Thursday, August 18, 2011

Wild fire - nothing new in the West



One of several helicopters dipping their buckets into the Rogue River collecting water to dump on the fire.
Wild fires are part of living in the West. Every 10 years or so, we watch one from our backyard. It is usually on a southwest-facing hillside called Tin Pan Peak just outside of Rogue River and a mile or so from us. Late this afternoon, several small fires erupted along the Rogue River and also on the Tin Pan Peak crest. Maybe arson? They blew up and converged and by early evening were thought to have burned at least 200 acres. That's small, as wild fires go. Just a few minutes ago, I took this photo as the fire had "laid down" for the night.
The fire tonight, as seen from the back porch.
The fire crews will no doubt subdue it tomorrow. But still. Even though this was probably a human-caused blaze (most are lightening-caused) and won't likely result in loss of homes of lives, it is humbling to watch a fire blow up.  We've never worried about fire at our house, except, of course, for that one time shortly after we relocated to Grants Pass for four years for Chris to attend high school and we had renters at our home, and the wood stove caused a fire that almost burned the place down. Local fire fighters saved the day and the house, and the fire just caused $30,000 damage  and displaced our renters for three months.
Well, maybe we do worry about fire.
More fire pics.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Ridiculous luck

Devouring dinner tonight, I was reminded of life's inequities. Life has NOT been unfair to me. Not at all. On the contrary. I am so fortunate it's sickening. I'm not sure how and why some people, like me, slip into golden favor while others are born in Somalia or countries where women are victimized by genital mutilation and children suffer and die because they lack clean water or adequate food and they suffer, suffer, suffer before dying too young. Or why women in my own community endure domestic abuse or puzzling but disabling hormone imbalances or ungrateful children or homelessness or worse.
As I digest my excellent meal, I'm grateful. I try not to guilt trip too much. It's not my fault that so many people in so many places are deprived while I enjoy life's favors, including excessive calories with bonzo nutrients. Tomorrow I'll undoubtedly have another such meal because I can. It's the great good fortune of my current situation and PK and I working our butts off in the garden. From the beginning, I've been lucky:

  • Two years ago I won a cruise for two to the Caribbean!
  • A few months ago I won a great camera!
  • Sixty-six years ago I was born to working class parents who never doubted that I was the most magnificent person on earth. (Except for, of course, my sister, who was also Golden.) My parents didn't have much money, but it was always understood my sister and I were absolutely brilliant and would go to college. And we did. (Sister may be brilliant, and I managed to eke through.)
  • On rebound from an unfaithful lout, I met and married PK.
  • We had two amazing sons who continue to astound and fulfill us. Children can be a great gift.
  • Our grandson, Noah, 14 months, is beautiful and brilliant and has the best parents, a fact that adds immensely to my contentment.
  • I almost died once, but have had great good health most of my life.
  • Friends are plentiful and precious. 
  • Our current cat, Koko, is amusing, and as I compose, he's digging into bookshelf drawers in my office. He is now trapped, but I shall soon liberate him.
  •  My mother, LaVone, 95.8, has become a part of my daily life. I sometimes chafe at the restrictions she presents to my comings and goings, but mostly I marvel at her resilience and spirit and the great good fortune I have to be with her now.
  • Which brings me back to being lucky, And here's tonight's dinner. Thank you, whoever presides over the universe. Great meal!

Corn on the cob, smoked grilled chicken, cuke/onion salad, the season's first fresh tomatoes, smoked grilled peppers, garden medley including zukes, eggplant, peppers, onions, basil, and garlic. 

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Zucchini frittata with dill sauce—and more!


Dinner tonight — Zucchini frittata with dill sauce and cucumber/onion salad. Those red things are our first tomatoes! but not at all essential to the recipe. Tomatoes are still a couple weeks away from ripeness.
Every year we have zukes to burn. Actually, we give most of them away or chop 'em up for compost. Used to be, in the old days, we fed 'em to the hogs. But now that we have only four zucchini plants (and zero hogs) and three of our zuke plants are sub-standard, thank god) I'm attempting to use more in dinners-for-two and perhaps even freeze some for winter. (Plus hauling burlap bags of them, along with multiple cukes, to the Community Center Food Bank.)
So here's a surprise experiment that turned out very well. I'm home alone tonight, but this could easily be doubled or quadrupled for the main dish—or used as a substantial side. As always, my recipes are "soft" in that I don't measure precisely. But this one is more measured than most. Here's a hint about real foodies: we cook without an audience (or a partner present) and relish every bite.

Zucchini Frittata
2 T olive oil
4 small to medium zukes, cut into like-sized pieces (think 1/3 inch thick and about the size of a quarter)
1/3 - 1/2 medium onion, finely sliced
1.5 T minced garlic
1 sweet or mild green pepper, sliced but not diced (optional—it happens that our peppers are coming on strong.)
2 beaten eggs (maybe some day we'll raise chickens again!)
1/2 to 3/4 c shredded fresh basil, loosely packed
1/2 c shredded Parmesan cheese (Feta cheese would also be good.)
salt and pepper to taste
pepper flakes to taste
dill sauce (recipe follows)

Directions
Saute the zukes in the olive oil until crisp/tender. This could take 10 minutes.  You don't want them mushy, just starting to become translucent. Add the onions and saute a couple minutes or so. Add the pepper and garlic and stir fry for a couple minutes til the garlic is intoxicating. (Don't get drunk, but do enjoy some wine while cooking!) Add the beaten eggs and fold into the veggies. When eggs are almost set, top with shredded basil and Parmesan cheese. Cook over low-medium heat a few more minutes until cheese is nearly melted. Remove from heat and let it rest for a few minutes. In the meantime, get the dill sauce ready to serve.


