February: Walking the Line's 50th post!

Hey!  We made it to 50.  I can't say the blog is going strong, but it's still going!  February brought us a little more snow than January, but I think we're still on track to have one of the worst year's for snow on record.  Trying to post monthly is at least helping me capture the little things going on each month.  My dad's extended family has had a monthly family newsletter for years and lately they have been encouraging those of us from our generation to contribute.  I like to think that keeping the blog updated on a monthly basis counts as my contribution. :)  February wasn't too exciting.  Drew passed his exam to become an official professional ski instructor.  He learned a lot of good techniques for himself.  It even helped me out a little since I went skiing TWICE this month.  If you don't know, I never ever skied before I met Drew.  Our first day of Drew teaching me to ski started out with a lot of laughs (which I think you can still see videos of on my Facebook page) but ended with Drew's first introduction to my hotheadedness (not featured on Facebook but you can bet it's one of Drew's favorite stories to tell people about me.)  Luckily, he stuck with me despite my flaws and inability to ski, and every year since I've gone skiing exactly one time a season.  It usually coincides with Drew's birthday as his birthday wish is always, "I want to go skiing with you."  This is enough of a guilt trip to get me back on the hill, vowing again to not lose my temper and make his birthday any worse than just having to wait for me to get down the bunny hill over and over again all day. Unfortunately, I don't have enough self control to stop myself and most of his birthday ski day memories include that time I impaled him with a ski pole/threw a ski/yelled profanities at a well meaning skier passing by/threatened to throw myself off the chairlift/etc. Every year it gets a little better, and last year I could actually say I had fun for most of it.  So this year Drew took it a step further and bought me my own set of skis. We actually had a pretty great time when we went, and I decided to go a second time the next week.  Drew skied mostly with Rich, and I just stayed on Chair 3 and tried a chair 4 run at the end with Drew.  I skied for like 6 hours and had a great time, once I figured out how to get my skis on.  I'm hoping to go out a few more times this year, but I've been so busy it's been hard to commit a full day to using a ski pass and getting on the mountain again.

For Valentine's Day I knit Drew another custom handle mitt for his cast iron and Drew made me this awesome white chocolate/peanut butter frosting cake inspired by my favorite candy: 

Delicious..but super rich!

I've also been a more social cross country skier this month and went out a few times with friends.  I am excited because even Drew decided, without my even pushing him, to get his own pair of classic skis.  Maybe we'll even go together one day! My friend Sam also bought cross country ski's this year and we got Drew to take her older kid downhill skiing while we took the younger one out in Moose Meadows.  It was beautiful, and Sam rocked it.  It's got to be so much harder with a little one on your back!

Have I mentioned that I love where I live?

I also had my spring concert with the Alaska Chamber Singers this month, which was all Johann Sebastian Bach.  It was good music, but it was a heavier concert for the boys to sit through.  I'm looking forward to resurrecting our fall concert program, Darwin Sings:  The Evolution of Choral Music, for our tour to Homer and Cooper Landing in April. Drew baked up some amazing snacks for my choir and for work.  He made peanut butter and chocolate cookies, as well as croissants, some stuffed with chocolate.  He's pretty amazing.

I also ran in the Frostbite Footrace during Fur Rondy this year.  It's only the 3rd race I've ever done and the other two I waited for over an hour just to start running.  So we were like 10 minutes late getting there for this one which I assumed would be no big deal.  Oh no, it had started already.  Which meant that I got to bust through the people on the sidewalk and start running right in front of the funny guy with the mike that gets paid to make smart alecky comments as all the runners come by.  You can bet he loved making fun of me. :)

At first I felt like a total loser cause I was being passed by EVERYONE and I was huffing and puffing.  I finally gave up and slowed my pace to something I could handle.  It was a loop course that you did twice.  When I came around to start my second lap while everyone I'd been with cruised to the finish line I realized I was running with all of those competitive athlete people.  I came around the corner and there were all of my people, jogging at a much more sane pace.  :)

I'm hoping to do 3 more races this year, so this was a good warm up one.  Next time I'll try and be on time for my start.  Hope you got through your February OK.  I guess it won't be too long before I'll be late for a posting in March...better late than never!

Drew's Birthday Weekend

To be fair, I wrote this entire post and then tried to publish it just as the library was closing the other day...and it didn't publish but instead erased the whole thing.  So this is Drew's birthday summary, take 2.  This winter we figured out that most all of our friends have winter birthdays, so we have been moving McKenzie's "Happy Birthday" banner from restaurant to kitchen to kitchen.  We decided being born in the winter has influenced our decision to end up in Alaska.  Anyways, for Drew's birthday he actually made pizza, which sounds pretty lame that he ended up cooking on his own birthday, but Drew's pizza is so good, nobody could do a better job.  McKenzie did make him a super sweet chocolate birthday cake:

The night ended as most of our raucous house parties end, by falling asleep under the electric blanket watching Seinfeld.

