A potpourri of: Highland Park; Jewish topics; Central New Jersey; art, nature, WordPress, health, photography …

We just came back from a fun ski vacation at Stratton Mountain in Vermont. The skiing went well, despite the fluctuating ski conditions (rain one night) and up and down weather. My daughter now eagerly skis a longish trail on the side of the mountain called Lower Tamarack.

On the food front, finding food for us to eat for 3½ days is a bit of a struggle. This year, I packed various homemade food over the past two months that I had frozen in advance for vacation. The potato latkes from Chanukah, for example, were OK since I had packed little applesauce cups as well, so they had a nice condiment to go with them. Spaghetti pie (recipe in Honest Pretzels by Mollie Katzen), however, normally one of my daughter’s favorite dishes did not freeze and defrost nicely into a tasty dish. Most of it got thrown out, unfortunately. The homemade mushroom barley soup was a hit, but the prepared Tabatchnick’s frozen mushroom barley soup not as much. My kids normally like macaroni and pizza slices, but how many of those can one eat? Ditto for Streit’s canned minestrone soup – all my kids like that soup, but not for every meal. My family eagerly consumed leftover chicken soup last night when we got home.

For myself, I made brown rice in the crockpot two nights in a row (1 part rice to two parts water). I bought scallions and parsley in a supermarket right before we got to Stratton. Scallions are an improvement over bringing an onion and a knife and then ignoring the onion for the duration of the trip. You can cut scallions with a plastic knife, if necessary. Also, one year I brought lettuce on our winter trip, only to find it had frozen and wilted on the journey. Parsley holds up better in the winter weather. I’ve also learned to bring a few bags of frozen vegetables – easy to store, easy to prepare.

If you bring your own food on vacation, what tips do you have for storing, preparing or serving the food?

Some bloggers have suggested that one do video as part of one’s presentation (especially if you are marketing a product or service). However, having seen some poorly made videos by some bloggers, I will continue to specialize in coding, graphics, social media and writing short web content. Also, I see via my middle son how much energy goes into creating what I consider to be a good video.

Hope you enjoy his latest claymation film creation, which uses clay for creatures.

We’ve been having plenty of red cardinals visiting our backyard. I’ve been good about filling our one bird feeder. They like the sunflowers seeds in the bird feeder box.

This cardinal sat in the bird feeder for quite a while, until I got up close to him because I wanted to take an up-close portrait. He decided he had better things to do and flew off.

For more Nature Notes:

I finally figured out how to make a decent bowl of oatmeal. All you need:

• 1/2 cup steel cut oats (double for more)
• 1 cup of water (double for more)

Grind the oats – I use my coffee bean grinder. Soak the oats overnight (or longer). Cook for about twenty minutes in twice as much water as the measurement of the starting oats (so 1 cup of water if you started with 1/2 cup of oats). Stir every five minutes, more toward the end.

How do you like your oatmeal? I eat this straight, but my family members like oatmeal with maple syrup. Some people like a pat of butter or a teaspoon of cinnamon in their oats.

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Now I will tell you how I came about this version. A few years ago, my father decided steel cut oats would be a good to try, for nutrition reasons. We found it took about 40 minutes to cook, however, and it was still gritty. Then I was reading a book about fermenting grains, and I decided to soak mine. That helped, but they were still somewhat gritty. Finally, I read this post about a man who had healed his own cancerous tumors with a mixture of grains and seeds, including oats. He ground his first, and in the comments I found this note by Eileen Weaver: “One of the reasons this worked well was that the grains were soaked overnight, after being FRESHLY ground. The soaking activates the enzymes that would have sprouted the seeds/grains.The activated enzymes begin to convert the storage forms of protein/starch/minerals to active forms, and dramatically increase the vitamin content. All seeds, whatever form they are in are better for soaking because of this.” Eileen convinced me. I’ve been hooked ever since.

More on soaking grains.

And why steel cut oats? “I would argue that cut oats are better for you simply because they are processed less than the rolled variety.”

Quick Oats, Steel Cut Oats, or Regular Oats: What’s the Difference?

I discovered this photo of basil I had photographed in September 2009 – now isn’t that a warm image to share on a cold January 2012 evening?

For more photos straight out of the camera:

Here’s a recipe for basil pesto and a recipe for basil meatloaf. What do you with your summer basil?

A nest in a tree: this is easy to see. (Michelle thinks this is a squirrel’s nest, a drey).

Nearby to the nest, I found this large hive. Is something alive and living in this hive? Hornets, perhaps? (Michelle suggests a bald faced hornet hive – see her comment below).

Birds high in the sky fly by without a hello. Nor a goodbye.

I walked in the woods (behind my daughter’s school) and whom did I meet: two deer, what a treat.

For more Nature Notes: