The National Aviary: Review

I should open this post with a quick disclaimer and state that I have a personal connection to the National Aviary, so I'm a little biased.  Nonetheless, I wanted to write about it, because I really do feel that it's an extraordinary place worthy of attention and accolades. 

The facility, located on the North Side of Pittsburgh, has undergone some major changes and additions, and they continue to renovate exhibits frequently.  This is always done with the birds' happiness in mind, accommodating their need for stimulation in their spaces.  In fact, the birds' happiness and well-being are truly of utmost importance at the Aviary.  My experience with their practice behind-the-scenes is totally consistent with that idea - they have fine-tuned their training practices, trainers are constantly providing new activities for the birds to keep them engaged and active, and even the volunteers and interns undergo extensive training to ensure the safety and comfort of the birds.  And don't even get me started on the incredible veterinary staff.

I have always felt that zoos are a "necessary evil" - that while it's not ideal to keep an animal in an artificial environment rather than out in nature, we need zoos to educate and to inspire.  The Aviary really embodies this - their educational programming is absolutely fantastic, and really targets different age groups well.  It's a great way for kids of all ages to learn about the birds and about preserving the natural habitats of all creatures for the future survival of at-risk species. 

One of the greatest things at the Aviary is their devotion to the Species Survival Plan.  Staff members are very knowledgeable about this program, and many of the birds at the Aviary are part of the plan.  It's a collaboration between zoos the world over to preserve both numbers of individuals and genetic diversity of the population (in order to ensure strong offspring).  The African Penguins and Guam Rails recently hatched at the Aviary are examples of the success of this program.

Stepping off my soapbox now, the main point about the Aviary is that it's just such a neat place to be!  The different environments that visitors walk through seem to have their own unique moods and rhythms.  My favorites are the tropical rainforest and the grasslands - both spaces are usually active yet mellow. 

Here are my photos from today, using my shiny new camera:

Benito the Hyacinth Macaw shows off for the camera

White-Cheeked Turaco

Burrowing Owl

African Penguin - this is one of the recently-hatched young'uns!

 Adult African Penguins

 

Shaft-Tail Finches

African Gray Parrot

Inca Tern

Victoria Crown Pigeon

Guam Rail

Cape Thick-Knee

This is just a snippet of what's on offer at the Aviary.  Better yet, there are interactive feedings run by the trainers, where guests can even get a chance to feed a bird.  There are also fantastic bird shows, run by an extremely capable show staff.  The training process for the shows is absolutely amazing, and very intense.  Since training must be consistent across the board, there is a very precise training protocol that the staff follows. 

The Aviary has great summer programming, as well as some summer camp sessions, and tours for large groups.  Wing your way over to their website for more information!

Our Cats

I thought I'd do a little post about our two charming-but-very-stupid cats, I'll call them Big One and Little One.  Big One is my husband's cat since before I was even on the radar.  He is enormous, plus he is slightly overweight, which definitely exaggerates his already-large self.  We believe he's mostly a Maine Coon cat, or possibly a Norwegian Forest cat.  Personally, I like the romance of the Norwegian Forest imagery, so I'm going to go with that.  Little One is my cat, and we got him when my husband and I first moved in together.  He's a very cute little short haired black cat with a few white patches on his belly.

Here are some photos, starting with the glamour shots:

...and then some of their less glamorous moments:

To be fair, my husband set him up for this by filling Little One's house with catnip.  Big One could not resist.  In his defense, the camera really does seem to have added 10 pounds here.  Especially when you compare the cat with that tiny little house, which is just barely big enough for Little One.

Little One, right after we got him.  He is in love with all things he can climb into.

This was Big One's super-stealth hiding spot for some time, back when we had these horrible old hampers.  Totally convinced that no one could see him in there, he would occasionally do a vertical leap out of the hamper and pounce on whatever pair of legs happened to be passing.

An action shot.  Little One goes for the party ribbon, which he promptly threw up all. over. the. apartment.

Investigating the cooler bag

Don't tell me this thing wasn't designed as a bed for me.

This is a frequent sight in the winter - furniture coated with Big One's hair, with Little One in a tiny little ball.

I can doez my cute facez now.

Aaaand I just became the crazy cat lady.

I may or may not have time to post anything this weekend, as we have family coming to visit this weekend!  It'll be very exciting, and I'm sure I'll have plenty to post next week!

