Baby, It's Cold Outside!

Before I start laying out my plans for 2011, I have to share the last day of 2010. The morning of New Year's Eve found me selling pie again, as I whipped up some salted lavender caramel tarts for a friend who stopped by to pick them up for her family's New Year's dinner. It was a gorgeous day, if a frighteningly cold one - I don't think it got above freezing that day at all - and I wanted to get out, so Keith and I bundled our coats and scarves into the car and headed for Mt. Hood.



We didn't go all the way to the top of the mountain, since we had to chain up pretty early on. Three feet of fresh snow had recently fallen, and the sun was shining on a perfect New Year's Eve, so we parked as soon as we could to frolic in the thigh-deep snow.



I'm still Southern enough that snow REALLY excites me. I've traveled a lot and lived in a variety of places, but I've never lived in a snowy area, and even in Portland snow is a rarity. So the chance to get up to the mountain and see all the lovely firs in the glittering snow, well, that always makes for a pretty awesome day. We spent most of the afternoon snow tubing and had a fabulous time while getting in some exercise.



Once off the mountain, we made a spontaneous decision to drop by Lauro, our favorite special-occasion restaurant, for a fabulous dinner, and then we crossed the street to Pix Patisserie for dessert. We had a bottle of champagne someone had given us for Xmas, and the plan was to take it to the top of Mt. Tabor to toast the New Year under the trees while overlooking the Portland skyline, but it was about 20° F with a sharp biting wind, so we went on home to a warm crackling fire instead.

So now I'm finally getting a chance to sit down and have my New Year's assessment of the year before and year to come - well, I'm still in the middle of it, but it took me a couple days into the year to find the time to start! This year is already off to a busy beginning, and it's loaded with new projects.

I'm figuring out my sewing machine, for one thing; I've made some curtains and tote bags, and am currently working on a more complex project that was supposed to be a Christmas present for a friend but may wind up being a "friendship present" in another week or two. (Oops.) Once I finish this one, I'm going to make myself a couple of girly aprons and then ease myself into clothing (my ultimate goal) with a simple wrap skirt or two. So far sewing is a lot like cooking; my early blundering attempts are kind of cute in their incompetence, and I can tell this will be easy once I get in a lot more practice.

In other news, just to see how crazy I can make myself with project-juggling, I decided to go ahead with an idea I entertained over the summer. Over at my newest blog, Dinner With the World, I'll be documenting my attempt to learn more about my global neighbors and the unique variations of global cuisine as I cook a meal from every country in the world in one year. This should be a pretty interesting read, since I'll be juggling unfamiliar ingredients, a nominal commitment to kosher restrictions, and an effort to stick to seasonal Oregonian produce.

Oh yeah, and I'll also be juggling a business startup. After cultivating a dream of entrepreneurship for most of my life, it's finally time to make it happen. I'm currently saving up for a unique twist on Portland's food cart phenomenon, and have already begun selling my butter-flaky pies to friends and coworkers. By spring, I hope to be out there in the world, slinging pie to the masses. Learn more over at PortlandPiecycle.com (website operable, but still under construction).

Meanwhile, I'll be participating in Charcutepalooza 2011, a multiblog project wherein we'll all revive the lost arts of meat preservation. It's a logical next step after slaughtering chickens last year (and we're actually raising meat birds for real this summer!), and an especially hilarious development for this former PETA member and 12-year vegetarian. We're tackling one meat project per month, with the first up being duck proscuitto. I checked out Michael Ruhlman's book on Charcuterie from the library and can't wait to get started!

I'm also hoping to revamp this blog a bit, improve my photography and rework the design, but that's going to have to wait a few more weeks at least. It also looks as though I may be cowriting a cookbook later in the year - stay tuned for more on that project.

And of course, novels and screenplays await completion, along with the mountain of books I still need to read.

With a to-do list like this one, who needs resolutions?

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Wild Foraging: Chanterelles

Yay, today I'm writing for TWO blogs! This is also a guest-post on my friend's urban foraging blog, First Ways. I follow her blog avidly even though I'm not much of a forager yet - I eat the dandelions out of my yard, but I still have no idea where to find burdock or watercress in Portland, even though I know they're growing wild around here. One day I will take her class and learn. In the meantime, I'm here to crow about my very first wild foraging expedition!



That's me there, yesterday morning just after dawn, soaked with heavy rain out in the woods, bagging up chanterelle mushrooms. They're going for a relatively cheap $10 a pound at the farmers' market nowadays - I've seen them for two or three times that - so it's worth a good hike to go pick them yourself if you know where to find them. I didn't, but we have a friend who does.

