Vegan Meringues: A Sticky Partial Fail

 Although I'm not vegan (or even vegetarian), I've been somewhat interested in vegan cooking and baking for several years.  I had read before about using the water from canned chickpeas ("aquafaba," if we're being fancy), but had been extremely skeptical until I saw it being used on The Great British Baking Show. After watching contestants construct vegan pavlovas, I decided I would try scaling down a bit to make some vegan meringues. I consulted the internet for recipe ideas and learned that in addition to using the water in canned chickpeas, I could potentially use cooking water left over from cooking dried chickpeas (or even other dried beans).  This worked for me.  I do occasionally used canned chickpeas, but more often than not, I'll just cook a batch of dried chickpeas and keep them in the freezer for when I want to use them.

It came time today to cook some more dried chickpeas, so I carefully drained them over a large bowl and let the cooking liquid cool to room temperature.  I beat the liquid in the bowl of my mixer with a little bit of cream of tartar.  It was fun to watch because they really did look like egg whites becoming fluffy.

I put them in the oven, and they became dry and even a little crispy in less time than the recipe suggested.  I tasted one, and it was a little sweet for my taste, even though I had added less sugar than the recipe called for.  Still, it was tasty and had a cool texture.

However, a few hours after taking them out of the oven, they are becoming sticky and messy.  I warned Scott that if he wanted to stress eat meringues, he would have to do so soon.  I'm thinking it's possible that the humidity is a contributing factor to the sticky mess, but I don't know.  It was an interesting experiment, but I think I have to count this as at least a partial fail and think hard about whether I want to spend precious recreational cooking time trying again.

The Downside To The Cicada Merriment

 Earlier this summer, I wrote here about the emergence of cicadas in the DC area. They were a fairly polarizing insect in this area, I believe with many more people hating them than loving them.  I actually like them, but am now experiencing an unforeseen (at least to me) downside to their emergence:  oak mites.

I had never even heard of oak mites before this summer.  Evidently, they are very small insects that eat cicada eggs (hence their large population this summer in the DC area).  They can be carried by the wind, land on people, and bite.  Though I have no way of definitively proving it, I believe both Scott and I have been bitten.

Scott was bitten first. He had a bite from something on his back. It didn't quite look like a mosquito bite, and he said it was much itchier. Then I saw a post on our community's nextdoor.com that described similar bites and advanced the theory that it was oak mites. I subsequently saw news coverage of oak mite bites and how people were flocking to urgent care clinics and dermatologists for relief.

More recently, I had two bites on my back which were much itchier than mosquito bites. I tried using hydrocortisone cream, but I didn't get much relief.  I was having a fairly uncomfortable night of sleep, punctuated by the cat stretching next to me and clawing my itchy bites. Fortunately, I remembered that someone had who had posted on nextdoor.com mentioned getting relief from putting gel hand sanitizer on the bites. I have no idea why that would work, but I tried it, and fortunately, it helped. So, consider this a public service announcement to anyone else who is similarly afflicted.

Not that I get any say in this at all, but I did enjoy the cicada emergence enough to think it was worth the oak mites now. That being said, seventeen years from now when this brood emerges again, I might consider enjoying the cicadas but then taking a long vacation somewhere else until the oak mites have had a chance to come and go.

Trying To Be Green

 Before the pandemic spread around the world and became the focus of everyone's attention, I wrote here about my fears and pessimism surrounding climate change and a small effort I was making to help Australia's wildlife.  I'm sorry to say that if anything, my fears and pessimism have increased since then.  This summer has been very frightening, with too many extreme weather events to keep track of.  Some that immediately come to mind are the apocalyptic heat waves and fires out west, fires in Siberia, and flooding in Germany and China.  Of those, the one that hit closest to home for me has been the heatwaves in the Pacific northwest.  I have several relatives there and have gone out there many time.  It's sad for me to think that such a wonderful area of the country may be changing forever.

I think we need much more than individual efforts to combat this existential threat that impacts us all; however, I'm not optimistic that sufficient government action is forthcoming, particularly in the US, where any and every issue is routinely politicized.  As a result, I am looking for ways to be "greener."  One of those ways is trying to divert some of my food waste from the landfill.

