Still Snowbound

Well, we're still stuck here with about 14 inches of snow on the ground with 3 to 8 more forecasted for tomorrow and Thursday. We've been working from home during the day and doing a lot of reading and movie watching at night. I've been cooking. Last night I made bagels, because really, what better time is there to try a recipe you've always wanted to make that when you have the whole evening with nothing to do and nowhere to be. They were actually very easy and tasty too.
For lunch today we took a break and headed down the block to have lunch at a pizza buffet because we both needed to get out of the house. Things aren't too bad on foot, but the roads are still a mess. Some of the snow is melting off of the house into icicles, but the rest of it seems to be staying put.
We're hoping that we get a break in the weather soon, ideally with enough time to still make the drive to California for Christmas, but the weather folks aren't being too encouraging.

2008 in Review

It's December, and another year is nearly gone. Thanks to a number of weddings, we got to spend quite a bit of time out of state and connect with many friends and family over the course of the last year. Looking back, we are very thankful for all of you, and we thought that we would wish you a Merry Christmas and share a few of our favorite memories from the year past.

In writing this up, we realized that we're not terribly exciting or are extremely forgetful, because we don't have anything to report from the first five months of this year. Our first notable adventure took us out to Joseph, a small town set at the foot of the Wallowa Mountains in northeast Oregon, where we celebrated our 2nd anniversary in May. While in Joseph, we took in some fantastic scenery while hiking, stayed in a cozy bed and breakfast, went bowling (Erica won a free game with her tremendous skill), and of course, dodged the raindrops.
Over the summer, we took a ten day trip bookended by two weddings. The Kriegler wedding in Los Angeles was the first stop. Fred was a groomsman in the wedding and got to introduce Erica to many of his friends from college. This was also Erica's first trip to the Los Angeles area, so some sight-seeing was in order. We were able to go to the beach in Malibu, spend some time with our friends Christopher and Amy and Fred's Aunty Jane, and check out the Harvey Mudd College campus where Fred went to school.
From Los Angeles, we flew out to Missouri for Erica's brother Ryan's wedding. Ryan and Sarah were married in the small town of Altenburg, where Fred got to experience many southeast Missouri traditions. After the wedding reception on the top floor of the Knights of Columbus reception hall, we strolled down to the bottom floor to crash Erica's 10 year high school reunion.

In August, Erica participated in the Portland to Coast walking relay with several of her co-workers, which is the version of the better known Hood to Coast Relay for people who don't like to run. Despite a serious lack of training and a late-night leg fueled by a blue cheese and bacon burger for dinner, Erica had an enjoyable time and came through relatively unscathed.

In November, Fred donned a tuxedo one last time for friends Josh and Yi's wedding in El Segundo, California. Erica got her second taste of California sunshine and got to meet another batch of friends from Fred's college days. Josh choreographed a heartwarming song and dance routine to cap the wedding ceremony. Fred and the other groomsmen played a supporting role in the act, which actually landed on YouTube.
Just recently, we've had some additional excitement thanks to some unusual weather. Portland is known for it's rain, but not necessarily for its snow. In fact, we are woefully unprepared for snow, which makes the several inches of snow that we got last weekend such a big deal. Then, this weekend's snow left us snowbound with plenty of time to pull this update together.
We hope that this letter finds you all well. Have a Merry Christmas, and may 2009 be a blessed year for all of you.

Love,
Fred and Erica

Thanksgiving

This is a bit late, but I finally downloaded the pictures from Thanksgiving. We had a really nice time. Fred's parents, his sister Sydney, and her boyfriend Dan spent the weekend with us. We had all of the traditional Thanskgiving foods, but the most talked about item was the 6 pound sweet potato that Fred and Sylvia brought with them from Califiornia--by plane. Here are a few pictures to give you an idea of just how big it was:


The six of us ate maybe one quarter of the sweet potato at Thanskgiving dinner and made a batch of sweet potato biscuits for breakfast the day after. I froze enough to make two more batches of biscuits and we still have about a quarter of the potato left. I plan to cook it this weekend and try my hand at sweet potato pie.

Aside from eating, there was also time for everyone to compete in Wii bowling and boxing, which was a lot of fun.