If you know any mushroom hunters, or if you've read Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma, then you know that mushroom hunters will go to any length to avoid telling anyone where their spots are. It can be incredibly frustrating for the novice mushroomer, to beg and plead for a lesson only to have someone politely change the subject. This time I got a promise back in the summer, when I first floated the idea of killing and eating our seven excess chicks; friends offered to take us mushroom hunting in exchange for chicken processing experience and two of the chickens.

So chanterelle season rolled around, time for us to collect on their promise. Everyone was busy with one thing or another, so it was only yesterday and quite late in the season when we all drove out to an undisclosed location in the woods (hey, I swore I wouldn't tell). We left well before dawn, and there was only just enough light to see through the hard drizzle when we parked the car. We set off with bags and buckets for a relatively easy hike, a few miles down a smooth trail, and then there was the first chanterelle - just sitting there, growing right next to the road.

As we went deeper into the woods, we found them everywhere! They seem to favor the places close to tree stumps and live trees, without too much undergrowth (other spots were carpeted in ferns, and there were no chanterelles there). We found most of them in the wetter spots - yes, even in the same forest, one spot can be considerably wetter than a spot just a few feet away - and they didn't hide underneath logs and such the way that some other mushrooms do. There'd be dark brown leaf litter and the yellow-orange mushroom standing bold against it.

I understood pretty soon why mushroomers guard their spots so jealously; the mushrooms make so little attempt to hide themselves that there would be none left for anyone if the word got out where they were.

By the end of the day, our experienced guide had scored just over ten pounds, and Keith and I had bagged about half that. Had it been earlier in the season, we would've gotten plenty more, but I'm thrilled with what we got! We had a wonderful time tromping around in the woods, and so far we're enjoying ourselves just as much eating these delicacies in our warm dry house. A couple of them even found their way into our scrambled eggs this morning.

But I spent the afternoon turning the bulk of them into duxelles. This is a lovely way to preserve mushrooms of any kind; the French use it to stuff meats and vegetables or to spread on omelettes, and the British use it for Beef Wellington. I now have a pint and a half of luxurious chanterelle duxelles, which I intend to stir into risottos and which will probably find its way into the cornbread stuffing and the gravy this Thanksgiving. (And now I'm all on fire to make a Beef Wellington too.)

Go get your own delicious mushrooms - chanterelles are the best but use whatever edible ones you have available - and make up a batch of duxelles. It'll give a rich boost of earthy flavor to almost anything. Here's my recipe, adapted from Well Preserved by Eugenia Bone.

MUSHROOM DUXELLES

3 Tablespoons good olive oil
3/4 cup minced onion
2 lbs mushrooms, best available, washed & finely minced
1 sprig fresh thyme (optional)
1/4 cup chardonnay
1/4 cup dry vermouth
1 heaping tsp salt
1/2 tsp fresh-ground black pepper

Get down your biggest, heaviest skillet and heat 1 Tbsp olive oil in it. Add 1/3 the mushrooms and onions and saute; the mushrooms will let out a good deal of liquid, so keep cooking until the liquid evaporates. Transfer to a clean bowl, add another 1 Tbsp olive oil and half the remaining onion and mushrooms. Saute until the liquid evaporates, transfer to the bowl, then repeat with the remaining olive oil, onion, and mushrooms. When the last batch is cooked through, put the first two batches back in the skillet.

Add the whole sprig of thyme and all the other ingredients. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until the mushrooms have absorbed all the liquid; they should be a thick chunky paste by now. Fish out the thyme sprig and discard.

Spoon the duxelles into clean jars and refrigerate or freeze. You can also spoon it into ice cube trays and freeze into small servings, which can be added to gravy, pasta, eggs, etc. or just heated to thaw and spread on toast. If you want to save the duxelles in the fridge for more than a day or two, pack it densely into the jar with as few air pockets as possible, then cover it with olive oil and seal. The oil on top will keep it fresher for longer.

Midnight Meeting

I keep thinking of things to blog about, and then I get busy. I have a lot of irons in the fire these days, but I need to get better about blogging more than once a week. Because I have a lot to share here and I hate when I forget and miss it. Like last night, for instance.

Last night I had occasion to be walking home from the bus stop just after midnight. Our neighborhood is well-lit and very quiet, and I was strolling along under the streetlights, bouncing my backpack, enjoying the soft silence around my steps crunching in the gravel. And then a dark shape streaked across the street, from one driveway into another.

"That wasn't a cat," I thought. I watched the place where the shape had gone, and guessed I knew what it was.

As I got closer, I saw that I was right. The opossum had climbed to the top of a low chain-link fence, and he was watching me approach. It felt like no one else around was awake, just him and me, and I felt drawn to him for a better look. I've never seen a live opossum up close. The driveway sloped down slightly, so that when I got to him, he was just above my eye level, his head turned back the way I had come.

I could've touched him - I didn't, of course, but I could have. I could see the fingerprint pattern in his thick rat-tail, the coarseness of his wiry fur, white and mussed. Then, slowly, he turned his head and looked at me. A drop fell from his nose as he fixed his eyes on mine. His face denied fear; he was not afraid of me. He just watched and waited to see what I would do.

For another long moment, I stood there in a stranger's driveway, one of my neighbors and yet a person I don't know, while this opossum and I shared a mutual acknowledgement. He looked old, but tough; he was a survivor. Before this moment, I'd only known opossums as dirty roadkill, but this guy was alive in a way that most of the animals I've encountered are not. He was wild, and he knew where he was going and what he'd do when he got there, and he was simply waiting for me to leave him to it.

So I did. With a respectful nod, I went on toward home. He watched me go, but when I was a few houses away, I looked back and he was gone.

Yes, I Can! (A Lot.)

I have a hunch that very soon, I'm going to have enough grapes to share a few.

We need to get some carboys and get ready to make some white wine, I think!

I've been canning like it's 1899 these days. More corn salsa, some more peach salsa coming up... I've also put up blackberry jam, ginger-blackberry chutney (which is really too thin and runny to be called a chutney, but it'll taste good poured over baked brie at the dinner gathering I'm having tonight), some cherries in wine, and more.

We've been picking blackberries almost every day, since they're growing wild and abundantly all over the neighborhood; on Wednesday we went up to Sauvie Island to pick blackberries and lie on the beach for awhile. It was a nice break from work and cooking, but the canning work continues. Every time I get caught up, we go to the farmers' market or find a blackberry bush, and I'm off again.

I'm hoping to get started on pickles and tomatoes this week. I recently learned that the FDA, in their infinite... uh, wisdom, requires all tomatoes and tomato sauces to be canned with BPA in the can lining. Even the organic ones. As a woman who's hoping for pregnancy, I'd rather steer clear of BPA when I can, so that means I need to put up tons of tomatoes now because I use the heck out of canned tomatoes in the winter! Thank you, FDA, for giving me still more busywork. You never fail to impress me with the deepest depths of your competence.

And the pickles. Ahh, pickles. I'm currently looking at a 10 lb bag of beets we got for $9 on Sauvie Island, which is destined to become beet pickles and beet relish. And the pickling cucumbers are coming in, so I'll be putting up some dills as well as bread and butter pickles, which Keith has requested since we sampled some awesome bread and butter pickles at the farmers' market.

I had wondered just a month or two ago if canning season would come at all. Hilarious.

Chicken Processing (Warning: Bloody)

Don't read this post or look at the pictures if you're squeamish!

On Sunday, we processed five of the seven chicks that were hatched in our garage back in April. One was too small to be worth killing, and the other was a Thank You gift to Dawn, the woman who brought her two kids into town to show us how to do this. (She preferred a live pullet to lay eggs, so that one also lived.) It only took us a couple of hours to completely process all five birds, but it most certainly made for an interesting day.

I was a bit anxious in the morning, worried about how it would go. We went to breakfast with some friends of ours, but first I whipped up a pie crust, and when we got home from breakfast I channeled my anxiety into a strawberry-rhubarb pie. It was just coming out of the oven when it was time to get our day started, so it cooled in the kitchen as we worked outside.



This is the killing cone, which we borrowed from the Urban Farm Store for free and hung on the fence. Underneath it are two gut buckets - one for the feathers and guts, and another to catch the feathers and heads during processing. We had planned to slit the birds' throats in two places, which is what Joel Salatin and some others recommend, but beheading turned out to be much easier. You can behead a chicken with a filet knife, or a paring knife! I had no idea!

We were joined not only by Dawn and her kids (who seemed to have a healthy respect for the process, but were not the least bit squeamish about it), but also by our friend Kelley, who has been primarily a pesco-vegetarian for many years and whose toddler daughter had never eaten meat before. Kelley also has egg-laying hens and has been debating whether to raise meat birds next summer, so this whole process was kind of a trial run for both of us to see if we could handle it. While we waited for Dawn to arrive, we sipped beer and wondered if we would pass out or scream.

