Figuring it out

Portland.

February 9, 2010 in Experiences | No comments

This is our Christmas gift - what a great idea!

This was our Christmas gift - what a great idea! Look closely at the dates on the bottles.

Mt. Hood from the car window

What a delightful weekend from beginning to end. Staying at McMenamins Edgefield near Portland,Oregon was a wonderful destination. An incredible soaking pool – huge, beautiful gardens, entertaining murals on every wall of the old poor farm – way too much to include here. I suggest scheduling a massage right away so you get a full hour. Our half hour set the stage for a great day. The food is okay and their beer is great. If you’ve never had milk-chocolate stout, this is the place. I wish I had taken pictures of us playing darts. I didn’t do too badly – actually had a sore arm the next day. HA! For brunch one day I was able to connect with a dear friend, whom I had not seen for 20 years , which was an added plus. On Saturday night I had the best Southeast Asian food I have ever eaten at Pok Pok Restaurant in Portland. We lived in this city when we were in our 20’s, so we had to drive by the old abodes. Nothing stays the same, but it brought back great memories. On the way home we stopped at the FishTale Brew Pub in Olympia. Good food, great brew. We picked up a couple of growlers for the Super Bowl Game. What a weekend.

Ruby's spa at McMenamin's Edgefield

our first Portland apartment missing the leaded glass windows

our first house - not the same anymore

Fish Stew.

December 18, 2009 in Cooking | No comments

This is Real Simple smokey fish stew from the January 2010 magazine of the same name. It was delicious. Served with crusty parmesan baguette and a crisp 2007 Albariño (Torre Fornelos).

fish stew

Drinking without the rice bowl.

December 10, 2009 in Experiences | No comments

Forrest

drinking

...because it was 18°F and his favorite watering hole was frozen over.

Forrest … warm.

December 7, 2009 in Experiences | No comments

It was 19°F when I got up this morning. Since the sun was already up I knew it had been colder during the night. I was worried that our outdoor cat, Forrest, was too chilly last night. Because of a midnight visit from the neighborhood raccoon I knew he had been driven from his warm bed at the bleakest hour of the night. However, when I checked, there he sat in his heated little hut. He was fine. His water was almost frozen solid. Mixed guilt leads me to cater to what (I think) he needs. When the guilt is the strongest, I warm up his 1/2 can of Weruva Asian Fusion – with tuna and shirasu – in aspic, then bring him in for a little pet. With a full belly and weird little burps, he purred yet never quite relaxed – always just a little stiff. Ever since we rescued him as a kitten from the dumpster ten years ago, I’ve called him our cardboard kitty. He is a good cat – he does his job with the rodents and shares his food (arghh…) with Rocky (or Rockina?) the raccoon. Never a dull moment.

Forrest... warm.

water sans bowl

Thanksgiving.

November 30, 2009 in Experiences | No comments

Thanksgiving Centerpiece

I am thankful for our relaxing day together. It does amaze me how quickly hours of preparation turns into full bellies. Ken, amazing chef, once again cooked everything to perfection. With a gleam in his eye, he took my challenge of eating at a specific time to a precise new level. Perfect.

Earlier in the day, Jessie and I were a pie making machine: she did the filling – I, the crusts. Two pumpkin, one apple and one pecan pie was more than plenty. I missed the trip out to the Root Connection for the big bag of Kale. Sauteed with shallots, it was immensely fresh. Peter was the master of preparing cranberry sauce. It was the basic sauce of simmering fresh cranberries with some sugar and water. Then he added zest and juice from a fresh Satsuma followed by ferreting out cloves and ginger from the spice drawer along with a little salt and pepper – all from someone who doesn’t really take to cranberry sauce all that much. Peter E. gave us two huge bags of corn last summer which we cut off the cob and froze for this meal. It reminded me of my Iowa roots – so sweet. Everyone helped with the clean up so there was a lot to be thankful for in that. Alex was the poker chip hog in the Tripoly game and Jessie and Peter beat it around the Pictionary board first for the best guesses with almost nothing drawn at all.

Among other things this Thanksgiving, I learned that paying extra for an organic heritage turkey makes a lot of difference as to whether or not people actually like turkey. No comparison in flavor! I also know that roasting 6 organic turkey wings the week before, saving the crispy bits and fat for gravy and dressing saves a lot of time. We covered the wings with water and added an onion & a few carrots and sprigs of fresh thyme to make broth for use in the dressing. We froze the dressing & the crispy fat and used them on the real day. Big time saver…savour. It was well worth the effort of freezing the corn last summer.

Harvest.

October 29, 2009 in Garden, Uncategorized | No comments

We planted pumpkins in our flower garden bed this year. The rabbits loved the blossoms. I fenced in a little bud and actually grew one pumpkin. The squash was much happier with more room to roam, a better source of water and sun.

kabocha squash and pumpkin

Every week of the summer I pick sunflowers at the Root Connection, the CSA where we get vegetables to eat all summer long. Ken picks basil and kale while I pick flowers.

Fall plantings.

