The Camino One Year Later

Crossing the Bridge at the bottom of Rue de la Citadele

One year ago today we started walking out of St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port, naive pilgrims without an idea of what was ahead of us. That seems like a lifetime ago. On the occasion of most anniversaries, I reflect on how quickly time has passed by. It seems only yesterday that we did this or that. It was only a year or so ago that we graduated, met friends, lost touch, moved in, moved out, traveled to this place or that; all things that happened years or decades ago.

This year has been different, though. I sometimes try to reflect on all that we did this year, only to have the details lost in the fog of time and memory. It takes looking back at pictures to remember all of the people we met, places we saw, and all the things we did. The pictures bring back only good memories, where it takes reading our old blog post to remember the physical and mental pain we suffered on the Camino. This is what makes the most everlasting memories though: remembering how much we needed the other people around us to keep on.

It seems years have passed by since we walked the Camino. It's hard to imagine that after we walked the Way, we also traveled all over the US, Carribean, and Central America. Our time after the Camino affected me nearly as much as the time on the Camino. We hiked the most amazing, awe-inspiring, and breathtaking trails in the National Parks, and rekindled a love of camping and the American outdoors. The National Parks we visited instilled in me an awe of nature and a pride in America that I haven't felt in years. We snorkeled among beautiful underwater gardens of coral that I didn't imagine possible. The time out living at Kahola gave me a new outlook on conservation and being less wasteful with water and energy. Living in Colorado, and seeing no other soul besides Lauren for weeks at a time gave me a much deeper understanding of our marriage and made me love her that much more.

On reflecting on the past year, I think that I can come up with three things that I've learned: we all need each other for happiness and survival, the Earth is a more beautiful and amazing place than words are capable of describing yet all too easy to defile, and we don't need extraneous material goods in our lives to be happy. What follows from this is that we should spend more time with our friends and families, spend more time outdoors, be more conservation minded, and live simpler with less things. Material goods only serve to bind you to an unhappy life of keeping up with the Jones's; working long hours to afford things that won't make you happy and serve only to fill up our landfills. Whereas, camping, hiking, and generally being in nature will make you happier, lead to lower stress, and give you a sense of how important it is to protect our natural environment. What's even better, is to enjoy these things with friends and family alongside.

A happy Camino family just after receiving our Compostela's at the end of the journey in Santiago, Spain.

Spring at 9000 Feet

Spring at 9000 feet: frost covered trees, snow, waking up to 15° F outside and 59° F temperature inside. Should have turned up the heat last night. Had to go with a morning fire today. Hopefully we won't be seeing this weather on our upcoming camping trip... Punxsutawney Phil, you have failed me.

Doing Some Shoeing

Jay checking our status on the GPS.

 With a solid 8 inches of fresh snow we decided to get out and do some snow shoeing.  We circled around the side of the resort through the forest.  We encountered some beautiful snow formations tucked in to the woods including some awesome wind swept bowls.  They were so pristine looking it made me just want to jump in and waller around in each one of them making snow angels.  We managed to make it to the lower ski runs before turning back to head home through the falling snow.

Fresh snow for shoeing.

The Parents Are In!

I was so looking forward to my parents arrival and must say we had the best of times.  For starters, they showed up with a car load of goodies.  Now we have an entire fridge full of fresh produce.  Yessss!  We spent our days touring the area and evenings relaxing with good food and games.

Relaxing by the fire.

Rocco saying hello during our walk.

We walked the loop and were accompanied by Rocco, yes, we have finally confirmed from the Judge's wife that this is in fact the big white dog's name.  We also toured the ski resort and had a look inside the old ski shop.  Mom's feet nearly froze off but we got in some good photo opportunities and had a nice look around.  

Cuchra Pass

A handsome view!

A brief snowfall passed through leaving a couple inches of fresh powder on the ground.  We first attempted to drive to Cuchara Pass in our Toyota. With a little coaxing (getting out and pushing the car) we were able to get our little front wheel drive safely back to the garage.  Thank goodness we had my dad's four wheel drive to get us up to the pass.  After blowing through some snow drifts we made it to the lookout for some mountain views.  We decided to visit the Dog Bar for their Sunday chicken fried steak special and the Ryus Ave. Bakery in LaVeta.  Both were good, but resort prices still remain even though there's not much of a resort left.

Posing in LaVeta after checking out some of the shops.

Lobster feast anyone?

Cooking up a storm...
a storm of lobster that is!

Our evening meals were simply gourmet thanks to Mom and Dad.  We had a delicious taco dinner and even a lobster feast!  Talk about the good life.  This past week was surely it.  We swapped music, stories, and played some serious games of dice, backgammon, and spades.  In fact, I almost feel the need to catch up on some sleep after our late night card games.  I'm not sure if they did it on purpose, but they left the backgammon board with us, so now we can brush up on our skills for our next group of visitors.  We'll bring it back to KC in March!  This has been an action packed few weeks thanks to our family and friends.  We've had so much to look forward to and are so glad everyone has been able to share a little part of our sabbatical with us.  This whole thing really is flying by way too fast, but I feel like we've seen, done, and enjoyed so much more than we ever anticipated.  Thanks to you all!

Cucina Aber

One of the best dishes that I even ate twice while at Cucina Deli in Salt Lake City, UT was their spaghetti pie.  Mmmmm mmmmm good.  Dean gave me the recipe verbally while at the deli one day and I decided it was time I give it a shot.  Now there were several substitutions that had to be made due to what we have in stock here at the condo, but all in all it turned out swell.  I was pretty worried that I'd end up with a pie plate full of loose spaghetti on my hands but the thing held up nicely.  I really think this will become a go to dinner dish for us.  

