Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Cookies!

A few weeks ago, I did something I’ve never done before: make cookies. I feel pretty confident with cooking, but baking is the wild west as far as I’m concerned. The first recipe was one I spotted on Facebook in an exchange between the Abendroth cookie experts. The second is my favorite cookie that my mom makes. (Turns out they are from the back of the white chocolate chips bag. Ha!) I tried a third cookie this weekend but it didn’t turn out real well so I’ll have to give it another shot before it hits the blog. Enjoy!

Ingredients

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
  • 1 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup white sugar
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • 1 egg
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets or line with parchment paper.

Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt; set aside.

In a medium bowl, cream together the melted butter, brown sugar and white sugar until well blended. Beat in the vanilla, egg, and egg yolk until light and creamy. Mix in the sifted ingredients until just blended. Stir in the chocolate chips by hand using a wooden spoon. Drop cookie dough 1/4 cup at a time onto the prepared cookie sheets. Cookies should be about 3 inches apart.

Bake for 15 to 17 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the edges are lightly toasted. Cool on baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely. [source]

  

Ingredients

  • 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2/3 cup Nestle Toll House Baking Cocoa
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1 cup butter or margarine, softened
  • 3/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 2/3 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 2 large eggs
  • 2 cups (12-oz pkg) Nestle Toll House Premier White Morsels

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Combine flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt in small bowl. Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in large mixer bowl until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in morsels. Drop by well-rounded teaspoon onto ungreased baking sheets.

Bake for 9 to 11 minutes or until centers are set. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes. Remove to wire racks to cool completely.

benmartens November 27, 2009 Food

Crystal Mountain Opening Day

I sent a vacation email to the team at work, dug the gear out of storage, packed the rock skis in the car, and headed down to Crystal Mountain this morning for Opening Day 2009.  Never having been to an opening day, I didn’t know what to expect.

On the drive down, I realized that a lot of schools had the day off. Sure enough, the hill was packed with a decidedly non-standard Crystal crowd. In fact, by the time I left, the lots showed evidence of being extremely full, all the way down through D lot.

With a crowd that big, the Chinook Express and Forrest Queen were very crowded. But hey, those were the only lifts that were open (aside from the bunny hill) and who am I to complain about skiing in early November for half price?

By noon, there were tracks starting to appear in Campbell Basin. The people putting in the effort for fresh tracks were being rewarded with two to three feet of good quality snow. That being said, anything off the groomed runs usually resulted in scraping a rock or three. If you have rock skis, use them.

While taking a break at the upper lodge around 12:50, I heard a rumor that REX was going to open at 1 despite the “we’re not opening this today” sign. I skied down and joined the small group that had gathered in front of the lift. We waited for about 50 minutes before finally getting on the lift. Towards the end, I admit thinking it wasn’t worth the wait, but boy was I wrong! I was probably about the 10th chair up and I didn’t waste any time bombing down into Green Valley.

Incredible.

That one run alone was worth the $30 lift ticket. Top to bottom untracked powder. I jumped onto a chair and watched it get tracked out as I rode up. On the second run, I did a little bit of hiking and got another huge run of fresh snow. By that point, the football field sized plots of untouched snow had pretty much disappeared, but I was in awe of the fantastic November skiing.

But yes, it is early season. You WILL hit rocks. Don’t take those brand new $700 skis with you, but do find a way to get out there! Ski season in Washington has arrived!

You can find photos in the photo gallery. They all have the title “Opening Day.” Also note that the text up to this point is a duplicate off a post I made for the SeattlePI website. I’ll keep a lot of the skiing stuff there, but I’ll still continue to cross post a few of my favorites.

One of my favorite parts of skiing is the people you meet on the lifts. For example, my first ride up was with a guy who said he hadn’t skied in 10 years. Another guy said, “Have you been locked in a closet?” “Close. A cell.” Turns out he got out of jail about a month ago. By the end of the lift ride, the ex-con had a potential job offer from another person on the lift. The second ride up was with two wives who had ditched their husbands to come skiing and were making fun of their guys for going to work instead of skiing.

There was a lot of discussion among the skiers at work about whether or not Crystal would be worth it since they only had 2-3 feet of snow which is barely enough to cover the rocks. I laughed all day as I thought of them sitting at work, especially as snow was blowing up into my chest on those runs down Green Valley. Seriously, when have you ever been skiing and though, “Ehh I should have been working today”? And as for the chest high snow (and I already twittered this): When you’re a 6’4" skier, it’s hard to get face shots, but the more accurate "nipple shots" doesn’t sound right.

One other thing I left out of the Seattle PI is that I saw my first real fight on the mountain. As we were hanging out around the bottom of REX hoping that they would open it, there was a lot of shuffling and jockying for positions in the line/blob. One guy was definitely mad (and I think he was drunk) but he was running through a wide assortment of foul language directed at the four teenage girls who had somehow camped in the front of the line. Eventually his berating moved onto someone else and he ended up throwing a punch. The crowd quickly subdued him and ski patrol jumped into action and escorted him away. I know we joke about “no friends on a powder day” but come on, it’s not like one spot in line is going to spoil your 100s of options from the top of that lift.