The big excitement around here now is that it's supposed to snow this weekend. Portland doesn't really get a lot of snow, so when it's in the forecast, it's a big deal. I thought the newscasters in Missouri got worked up when a winter storm was in the works, but they've got nothing on Portland. The forecast has been for snow starting tonight at elevations below 500 feet (most of Portland). One news channel has had someone stationed at the top of Sylvan hill, which is high enough to usually see the first of the snow, since yesterday morning--when it was still about 45 degrees out and not even raining. We're not too worried about it all--we're well stocked to stay warm at home, and if things really are bad by Monday morning, we can both work from home. I wouldn't mind seeing some snow, but I have a feeling that all of the hype isn't going to amount to much.

Blooming!

I'm very excited--in the summer of 2007 I took some cuttings from one of my Grandma's and one of Fred's Grandma's Christmas cacti. They didn't bloom last year, but at least some of the cuttings are blooming now. I guess that at least one of the cuttings is from a Thanksgiving cactus, not a Christmas cactus.


We've been busy lately. Last weekend we flew to LA for Fred's friend Josh's wedding. It was a nice wedding, but a tiring weekend. We both had long weeks at work, so it was nice to have a relaxing weekend at home. We did some errands, ordered our Thanksgiving turkey, and did a little bit of work around the house. Last night I used some of pumpkin puree I made last month to make a pumpkin bread recipe that I'd been wanting to try. (If you look up the link--I made the yeast bread, not the Trader Joe's version, although I made that a couple weeks ago, and it was easy and tasty).

Anyway, the recipe made enough for two loaves. We only have one bread pan, so I made one loaf and used the rest to make pumpkin cinnamon rolls. They were really good--one of the best batches of cinnamon rolls I've made from any recipe.

Fred liked them too. He pretty much likes all cinnamon rolls--except for the first batch I ever made for us. I made the mistake of baking them in one of my stoneware baking dishes that I'd used previously for a beef roast. Unfortunately, that left an unpleasant beefy taste in the cinnamon rolls. I've learned to only use that dish for savory dishes and use Pyrex for desserts.

Cooking for fall

I spent a lot of time in the kitchen today--by choice. The weather was very fall-ish, so I made a big pot of chili for dinner and to last us through the week. This is my second pot of chili in less than a month. Fred makes fun of me because I'll only make it in the fall and winter (and probably well into the spring here, since it stays rainy and cool into June), but to me chili just doesn't seem like summer food.

I also roasted some butternut squash and sweet potatoes. The sweet potatoes are for making biscuits, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the squash. I have about 6 cups of mashed pumpkin and squash in my freezer, but when I see it on sale I feel like I need to get more to stock up. I'll be able to bake a lot of pumpkin/squash bread through the winter.

I made a batch of the sweet potato biscuits to go with dinner tonight, and as always they are almost gone. I found this recipe last year after Thanksgiving when we had some leftover roasted sweet potatoes. If I remember correctly, they are excellent with cranberry sauce, but they're great by themselves. The recipe is modified from a Paula Deen one from the Food TV website. I consider it healthy, since it only has 1/4 cup butter in the whole batch (if, like me, you don't brush them with butter after cooking).


Anyway, if you're interested, here's the recipe:

Sweet Potato Biscuits
Makes 8-12

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 heaping tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup mashed cooked sweet potatoes
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) softened butter
2 to 4 tablespoons milk (depending on the moisture of the potatoes)
2-3 tablespoons flax seed (optional)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. In a separate bowl, mix the sweet potatoes and butter. Add the flour mixture to the potato mixture and mix to make a soft dough. Then add milk a tablespoon at a time to mixture and continue. Be lazy like me and drop spoonfuls of batter onto your baking stone, or be like Paulal and turn the dough out onto a floured board and toss lightly until the outside of the dough looks smooth. Roll the dough out to 1/2-inch thick and cut with a biscuit cutter. Bake for about 15 minutes. (Watch your oven: If the biscuits are browning too fast, lower the temperature.)

Crafty

A few weeks ago Fred and I made our annual fall trip to Hood River to visit the farms on the fruit loop. We bought lots of apples, pears, and cider and visited an alpaca farm. They had some really cute babies, and all of the bigger alpacas looked funny because they'd been shorn recently.


They have a yarn store at the farm, and I got some great alpaca yarn to make a warm winter hat.



