to be a great camping trip. Good friends, tents, delicious camping food, kayaks, and yes, even a few perfectly legal beverages (if you're outside the park). However, reality hit when we couldn't leave our tents Saturday morning because of the rain. It finally subsided enough for the creation of what was henceforth known as the "party pod", which was my tent plus two giant IBM umbrellas plus four people MAX plus games! I got to introduce everyone to the best game on the planet, Werewolf. This is a psychological game I learned about from my colleague, Dirk Spannaus, in Tanzania. With a group of no less than nine people, you split the crowd secretly into wolves and villagers. The wolves silently kill one villager per round and the villagers discuss amongst themselves, trying to figure out who the wolves are. It's way more fun and interesting than I can make it sound, so if you help me gather up nine people sometime, you can try it out for yourself.

It was nice for everyone to finally go on a tour with Nathan at the park and Jess, Jackie, Amanda, and Danny earned their Junior Ranger Badges (lovely pictures of pipes and wildlife were produced by all)!! Later that night, the rain, thunder, and lightening were so horribly close, I decided to bail and headed toward our dry apartment in Pipestone at 12:30am.

Amanda, Jackie, Jess, & Danny with their Badges

Everyone, including Marie & Kris, had fun taking their pictures with the ranger

And that brings me to this weekend! Friday I went to Madison for lunch with my friend, Jas, who I hadn't seen in 500 years. The day was a PERFECT day to be there. After a two-hour lunch outside on State Street, I wandered around campus and enjoyed some delicious Babcock Hall Ice Cream on the terrace. I really miss that city.

Bascom Hall

I took a trip with my parents up to Horicon Marsh on Saturday. What a spectacular place! The scenery is beautiful and if you're into bird watching this place is heaven. We saw Sandhill Cranes and Egrets among a plethora of other birds. There were also frogs parked every 10 feet on the trail, a muskrat that ran a few feet in front of us, and a pair of River Otters in the marsh.




On our way back, we stopped at an unlikely roadside attraction: the Honey Acres "Honey of a Museum". Complete with a 70's era video that taught us everything about bees and beekeeping, this place was kind of funny, but kind of sad. I guess after visiting so many National Parks, I expect interpretation to be a little more artfully done, but I do admit that I learned something and will probably check for the Honey Acres label when I buy my next jar of honey. You can try out some honey and stare at a working beehive if you can get the little kids out of the way first.


A little preview of what's coming up soon - we've got a two-week vacation planned in October to the East Coast and I'm bringing my laptop to blog. Lucky you.