Fall Into Thanksgiving

Before I describe our recent travels, here are a couple of photos we took about 2 weeks ago when the leaves began to fall in the back yard. Alex really enjoyed playing in the crinkly, colorful leaves, and he had fun trying to eat them too.




Shortly after these pictures were taken, I invested in a high-powered Toro leaf blower/vac. I used it to great effect to collect most of the leaves here and mulch them for use in the garden this Spring.

Last week, we all traveled to San Francisco for a Patent Bar exam review class that Dana took to prepare for the Patent Bar. She was in class for 8-10 hours each day from Wednesday through Sunday. I worked from my parents' house in Benicia on Wednesday, Thursday and part of Friday. On Thursday I drove down to the corporate campus in Cupertino to work for the day and meet with one of my teammates who I hadn't had a chance to meet yet. My Dad was just wrapping up a 2-month stint working the graveyard shift at the plant. Fortunately his project wrapped up on Friday and he was able to spend the rest of the weekend with us, albeit a little groggy.

Three generations of (sleepy) Stangel men.

Here's the latest picture of the airplane project, a Glasair IIS-RG my Dad is building. Next up: windows!

We returned to Colorado on Monday evening. On Wednesday our Thanksgiving visitors arrived. We have my sister Alison and her husband Eric here at our house. My Mom and Dad and Dana's Mom and step-Dad are staying at the Bed and Breakfast just down the street, enjoying lavish breakfasts from the proprietor Mark -- every breakfast is topped off with an ice cream-based dessert.

Grandpa Herb, Susan, Carla and Dana working on Thanksgiving dinner in the kitchen

This year for Thanksgiving we prepared a deep-fried turkey out in the back yard. This is the second time I've fried a turkey, and I'm more convinced than ever that it's the way to go. Cooking time of 3 minutes per pound means that the entire afternoon of cooking can be done in 2 hours or less. We used a mixture of canola and corn oils. The 15-pound bird was brined overnight with extra seasoning.

It was a pretty chilly Thanksgiving here. We gave our native Californian families a run for their money!

Of course, it's no good heating up 3 gallons of oil if you're just going to cook a bird. So before the turkey, we deep fried some doughnuts, then we made authentic sweet potato french fries with about 8 sweet potatoes and yams. Both made for excellent appetizers (despite everyone's initial uncertainty). Will the deep-fryer become the new barbecue?

The finished product!

Kupuna kane Herb with the little keiki

The high Thursday in Berthoud was about 30F, and once the sun began to set below the fence in the back yard, it started to drop quickly. I think by the time we took an evening walk it was about 15.

After dinner, Grandpa Herb and Uncle Eric favored us with a guitar duet. We had fun singing along with several tunes we sort of knew the words to.

I joined in playing Alex's alligator for accompaniment.

And here's a brief video of the hit of the evening:

Our evening walk, with Alex in his snow suit!

This morning I got up early to head over to the ACE hardware store for their usual post-holiday rebate sale. I picked up some awesome Stanley tools for a song, plus free Christmas lights and a free cordless electric screwdriver set. Hard to beat that! They even let you file for rebates online now, so I don't have to spend $0.41 on postage or cut out any UPC labels!

Stair Master

Alex has mastered climbing up stairs, as evidenced by the video above. (Hit the "play" icon to watch it). In the course of about 2 weeks he went from tentative wobbly clambering to confident climbing. The next step is teaching him to go down stairs.

Badada Bread (Dan's Banana Bread)

Wednesday night I had enough time to myself in the kitchen after Alex went to bed and before Dana got home from class to bake a loaf of "Badada Bread," probably our favorite baked item. I haven't made any since the day Dana went into labor, when I baked some for the nurses at the hospital (they loved it and treated us like royalty).

A couple of years ago, I started with a recipe from The Best Recipe, but have made several major changes to suit our tastes -- mostly less sugar, less fat, great taste. Here's what we ate:

Badada Bread (Dan's Banana Bread)

Dry Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups walnuts (1 cup chopped) or more (optional)
1/4-1/2 bag semi-sweet chocolate chips (optional)

Wet Ingredients:
3 very ripe bananas, smashed to a thick paste
2 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup plain yogurt
2-3 tablespoons butter (may be substituted)
2-3 tablespoons yogurt or mashed bananas, in addition to amounts above

In a large mixing bowl, shake dry ingredients together so they're uniform
In another large mixing bowl, stir wet ingredients together so they're uniform
Fold dry ingredients into wet ingredients, but don't over mix (leave chunky)

Grease & flour loaf pan, pour batter in.

Cook 75 minutes at 350 F on lower middle oven rack.

Let the loaf sit for 5 minutes before devouring.

This recipe also works very well as vegan badada bread - just substitute the eggs & butter with equivalent amounts of more bananas, more yogurt, apple sauce, smashed-up tofu, or other typical substitutes. Adding crushed flax seeds and wheat bran is also great. It is pretty hard to screw this recipe up, except if you under-bake it so the center of the loaf is gooey.

What do you like with your badada bread?

Note, this is how we do it "a mile high," for you flat-landers out there, you might have to fiddle with the temperature or the time or the flour or the moisture or something -- I still haven't figured out the whole altitude cooking math, I just know what works for banana bread in Berthoud.

Satisfied Customer.