Thursdays with Inuk, part two

A couple pictures of me with my buddy, Inuk. I am still doing whale enrichment on Thursday mornings at the aquarium and can not imagine giving it up. As if the whales weren't cool enough, I have the best partner, Marliese. She and I have a blast playing with these guys - plus, she takes the best pictures!

Thursdays with Inuk

This is what I do on Thursday mornings before I go to work. I play with three Beluga whales, including Inuk, the curious guy in the background there - and give them plenty of fish and tongue rubs (yes, belugas like their tongues rubbed). Sticking your hand in a whale's mouth may not be your idea of the right way to start the day, but it rates pretty high on my list.

Spring Strollin'

Having now attended two of them, I can honestly say there is no better event in New London than the Food Stroll. Food Stroll happens twice a year - once in the fall and once in the spring - and each one seems to get better than the last.

I blogged about the Fall Food Stroll back in October. The Spring Stroll this evening saw many of the same vendors but with different offerings, as well as some very exciting new editions.

Noe and I were actually very involved in the logistics of Food Stroll this time around - I was on the committee (though I was too busy to contribute as much as I did to Reel Love), Noe volunteered for some various manual labor, and we both sold tickets and helped with the set-up and tear-down. Having worked on the inside, I can truly say that a LOT of hard work goes into this event and Tracy down at Main Street deserves a huge shout-out.

We hooked up with my good friends Dena and Jeanette and headed out. We started at the far end of Bank Street and hit Stroll staples Jasmine Thai (pad Thai and sushi rolls), Hot Rod's (serving my two favorite varieties of wings - garlic pepper dry rub and Thai chili) and Dev's (goat cheese!) as well as Steak Out (formerly Cafe 57), which was serving some marinated steak. (I'll actually be eating dinner at Steak Out for a company dinner on Monday, so a review will be forthcoming.)

We continued down Bank to Lucca (crostini with tapenade - only OK) and the sweet-tooth triple-threat of Daniel's Dairy, Muddy Waters, and Passion Coffee House. Then we doubled back a little ways to mosey down Golden Street to the recently opened Red Lion Steak House. Red Lion served us a decent mini crab cake, but gave us an excellent-looking taking out menu featuring some mouth-watering sounding steaks, as well as chicken and seafood options. That menu, combined with the fact that the place looks amazing (long wood bar, sophisticated color scheme) ensures that we will be back sooner rather than later.

We made our way to the far end of State Street, trying out chili con carne and guacamole at Zavala (I still have mixed feelings about Zavala - I love the look and the location, but the food is extremely inconsistent and the service is terrible).

Jeanette, me, and Dena outside Zavala

We continued up the street, trying out a spicy carrot spread and vanilla bean cake at organic haven Mangetout (the cake was fantastic and the spread was really interesting) and some run-of-the-mill chicken tender offerings from Wings & Pies. Then we came to the Crocker House, the be-all-end-all of food strolling.

Gourmet Galley Catering always sets up shop at Crocker House, a great event space in the heart of downtown. At both strolls I have attended, we've been greeted at the door with booze. In the fall it was rum-spiked cider; in the spring, champagne - Crocker and Gourmet Galley wanted to showcase their wedding potential, so they staged a mock reception.

Champagne in the Crocker House lobby

We took our champagne and headed through the rainbow-colored lobby to the courtyard, where we found ourselves face-to-face with a cheese table containing various varieties of bleu, goat, and soft cheeses such as brie along with crackers and various accompaniments such as olives, nuts, and fruit.

Cheese station

After Dena and I reigned ourselves in from the cheese table, we headed into the ballroom where mini salmon and filet mignon (as well as cake - I just couldn't handle more sweets) were being served. For being mini-portions, everything was beautifully displayed (where did those tiny forks come from?) and miraculously, nothing was overcooked. I'd hire Gourmet Galley to cater my wedding based on this sample alone.

Palm-sized salmon entree

We decided to go ahead and get our drinks at Crocker as well, because they had a full bar and actually pour regular-sized drinks. Even though it was getting a bit chilly, we enjoyed them in the courtyard before reluctantly leaving.

