Author: damien

Sober | Warrior | Cyclist | Father | Husband | Coffee Achiever | Cook | Eater | Penn Stater | Survivor

Quinoa and Coconut Porridge 

This morning I was browsing Instagram (as I am known to do) when I came across this photo of a Vegan Quinoa and Coconut Pudding. I hadn’t had breakfast and it looked damn good so I started looking in vain for the recipe. 

Nowhere to be found. 

Not one to be deterred by the lack of instructions, I headed to the kitchen and got busy with my craft. I came up with the following as a start.

  • 1/2 cup quinoa (Bob’s Red Mill)
  • 3 Tbsp unsweetened coconut (Bob’s Red Mill)
  • 3/4 cup fat free milk (I’m not vegan and I won’t ever be one)
  • 1/2 cup lite coconut milk (Thai Kitchen, organic)

Of course, I washed the quinoa first and then set the ingredients on the stove and brought them to a low boil. I turned down the heat and covered the pot with a lid. After about 15 minutes I checked on things. 

Despite the fact that most of the liquid was absorbed, the quinoa didn’t look like it was done — the hulls were still completely intact.  I figured that there must have been something about the milk/coconut milk mixture that prevented this — I hypothesized that it was the fat content of the coconut milk but that’s just a guess. 

So I added 1/4 cup of water to the pot and let it simmer for another 10 minutes. When I checked, the quinoa was done. 

I garnished the porridge with chopped walnuts, honey and raspberries. It turned out really good and packed a full 15 grams of protein to boot!

Here’s the final recipe:

  • 1/2 cup quinoa (Bob’s Red Mill)
  • 3 Tbsp unsweetened coconut (Bob’s Red Mill)
  • 3/4 cup fat free milk (I’m not vegan and I won’t ever be one)
  • 1/2 cup lite coconut milk (Thai Kitchen, organic)
  • 1/4 cup water

According to MyFitnessPal the porridge packs 290 calories, 11 grams  fat, 37.2 grams carbohydrates, and 10.6 grams protein. (The walnuts made up the difference here folks)

First Ride of 2016

12806050_10209755952441842_73562242598076417_nI got back on the bike today after being off it since October and it felt pretty good.  I was definitely not strong, but it still felt good to be back on two wheels and spinning the legs. I decided that I would take it relatively easy and rode about 30 minutes at about 13 mph.  I logged a little over 8 miles.

I’m certainly not in the shape that I was  a few years ago but that’s to be expected.  I simply haven’t put in the time on the bike and I made some choices in lifestyle that severely impacted my fitness.  With that behind me, I am looking forward to making slow but steady progress toward rebuilding my fitness.

An eight mile ride is a start.

A Brief Note to Followers

If you recently followed the blog “Sober Boots,” you will probably want to sign up to follow it again over at that site.

When I originally started blogging about my experiences as a sober person I didn’t give it much thought and just started posting on my existing blog.  Over time I decided that I would rather have a dedicated space for those thoughts and so I split out the content related to sobriety and a dedicated blog for it.

Of course, if you’d like to read about my other interests, please feel free to keep following this blog.

Out in the woods

I finally got out in the woods yesterday.  I’ve been longing to get out in the woods for a few weeks.  I had high hopes that this would be a family event, but that did not come to pass.  I spent some time at Patapsco State Park near Elkridge, MD yesterday afternoon.  The smell of the decaying leaves, the earth, felt good in my nostrils.

I took an easy hike starting in the Avalon Area of the park, over the swinging bridge, and north on the paved path until I came to the “Forest Glen Path.” I took this path which ascends from the Patapsco valley toward Catonsville, MD.  I saw a few other walkers on the path but it was far from crowded.  Just what I needed — a bit of solitude and time alone.

The weather was a bit cold for mid October in MD, but I was happy for it.  Also, there seemed to be a front moving through and the sky alternated between cloudy and sunny.  There was a brief period of light rain.  I was glad to be wearing my new  Gore-Tex shell.  I have Mrs. TKD to thank for the reminder to take it as I left the house.

When I got to the end of the trail, I found myself in an area known as the Hilton Area, and there was a really cool playground made of used tires there.  I plan to bring Mr. Grey back to see it.  I showed him pictures of it on-line last night and he said, “I should have gone to Patapsco with you.”  I thought to myself, “yeah, buddy, you should have,” but I kept that thought to myself.

I wish we lived closer to some wilderness.  The fact that we have to get in the car to find some empty spaces really wears on me.  Growing up I had open spaces right across the street from our house.  I could go out and be in farmer’s fields in as little as 100 yards.

I enjoyed playing outside in the fields for hours upon end.  Sometimes I saw wildlife.  Sometimes I climbed up trees and hung out in them until the sun set.  Sometimes I ate wild raspberries.  Sometimes I got poison ivy.  Sometimes that happened in February (the poison ivy).

