A Point-to-Point Kayak Trip

The boys and I went on a point-to-point kayak trip this morning.  Usually we start and finish our kayak adventures in the same place, so this added some excitement by traversing new (to us) waters.  It also introduced the concept of "coordination," as we had to coordinate drop-off and pick-up times and locations with Mom.

We began our trip at a boat launch in the Susquehanna River, and planned to meet up with my wife at our town park, which is where we normally kayak.

It is in the kayak that I really know how much my kids are growing.  Our draft is getting quite deep.  And the two of them together weigh almost as much as me.

U.S. Route 40.  Another discussion on our voyage was "perspective," as in "we see this view almost every day, but usually we see it from bridge level."

Stopping to skip rocks on an island at the mouth of the Susquehanna River (Garrett Island).  Perryville, MD is in the background.

An old bridge support at the mouth of the Susquehanna River, with Havre de Grace, MD in the background.  I love the tree.

An Amtrak train crosses the Susquehanna River's most downriver bridge before her waters empty into the Chesapeake Bay.

Geese buzz our flank.

My younger son, who will do almost anything to forego a nap, fell asleep near the end of our trip...

Arriving at the town park, our voyage complete, we just had to wait a few minutes for Mom to pick us up.

Tortellini Time

I was inspired to try making tortellini this week.  With a few changes, I followed this recipe and was pleasantly surprised with how easy it is to make tortellini (CAVEAT: by easy I mean it is something edible that I was able make without causing too much disruption in our house - and does not mean I just whipped up some five-star restaurant-quality tortellini).

  
My younger son loves pasta and he was happy to help roll the dough.  Once rolled (to what we thought was thin enough) I cut the dough.  Unfortunately we don't have a round cooking cutter, so I improvised and used a wine glass...

I don't have the tortellini fold perfected, but there was noticeable aesthetic improvement from the start of the process to the end.

And dinner did resemble tortellini...

The first batch of anything is always more of a learning process, and I'm fortunate to have an easy crowd that puts up with my food experiments as of late.  The biggest tortellini lesson I learned from the first batch is to roll the dough in smaller sections in order to be able to roll it thinner.  Dinner wasn't bad, but the tortellini was a little bit doughy.  But this is something that is definitely worth trying again, and it doesn't take very long to make.  Cheers!