Cleaning out the pantry and some randomness

Yesterday on the drive home I saw a raven flying with what looked like a whole burrito in it's beak.  Seriously...a whole, six-inch long, burrito.  It was probably thinking it won the lottery.  Last week I saw a black bear standing in the middle of the road.  I love my short, wild commute.

The streak of good weather continues.  It was supposed to rain a bit yesterday, but didn't.  At one point we apparently hit an ambient humidity level of only 17%, which is super low since we're usually in the 70-90+ range.  It's so dusty here without rain, it's getting a bit annoying (and the sun is not helping my lack of desire to study for my comprehensive exams).

So that fishing survey that I'm going on at the end of May might have hit a bit of a snag.  The fishing vessel we'll be on stores it's gear (and our scientific gear) at a warehouse in Dutch Harbor, which apparently burned to the ground over the weekend.  I'm not privy to all the details, but it sounds like our equipment (custom-spaced fishing lines, holding tanks, work tables, the 'dog house' what sits on deck for the observers to shelter out of the elements while collecting their data, etc) is gone.  I don't think anyone knows yet what this means in terms of timing for the survey, and whether or not we'll be able to start as planned in a couple of weeks.  What an unfortunate mess!

We're working on cleaning out our panty - eating all the things that have been in there a while - which makes for some creative meals.  Yesterday morning I made pancakes since we had pancake mix, syrup, and...oatmeal!  We had two packets of instant 'maple and brown sugar' flavored oatmeal, so I threw one in with the pancake mix, along with some chopped pecans (also laying around in the panty).  It was SO GOOD.  I may make pancakes this way all the time now.  The oatmeal added some flavor and texture to the pancakes, as did the pecans.  I used 1 cup pancake mix with 1 pkg instant oatmeal, about 1/4 cup finely diced pecans and I added ~1/2 t of vanilla extract.  I had to increase the water just a tiny bit too.  I think other flavors of oatmeal would work too...like apple cinnamon or maybe even a bananas and cream with some shredded coconut tossed in?  Next up - lasagne noodle surprise...and something with tropical flavored jello (why did I buy that??).