October 20, 2009 in Garden | No comments

Today was a good day. It was gorgeous and we kicked b*tt in the garden. Knowing that it is supposed to start raining again tomorrow, we wanted to get as much done today as possible. To start with, I planted 102 tulips and a super sak® of blue grape hyacinths from Brecks. I have a lot of details with pictures I will share later – including a, not so little, spider episode. There were many critters “helping” all day. While I was planting deluxe perennial tulips (which mostly means they are huge and have to be planted 9″ deep), Ken was filling a bed with our most recent purchases. It is a nice fall planting.

garden bed between the house, studio and driveway

I plan to make some sort of list of all the plants included – I can never remember their names. We did our homework, but one never knows what will happen with just the right light (or wrong light) and just the right nutrients (or wrong ones). The dogs can walk up the pathways on either side of this bed, so we are kind of worried they might want to dig in this bed. WE were digging so it makes sense. Hence, the fence! Ken calls it the tension fence. He wove these stakes together and by pushing them against each other, they are supposed to stay tight and keep the dogs out. Right. I hollered at Hugo that afternoon when I caught him digging up a few of the winter pansies. Big dog prints all through the garden. Helpful critter? I think not.

escallonia blossom

tension fence

The rest of our day was consumed with digging, moving and placing more plants. That evening, as we sat on the deck, we could really see the changes we made. Of course we came up with more ideas for future gorgeous days.

October – plant garlic.

October 12, 2009 in Garden | No comments

October is the month to plant garlic and today is another beautiful day in the Pacific Northwest.

killarney red

What an accomplishment – getting the garlic ordered – pulled apart (called popping) and then planted. Preparing the garden bed is no small task either. I’ve got 186 cloves planted which ideally (with no moles, cats or bad weather) will be the same number of bulbs harvested in July. Purple Italian, Premium Northern White, Killarney Red (I wanted Spanish Roja) and Silverwhite are the types that spoke to me in the catalog. Organic. The Premium cloves were HUGE. Garlic seems pricey to me in comparison to other seeds and starts ($16/pound plus shipping). I have yet to find a place to buy them that I could really recommend. You are supposed to plant only the larger cloves to get larger bulbs. Makes sense. With the little pieces left over, you can either cook them (duh) or plant them in a little spot in the garden and use them in the spring as little garlicky additions to your food. Yum.

Now that it is all planted, I’m ready for the rains. I know that harvesting in July will arrive quickly enough. Hopefully, the bulbs next year will be larger than they were from our hot, dry summer this year. It is the mystery that I enjoy about the garden.

bags of garlic cloves

garden tags

freshly planted garlic bed

Applesauce.

October 10, 2009 in Cooking | No comments

14 pints, 3 cups and 8 little lunch sizes

This kind of work takes time and in the end you have to be an applesauce eater. In the middle of the apple cooking, Ken walks in and says “Whoa”. I know – every window was fogged up and we have a lot of windows. I used 12 pounds of honey crisp and 12 pounds of jonagold apples for my sauce. Organic. The hardest part is peeling and quartering the apples. Ken helped. In the first of two batches I cooked the different types of apples together. That was a mistake. Jonagolds cook WAY faster than honey crisp, they are actually pretty mushy. The honey crisp took more than twice as long – some of them were still somewhat “crisp”. HA! Cooking them in separate pots works best. I used about 1/2 inch of organic apple juice to cook/steam them. Stirred them frequently. One of the recipes said to puree the apples in a food processor. Yeah well, the first batch reminded me of baby food and I could not see any of my family powering down this stuff – including me. The pulse option worked better and by the very last batch I was using the potato masher. I like chunkier sauce. Before processing, I mixed all of the sauce together and added 1/4 cup organic lemon juice (per batch). No sugar. Yep it is a bit tart but the mixture of the two apples have a nice flavor. I’m wondering about all of the other varieties now. Processing the pints took 20 minutes and since my canner only holds 7 jars, no matter their size, I had to repeat this step four times.
I know that on a cold winter day, a jar of homemade applesauce will hit the spot! This kind of work feels good – now to wash the windows.

peeling apples

apples cooking

Home Preserving by Judi Kingry & Lauren Devine

recipe: Home Preserving by Judi Kingry and Lauren Devine

Visitors.

October 4, 2009 in Experiences | No comments

One of my favorite summer memories was the time my mom brought her friend to our house for a visit. Every aspect of it was lovely. She brought us some fancy pants chocolates from California, all different shapes and flavors. After dinner we carefully split maybe 2 or 3 chocolates into bite sized pieces so we could try each one. Add a few sips of red wine and you’ve got an inspired gift! Another moment was picking sunflowers at our local CSA farm. We took in Seattle’s Public Market and the Sculpture Park. After visiting Lopez Island for a day, we had a delicious dinner in Anacortes at Cafe Adrift (make reservations – 360-588-0653). Near the end of their visit we enjoyed a sculpture installation by an artist from Lopez island at the Bellevue Art Museum. They were stacks and carvings of madrona wood – just beautiful.
It was a delightful visit!

Pike Place Market

Here they are at Pike Place Market waiting for them to “throw the fish”. However, this was right after the controversy happened with the animal activists. We never saw them throw the fish.

Here is a link to the controversy.