Noe, Jeanette, and Dena in the courtyard

After Crocker, we thought it might be anti-climactic, but then we got to 2 Wives, a new brick oven pizzeria opening officially tomorrow. We tried their four-cheese pizza with pink vodka sauce, and if this sample is any indication, 2 Wives is going to give Apizzo in Pawcatuck a run for their money. Noe and I - and probably the girls and I - will be back soon for sure to try out some more offerings.

We finished the night at Tony D's - unfortunately, they ran out of their famous calamari before we got there. We still accepted our cheese tortellini gratefully, however, and sat down in the lounge to rehash all the food we had just tasted.

Food Stroll continues to get better and better. The restaurants really seemed to step it up this time as well, with new and more complex offerings. I'm sorry I couldn't mention everyone in this post - I inevitably left out a few - but I hope they all keep participating. And I can't wait to try Red Lion, Steak Out, Passion Coffee House, 2 Wives, and - opening in June - the State Street Grill (cool building and - wait for it - gourmet burgers). It's exciting to see New London get so many new and promising restaurants...plus, it will keep me busy with my amateur food critiquing!

A week or so in review

As you may or may not know, I recently accepted a new job. The good news is I am loving it so far. It feels great to be creative again, and to be appreciated by my coworkers - who seem to be a great group of people. The bad news is that I don't get as many blog posts up because I am not on the internet during work hours! However, I'm starting to adjust to the new routine, so maybe I'll be better about it from here on out (the laptop and/or iPhone I plan to buy with my tax refund may help the situation as well..)

Anyway, here's what I've been up to this week:

Gardening


The seedlings have sprouted, and the cucumber half of the greenhouse is out of control! The pepper half was slow to sprout, but now everything is pretty much ready to be transplanted. Now I just have to talk Noe into going to Home Depot or Lowe's and buying some of those little pots and some soil...

Whale-Watching (well, playing)


I just had my second session on the Whale Enrichment Team at the aquarium. I think if I were retired or unemployed I would be at the aquarium every day. I still can't believe that I get to be this close to beluga whales and sea lions.

Hangin' Out at the Coffee House

Up until now I've been more partial to Muddy Waters than I have to the Bean & Leaf here in New London, but I haven't been frequenting coffee houses like I used to in Michigan, either. And while I still prefer Muddy's for a cup of morning joe, the Bean is a fantastic evening spot. For one thing, they're open (Muddy closes in the afternoon); two, they have an amazing selection of loose-leaf tea (I don't like coffee after 11:30 AM) and three, they have a jazz quintet on Wednesday nights. It's like the best elements of the Food Co-op and the Firefly Club in Ann Arbor combined - you can even BYOB to jazz night at the Bean. There aren't many places where you can enjoy a cup of tangerine-ginger followed by a finger of Lagavulin. (The crowd reminds me of Ann Arbor, too - thanks, Loree!)

Snake-Wrangling


You may remember a November post about a snake in my house. Well, we had another. Only this time we didn't find it in the house; Noe found it outside and chose to bring it in. I let the Bun chronicle this one on her blog, The Buns-Eye View.

Being a Local Celebrity

Just kidding. Sort of. Read the New London Main Street newsletter if you want more details about that.

In addition to all this, I've been working on my mysterious writing project, which I hope to make some real progress on in the near future (once again, the laptop/iPhone will probably help). There's some good stuff going on over the next few weeks, though, and we're supposed to be getting a new bar and a new restaurant here in New London pretty soon, so check back - I promise I'll post more regularly!

Animal Planet

Volunteering at the Mystic Aquarium and Institute for Exploration definitely has its perks. Yes, I have to do some sort of disgusting stuff, like clean the skimmers and handle raw fish (really, the fish part is not that gross - at least, not to me). However, when I am not prepping their food, I get to hang out with these guys:

Coco, our biggest and oldest California sea lion. He weighs about 800 pounds right now and he is over 20 years old;

Surfer, our teenage sea lion. I secretly think Surfer is our best-looking boy in the marine theater;

Hut/Boomerang,our youngest and most playful. Hut is about two and a half and he is a handful sometimes. He loves to play with the toys we make him out of old kitty litter bins, PVC, etc.

The sea lions have always been my favorites, and I knew when I started volunteering as a docent that I eventually wanted to volunteer on a sea lion exhibit. And I have no intention of ever giving up my post unless I absolutely have to.

