Instructions

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and nutmeg in large mixing bowl; mix well. Cut butter into flour mixture with pastry blender or blend with your fingers until mixture is the texture of cornmeal. Make a well in center of flour mixture; add egg nog. Stir with fork until dough comes away from the sides of the bowl. Gather dough and divide into 2 balls. Roll or pat one ball on floured surface to form a circle 1-inch thick. Cut into 8 pie-shaped pieces. Place on lightly greased baking sheet; brush with egg nog and grate a light dusting of fresh nutmeg over tops. Repeat with remaining ball. Bake at 425°F. 12 minutes or until tops are lightly browned. Serve warm. Makes 16 scones.

Variation:  bring 3/4 cup raisins and 1/2 cub bourbon or dark rum to a simmer.  Shut off heat and let raisins soak up liquid while you prepare dry ingredients.  Drain any excess liquid and add to dry ingredients with egg nog.  Combine.  You want your dough to be a bit dry and not sticky.  If it seems too wet, sprinle additional flour and lightly knead into dough.  Roll out & finish per original instructions.

5 lbs. potatoes, peeled and quartered
6 oz. reduced-fat cream cheese
1 cup light sour cream
2 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
2 egg whites, slightly beaten
1 Tbsp. butter

Cook potatoes in a large pot of boiling water until tender.  Drain and mash until there are no lumps.  Add cream cheese, sour cream, onion powder, salt, pepper and egg whites; stir well to combine.

These are great left over or browned up for breakfast the next day.

Setting up shop on the deck…

Removal of the existing carpet and underlayment…

Installation of the Brazilian Cherry…

This is where day one ended…

Day two only took about 2 hours to complete…

Showing how they interleaved the wood into the existing flooring…

All the family room furniture stacked in the dining room.

Good thing we don’t have any dining room chairs or there would not have been enough room.

The original finish on the floors did not last as long as we had hoped before showing significant signs of wear, so… We’re having all of the existing flooring sanded and refinished as part of this project. At least this will ensure a perfect match between the old and new wood. In two weeks, when the sanding and finishing gets underway, we’re going to have to move all the furniture from the first floor out to the deck and into the garage for a couple days. For the time being we put the furniture back in the family room.

I’ve added a new page to the site detailing the list of FireFox 3 add-ons that I have installed. I’m not one for clutter on my desktop (my computer desktop that is, my real desktop is a complete disaster most of the time) so I keep the add-ons limited to only those that I really use. Some of them are even designed to eliminate things I don’t use. Check it out. Aren’t using FireFox 3 yet? Better download it.

Last night Yvette, Bill, and I spent the evening at the Alpenrose Velodrome learning how to ride a bike on the track. We had a lot of fun. Alpenrose is a local dairy here in Portland. They have a large property right in the middle of southwest Portland. Along with the dairy processing plant, they have several little league baseball fields and, oddly enough, a world class velodrome. Just two weeks ago a national championship 6-day race was held here. The Alpenrose velodrome is one of the steepest and shortest velodromes in the world. Each bank average 43 degrees and the track length is 1/6 mile. The banks do not gradually increase slope. They very abruptly go from flat on the inner apron to 43 degrees on the track surface. The track surface proper is painted cement.

Every Wednesday night during the summer the track gurus invite beginners out to the track for a class in track riding. For $5/person they will spend close to three hours teaching you how to ride. For $5/person more, you can rent a track bike. Quite a deal. Rented bikes don’t come with pedals. We had to bring our own pedals which the track mechanic installed on each bike. This evening there were probably 30 people riding. A larger group than normal we were told.

Track bikes are fixed gear bikes. That means that these bikes don’t coast. If the bike is moving, then the pedals are moving. You can’t not pedal unless the bike is stopped. For those of us that are used to riding regular free wheel bikes on the street, riding a fixed gear is a very strange experience. And they do not have any brakes. The only way to slow down is to exert backforce on the pedals. It can also be dangerous. If you exert too much backforce and try to stop too fast you can easily send yourself head over heals over the front of the bike. As a result of the nature of these bikes, there are many rules that must be followed when riding on the track to ensure a safe environment for all the riders.

Yvette, and, to be honest, myself, were both a bit nervous at the beginning.

Bill’s good friend Mark also showed up unexpectedly. Here’s Mark having a good time (and me wrestling my rented track bike!)

After a bit of instruction, the instructors took us out on the track. Riding on the banked corners definitely takes some getting used to. It takes a bit of commitments to ride into that first turn…and a bit of perseverance to continue riding into the next turns. Your mind is telling you that it’s not right riding on the 43 degree banks. You have to keep your speed up. The minimum safe speed on the banks is 12mph. Any slower and the bike will slide out from underneath you. Fortunately 12mph is not that fast. At first we stayed pretty low on the turns. Here a shot of Yvette out on the track.

Several women showed up for the class which worked out quite well. There was even a female instructor. They all got to ride together as a group.

Here I am on the track with my group.

Eventually, after a bit more practice, we were riding higher on the corners. When riding a pace line on the track the lead rider will ride high on the track and let the following riders pass on the low part of the track. Here’s Yvette executing a sweet pace line exchange.

Since there were usually two or three groups on the track, every once in a while a faster group will need to pass a slower group. The faster group will usually passes on the top at least when you’re a beginner. In acutal racing, the rules are a lot less well defined. Here’s my group passing another group.

Bill, Mark, and I shared an instructor for the evening. We’re all in pretty good riding shape and I think we surprised our instructor, Ken, with how well we adapted and how fast we were able to go and keep up with him. I’m absolutely sure that Ken is much faster than any of us on the track, but he was working too and commented that he should have warmed up more beforehand.

In the end we all survived and had a great time. We worked hard and were quite tired, but we’ll go back and do this again. There’s a lot to learn about racing on a velodrome and we barely scratched the surface.

Meg, Bill’s fiancee, took all the pictures featured on this post, except the title picture that I took two weeks ago at the 6-day race.

The event is called a ciclovia and is modeled after the ciclovia that takes place in Bogota, Columbia one Sunday each month. Portland has a long way to go before it is even considered in the same class as Bogota’s ciclovia. In Bogata they close 70 miles of streets once a month and up to 2 million people come out to enjoy the roadways. StreetFilms hosts a nice video of the Bogota event.