Word on the Hizzouse

Behold my first home-grown artichoke! I've produced other garden vegetables and they're all lovely in their own right, but I was infatuated with this artichoke on a completely ridiculous level. They grow like weeds on the west coast, especially here in Portland with our wet, rich soil and mild summers (well, except for this past week), and every other garden features those silvery, weapon-like leaves and alien purple blooms. We're trying not to let ours bloom at all, because (as we used to say) them's good eatin'! This particular artichoke met its fate on our charcoal grill, brushed often with a lemony-peppery olive oil baste.

Last night we got the news that the mortgage company approved our loan. And who doesn't crave approval? We celebrated by throwing together a huge veggie feast. Went out to a burlesque show but the place had no air conditioning and the heat wave rages on, so no one else showed up and the dancers were disinclined to perform for an audience of two; after sitting there for almost an hour waiting for the show, we shrugged it off and went home. Oh well.

Supposed to go sign loan papers today, will close on the house on some undetermined day next week. Yes, I'm excited, yes, I'm terrified. I think I'm going to prolong my adolescence for a bit by continuing to refer to it as a hizzouse.

Restaurant Reviews: My Birthday Dinner

I had a great birthday, with dress shopping at Naked City and ice skating at the Lloyd Center (where Tonya Harding trained!), but, as is often the case with us, the real highlight of the day was the meal. After a big breakfast and a long nap, and then shopping, we were ready for an early dinner about four. This worked great for us because Pok Pok was empty at that hour. They weren't serving the full menu yet, so we ordered cocktails and a Pok Pok Special to split.

Words cannot describe how good this is, let me tell you. The special is described as "half a roasted game hen with a small green papaya salad (papaya pok pok) sticky rice and dipping sauce." That's like describing the Swiss Alps as "mountains and some snow." In actuality this bird, served in chunks and meant to eat with your fingers, has a texture almost like creme brulee, all moist and creamy under a crisp, crackling skin. It came with two sauces, an herbed brown tamarind sauce and a spicy sweet-sour sauce that fully engaged every bud of the tongue. We dropped the sticky rice smack into the leftover juices just to make it last. The other side of the plate offered the Thai special that the restaurant was named for, papaya pok pok. Keith couldn't eat much of it; I loved it, but I was paying for it later. This is a salad of shredded crunchy green papaya, bashed in the mortar and pestle with enough hot Thai chiles to cook your gut, drizzled with lime and sprinkled with salty peanuts and cashews. Every kind of taste is at work here - sweet, salty, bitter, umami, tart, and oh that spicy heat. It took a lot of water and all of my apple-vinegar gin rickey (yes, I said vinegar) to get it down.

Once the dinner menu opened up, we ordered again. Pork skewers with a coconut-satay dipping sauce for Keith, and for me, grilled rare flank steak served as a salad with mint, lime, roasted hot chiles, and shallots. We shared more sticky rice and each took a side of cucumber salad with still more hot chiles. I grew up on cucumber salad in hot weather; nice cool cucumbers with a zing of tangy vinegar to cool you off when the weather and spicy food are burning you inside and out - but this one has hidden hot peppers that creep in for a sneaky sucker-punch. I was dipping strips of steak into Keith's bowl of peanut sauce and dropping leftover lime wedges into my water cup for relief. By the end of the meal I was completely cooked, but satisfied, and flying on a magic carpet of endorphins and gin.

At this point we stepped outside into a temperature of 105 and decided it was time for ice cream. But not just any ice cream. We headed a few blocks down the way to Pix Patisserie, best known for their chocolates but in the summer they craft the most stunning gourmet ice cream. Keith ordered a chocolate-based port wine and fig ice cream, served as two small scoops in a lovely little glass dish and accompanied with a small glass of port. I had trouble deciding but settled on a special lemon sorbet, served in a hollow lemon (see pic above) with a glass of Kir Royale. Sorbet was never so creamy. You could've told me this was made with full cream and I would've believed you. I was scraping the insides of the lemon for every last drop, relishing the sensation of all that cool creamy citrus cleansing out the hot peppers and broiling sun. I lingered over that lemon sorbet long enough to read an entire newspaper, licking tiny scoops from a doll-sized spoon, and could've cried when none was left.

I haven't eaten much today. I think I'm still digesting the memories.

RIP, My Twenties

Half an hour to midnight, when I officially become 30. I wasn't born until afternoon, technically, but whatever.

Today saw the hottest day in the history of Portland, with a high of 107. It's supposed to do it again, just for my birthday, and then it starts dropping dramatically, getting back down into a much more pleasant low-70's with a little rain to cool everything off. We've closed up the rest of the house and are still camping in the living room, where the temporary air conditioning is, and are living in our undies. And of course, I spent some of the hottest day in history working over my canner. Didn't want to, but I had 10 pounds of pickling cucumbers that were heading south, so I was boiling vinegar brine and handling hot jars for longer than I wanted to. I meant to pickle green beans and garlic too but just couldn't face it. Maybe Thursday.