Cooking tip

On a trip to visit my parents in January, I had an epiphany.  I used to worry about family recipes (or just other families' recipes that my family copied and adapted) getting passed along over the years.  My sister, cousins and I are all at varying degrees of culinary talent and knowledge, and there are some damn fine recipes that my mother has on index cards - some with random things crossed out and edited, some even written by family or friends and given to my mother.  I realized that a great temporary solution, rather than copying them all out into a cute recipe book (too painstaking to do at once) or entering them into a computer-based system (to soulless), I could just photograph and catalog the recipes I wanted for now.  So now I have a digital cookbook supplement.  As I prepare the recipes, if I love them enough, I then copy them into my beloved recipe book, which I snapped up in the last days of Borders' going-out-of-business sale (*sigh*).  Sadly, the only pictures I seem to be able to get tonight are pretty crummy, but to illustrate my system...

I start with something like this...

...and this is where I enter the recipes I really love.

I admit, I haven't yet tried the stuffed mushroom recipe posted above, so it's a potato gratin recipe pictured in my recipe book photo.  I always make sure to note where the recipe came from.  In the case of the potatoes au gratin, it's my old standby, Martha.  I always add bacon, incidentally.  This recipe is one of my all-time favorites, and we make it whenever we want to impress guests with our culinary prowess.  Although honestly, a trained monkey could make it.  It's time-consuming to slice those potatoes, but apart from that, it's a cakewalk.

Anyway, I love my recipe book, and I love that it keeps evolving.  I actually have to go add the quiche recipe I previously reviewed.  I've made it twice and loved it, so into the book it goes!

I should also note that for recipes that I pull out of magazines in card or folded-page format, I have a charming little recipe box - yes, designed by Martha, so sue me! - to file those away.  So many recipes, so little time!

Anybody else have a favorite system for holding on to the best recipes?

Recipe: Strawberry Salsa!

Recently, I decided to buy a completely obscene amount of strawberries.  We're talking several pounds of strawberries.  So, for our neighborhood Cinco de Mayo bash, I made some strawberry salsa.  It came out really well, especially for a first attempt at salsa, plus salsa can be used in a ton of diet-friendly recipes; sweet salsas pair nicely with salmon, pork, chicken, etc.  Here are the ingredients:

1 lb strawberries, diced
1 lb tomatoes, diced - try to find an especially flavorful variety
2 jalapeno peppers (one of them seeded, one with the seeds), sliced
1 small yellow onion, diced
Fresh cilantro, finely chopped, to taste - I love a ton of cilantro, so I used a lot of it.
Salt and pepper to taste

Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl.  If you like your salsa as pictured below, then you can stop here.  This results in a very mild salsa (obviously, you can add more jalapeno and include more of the seeds to up the ante spice-wise).

However, I prefer it this way:

To do this, just stick the salsa into a blender and pulse until you get a consistency like the one in the picture.  This style keeps a lot longer, too, so we left ours in an airtight container overnight in the fridge, which made it REALLY tasty.  It went over quite well for Cinco de Mayo.  It's still pretty mild by salsa standards, but I personally prefer it that way (again, if you like it spicy, just keep on adding those jalapenos!).

Enjoy!

Product Review: Seeds of Change Tikka Masala Sauce

Just a quick review and a run recipe for the Tikka Masala Sauce by Seeds of change.  This stuff is magically delicious.  I would literally cook with it every night if that were a reasonable behavior.  It's got a really wonderful flavor, and while we have used it in the traditional manner, my favorite thing to make with it is Chicken Tikka "pizzas":

Unfortunately, when I actually got around to taking a photo, we had already used up all the Naan (we used the Whole Foods store brand, which was delicious by packaged bread standards), so this one was made on a flour tortilla.

For each one, I used 2-4 oz shredded chicken breast, 1 serving of the Tikka Masala sauce and 1 ounce shredded cheese (I used mozzarella, but you could definitely try others).  Popped them in the oven on 250 degrees or so and just kept an eye on them until they were done.  They're quick, easy and DELICIOUS.  The key is the sauce, I kid you not.  It's that good.

A Sweet Picnic Date

In an effort to bask in the early warm days of spring back in March, I decided to whisk my husband away after work for a special date.  Since one of our favorite things about living in the DC area was frequent picnicking, I thought that would be a great plan.  So I hit up the grocery store and picked up some favorite foods and prepped our beautiful picnic basket:

Fresh mozzarella, apples, chevre, cheddar, melba toasts, salami, and bread from Breadworks

I hid the picnic basket in the trunk and picked my husband up at work.  I told him we were going for a special surprise and didn't tell him where - we headed to the park near CMU, where plenty of CMU students had also headed out to enjoy the new spring weather!