We're not living in an ideal environment to compost. We live in an apartment-style condo. In theory, I might be able to keep a small composting bin on the balcony (as long as it doesn't stink, attract pests, or do other things that would dismay my neighbors), but even if I could pull all of that off, there is the problem of where I would ultimately put the end product when I don't have a yard.  However, our local farmers market has a community composting program where you can drop off plant-based scraps.  I decided to join.

With limited space (and not a very firm grasp on how much plant-based waste we were actually producing), I bought a small counter top bin.  It turns out I pretty consistently fill it within the first 48 hours of emptying it.  This may be particularly true in the summer, when seasonal treats like melons and fresh corn create a large amount of waste in one go. I bought some biodegradable bags so I could store our compostables in the fridge after collecting them, not wanting a full bin on the counter to attract bugs. For a while, I tried filling the bin multiple times during the week, but it turns out our fridge is really too small to hold both massive quantities of scraps for compost AND all the food we plan to eat.

There are times when I wonder if it's worth the effort to divert maybe two days of waste from the landfill out of every week. But then I see the collection bins at the farmers market and how fast they fill up with so many people contributing. This community composting program certainly won't save the planet on its own, but it has been inspiring to see the power of collective action.

Happy 272nd Birthday, Alexandria!

 I've always enjoyed seeing fireworks displays, but in recent years, have only rarely gone to see them.  What usually holds me back is the idea of heading into large crowds with parking and/or mass transit scrums.  I made a happy discovery about our new home this year, though.  While I was researching if there was a way I could view DC's July 4th fireworks without actually going into DC and getting involved in the aforementioned scrums and crowds, I discovered that Alexandria celebrates the anniversary of its founding with fireworks!  Best of all, the park where celebrations were held is an easy walk from our home.  There are things I still miss about Silver Spring, MD, where we lived before moving here last summer.  However, the promise of annual fireworks that I can walk to is definitely a point in Alexandria's favor.

The Potomac River at night

My one fireworks photo that is recognizable as a firework

Pandemic Daze: Traveling Right Now

 I'm not sure what to call this particular period of time.  I think we'd all like to think of this as the post-pandemic period, but I don't want to jinx us all by doing that.  After all, much of the world has little to no access to COVID vaccines.  Then there is the vaccine hesitancy in parts of the US to contend with.  So it may not be a post-pandemic period, but as someone who is fully vaccinated, I feel more freedom to do as I please, including traveling.  I just got back from a trip to North Carolina to see my parents and make a trip into the mountains so we could all escape the heat.  

From my experiences preparing to travel and traveling, it appears that the entire US is currently traveling.  However, if you're not currently traveling and want to travel, I can offer the following tips:

1.  Book pet care/housesitting early.  Granted, we were at somewhat of a disadvantage here because (a) this was our first overnight trip since moving last summer and we weren't established with a local company, and (b) we planned our trip on fairly short notice.  That being said, we were told by multiple local pet sitting companies that they were booked solid, and the sitter we ultimately hired through Rover told me she'd had to turn down multiple requests.

2.  Expect odd crowd patterns.  On the way to NC, we had to sit in a line of cars to get a parking spot at a rest area.  On the way back, we got off on an exit with the plan of going to McDonald's for coffee and a restroom break.  It turned out they were open for drive-thru service only, so we went to a combination convenience store and Dunkin' Donuts.  This was fine except that everyone else seemed to have the same idea, and I must have waited in line for a good 15 minutes to use the restroom.  

On an unrelated side note, it turned out that Dunkin' Donuts had iced decaf!  I was so excited to learn this, since even getting hot decaf is a struggle sometimes, and you nearly always have to get iced decaf as a more expensive specialty drink.  Dunkin' Donuts will be getting a larger share of my road trip coffee funds from here on out.

3.  Bring a mask.  In the interest of full disclosure, I wore my mask less on this trip than I had at any point since last spring.  But, I was happy to have it sometimes in crowded indoor environments.  Also, very occasionally, a business still wanted everyone wearing a mask (like a bookstore we stopped in before returning home).