Then it was time.

Dawn's teenage son processed the first bird, and then we did the rest, though Keith had to do all the killing of the other four (Kelley and I weren't quite ready for that yet). It was easier to get ready than I thought it would be; you simply hold up the chicken by its feet, and after a couple seconds of flapping around, the blood goes to its head and it loses consciousness. Then you slide it headfirst into the cone, so that it's neatly contained and the neck is easily accessible.



Then, you take your filet knife (or paring knife) and in one quick stroke - THWACK.



Now you leave the chicken there for a couple of minutes to bleed out. This is pretty quick and a lot less gory than I anticipated. There is a surprisingly small amount of blood in a chicken (and thank goodness for that). When it's done, you take your headless chicken, as Kelley does here...



...and dip it in some hot water for a second or two. This makes plucking a lot easier. Despite the blood and guts, I think the plucking was my least favorite part - most of the big feathers just come off in handfuls, but then you have to pick off all the little pinfeathers, the fluffy ones around the legs, and the soft hairy ones on the roosters, and you have to do it without ripping the skin. Two of them, we tore the skin and decided to take Dawn's advice and just skin them. It's a lot easier but you don't get the delicious chicken skin that way. So most of them, we plucked.



Ready for butchering now? This is when you cut off the feet, neck, and oil gland, and trim the wings. Here's Keith and Kelley double-teaming this process, while I helpfully snap pictures.



Now it just looks like meat! This is when you eviscerate them, cutting around the vent and scooping the guts out. Most of the innards come out easily in one scoop with your hand, but you do have to dig around in there for the trachea and esophagus, and you have to use your nails to pry the lungs off the ribcage. Those lungs really stick! And they're so very tiny, just about the size of a man's thumbnail. Hard to believe they can crow and cackle as loudly as they do, with those teeny little lungs.

If I were true to my heritage and the spirit of this process, I'd have saved the livers and hearts to fry up or cook into stock. But this is me, and I don't like organ meats. So they went into the gut bucket with the rest of the guts.



Rinse out the bird, take a good look to make sure you got everything out...



...wrap the bird in a plastic bag, and you're done!

It all went really quickly. Neither of us passed out; we handled the whole thing really well, despite not being ready for the killing ourselves. Keith did the killing just fine. There was one unpleasant moment when he hit the bone of one chicken and took two or three loud squawking strokes to decapitate it, but generally we all performed quite well and didn't let the carnage get to us.



(I do have a picture of the inside of that bucket. I decided against posting it. I also have some video footage, which I also haven't posted, but if y'all express an interest in seeing it, then I'll upload it for you.)

When all five birds were processed, Kelley took hers and went home to her family. Keith got the deck cleaned up...



...while I got started on dinner. Remember the Cuckoo Maran rooster, in the foreground of Saturday's picture? He woke me up on Sunday morning crowing enthusiastically, and on Sunday evening I rubbed him all over with schmaltz, sprinkled him with salt, and stuffed his cavity with salted lemons, fresh herbs, and elephant garlic. I roasted him up, made a lucious gravy with the pan juices, and served him with hot potato salad and that amazing gravy.



Kelley made beer can chicken with hers that night, outside in her lovely yard.



The verdict? Obviously the chickens were tiny, as these aren't bred for modern meat production and they take more than a year to reach full-size. Next year, we may get meat birds that grow faster. Each bird made multiple meals for our two families, though, so we can't complain about size.

The meat itself was quite chewy; I later learned that it's better to refrigerate the birds for 24-48 hours after processing to relax the meat. (Rigor mortis makes for chewy muscle!) So the next ones I cook should be much better. Despite the chewy texture, the flavor was incredible. We've got a running joke in our culture about the taste of chicken, or rather the lack thereof, but this chicken had a distinct and delicious flavor that must be what caused our ancestors to domesticate this bird in the first place. Think of the best European chicken stock you've ever had, then solidify that flavor into meat. I really enjoyed it.

On Tuesday I took the leftover carcass from my roasted chicken, all the lemons and garlic that were in it, some veggie trimmings and fresh herbs, and the chicken necks from Processing Day, and I made stock. I now have quite a lot of really awesome stock that I can use for a long time to come. And I still have two more chickens in the freezer!