The flowering trees in Schenley park and on CMU's campus were just gorgeous!  I had a great time photographing them.

My husband loved this date - he felt special, I felt special, and we had a wonderful, sun-splashed afternoon!  I highly recommend the surprise picnic as a date - it's a great way to make someone feel very loved.

Pittsburgh Opera: Review

This isn't really so much a formal review of one opera so much as a review of our overall experiences there.

We have now seen several things at the Pittsburgh Opera - Turandot, Dialogues of the Carmelites, La Traviata, The Pearl Fishers and Tosca.  We loved every last one of them - except the Carmelites, but that was really the fault of the opera rather than the opera company.  More on that later.  We headed down to the opera on a beautiful Spring evening...

 ...passed by the robot repair shop, where the poor little guys seemed to be getting even more anxious...

 ...and made it to the lovely Benedum Center.  It is a majorly over-the-top opera house, decked out from head to toe in gold-encrusted moldings and other crazy details.  It narrowly misses tackiness and instead is just dripping with awesome, like these fabulous chandeliers:

 Seriously, I need one of those for my house.  Also, I need a giant house to put one of those chandeliers in.

 I trotted out the antique opera glasses - my Christmas gift from my husband - at Tosca.

They have great little side rooms for intermission, too...

Fabulousness of the Benedum Center set aside, the Pittsburgh Opera is a fantastic company.  I was so spoiled, going to operas at the Kennedy Center when I was in college, and having seen Renee Fleming sing at the Met in New York.  I didn't expect Pittsburgh to measure up, and yet it turns out some really wonderful performances.

Turandot was great, in particular Naguanda Nobles, who brought down the house.  The tenor the night we went was a replacement, and he seemed to be perhaps under rehearsed or not feeling well.  But overall, the performance was fantastic.

The Dialogues of the Carmelites was an extremely well-done production of an abysmal opera.  I should note here that I'm sure there are many who appreciate this sort of opera.  I am not one of them.  It's gloomy, with a story that starts out promising.  I think the biggest problem with it is that the music doesn't match the action of the story - there are many moments of either dramatic music during a banal moment, or dull music at an important time.  That said, the Pittsburgh Opera company did the best I can imagine anyone doing with it, featuring some lovely singing talent.

La Traviata was absolutely superb.  The set design was over-the-top in a very good way, and the garden/conservatory setting in Act 2 was particularly gorgeous.  The soprano starring as Violetta, Anna Samuil, was stunning in both voice and acting ability, and she was perfectly matched with the baritone, Stephen Powell, who sang Giorgio Germont (the male lead's father) in some very touching duets in the second act.  The tenor, Giuseppe Varano, was also excellent.  But really, it was the second act moments between Samuil and Powell that were the most moving for me, which is unusual, because I normally find that to be the least interesting part of the opera.  The two of them were just enchanting together.

The Pearl Fishers was a lot of fun, featuring Zandra Rhodes' spectacularly wacky set design - bright colors and bold shapes everywhere!  The production featured two resident artists, tenor Sean Panikkar and baritone Craig Verm, and these two were an excellent match for each other.  I hadn't really been exposed to this opera before, but was completely charmed and am still listening to it often.  It was so nice to see such phenomenally talented young singers developing their careers in Pittsburgh.

Finally, we saw Tosca, an event much touted in the press due to the soprano, Angela Brown, who definitely delivered on all the hype.  She was a superlative performer in every way.  I feel very fortunate to have seen her sing such an emotionally significant role - one of the most difficult to sing, I believe.  Mark Delavan was the perfect villain, and Hugo Vera's "e lucevan le stelle" was very moving.

We loved going to the Pittsburgh Opera, and were we not trying to move back North as soon as possible, we would have already renewed our subscription for next year - I am nearly peeing my pants over next season's lineup!  Rigoletto, Don Giovanni (one of my favorites!!), Madam Butterfly, La Cenerentola and Il Matrimonio Segreto.  Don Giovanni is the only one of those I have seen before, and given the choice, I'd see it again, along with Rigoletto and Butterfly, which I am also dying to see!

Please consider subscribing to the Pittsburgh Opera if you are looking for some interesting cultural events to explore.  They really put on great productions, and they do a great job of cultivating local talent, which I think is very important for a strong opera house.  Plus, their tickets start at something like 10 dollars - a seriously great bargain!