Madison Thai

After our canoeing fun we went to a Thai restaurant close to our friend's apartment complex. It was stuck on a road that ran parallel to the larger more densely franchised road. What I'm trying to say is that its location was a little funny but its decoration and food was yum yum yum. I had a fried tofu appetizer, wonton soup and green tea.
The tofu and accompanying cucumber salad/sweet dip were delightful.
And the soup was large, filling and had subtlety to it. Oh, it was good.

Apples For Everybody

To read about our apple trip and my way of making applesauce go here.

I'll Canoe You

On Sunday the boyfriend, our friend and myself rented a canoe and went paddling around Lake Mendota. We mainly paddled to 'picnic point', where the boyfriend caught a stick with his fishing pole, and paddled back (we were on a strict timeline).
I sat in the middle and it didn't have a seat. This seatlessness was okay except that it meant that I sat cross legged (that's how I sit) and eventually lost feeling in one of my feet. It also meant that on the return paddle my ass got pretty wet when water jumped into our boat. Fun though.

Clanagh (or something like it) Restaurant

This weekend the boyfriend and I went up to Madison, Wisconsin to see a friend. Our biggest excursion most surely (in my mind) our trip to an apple orchard but seeing as I'm going to write that up (along with a recipe for applesauce) for Chicagoist tomorrow I'll give you the rest of the highlights. We arrived around 9:30 and went to a Irish themed pub/restaurant. Our friend lives in a recently developed area of Madison where everything is a bit shiny and unneeded...lots and lots and lots of chain restaurants and stores and their inevitable parking lots, sultry teenagers and stay-at-home moms. The restaurant was no exception. It was next to a 'Cheeseburger Paradise' restaurant, across the way from a World Market and Cold Stone Creamery and there was a TGIF just at the other side of the parking lot. They did, however, have guys playing Irish type music and whisky flights.
And large portraits of Michael Collins.

Ornithology

Yesterday the boyfriend, our two friends and I walked around an area outside of Madison called E-Way. Or maybe it wasn't called that but the trail was. Rolling hills and flat straightaways of prarie-like land. Trees and whatnot. These photographs are not chronological...and that bothers me, but not enough to re-order them.
The boyfriend found this giant pod and insisted that we all smell it. I pretended to smell it but didn't actually breathe in. Sorry. This was a lake we saw. A little boy told us the birds out there were ducks but later on we learned that they were Coots. Are Coots ducks? For the pseudo- ornithologists among you this post is chock full of interesting things, so pay attention, or not.
Prarie like grass and this strangely red stuff.
A cute little bluebird sitting on a blade of whatsit. We also saw a red winged black bird but I was told they're so common they don't count for jack so I won't include the photograph of it.
This was the first time in three months that I've had any time in a flat not city like atmosphere. Though it wasn't like we were in real country side, every way you looked you could see the faint outlines of boxy industry. But if you looked down you'd see cute, though perhaps kind of stupid, field mice like this one. This guy took about ten pictures worth of time to decide maybe he didn't like all us big people staring at him.
Purty.
So. Not included visually here is much playing on play ground equipment and hitting stale tennis balls with sticks. But maybe later. Oh yes also we saw a bald eagle. Well, I saw the tail of a bald eagle. Then after about an hour of hard core swing set action we started walking back to our car. We came around a bend in the path and there was this middle aged guy with a hat and a tripod just standing there. We nodded as we approached and once we got a little closer he said:

"Will you come with me for a minute. I have something I want to show you. It's not something you see everyday."

And then the four of us, all college graduates and reasonably intelligent young people, just shrugged our shoulders, asked no questions and began following him down a different path. I was in the back with the friend we were visiting and I mentioned to him how strange it was that we were following this guy we didn't know down a path we didn't need to go on to see God knows what and not one of us thought to say something like:

"Uh, who are you exactly? And are you about to kill us then take photographs?"

Of course this man actually did us a great favor. After about five minutes he stopped and put his tripod with camera like thing attached to it on the ground. He proceeded to fiddle with the lens for a second before saying:

"Look."

And what do you think he showed us?
Take a minute and guess.

I'm going to tell you now.
He showed us, with his uber cool binocular 45x magnification thingy ma jiggy, a nest. A nest a good quarter of a mile away and way way way way up in a tree. If you only had your naked nudie eye you'd see a clump of leaves and if you thought about it at all you'd chalk it up to a squirrel nest. But lordy lordy this was much cooler. We saw a nest and in it was one adult Great Horned Owl. Wow! Neato. The focus and zoom was so great you felt like you were looking into its eyes. But even more amazing than that were the two, yup two, baby Great Horned Owls all fluffy and yawning and cute as can be.

The end.
It was really cool.
I wish I can a camera with a super zoom so you could fully understand how neat it was.

Ooh. Also on the ride home we saw two pheasants. And they, too, are neat...and probably nice to eat.

A Change Of Place

The boyfriend and I, along with one of the boyfriend's college chums, drove up to Madison last night to have a little visit with another college chum. We arrived around 9 and then went to dinner at a restaurant called something like Claddagh Arms. I was a little skeptical of the place because it was in the middle of a shoppping parking lot place. Next to it was a place called 'Cheeseburger In Paradise' and across the way was a World Market and two or three other stores of that ilk...oh and a Cold Stone Creamery was nearby (I had never heard of CSC before moving to Chicago and I have yet to try it..faux pas?).

Skeptical I was. But by the end of the meal I was far less so. This joint was living life Irish. It had two or three real fireplaces and big bar and a decent menu. We split the Shamrock Wings, which our host said smelled funny, and they tasted pretty good but not at all spicy. I had a housesalad which was a straight forward affair of iceberg lettuce, chopped tomatoes, red onion and cucumbers. I most certainly can make a better salad but the lettuce was fresh and not all wilty wacky around the edges. I had the calamari appetizer for dinner. Each bite was crispy and the portion was too big for me to finish...oh and their cocktail sauce had what I consider an acceptable amount of horseradish. Many restaurants put like a pink fingernail clipping's worth of horseradish in their sauces and that's just silly you need at least a whole thumb nail. The end.