All in all, this was an interesting day. It started off as a groomer-cruiser which helped me get back into gear and also because the off-piste snow was sketchy. It ended with three runs that I will remember for a very long time. It’s probably the second or third best runs I’ve ever had. (Other’s in that category are the day at Crystal with Jay and Andy when we had the ski photographer and also the runs that Mike and I made off the top of Lone Peak.)

benmartens November 12, 2009 Skiing

Peanut Butter Noodles

It’s been a while since we’ve had a “Cooking with Tyla and Ben” post. This one is mostly Tyla’s brainchild. She had a hankerin’ for some peanut butter noodles. The only change we made from the allrecipes.com script was the addition of a chicken breast because who eats food without meat? That’s crazy talk.

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup chicken broth
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger root
  • 3 tablespoons soy sauce
  • 3 tablespoons peanut butter
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons honey
  • 2 teaspoons hot chile paste (optional)
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 8 ounces Udon noodles
  • 1/4 cup chopped green onions
  • 1/4 cup chopped peanuts
  • 1 chicken breast

Cook the chicken breast in a pan. Optionally, add spices.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add noodles and cook until tender according to package directions. Drain.

Meanwhile, combine chicken broth, ginger, soy sauce, peanut butter, honey, chili paste, and garlic in a small saucepan. Cook over medium heat until peanut butter melts and is heated through. Add noodles and chicken and toss to coat. Garnish with green onions and peanuts.

Check the timing on the noodles. It took us a while to boil water and then another 12-14 minutes for the noodles so the chicken was done way too early. However, since everything is combined and heated together at the end, it’s not a big deal.

benmartens October 6, 2009 Food

Olympic Peninsula

Mom and Dad came out for Labor Day and we took a trip with Tyla around the Olympic Peninsula. On Day 1, we started with the Edmunds-Kingston ferry. We weren’t actually sure if we should even begin the trip due to the wet weather and the even wetter forecast. The ferry crossing was dry but incredibly windy. We made our way up to the top of Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park. It wasn’t raining there either and the clouds were loose enough to give us some good views. Not knowing much other than the fact that it was a little dirt road, I decided to drive the family out to Obstruction Point. What a drive it turned out to be! Do NOT drive this road if you have an RV or even a large truck. There are many points where it is really a one lane road with hill on the left and cliff on the right. The road was in pretty good shape and we made the 9 mile drive in about 20-30 minutes. Once at the end, we did a little hiking and then made the trek back. The highlight for Tyla was definitely the marmots. We drove back to Port Angeles and spent the night there (after I dropped my camera in the sand and broke it.)

On Sunday we drove from Port Angeles to the Hoh Rain Forrest on the west side of the park. It was raining. Shocker. They get 140” of rain a year with another 30” of mist. We took the ranger led hike, learned a bit, and got soaked despite our ponchos. We continued on to Ocean Shores where, once again, it was not raining and we enjoyed the beach for a while. The beach there is an official state highway so I took the Subie out there for a while.

Sunday morning we headed to the jetty on the south end of the island and then made the long drive home.

I think we made a great move going in spite of the rain. It sounded like it poured all weekend in Seattle and, although it was cloudy, we didn’t get much rain on our trip. There are a lot more things I want to see over there, but this definitely crossed a few items off my list!

Photos are in the photo gallery under Olympic Peninsula.

benmartens September 15, 2009 Outdoors, Travel

Garage Shelves: Part Deux

Ever since I did the first set of garage shelves, I’ve wanted to extend them. Tim came over and we were able to do just that.

We tripled the previous surface area and even added a ladder to make it a bit easier to get up there. The end result is enormous, but it really provides a lot of storage area for my little condo. I had a couple neighbors jealously look on and ask if I’d come do the same in their garage.

Thanks for the help Tim! I’d probably still be making trips to Home Depot for replacement pieces of wood if you weren’t there to help.

It’s a bit difficult to photograph the shelves, but this should give you an idea. There is about 90 square feet of space on top. I had to put a lot of stuff on the floor while I was building the new shelves and I clearly have cleanup work remaining.

benmartens September 14, 2009 Projects, Woodworking

Wellington

If you’ve read The White Cascade, you probably recognize Wellington as the sight of one of the greatest train disasters in history. In 1910, a couple train got stuck on the tracks by a huge snowstorm and was eventually taken out by an avalanche killing 96 people. It’s located in Stevens Pass and on Thursday, Mom, Dad and I headed there to check it out.

I tried to hike to Wellington on Father’s Day last year but got turned around by snow. This year we didn’t have any problems like that. We drove to the top of Stevens Pass, caught the north end of Old Cascade Highway south down the valley to the Wellington trailhead.

Unfortunately it was raining just hard enough to thwart our attempts at a good hike, but we hiked about a mile underneath a concrete snowshed and saw the entrance to the old Cascade train tunnel.