So I feel pretty good about Sunday's work. It was deeply spiritual in a very earthy way; this is what eating meat is supposed to be like. I wonder if a lot of our social disconnect with murder and violence is rooted in this detachment from the death we eat. Factory birds, drugged and diseased, dismembered by machines and wrapped in plastic at the supermarket... Yeah, I can now say I consider that to be far more barbaric than the natural way. I have finally looked my meat in the face and taken responsibility for it, and I found it to be a positive and uplifting experience.

And that strawberry-rhubarb pie I channeled all my earlier stress into? I am pleased to say it didn't taste like stress at all. Once dinner was done and the kitchen cleaned, that pie tasted a well-earned reward for a good day's work (or a couple of days, if you count the day that Kelley and I spent picking and freezing the strawberries last month).



(I just noticed how many of my happy blog posts end in pie!)

Indeed, Mr. Williams.

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

- William Carlos Williams



I know a lot depends on MY red wheelbarrow, even though my chickens aren't white. What you see in the picture there is five cubic yards of four-way dirt; this is a mix of topsoil, peat, cow manure, and sand, blended into the perfect "black gold" you need for raised garden beds. Given the crappy nature of our soil in the back yard, we have to install raised beds and bring in dirt, and our first dirt delivery arrived on Friday.

Keith built the big raised bed a few months ago, but we didn't have the money to fill it until now. The bottom of the bed was lined with newspapers (to kill the grass) and covered with the mucked-out litter from the chicken coop (pine shavings and chicken doody, great for the garden). And once the dirt got here...

I started shoveling.

Yep, I've been moving that dirt, one shovelful at a time. And I'm not done yet.

Five cubic yards of dirt doesn't sound like much, but it's enough to fill a raised bed that is about 140 sq ft, by more than a foot deep. I'd be done now, except for a snag I hit when a couple of screws turned out not to be long enough, and part of the bed buckled under the weight of the dirt. So I have to fix that and then move the rest of the dirt in.

But I'm almost done! There's only a small pile of dirt left in the front now. Tomorrow I have to go to work, and then it looks like my Fourth of July evening is going to be spent moving the rest of this dirt into the back so I can get something planted in it finally. Better late than never.

And thank heaven for that red wheelbarrow.

Well, whaddya know!

The day after the first day of summer, when I posted about summer being cancelled...

Summer showed up after all!

For three days now it's been sunny, warm, and beautiful. Highs have been in the mid-seventies and this is set to continue all week. While it does mean I have to water the seeds and look after my little garden more, I'll take it! My corn, beans, squash, and melons - I have them planted all together, Indian-style - shot up overnight and have all unfurled large leaves. Well, the corn is actually more like grass right now, but the beans are going up like gangbusters.

I've spent as much time outside as I possibly can these past few days. I really need to sweep the house, but I can't bring myself to stay in that long! I've been getting up first thing in the morning and opening all the windows to let the air in. I hear other people's music, the kids next door playing basketball, all the ice cream trucks going by (we've had several)...

Yup. It's summer, at last.

Desperately Seeking Summer

The headlines are all over the news here in Oregon: According to the National Weather Service, summer has possibly been cancelled for this year. On account of rain, I suppose. A meteorologist here in Portland put it well...

"If you look at a national temperature map, it's almost like we have become a separate continent," said Hill, "because literally everybody else in the lower United States is in a different season than we are. I mean, it really is just absolutely nuts!"

He's not wrong. My family back in the Mississippi Delta has been living in triple-digit heat for some time now; the corn in my father's garden is apparently over seven feet tall. Me, I just planted my corn a few days ago and have no idea if it's going to make it or not. The newspaper today lamented our local farmers' losses and the sad state of our legendary farmers' markets; our strawberry farmers have lost some 80 percent of their crop to weather problems and associated pests. According to the National Weather Service, we have had FOUR - count 'em, FOUR - sunny days since April 1. That's getting close to three months ago. And no one knows why this is happening, or when it will end, which is possibly the most disturbing part of it all.

Still, today we got a few hours of blessed sunshine before the clouds rolled in again, and those hours of sunshine found me with my friend and her toddler, out on Sauvie Island picking strawberries. The crop may be suffering from the weather, but these particular strawberries were abundant, juicy, and oh-so-fragrant! I picked half a flat of them and set it on the kitchen counter when I got home, and a few hours later when I started dinner, the whole kitchen smelled like strawberries. That's how you know you've got good stuff.