Dill Sauce
This is a staple in my kitchen while dill weed is running rampant in the garden. This year I've dried a lot of dill and will attempt to replicate fresh dill in winter. I think it can be done. Dill sauce is spectacular with dishes such as zucchini frittata, anything with potatoes, any fish, and much more. Plus it is simple to slap together and keeps a long time. If you have fresh dill, more power to you! If not, see what happens when you use dried dill that still exudes essence of dill. If dried dill doesn't smell like dill, use it for compost.

Ingredients
1/4 to 1/3 cup fresh dill, minced, or 3 T dried dill
1/3 c plain yogurt
1/3 c sour cream
1/3 c mayo
3 T fresh lemon juice (can substitute lime)
Optional: 1 T lemon zest; 1 tsp Tabasco

Directions
Combine ingredients and mix well. Taste. Adjust dill and lemon to taste. Cover and refrigerate. Keeps up to a month, but is so good it won't last long.

Cucumber/onion salad
When it comes to fresh garden cukes and onions, this is a super simple recipe that never fails to please.
Double or triple as necessary. The salad keeps well, refrigerated, for several days.

Ingredients
2-3 medium cukes of any variety. Don't use super big ones that will have lots of seeds and bitter rinds.
Test to see if skins are bitter. If so, peel with a potato peeler. If not bitter, just cut off the ends. If you like, fancy up the recipe by striping the cuke with a peeler. If the cukes are large, you will  need to seed and peel them.
1/2 large sweet onion, thinly sliced
1/3 c rice vinegar
1/3 c sugar ( or substitute Splenda)
salt and pepper to taste

Directions
Combine ingredients and taste. Adjust seasonings. Serve immediately or refrigerate. Seasonings may need to be adjusted later as salt extracts water from cukes and onions.

Garden photos follow, if you like.
Overall early August garden scene.
 Plants encroaching on house. Residents preparing to flee.

Messy  entwined dill, green beans, and marigolds.
Still, it appears all co-exist to mutual benefit.
Can they please send a message to Congress?

Innocent-looking yellow six-inch zuke. Tomorrow? Twelve inches! Run!
Standing guard over the garden, youthful sunflowers are at their most audacious, tempting birds and bees with flagrant displays; They don't actually dance, except with the wind, but they don't need movement
when color and size and in-your-face life force are so outrageous. In a couple months they'll go to seed and be totally ravaged by birds. I won't forget their youth and beauty. (Or my mother's.) 





Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Happy @ 95.8

Here's LaVone, on the right, intent on bingo at her new digs, Morrow Heights,
an assisted living facility close to  my home in Rogue River, Oregon. 
My somewhat-older sister and I often discuss the probability that we will live into our nineties. Our father died at 93 and our mother is 95.8 and going strong. However, we've sorta decided we don't want to go there. What we'll do to prevent it, I don't know. I've told her I'm not going to be the one to do her in when/if she decides to check out. But I'm still in disbelief that I'm approaching 70, my sister, of course, is somewhat older. Age denial began decades ago and continues. Stupid, I know, not to "be here now", and sometimes I can be. But other times I look in the mirror and say, Who, me? My mother doesn't look in the mirror (she can't really see that well) and that's a lesson. She just IS here now, almost free of vanity* and distilled to her most essential needs: eating—her appetite is keen, seeing me, and playing games. Bingo every day! Yes! And dice two or three times daily and also a plastic-wand themed noodle-cize class. Between these activities and eating, showering, physical therapy,and pushing herself around in a wheelchair, she's occupied and has found her own elderly version of happy. I do not doubt that she is enjoying life, despite all the crappy details.

She forges ahead despite being almost deaf, nearly blind, stooped with severe osteoporosis, and having endured a recent pelvic fracture, a brief hospitalization, and 21 tortuous rehab days in a nursing home. Now she's installed in her fourth "home" in less than three years, and what does she do? She scrutinizes the activity schedule and jumps into every slot that will accommodate her. She's found her place, and I hope she never has to  move again. I'm learning from her. I don't know if I want to BE her. I'm not big on bingo or dice. But her ability to find pleasure in what some would consider a very thin medium is instructive and even inspirational. You go, LaVone. When (and if) I become 90, I will remember your example. Maybe my sister will too, and we won't have to deal with the messy details of euthanasia.


*While in the nursing home, she took my hand one day and implored, How do I look? Are my wrinkles really deep? I told her the truth. She is still attractive. Good bone structure doesn't lie. Her back may be stooped, but her cheekbones are still proud. 
LaVone a couple years ago, only 93, going with the flow.




Saturday, July 30, 2011

The Edible Fence

It's late August and time to harvest blackberries, or at least a fraction that are dripping from the thorny hedge that forms a fence between our little farm and the gravel road. We take them for granted. We didn't plan them, and do nothing at all to encourage them, yet they thrive as the invasive weed that they are. As opportunists, we enjoy them all winter with yogurt and granola, in smoothies, and even an occasional cobbler. Before I gave up sugar, I made blackberry jam and jelly.
 Blackberries are considered a scourge in Oregon, at least in the southern part of the state. They'll gladly take over your property, if you let them. But they are pretty good to eat, and they're free for the picking. So we arm ourselves with sturdy clothing and harvest buckets for the freezer. (PK mostly does this prickly chore.)
Berries ready to be frozen. Later they'll go into freezer bags.

The blackberry fence from inside our property.


Blackberry poop, probably raccoons, litters the fence line. Apparently they eat and poop within about four feet of the food source, then go back for more! 

The edible fence on the outside. 

Nasty conditions out there for berries: dust, direct sun in the late afternoon.  But still people pick them from the road.

A small bucket of berries worth about 2.5 frozen quarts.