Since our train adventure ended a bit early, we headed on to Leavenworth. After a quick stop to walk through the shops and get some fudge, we drove south and did the three pass blast in the Subie (Stevens, Blewett, Snoqualmie.)

benmartens September 9, 2009 Outdoors, Travel

Moran State Park Camping Trip

Every year around December, we check out the Washington State Parks website and see which campgrounds are filling up. There are usually some good campsites left at those parks and we snag one for the following year. Previous trips have been to Deception Pass and Fort Flagler. This year it was Moran State Park on Orcas Island.

The first challenge was getting everyone to the campsite. Tim, Andy and I headed up on Thursday afternoon after leaving work a little early. It’s a 70 minute ferry ride and there are not a lot of ferries each day. We eventually made it to Orcas a little after dark, found dinner at a bar in Eastsound and then made our way to the campground.

Our campsite was perched up on a cliff overlooking Cascade Lake. The site had a nice view but there weren’t any level spots to set the tents which made sleeping interesting.

On Friday, Tim, Andy and I hiked with Tucker around Cascade Lake and Mountain Lake, drank some beverages and played cards. Matt and Laura arrived just after dark, and Tyla and Chelsea arrived after 11. Tim and I were getting a bit nervous that they may have gotten lost, and with no cell reception at the camp site, we headed out to track them down. Thankfully we spotted them on their way to the site so we flipped a u-turn and led them to the campsite.

Saturday was a full day of hiking to the top of Mt. Constitution (the highest point in the San Juans), bumbling about in rented row boats, and playing cornhole.

Sunday morning came too soon and we had to pack up to leave. Thankfully we got on an even earlier ferry than we had planned (it was late because of fog) and we made good time coming home.

It would have been nice if the whole group could have been there longer, but I’m really happy that we got to go. I wouldn’t stay in that same site again. There are a ton of good ones to choose from though and the park is gorgeous. Thanks to everyone who came!

Photos are in the photo gallery.

benmartens August 31, 2009 Outdoors, Travel

A River Runs Through Me

Sunday was another hot day, so Tyla and I decided to take a little adventure. Three Forks Park (just north of North Bend) was one of the first places I discovered on my motorcycles rides. It’s not much of a park, but it is a good place to access the Snoqualmie River about a mile upstream from the falls. Normally I just relax on the bank but on Sunday, we decided to try to swim for a bit too.

We walked along the bank until we found a quiet spot away from the few people who were there. The smart people brought some shade with them, but we weren’t that smart this time. After swimming around for a while, I found a place to cross the river and ferried our stuff (and Tyla) across the river. We chatted, read books, and had a great afternoon.

I hesitated to write about this place at first because I don’t want it to become overrun. Then I realized that the three people who read this probably aren’t going to go anyway.

benmartens August 6, 2009 Outdoors

Mowich Lake

Saturday was our one year anniversary. 365 days ago, Tyla and I had our first date, and for some reason, she has put up with me for a whole year. To celebrate, we drove down to Mowich Lake.

Mowich Lake is located in the northwest corner of the park, a part I have never been to. It is the deepest and largest lake in the park. You access the lake via a 17 mile long dirt road. Before you go, make sure you check the website to see if the road is open. It just opened last Thursday so it takes them a while to get it ready for traffic. I think the next time we go back, we’ll take an SUV or a truck. The Subie survived, but I felt a bit bad about bouncing it along those washboard roads. Thankfully, the dirt road keeps a lot of people away and there were not a ton of people around. Don’t worry about trying to find a spot in the tiny lot, just park along the road and make your way down to the trail that circles the lake.

We found a very secluded spot right at the water’s edge to have a private picnic lunch. I was tempted to go back to the car for my swimsuit, but after wading in up to my knees, I realized that swimming in a glacier fed lake wouldn’t last too long. It was frigid! By the way, this was the second weekend in a row that I have played in the snow on dormant volcanoes. Have I mentioned I love the Pacific Northwest?

After lunch, we hiked to the south end of the lake where most of the crowd was. There are about 30 camping sites, but it’s really just a big rock field where you can pitch a tent. If you were doing a lot of hiking in the area, it might be worth it, but otherwise I think we’ll skip that campground.

Normally you’d see majestic Mt. Rainier just over the hills but there were too many clouds to give us a good view. You can check out the photos in the photo gallery or view the panoramic shot by clicking the image below (~17MB.)

We finished the day with dinner at Matts’ Rotisserie and Oyster Lounge in Redmond Town Center. (Minus eleventy billion points for auto playing background music when you open their site.)

Thanks to Tyla for yet another wonderful adventure. The last year has been full of them and I can’t wait to see what lies ahead!

benmartens July 27, 2009 Outdoors, Panorama

Artists Point Panorama

It’s been a while since I’ve done a panoramic stitch, but Saturday’s ride to the top of Artists Point was the perfect opportunity. There are a couple ways to view it. First, you can open the JPG directly but be warned that it’s about 9MB.

 

I also made an HDView page for this. (HDView is the Microsoft research project for viewing large images. You can read more about it on their site.) You’ll need to download the latest version of the plug-in if you haven’t used it lately, but once you do, it provides a very nice browsing experience. You can zoom and pan your way around the image.

benmartens July 21, 2009 Motorcycle, Panorama