So they were worth a celebration. After all, strawberries aren't so easy to come by this year, so we have to treat them right while they're here! I could think of nothing so much as strawberry shortcake. So I came up with my own fancy version: sweet, buttery short biscuits with fresh-picked rosemary baked in, topped with those juicy fresh strawberries macerated in honey, balsamic vinegar, and a little more rosemary, and then capped nicely with a scoop of Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream.



By the time I sat down to enjoy my dessert, the clouds had taken over again, and the air was heavy with the promise of more rain tomorrow. But for a little while, I didn't care. I sat on the porch and relished my strawberry shortcake, and the glow of a few hours' sunshine, and for as long as it took me to eat dessert, it was summer after all.

You gotta seize it when you can, these days.

We're Home! (A Very Portland Weekend.)

Oh man, am I exhausted! But it's the good kind.

We made it from L.A. to Portland in one 18-hour day, including a stop for lunch at a decent little pizzeria in Northern California, and a trip to a kitchen goods outlet store, which is a dangerous place for us to be but we scored a great deal on a salad spinner I really wanted and a very nice ice cream maker at half the retail price. Yay for homemade ice cream! We've really wanted an ice cream maker for some time now so that we can make our own deliciousness out of raw milk/cream and good organic fruits and herbs. Coincidentally we also scored ten bananas for fifty cents at our little produce market here in Portland yesterday, so it looks like banana ice cream is first up (though more on that later)!

Anyway, we also made the obligatory stop in Central Point, Oregon, for Rogue Creamery cheese and Lillie Belle chocolates, plus a very pleasant wine tasting. So we weren't in the car for the full 18 hours. But we were still pretty exhausted by the time we got in, about 10:30 pm. We loved on the cats some and passed out.

Since then it's been a flurry of catching up. Portland has suffered through a pretty massive rain in our absence, yesterday being the last day of a twenty-day run of straight rain. This is typical of winter around here but not summer, and no one knows why it happened. The most noticeable effect of it all was evident even as we pulled into our driveway in the dark: an explosion of roses, and knee-high weedy grass. Oops.

So we had mowing and weeding and staking roses to get through, plus unpacking, laundry, straightening up, restocking chick feed, restocking people feed, marveling over the chicks' incredible growth, and otherwise restoring the balance. We've been hard at work and still aren't done yet. I hope to finish tomorrow.

But today was Saturday, so we went to Sauvie Island for the afternoon. We made a stop at Kruger's Farm for fresh-picked, candy-sweet roasted corn, then headed for the beach, where we waded through thigh-high flooding to get to a narrow strip of sand along the swollen, fast-moving river. After so much rain ending in a sunny warm Saturday, all of Portland was out enjoying the weather today, but our strip of beach wasn't too crowded and we soaked up some vitamin D and relaxed for awhile. Eventually we headed back to Kruger's Farm to pick ourselves five pints of strawberries.

We got home sun-tired and woozy, but hungry, so I quickly seared and roasted a fresh salmon filet we bought yesterday (with fresh rosemary from the yard), and served it up atop a lovely salad of red lettuce, green onions, red turnips, sunflower seeds, and smoked bleu cheese. A lemon vinaigrette held it together nicely, made with a lemon from Keith's father's lemon tree (that tree makes the sweetest, juiciest, tastiest lemons I've ever had). The salmon was so perfectly moist and flaky, and went so nicely with the smoked bleu cheese, that we both just sat at the table quietly licking our lips like cats for several minutes before Keith got up to do the dishes.

I was going to make the banana ice cream tonight, but I'm just too freaking tired right now to skim the cream off the three half-gallons of raw milk we have in the fridge, much less cook up the custard and make ice cream. So I'll save that for tomorrow. It'll be a good day for it, since tomorrow is the first day of the Lents International Farmers Market (our favorite market in Portland, and also our closest one)! We'll have to celebrate with strawberry-banana ice cream now since we picked all those strawberries. Maybe we got too many, but they were so brilliantly red and sweet, still warm from the sun - I could've picked the whole field and brought it home.

Bye, L.A.!

This month down south is over, and in seven hours we'll be hitting the highway to go home! (So of course, I can't fall asleep. OF COURSE. Hence my blogging quietly in a dark room with the screen dimmed.)

We had a very nice last day in town. Went for a walk on the beach this morning, and watched a wild sea lion playing in the surf. We'd just lost him and were about to head back when three dolphins approached, so close we could've waded out to pet them. They cruised along as dolphins do, casually enjoying the morning, when out of nowhere the smallest one leapt from the water - RIGHT IN FRONT OF US - and did a little twist-flip on the way back down. They all continued on their way after that as though nothing had happened. Keith said it was almost like he did that just for our benefit. There was no one else around, early on an overcast Tuesday morning.