At least we got out of the house for a bit. We went to the co-op for some grocery staples, and went to a free wine tasting at my favorite little secret spot, Vino Vixens. The sweltering heat was just right for a crisp Prosecco, and before leaving we bought a bottle of the Prosecco to take with us. If we ever close on the house and get the keys, we'll celebrate with this Prosecco Rose. May that be soon.

In the meantime I'm nibbling a whole wheat flax roll I baked this morning from yesterday's dough, getting ready to crash out on the couch and put an end to my twenties. I've been reflecting a lot today - where I was when I turned 20 in the summer of 1999, what I expected for the decade at the time, how things have changed and how they haven't. I'm happy to report that I have little to no regrets. There are things I would've done differently, but I love where I am now and I love the experiences that led me here, both good and bad.

In the past ten years I have starved and feasted, loved and lost, been married twice and divorced once, lived in five cities on two continents, sobbed with heartbreak and wept for joy. I'm fortunate to say there's been a lot more of the joy. And now I'm happier than I ever dreamed a woman could be, so here's to another fond look backwards ten years from now.

Heat Wave

It's so much more fun when it's Martha Reeves singing about it. Yesterday we had a high of 102, and it'll be getting up to 104 today and tomorrow. This has never happened in the history of Portland; just seven months ago we had the heaviest snowstorm in 40 years, and now we're in a record-breaking summer. *sigh*

So we invested in some temporary air conditioning, which leaked gallons of water all over my little patio table outside on the balcony, ruining the paint. I'll add that to the list of things to paint when we move, I guess, but what an irritant. We camped in the living room with the air conditioner last night (and those who know me know I HATE air conditioning, but any port in a storm) and we actually did have a nice time watching movies while doing more preserve work. We peeled several heads of garlic so I can pickle the cloves today, and trimmed green beans for pickling too, and finally finished The Lavender Project. Back when my brother was visiting a few weeks ago, we each picked a huge handful of lavender at a farm near Hood River, and I dried it in the windowsill. Then we had to pick the buds off each stem to transfer to a baggie for storage. We've spent our downtime for the past several days stripping lavender buds, and finally wound up with a cereal bowl full of beautifully fragrant dried lavender. It'll be enough to give some away and still have plenty to cook with for the year.

In the house news, we will not be signing the papers as planned today, and likely will not close this Friday after all. Still more paper hoops to jump through, and maybe we'll close next week. I'm starting to understand why Dennis Miller once compared the home-buying process to a gangrape. Just when you think it'll all be over soon, someone else starts in and you wonder if you'll ever make it through.

But overall we're okay. We have food and water and a place to get out of the worst of the heat. We're living off fresh fruit and cool salads, my favorites. Things could be a lot worse on this Last Day of My Twenties. I'm going to be pickling all day - cucumbers, green beans, and garlic - and I have some whole wheat flax dough to make rolls with in a minute. Going to try to get some writing done and maybe get out of the house later, if I can bring myself to get dressed. In this kind of heat, even my breeziest skirt looks like a wool burqa.

Is it autumn yet?

Sauvie Island

Yep, two posts in a day. I'm a crazy blogging fool like that.

We spent the day up at Sauvie Island today and it was such a perfect day, I had to share it. Technically Sauvie Island is part of Portland, but it feels like another planet; it actually feels a lot like the Mississippi River Delta, but populated by Oregonians. Getting there from our place just involves about a half hour's drive along the Willamette, over the Fremont Bridge, through the industrial northwest, and over a pretty little bridge to this flat, sandy river island which is all wildlife refuge and farmland. There's not even a gas station on the island, though there are general stores. We got sunblock and a parking pass at the first general store, then stopped at Kruger's Farm for fresh cherries and a snack of fresh-picked roasted corn, crisp and sweet like candy.

We took the long road through the farm country, a twisty two-lane shoulderless thoroughfare with surprisingly little traffic. At the far end of the island, after the road peters out into gravel, we parked to visit Collins Beach. We found this hidden little gem last summer and I don't even remember how we found it; you have to hike a minute or two through cool heavy forest before the sandy path spits you out on a wide, sunny clothing-optional beach where the river meanders over shallow, velvety-slick sand. We spent the afternoon swimming in the chilly river, nibbling the fresh cherries, lying in the sand under the shade of a low tree. I'd brought Under the Tuscan Sun to read and Keith was reading The Thin Man - what does that say about us?