Boil up some spaghetti until it's just underdone and prepare the filling.  I chose to use spinach, onions, mushrooms, black and green olives, and ham.

Add the filling along with two beaten eggs to the prepared spaghetti and mix.

Place the whole concoction in a greased pie plate.  It looks a lot cooler if you use a spring form pan like Cucina Deli and display it as a stand alone pie. 

Sprinkle the top with Parmesan cheese, or in our case extra sharp white cheddar (that's all we had). 

Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

Top with pasta or marinara sauce.

Thank you Dean Pierose and Cucina Deli for the inspiration!

Eagle Soar

What a day. We went on a killer hike this morning--equal parts killer on the body and awesome. I wanted to scope out the route up to the South White Peak nearby us here, to make sure the stream crossings weren't bad and there weren't any fences guarded by high mountain cults. So we made the hike, which turned out to lead us through the most amazing high mountain meadow I may have seen. You have to walk for a long while along a steady downhill grade which is pretty boring, and shows you no scenery that you can't see from the road. But then near the bottom before you hit the creeks, you crest over a hill and the view opens up to this meadow nestled down between the Dakota Wall and White Peak. Couldn't have done it better in the Alps, if you ask me. If you come to visit us, we will be picnicking there (assuming there isn't 3 feet of snow on the ground). Yes, Kaitlin, this means you.

A very convenient log. 

It was a pretty brutal hike though, it took us 2 hours to hike 3.5 miles, I guess probably because we ascended about 1200' through the hike. I really think, though, that it mostly seemed hard because we had to walk uphill back to the car. Must remember, always park at the low spot... It will be a pretty epic hike once we tack on the extra 500' of elevation to hit the summit. Also as a side note, we saw a shitload (yes, I did intend the pun) of Elk scat. Probably at least 15 piles of it, some pretty fresh. Now just to find the damn things themselves...we have yet to see any wildlife up in our area of the mountains, just tracks and signs.

View Hike 2013-02-02 10:43 by kartoffeln on Breadcrumbs

So the hike was good and all, but then the day gets even better. We had to go down into town for some things--namely a cross-cut saw so I can manhandle some trees for our fireplace. Speaking of not seeing any wildlife in our area, they apparently have a monopoly on the wild things down in the valley. On our drive there and back and around La Veta, we saw no less than 33 mule dear and 1 bald eagle. Yea, thats right, a bald eagle just hanging out in a cottonwood tree. I don't think I've seen a bald eagle for like 15 years, and never one in this area. I had no idea they even lived in the mountains. Shows how much I know about our national symbol.

And to make things even better, Lauren is downstairs making me some spaghetti pie. (Never fear, I'm sure Lauren will elaborate on this later.) How can my day get any better?! Some beer and desserts? Yes!

I bet if that deer in the left front could talk, it would sound like Al Pacino. 

Say Cheese!

I knew that I wouldn't be able to brew beer on our sabbatical due to various logistical issues (mostly just bringing all of my brewing equipment out here). I have like 6 cases of homebrew in the basement right now, so fear not, I am not without my homebrews. But, having beer aside, I knew that I needed some fermentation in my life. I imagine most people who start to make beer, wine, cheese, cured meats, or any other kind of fermentation get infected themselves and can't go long without having something growing in their basement. I knew that I had to do something, and what better than cheese! Nearly as delicious as beer, and pretty good together with it too.

Edam in the front, caerphilly on the right and
Monterrey Jack in the back. 

So, the cheese factory has begun to churn out products in the Aber's laboratory kitchen. Soon, you will all be calling me the Cheese-Whiz, since I'll be like a wizard making cheese. Wait a second...never mind that. In any case, I've got a block of caerphilly, edam, and monterrey jack curing away in my cheese cave right now. The edam and monterrey jack should be done in about a month, and the caerphilly in a week or two from now. We're also mostly through my first batch of cottage cheese, which I might just make another of if we're not too sick of it by the time we finish (you find that a pound of cottage cheese goes a long way...).

Cutting the curds is Serious Business.

I'm pretty surprised by how easy it really is to make cheese. I'm always trying to get people to start brewing beer, but it really can be somewhat of a dauting undertaking. Cheese on the other hand, will probably cost you like $20 in equipment and supplies to make your first curds, and the recipes are straightforward enough that you don't really have to read up much on it at first to start. Most of the stuff I've used here, we already had in the kitchen, or I constructed out of junk. Literally, the stainless steel bottom of my cheese press came out of the trash. (Don't worry though, I did scour the thing like no other and put a new brushed finish on it using sandpaper, steel wool, and rippling biceps.) My cheese mold is a $1 plastic pitcher, that I cut apart and drilled holes in, and the rest of the cheese press came off of various parts of broken furniture among other things that we had in our basement.

This is what I love about cheese--it seems so complex and like something that could only be made in a sterile factory, but in reality its something that's been made in the home for the last 9000 odd years up until like 1950. I suppose this describes most food come to think of it... Also, the best part about making cheese is that  you generally get a pound of cheese out of a gallon of whole milk. So, based on the confusingly low price of $2.75/gal here in Colorado, we're going to be eating cheese for $2.75/lb. I can't imagine finding any cheese at the grocery store for less than about $4/lb. And you get the supreme satisfaction of eating some home made cheese.

And now, if you will excuse me, I have to go make some colby.

Poor little edam, being crushed by 60 lbs. of weights.

My water bath setup. Helps to heat the milk without scorching it and to hold a
constant temperature over long periods. Its just an electric roaster oven I randomly
found out here. 

Monterrey jack coming out of the press. That is one sweet cheese mold, isn't it?