There was an old abandoned house that was nearby, tucked back in the woods.  I usually didn’t remember that it was there, and didn’t go to find it very often, but every now and then, I came upon it and was always surprised to find it.

Things were different when I was a kid.  I roamed around those fields and woods alone for hours at a young age, perhaps 9 or 10 years old.  I can’t imaging letting Mr. Grey out in the wilderness on his own.  And then again, I wonder if it would be really good for him.

It probably would.

Installing Juniper’s Python module py-junos-eznc on Mac OSX Mavericks

python-logo-master-v3-TMIf you are a networking type who works with Juniper gear, you’ve no doubt heard a lot about automation over the past couple of years. Maybe you’ve heard about Puppet and Chef integration, and maybe Ansible integration, and if you ever ran into Jeremy Schulman, you heard about Py-EZ. Maybe you’re interested in checking this out. Maybe you’re a Mac User and you don’t really want to spin up a VM of linux to check it out. If so, read on.

OSX Mavericks ships with python 2.7 but does not include several tools required for installation of the junos-eznc python modules. Mavericks is specifically missing the xmlsoft tools libxml2 and libxslt. Additionally Mavericks does not include pip.

You can easily install pip by following the instructions at https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/installing.html

There are pre-compiled binaries of libxml2 and libxslt, but it’s probably safer to build these tools from their source. To do this, you need a few other tools from the public domain: GNU autoconf (because libxml2 doesn’t include a configure file, only a configure.ac file), GNU automake, GNU help2man (because the full text of the man pages is delivered in textinfo rather than man pages format).

This guide assumes that you’ve installed Xcode and Xcode Command Line tools.

Install autoconf
  1. Download the latest gzip tar file from http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/ (as of 20150626 this is autoconf–2.69.tar.gz)
  2. Run the command “tar xzvf autoconf–2.69.tar.gz”
  3. Change diredctories into the resulting autoconf source directory.
  4. Run the command “autoconf” to generate a configure file.
  5. Run the command “./configure” to generate a Makefile.
  6. Run the commands to build source and install the resulting binary.
    make
    sudo make install
Install automake
  1. Download the latest gzip tar file from http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/automake/ (as of 20150626 this is automake–1.15.tar.gz)
  2. Run the command “tar xzvf automake–1.15.tar.gz”
  3. Change diredctories into the resulting autoconf source directory.
  4. Run the command “autoconf” to generate a configure file.
  5. Run the command “./configure” to generate a Makefile.
  6. Run the commands to build source and install the resulting binary.
    make
    sudo make install
Install xz (required by libxml2)
  1. Download the latest zx source from http://tukaani.org/xz/ (as of 20150626 this is xz–5.2.1.tar.gz)
  2. Run the command “tar xzvf xz–5.2.1.tar.gz”
  3. Change diredctories into the resulting autoconf source directory.
  4. Run the command “autoconf” to generate a configure file.
  5. Run the command “./configure” to generate a Makefile.
  6. Run the commands to build source and install the resulting binary.
    make
    sudo make install
Install help2man (required by libxml2 and libxslt builds)
  1. Download help2man http://www.gnu.org/software/help2man/ (as of 20150626 this is help2man–1.47.1.tar.xz)
  2. Run the command “tar xzvf help2man–1.47.1.tar.xz”
  3. Change diredctories into the resulting autoconf source directory.
  4. Run the command “autoconf” to generate a configure file.
  5. Run the command “./configure” to generate a Makefile.
  6. Run the commands to build source and install the resulting binary.
    make
    sudo make install
Install libxml2
  1. Download libxml2 from ftp://xmlsoft.org/libxml2/ (as of 20150626 this is libxml2-sources–2.9.2.tar.gz)
  2. Run the command “tar zxvf libxml2-sources–2.9.2.tar.gz”
  3. Change diredctories into the resulting autoconf source directory.
  4. Run the command “autoconf” to generate a configure file.
  5. Run the command “./configure” to generate a Makefile.
  6. Run the commands to build source and install the resulting binary.
    make
    sudo make install
Install libxslt
  1. Download libxslt from ftp://xmlsoft.org/libxslt/ (as of 20150626 this is libxslt–1.1.28.tar.gz)
  2. Run the command “tar zxvf libxslt–1.1.28.tar.gz”
  3. Change diredctories into the resulting autoconf source directory.
  4. Run the command “autoconf” to generate a configure file.
  5. Run the command “./configure” to generate a Makefile.
  6. Run the commands to build source and install the resulting binary.
    make
    sudo make install
Install pip
  1. Follow the guide at https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/installing.html or run the command “easy_install pip”
Install junos-eznc with pip
  1. sudo pip install junos-eznc or pip install git+https://github.com/Juniper/py-junos-eznc.git