About the time I noticed our own sun was getting that dark golden hue more commonly ascribed to Tuscany, we decided to go back to Kruger's Farm. By this point it was almost 7 pm and it had cooled off enough to enjoy the breeze of open windows in the summer evening air. Someone was having a wedding at the farm, but we joined other partycrashers in admiring the baby chicks and picking blueberries, and then we stopped by the farm store and bought some work for me: a 10 lb. bag of pickling cucumbers, a handful of garlic to pickle in spices and cider vinegar, artichokes the size of melons, and freshly-picked corn. I'll be doing more preserving this week, at the peak of a heat wave, but it was worth it. I'm so relaxed from this day I'll be able to can all week if I have to. Right?

Chillaxed Weekend

Big Saturday yesterday. I got up early to make four dozen corn muffins - half jalapeno, half honey - for our friends' wedding, and then Keith and I went on the Tour de Coops. There were 26 chicken coops on the tour this year, all little backyard coops here in Portland, and there wasn't time to see them all, so we just devoted ourselves to the ones in our quadrant (southeast). Still a huge variety and lots of chickens. We got some excellent ideas for designing and building our own coop later in the summer. Pretty educational day and I scored some great gardening tips, too!

After the tour we straggled home sweaty for a shower and a change of clothes, then loaded up the corn muffins, a bowl of honey butter, and a bowl of pepper-garlic butter, and headed over to the wedding. It was one of the loveliest weddings I've ever been to, in the backyard of their new house, under the shade of a grand old maple tree. Centerpieces were fresh lavender in beer bottles with little candles scattered around, and the ceremony itself had musical accompaniment provided by the next-door neighbors' dogs. We ate delicious Texas BBQ and lingered over local wine and beer. Good times.

Today it's supposed to be hot - mid-nineties, what the hell - and they're predicting record-breaking heat in the triple digits for this week. Just to ruin my birthday, I suppose. The plan was to spend my birthday picking berries and lounging in the Columbia River out at Sauvie Island, but now that it looks like we'll have to skip town or spend the day at the air-conditioned movie theaters instead, we'll go do Sauvie Island this afternoon. I'm looking forward to it, but I'm sure I'll regret some of it when I pick too much and wind up spending the heat wave over my boiling canner. Maybe I'll just freeze the berries.

Anyway, since I'm proud of these corn muffins and they were super-easy, have a recipe.

JALAPENO CORN MUFFINS

2 cans creamed corn
4 c cornmeal, divided
2 Tbsp cider vinegar + milk to make 2 cups
4 eggs, beaten
1 c butter, melted
1 jalapeno, seeds and all, minced finely
2 c flour
2 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp salt (use black smoked sea salt if you have it)
1 Tbsp + 1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cumin
About 1/3 cup grated cheese (sharp cheddar or jack)

Preheat oven to 450 F, and grease two muffin tins (or line them with paper muffin cups). Heat creamed corn in the microwave until bubbling hot. Stir in half the cornmeal (2 c) until it's a thick mush. Mix in, one at a time, the vinegar milk, beaten eggs, melted butter, and jalapeno. Mix the dry ingredients together in another (very large) bowl, then make a deep well in the middle and pour in the wet mixture. Stir until just barely blended - lumps are okay - and ladel into the muffin tins, filling to just under the top. Sprinkle a little cheese over the top of each muffin. Bake 15 minutes or until a toothpick/fork comes out clean. Let cool on a rack and serve the same day; they're too moist to keep well. This makes 2 dozen muffins.

Self-Preservation

Aaaaaaand preserve season continues. This week I've put up rosemary jelly and lavender jelly, frozen garden greens, made several batches of honey corn muffins (trying to perfect a recipe by tomorrow), and broken out my new dehydrator (thanks, Dad)! Last night Keith and I put on an excellent movie - Barton Fink, I recommend it - and kicked back to keep busy. I pitted a gallon of huge, succulent dark sweet cherries until my hands dripped like Lady Macbeth's; Keith hulled the last of Pawpaw's pecans. Some of the pecans went into pecan pralines today. The cherries, much as it killed me to do it, went into the dehydrator. It violates everything I stand for, to be standing there with a huge bowl of lovely juicy fresh cherries and alter them this way, but I'm trying to keep my mind focused on how delicious these dried cherries will be once fresh cherry season is over.

In other news, Davey and Roxy enjoyed a little overnight trip to the vet's office and came home with their procreative organs missing. Davey's fine, Roxy's still a bit woozy, but I think they'll be okay. Fry was too tiny to go - be glad you're the runt, my little one - and she seemed to enjoy a fun night of wrestling with our hair and chewing our fingers as we tried to sleep. Now it seems she's very glad to have her brother back home for these games.

No word yet on the house. I guess now we'll hear back on Monday. Set to close one week from today...