But recently, I have been introduced to a new experience at the aquarium: beluga whales.

Belugas are new to me - the volunteer spots on that exhibit are extremely hard to get, and I didn't think I was particularly interested. But the more time I spent watching the belugas, the more I knew I wanted to see them up close. Luckily for me, I got my chance when the aquarium let the volunteers do a beluga contact session in preparation for the program they open to the public.

In the water with the trainer and our beluga

Noe and I got to put on waders and get in the water with a beluga and a trainer. The trainer showed us different behaviors they train with the whales and gave us the opportunity to do some hand signals with them. We got to touch the whales as well. We were literally less than a foot away from our whale the whole time.

Noe and I in our waders

Asking the beluga for a "high target"

As an added bonus, we were with one of the trainers from Shedd aquarium in Chicago (Shedd has their belugas and dolphins in Mystic while the renovate their exhibit) and our whale is the mother of a calf, who kept poking his little head out of the water to see what was going on. Baby belugas are probably one of the cutest sights on the planet:

Miki, our baby beluga:
the babies are born gray and lighten up as they get older

I liked the belugas so much that when a spot recently opened on our whale enrichment team at the aquarium, I interviewed for it. The whale enrichment team is a team of volunteers who essentially play with the whales every day for an hour. We take different shifts one day a week. So once a week, I will be going to the aquarium before work and making sure our whales get their intellectual stimulation for the day in the form of PVC toys, bubbles, feeder balls, musical instruments, etc. I went for the first time this week and I loved it. It is definitely worth getting up that extra hour early.

The aquarium has a new docent class starting up soon; you can fill out an application at the volunteer section of their website. If you're in the area, I urge you to check it out!

Reel Love This Weekend

I've mentioned New London Main Street in this blog before - mainly in relation to the Food Stroll. I've actually become involved with them since then and have been part of the committee putting together the "Reel Love: Sweets, Savories, and the Silver Screen" event. This event takes place on Saturday night - Valentine's Day - and is in conjunction with the Garde Arts Center's Winter Film Festival showing of Woody Allen's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona". The movie will be followed by a wine reception featuring desserts and finger foods from New London downtown restaurants, including Dev's on Bank Street, Hot Rod's, Lucca, and more. The event also features a silent auction with items such as a Eurospeed scooter, Yankees tickets, mountain bikes and a week at Loon Mountain Ski Resort.

It's $25 to attend (ticket includes movie admission) and all proceeds go to New London Main Street. If you're in or around New London on Saturday, check it out!


Read more in the New London Day.

Cool Stuff I did over the weekend

Found a delicious and soon to be unavailable wine

I discovered (OK, I didn't discover - Dave poured me a glass of) a fantastic and very affordable French red at the Thames River tasting on Friday night that, alas, I will be unable to continue buying because the distributor has decided not to import it any longer and Jim is down to the last twenty cases he will ever get. I have a feeling the two bottles I purchased will not last very long, so I am in the process of checking couch cushions and coat pockets to see if I can scrounge up enough money to go buy some more. In the meantime, if you get the chance to purchase some Chateau Villerambert Julien Minervois 2003, I highly suggest you do so.

Ate a gigantic cream puff

Noe and I went up to Mass to attend the Big E, which is basically a state fair for all the New England states put together. There were tons of animals, rides, displays...and food. This fair had more food vendors than I have ever seen in my life. In addition to the normal midway vendors, there were also regional vendors along the Avenue of States and, in one building, the famous Big E cream puff. I am talking about two bagel-sized mounds of flaky, melt-in-your-mouth pastry with a baseball-sized scoop of cool, refreshing cream sandwiched in between and dusted with a liberal amount of powdered sugar. Noe was all for splitting one until he saw them and decided he would rather have one all to himself, leaving me to polish mine off on my own. My only complaint was I was way full when I was done.

Collaborated on a home-cooked/home-grown meal
Katie, Amanda, and I are all into food, wine, and gardening. Katie's parents have a farm. So when Katie invited us girls over on Saturday night for some chicken, we knew that she didn't mean McNuggets. Katie roasted up a fresh chicken raised by her father's students, I provided picked-that-day veggies and herbs for appetizers and side dishes, and Amanda (the would-be pastry chef among our group) made us a delicious rum cake with espresso buttercream frosting for dessert. The dinner part would have made any slow-food advocate proud (and it tasted fantastic) and the cake was as good as any creation that my friend Richard ever served up at The Earle. (Of course, our real dessert was a trio of Cotes du Rhone...)