After that we walked on back and made our plans for the day. Keith dropped me off in Hollywood, where I had my favorite Thai lunch with a good friend, and then she and I went shopping for some incredible jewelry at the 1928 Outlet Store (everything half off!) and browsed around the other nearby shops. Meanwhile Keith had lunch with friends of his and browsed his favorite stores in L.A., Y Que and Glory. We met up again when we were done, and he and I headed down to Redondo for a walk with his dad and the dogs, and then the three of us (sans dogs) went to Ortega 120 for a fresh-and-delicious Mexican dinner.

Funny how I always thought I hated Mexican food before I moved to L.A. and actually had Mexican food. The nasty canned-goods enchiladas I had in the school cafeteria can't ever be compared to the mango-jicama salad I had tonight, topped with sliced all-natural carne asada, served with an incredible margarita made with fresh-squeezed juice. I'm off in happy la-la-land again, just thinking about that meal...

... Whew! And I'm back, still stuffed to the gills.

We're packed up mostly, the car is loaded and all we have to do when the alarm goes off at 3:45 a.m. is hit the snooze button for another two hours put our clothes on, brush our teeth, and go. We're leaving early so we'll be out of the desert by the time the sun gets insufferably hot, and also because Keith wants to make the whole trip to Portland in one day, which is a heroically long schlep but at least we can stop at the Rogue Creamery and Lillie Belle Farms again on the way up.

And until then, I really should at least try to get some sleep.

Gluten-Free Pancakes!

Well, after a week or two of attempts and tweaks, we've done it. We, my beloved husband and I, have mastered the gluten-free pancake!

This morning we made plain, vanilla, and apple-cinnamon to test out the recipe. I am stuffed. The apple-cinnamon pancakes in particular are a real stick-to-your-ribs kind, which you wouldn't expect from gluten-free. But they were so delicious that Keith was eating them straight out of the skillet without any butter or syrup, which he never does! So I'm really proud of myself for having finally nailed this recipe down. These pancakes rise beautifully in the pan and have that chewy, moist texture that pancake lovers dream about.

If you're waiting eagerly for the recipe, don't hold your breath, but you can still have some. I will soon be selling the premade mix (in a variety of flavors) to finance a food cart, on the way to my longtime dream of owning my own cafe. Next weekend we're having a pancake party to try out all the different flavors on a new audience, and shortly after that I hope to be in business!

In the meantime, it's a beautiful day outside, the sun is shining, and we have all the windows and screen doors open to let the fresh spring air in. The cats are basking in the sunlight, Chet Baker is playing on the stereo, the coffee is hot and fresh, and Keith and I are about to go indulge in our Sunday morning routine of doing the crossword together. After that I suppose we'll take a nice walk.

We'll need it to work off these pancakes.

Salad Love

This was so good I just had to post about it!

I loooooooove salad. Absolutely love it. I think I've posted on here before about how much I love salad for breakfast, but honestly I like it all day. And a big one-meal salad, loaded with tons of different components, is the best ever! We had this one today.

I topped mixed baby spring greens (arugula, mesclun, radicchio, etc.) with sliced artichoke hearts, diced avocado, carrot shreds, raw kohlrabi, leftover BBQ chicken, and sunflower seeds. Then I whisked up olive oil, rice vinegar, some juice from salted lemon preserves, a little black pepper, and a smidge of Dijon mustard. Drizzled that shizzle and served it up for lunch right after a really grueling workout. It was surprisingly filling (must be all those good fats in the avocado and olive oil)! And ohhh, so delicious.

It's probably a little ridiculous how a good salad always makes me so incredibly happy. But it does.

Potatoes for the Irish!

I just did a big long post about potatoes over at my other blog, Nothing But An Apron. It occurs to me I've never plugged that blog here, so I'll take the opportunity to do that now. I co-write it with a good friend of mine in Australia, the irrepressible Elizabeth Rivera, and we cover the range of home economics over there - mostly cooking, with cleaning, beauty, and other household stuff thrown in.

Today I'm talking 'taties, which have got to be the most underrated vegetable in the plant kingdom and which go with St. Patrick's Day just as well as corned beef and beer. Here at the homestead, we're celebrating the holiday with a couple of friends, and I'll be simmering corned beef in Guinness in my crockpot all day. To go with it, I'm whipping up Fab Frugal Food's Irish soda bread rolls, a sauteed cabbage with caramelized onions, and of course, roasted potatoes.