The next night Drew and I ate out at Pepe's Turnagain Arm House, which was pretty good, but not our favorite.  Still it was fun to eat at a restaurant we see all the time but have never tried. I had wanted to take a longer getaway for Drew's birthday weekend, but Drew had ski instructor class on Saturday so we decided instead to just spend Sunday night in Eagle River valley at one of the yurts you can rent.  We had thought we'd be snowshoeing or cross country skiing out, but there was barely anything more than a little ice here and there on the trail out to the yurt.  So we just walked.

 We got a fairly late start, but it was less than two miles back into the valley to the Rapids Camp Yurt where we stayed.

 We got there just as it was getting dark.  I totally took charge of making the fire in the wood stove, (which kept the yurt insanely warm) and I even made dinner.  (Don't get too excited, I made rice and tastybites.)  The next morning was sunny and clear and we enjoyed the beautiful view from our yurt before hiking out.

Fancy outhouse!

We drove home through Anchorage and spent the day running errands, eating out for lunch, and even caught the first movie of the day at the movie theater.  We saw American Hustle, which was good.  It was the first time I've been to a movie theater in over a year.  When you don't have a movie theater near where you live, you just don't go that often.  It was a short getaway but even just going to town with Drew and running errands together is a treat.  Here's to another year!

Denali for the Day

Drew and I thought it would be fun to take an overnight camping trip up to Denali earlier this month.  We packed up all our camping gear, put the cross country skis on the car, threw the snowshoes in too, and headed up to Denali National Park.  Man did we choose a beautiful clear day to visit!

Denali from the south viewpoint in Denali State Park

Though it was pretty warm with the sun on us, there is still a lot of melting to go.
We would have practically had to  lay on our stomachs to look out those scopes.

 We drove four hours to the park and got there in mid afternoon.  Although some of the park road had been cleared, we could only venture up the first 13 miles or something.  The ranger at the visitor center talked us out of camping.  When we arrived the visitor center was filled with backpacks and camping gear.  In a few minutes about 40 or 50 eighth graders came bounding out of the adjoining room.  She explained it was "camp with the rangers night."  All the rangers looked really thrilled.  We decided we didn't want to join the fun, so she filled us in on the good things to do in the park that afternoon.  Drew was questioning and teasing her about wolf sightings, skijoring to Wonder Lake, and possible injuries he might incur while in the park.  Generally just being Drew.  At one point she looked at me and said, "You must be a very patient woman, ma'am."  That's my baby.  Inspiring other women to wonder just how I do it... :)

Anyways, she pointed us to this hike, which really we didn't need snowshoes for.  Just a pair of icebreakers would have done the job:

The hike was along a river that was breaking up.
Drew loved the icicles hanging off the ice into the river.

Oh Denali National Park...how I would love to see you not in snow.

 So in the end we drove four hours to Denali and four hours back, and we spent probably less than 3 hours at the park.  I was just saying on the drive up how the drive is half the fun.  We really didn't mind at all.  Drew and I love a good road trip.  There's always interesting conversation as we drive, and beautiful scenery along the way.   We had to pull over on the way home for a few more shots of Denali.  It just looked like a backdrop in a play or something.  So perfect:

We saw so many other beautiful landscapes along our drive.  Every time we cross over this one bridge it seems that the sun is always setting over the river there, and the sunset is always spectacular.  We both agreed that really we know of no other place that manages to be this ridiculously beautiful constantly.  Granted break up is probably the least beautiful of the seasons, but if you look up to the mountains or out to the water you don't notice the dead grass and trash poking through the dirty snow at all.  We have lived here for almost a year now and we still haven't managed to get over it.  It is just so majestic.  So mighty.  We love being surrounded by so much grandness.

Dinner by Jennifer, or A Brief Explanation of Food in the Harlos Family

Hope everybody had a good Valentine's Day.  We don't normally really do anything for Valentine's Day, but when I woke up that morning I found these on the table along with my favorite candy (I had already eaten it by the time we took a picture):

Super pretty and very unexpected.  Drew's not usually one to get flowers.  So I figured I'd better do something more than just make brownies or something so he could have chocolate.  (He regularly complains he never gets to have anything chocolate because I don't like it.)  So I decided that I would make dinner.  Most of you know that I can count the number of times that I have cooked dinner since we were married on one hand.  And I never cook anything too exciting.  Usually Drew eats it after turning up his nose at the fact that I love to use rice or peppers or some other ingredient he never uses.  When we first got married I tried to sometimes make an effort to cook something...but then I realized I had had the good fortune of marrying a man who loves to cook.  A man who puts up menus like these on our fridge:

It didn't take long for me to get very used to Drew cooking every night.  My dependency on him for food is pretty sad.  When he got really sick last winter and didn't get out of bed for like three days it was most apparent.  One day all I ate was an entire box of Corn Pops.  Another night I went for a midnight run to a taco drive thru.  Drew and I have gotten fast food together like twice in the entire time we've known each other.  Drew woke up out of his stupor to find me chowing down on refried beans out of a Styrofoam container with empty cereal bowls strewn about.  That was a low point.

Anyways, the point is, I don't really cook.  If we are having a party I will cook something from a recipe and get kind of into it, but I don't cook as a daily chore at all.  Almost always this is just fine.  Drew loves tweaking recipes and figuring out what side will perfectly complement the marinade he used on the steak.  But every once in awhile, he just doesn't feel like carving the time out of his day to make dinner.  So I decided since he had worked the night before and was working again that night, I would make dinner.  And make something he liked.  So definitely a chocolate dessert...but what for dinner?  