Played with sea lions
I've been a docent at the Mystic Aquarium and Insititute for Exploration since the beginning of the summer. I love it, but repeating the same information and safety announcements over and over (sometimes to people who have no intention of listening) can get a little old sometimes. So when a volunteer position opened up every other Saturday morning in the Marine Theater - which houses the aquarium's three California Sea Lions - I jumped on it.

It's mostly un-glamorous work - cutting up fish for the shows, keeping the prep area clean, etc - but the big payoff is seeing the trainers get to work new behaviors with the animals from the ground up, and...enrichment. I get to give them toys and Jell-o and any other things that the trainers come up with that is a safe change to their everyday environment. I get to be right by the edge of the pool and throw things in for them to chase. I have never been that close to an animal like that in my life. Let me tell you, if you got to stand right in front of Boomerang and throw him Jell-o cubes, you wouldn't mind cutting up a few fish, either.

Age of Aquarium

When Noe and I came to Connecticut on our first house hunting trip, I liked exactly one thing about the entire state: the Mystic Aquarium and Institute for Exploration.

Honestly, that was it. We happened upon the aquarium by accident because it was right by our hotel and we noticed one night when we were treated to dinner at a somewhat tacky, touristy restaurant nearby. Before we went back to Michigan, we decided to go check it out.

Well, needless to say, Noe and I were both very impressed with the aquarium. It is not the biggest aquarium either of us have ever seen, but the exhibits are really well designed, the facility is clean and well laid-out, and they have some truly fantastic animals, including Steller sea lions - one of only five facilities in the world that houses them.

Since the aquarium was the first thing about Connecticut that I actually liked, I had to apply to be a volunteer when I saw the form on the website.

Most volunteers start as docents, or interpreters - the people you hear on the microphones describing the animals or hanging out by exhibits answering questions. After 100 hours of being a docent, you are eligible for other volunteer assignments, including physically working on exhibits and getting up close and personal with the animals.

Docent training was a little intense, mainly because it was packed into four full-day Saturday sessions (which included speeches and tests). I finished training last week and today worked my first day as an actual volunteer (well, I "shadowed" an experienced docent, a very nice guy named Chris).

I worked the morning shift (8:30-2:30) and rotated through three exhibits: the ray touch pool, Birds of the Outback, and Pribilof Islands.

I didn't really think much about rays before the docent training class, but I love them now. If you stick your hand in the tank and don't splash around too much, they'll come right up to you. You can pet them like a cat. Kids usually describe them as "slimy" but they are actually very silky and smooth to the touch (due to their coating of protective mucus - sorry, couldn't resist the gross-out fact).

I thought the ray touch pool was chaotic until we rotated to another interactive exhibit, Birds of the Outback. If you want to see something louder and rowdier than a room full of kids trying to touch cownose rays, just put said kids in an enclosed tent with 300 birds (cockatiels, parakeets, and rosellas - all native to Australia). Really, the most fun part about being in BotO is walking around with Captain, our "mascot" cockatiel, on your shoulder. It was sort of like being a pirate.

I got to finish my shift on one of my favorite exhibits at the aquarium, the Pribilof Islands exhibit. We were on Pool 2, the pool housing one harbor seal (Rocky), two northern fur seals - actually sea lions (Zhivago and Commander), and four of the aforementioned Stellers (Lucia, Juneau, LA, and Astro). Mainly what you do as a docent at Pool 2 is get on the microphone and alternate interesting seal/sea lion information with safety warnings (such as "do not dangle your baby over the edge of the ten-foot wall that seperates them from a pool of 500+ pound animals).

I adored my first day at the aquarium and spent the afternoon wishing I had signed up for the full day shift instead of the half (I figured that half days would be a good way to test out how much I was really going to like it). I can't wait to go back and maybe work on some different exhibits next week. And I really can't wait to get my 100 hours in so I can get even closer to these amazing animals.