Here are a few photos from the trip:

Linville Falls

Moth at Daniel Boone Garden

More bug-spotting at Daniel Boone Garden

Mountain view

Rhododendron at Linville Falls trail

Cicadas!

 Much to the envy of bug watchers everywhere, the DC area was recently a focal point for the emergence of Brood X cicadas!  This brood of cicadas emerges only once every 17 years, so for a bug event, this one was big.

As anyone who has ever lived with me can attest, I'm not really a bug person.  Cicadas, though, are one of the few bugs I actually do like.  They don't bite or sting, they're too big to fly into your eye or up your nose, and I'm fascinated by the varieties that spend years at a time underground.

The coverage of their 2021 emergence started many weeks ahead of time.  There was much hand-wringing by people who lived in the area in 2004, when they last emerged, and didn't enjoy them that time.  They were delayed in emerging due to a snap of unseasonably cold weather, and when they finally did, I was pretty underwhelmed and disappointed at first.  For all the coverage, I was expecting a Big Event, and I felt like I was mostly seeing a few stray wings on the ground.

They picked up as time went on, though.  I never felt like they were that numerous where we lived, but they were very thick on the ground (and in the sky and the trees) near one of the schools where I worked.  Walking to the bus stop at the end of the day made me feel like I'd gotten a true cicada immersion experience, between the deafening humming as I walked under trees, and cicadas actually landing on me from time to time.

Here are a few pictures to commemorate Brood X of 2021, along with a cicada necklace I made to welcome them in style!

Sunglasses Are The New Shoes

 Lest anyone become alarmed, (a) I will not be dispensing fashion advice on this blog, and (b) I am not advocating that anyone wear sunglasses on their feet.  

I've maintained for a long time that no article of clothing can make me nearly as miserable as shoes.  Ill-fitting shoes rub blisters and put pressure on the bottoms of feet.  If you're already out walking, you have no recourse as each step becomes increasingly agonizing.  No other article of clothing comes close in my opinion, but I'm starting to think of sunglasses as shoes-lite in terms of the aggravation and discomfort they cause.

I didn't wear sunglasses regularly until the year I spent in Syria (between 2004 and 2005).  I bought an inexpensive pair of sunglasses with wraparound frames to take with me, and I finally understood the hype about sunglasses--it really is more comfortable to not have a strong, unfiltered sun in your eyes!  I wore these sunglasses for years, though they frames were quite rickety even when they were new (I actually had them repaired in Syria because a screw came out).

I tried at some point after returning to the US to get a pair of sunglasses with less rickety frames.  I got a pair, but then found that the arms of the glasses dug into my head and gave me a headache.  I decided to take my chances with the rickety frames.

Several years ago, I had a flexible spending account funds that I needed to use or lose, so I got a pair of prescription sunglasses.  I liked these a lot. The frames were more solid than the pair I took to Syria with me and the glasses were comfortable to wear.  The one problem was that if anything, they were a little loose, always threatening to slide off my nose or the back of my head.  Despite their escape tendencies, I managed to hold on to them until a couple of weeks ago when one of the arms broke.  I'm not sure what caused it to break, but decided it was beyond repair and I would need a new pair.

While I hemmed and hawed over what type of sunglasses to get, I found the old pair I had taken with me to Syria.  The frames are as rickety as ever, and the hinges were getting caught in my hair when I pushed the sunglasses on top of my head.  I hadn't remembered that "feature" of them.  I decided to speed up my search for a new pair.

I splurged a little and ordered a well-known brand of sunglasses on sale.  They have wraparound frames, which I like, and fit very securely to my face, lessening the chance that they'll slid off somewhere.  But, as I discovered while taking a walk on a hot day, they fit so securely that sweat pools around my eyes and doesn't evaporate when I wear them.  It reminded me of trying on a pair of shoes that feels comfortable in the store, but then rubs my feet raw as soon as I wear them out of the house.  I can't really return them at this point, and I feel slightly bamboozled.

I've ordered a cheaper pair of sunglasses with non-wraparound frames.  These won't provide the sun protection for the outer corners of my eyes, but I imagine they will allow enough air circulation for my eye sweat to evaporate.  Much like with shoes, maybe I just can't have it all with my sunglasses.