I figured that Drew cooks what he likes.  The trouble is that what Drew likes is pretty specific, and pretty fancy.  You see, before I knew Drew and before he went to Italy, Drew was a very picky eater.  He ate like, ice cream, milkshakes, bread, cereal, pizza if he scraped most the sauce off first.  Definitely not vegetables.  The only Drew I have known is one that loves to cook, and got very into learning to cook from Italians.  By the time I actually met him on the mission he was known for being the go to missionary for cooking stuff.  I remember even deciding to invite him and his companion to a dinner a bunch of us were having after a baptism, under the condition that they would do the cooking.  

After we started dating, I did realize that this must not have been the way Drew always was.  He would timidly bite into a piece of fruit or a vegetable and tell me this was the first time he was actually trying it.  The first time we went to a Mexican restaurant he just stared at the menu and was like, "I don't know what any of this is.  I don't know what to order."  So I ordered him a chimichanga.  He ate it, but he felt like everything on the menu was just the same few ingredients slapped together in a different form.  

That's when Drew really started to become a food snob. For a long time all Drew really knew how to cook or liked to cook was what he ate in Italy.  Obviously he was getting great food.  As time has gone on Drew has expanded his tastes beyond pasta, seafood, fried meats, and artisan bread.  But only to what he believes is the more refined food.  Mexican is not refined.  Chinese is not refined.  American casseroles are not refined.  30-Minutes-Or-Less meals out of Family Circle are definitely not refined.  Most Italian food made by Americans is just revolting.  He really is a food snob.  The only cuisines that make the cut are Italian, French, Indian, and super traditional Southern cooking.  Since we came to Alaska and went to a cooking demonstration with a famous chef in the area his expectations have become even higher.  Our grocery bill is insane, but hey, I am getting a gourmet meal that I didn't have to prepare every night, right?

So I went with a very Drew dinner:  steak with sauteed mushrooms with some type of reduction, baked asparagus with a balsamic glaze, and mashed potatoes.  Lava cake in individual ramekins for dessert.  (I don't judge you at all if you have to Google what the heck a ramekin is.)  I should have known I was getting way too over my head.  The amazing thing is, it all ended up being pretty edible!  The steak was definitely dry, but not terribly so.  I tweaked the reduction recipe but that didn't turn out to be a huge mistake.  The asparagus was good and so were the mashed potatoes.    I will admit that all I really did for the mashed potatoes was cut and boil the potatoes.  Drew took over from there because I was running out of time before I had to go to work.  But it turned out pretty tasty.  Dessert was probably the worst.  I tried to make lava cake but it wasn't lava-y at all.  I cooked it too long.  But he ate both of them so they couldn't have been that bad!

Drew and his lava cake

I was hoping to have it mostly done by the time Drew woke up, but he woke up early and heard something very strange...was that me, in the kitchen??  (I admit it was like two weeks into living in this apartment before I ventured past the fridge into the rest of the kitchen.  I felt so eerily out of place.)  So Drew hardly knew what to do with himself and ended up relaxing on the couch.  I gave him the chocolate covered bowls and beaters to lick.  It was at this point that Drew said, "Ahh, finally!  This is what I always dreamed that marriage would be like!"  I'm glad I fulfilled his fantasy for at least one brief moment.  :)

I'm not really into Valentine's Day, but I'm glad that this year it made me stretch and try something new.  And I'm glad I've got a husband who is always whipping up a new concoction or bringing home a new cookbook from the library.  I have so many memories with Drew and food: Swinging in a hammock while Drew kept bringing out plate after plate of waffles.  Cooking Pasta alla Norma at his parent's house before embarking on our now infamous road trip.  The pork skin we brought my best friend, Annie, in Alabama when we stopped to visit her.  Her now husband was the only person at the party willing to try and eat it.  The Moab Diner where we had our first date.  Polishing off a pan of lasagna just between the two of us.  Backpacking with a bag of frozen chicken and some barbecue sauce strung up in a tree away from bears, just so Drew could attempt a gourmet meal in the wilderness.  Deciding maybe I would give him another chance after getting into a huge jello fight with him outside his apartment in the Riviera.  Drew cooking for my parents the day he first met them.  The fish Drew brought on the plane with him from Alaska when we reunited after my return to Italy and his first stint in Alaska.  Choosing our Italian themed menu for our wedding reception.  Having friends over to our first apartment more nights than not, and always making lots of food to share over good conversation.  Getting dressed up and going to a fancy restaurant in the middle of a camping trip.  Starving all day long while we travel because we are too cheap to eat out and then going from restaurant to restaurant ordering the local fare all night long.  Savoring the best steak of my life atop a mountain on our anniversary. Celebrating getting my dream job or Drew graduating by eating out at a fancy restaurant by candlelight, chatting and laughing for hours about what the future might hold for us.  Food has so often been a part of our fun together, I'm glad I got to add to our memories with my own little adventure in the kitchen.