And because it's a special occasion with company, what the hell, Guinness cake! I made this cake once to take over to a friend's place a few months ago and it was absolutely unholy. If you follow that link to the recipe, she's got it pictured as a loaf cake, but I did mine in my Bundt pan. It makes a beautiful rich black Bundt cake that's almost too pretty to slice into. (Almost.)

Keith, my brawny Irish husband, will be enjoying his favorite holiday with his favorite Guinness, but I prefer (of course, haha) a local Oregon brew: Hazelnut Brown Ale from the Rogue Brewery. It goes beautifully with beef and smoky flavors, with a rich hazelnut flavor and just a slight hint of sweet. It's a bit lighter than the Guinness and less intense for me.

Funny how I never liked beer until I came to Oregon and I still only really go for the Oregon beers.

I have a free hourlong session at the gym with a personal trainer this afternoon, thank G-d. I'm going to need to work off this dinner before I eat it!

UPDATE: Got a picture of the Guinness-ginger cake. Delicious!!

Luddite, indeed.

So the evil empire just jacked up our internet service bill again, and now we really can't justify paying $50 a month for a service that wastes our time more than it contributes to our lives. So... we're thinking of cancelling our internet.

*gasp* "No!" you cry. "I cannot LIVE without reading this blog!"

Fear not. Coffee shops with free wireless internet abound in this fair city, and if I know us we'll still be online two or three times a week. But I refuse to pay for it any longer when it wastes so much of my time at home, and we don't really need it. I get the newspaper delivered now, so that's what I can read over breakfast to get the news, and with all the work there is to do around this house (plus a lot of writing I want to get caught up on), I will be glad to be rid of the distraction.

This is a big step for me though, as my biggest weakness is my internet addiction. I anticipate heavy withdrawals soon, ha, but I do think it'll be better for us both in the long run.

And I know I'm going to be very busy soon, as the tomatoes are already sprouting and I have seeds to order and peppers to plant and a fence to build and grass to kill and so much to do outside...! Today I'm running out for a flourescent light for my tomatoes. They sprouted a lot sooner than I thought they would and they're stretching out way too high looking for sunlight, which they aren't getting in our spare room! (But in the spare room, they're also warm and not being trashed by cats, so...)

Spring!

I got that picture of Patch when I was hiking on Sauvie Island with Peta recently. We did a seven-mile hike through the woods and along the beach; I think the beach was Patch's favorite part, as he tore through the sand and ran like I've never seen him run. He splashed around in the river and had a terrific time. He was a bit more subdued in the woods, though he did find lots of interesting smells, and we all enjoyed the walk.

The hike ended at a tiny curved beach with a lighthouse on it. We sat there for awhile and ate peanuts and threw sticks for Patch to chase. Then, behind the lighthouse, we found this:



It must've been where the lighthouse guy lived, when there was one. Charred wood still surrounds it. There was a big flagpole hidden in the woods between the house and the river, and the whole area was overgrown with blackberry brambles. In the summer I'm coming back with a bucket to get as many of those blackberries as I can!

Closer to home and the present, it's looking like spring here. We might get a bit more winter - it's raining again today - but look what I found in my yard! It's the first crocus, starting to come through!



I planted the bulbs back in October and they're all putting out shoots now. I planted irises too, and look at this fancy spotted iris that's starting to peek out through the mud!



I also have garlic shoots coming up absolutely everywhere. I planted a ridiculous amount of garlic. Soon I'll be cutting and eating those tasty garlic shoots, and at the end of the summer I'll have the bulbs themselves. Yum!

The roses are putting out leaves all over the place, and the rhododendrons are covered with little buds. Even if it is still raining, spring is definitely here now.

I am a leetle fishy.

Keith has always spoken wistfully of lap-swimming, but we've never had a pool and our gym in L.A. didn't have one either. We finally joined a gym with a heated indoor pool; I went along with the lap-swimming to see if I liked it, and I LOVED it! So now we go to the gym, get the cardio out of the way and then do a bit of weight machines, and then we jump into the pool for an hour or so.

I can feel it toning muscles already and I really enjoy it. And I'm not all sweaty and overheated afterwards. It's a salt-water pool, so I'm not being dried out with chlorine, and there's a hot tub to soak in afterward.

Hopefully we can get ourselves back in shape soon and have a good time doing it! We only intend to keep the gym membership until summer, and by then we'll be doing the bicycling and outdoor thing. But until then... swimming!