I'm happy with how it turned out, and I'm hoping it's cool enough to wear it tonight when Fred and I go to a corn maze with some of my coworkers. I don't know if anyone who reads this blog knits, but if you want to give this hat a try, I modified the pattern for the hat found here.

Snippets

I started this post about a month ago and am only now getting around to finishing it. I'm going to have to start doing more exciting things worthy of reporting.

I finally uploaded a couple of months worth of pictures from the camera. I found lots of food pictures:


Blueberries we picked at a farm down the road. I washed and froze a couple gallons so we'd have berries for pancakes and muffins throughout the winter. I think we need to get a chest freezer so we can stock up on goodies.


We went out for dinner at a restaurant called Lovely Hula Hands a couple of months ago and have been making this salad at home since. It's made of summer tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, and goddess dressing. We went to the farmers market this weekend and got the ingredients to make this for the last time this summer.

Those pictures were summer food--this weekend has been all about fall food. I picked up a few pumpkins at the farmers market and roasted and pureed them last night. Today I roasted the seeds and made some pumpkin bread and muffins. We also made a big pot of split pea soup with enough for leftovers this week plus some to freeze for a quick dinner sometime in the future.

Awesome blog if you like cake and/or things that are funny

This is my new favorite blog. It's a compilation of pictures of professional cakes that are just horrible. It always makes me laugh.

I'm back

August was a busy month, but I kept putting off writing. I'll try to catch up now.

Work has been busy but good. I was out in the field off and on through August, but now I'm done and back in the office for the foreseeable future (except for a conference in San Diego at the end of the month).

A couple of weeks ago, I completed the Portland to Coast walking relay with a team of women mainly from my office. It was fun, and I was able to walk my three ~5 mile legs relatively unscathed (I have one purple toenail) which I consider to be quite a feat since I didn't really train for the relay. I didn't take my camera, but I'm hoping to get some pictures soon.

Our labor day weekend was pretty relaxing. I spent most of today reading, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

I'm sure I left something out. I hope to write more in September.

Erica

Weekend excursion: Tillamook

Since I'm feeling prolific tonight, I'm going to post twice. Fred and I both managed to get Friday afternoon off last week, so we got an early start to our weekend. We drove all the way out to Hillsboro to eat a late lunch at an Indian restaurant some of his coworkers had told him about. It was great, but since it was a buffet, I ate way too much and was miserable the rest of the night. We didn't even eat dinner. We did stop by our favorite farm stand to get a watermelon, corn, and half a flat of berries. Between the two of us, all the berries were gone by breakfast today. And I didn't even bake anything with them.

Then on Saturday we got up and made our way out to the coast. On the way, we stopped at the Tillamook Forest Center. We had a lot of fun learning about the forest and taking a short walk along the Wilson River. And we got our pictures taken with Smokey.


Afterward we made our way to Tillamook to visit one of our favorite Oregon places--the Tillamook cheese factory. Maybe I shouldn't speak for Fred, but it's definitely high on my list. Our first stop was to get an ice cream cone (they make more than cheese there). We skipped the tour and the cheese sample line because it was pretty busy, but we did make it to the cheese shop to pick up a couple of bags of cheese curds and a pepperoni stick. We came prepared with a cooler for the cheese, but did make quite a dent in one bag of curds before we made it home.

Wedding #2: Missouri

This post is a long time in the making. I started it over a week ago but didn't finish it because all of the pictures from MO weren't on the computer yet. It took me until today to upload. Here's the description of the rest of our trip:

We flew from Los Angeles to St. Louis on Wednesday, July 2. We got in just in time to head downtown and catch a Cardinals game with Lynn and Ryan, courtesy of Ryan's dad Paul. We had a lot of fun catching up with them and getting to see the new stadium. Thankfully, we were sitting in covered seats, because a summer thundershower passed through early in the game.


We spent the next few days helping to get ready for the rehearsal and wedding. And visiting the Missouri Wall of Fame. That's me and Mark Twain. Yep, he's from Missouri. And famous. We were there while the Mississippi was flooded. It's on the other side of the floodwall--probably up to about Mark's shoulder. Good thing the wall is there.


Here's a picture of us all dressed up for the wedding:


And one of the school bus that took us from the wedding to the reception:


And finally, one of Ryan and Sarah and their wedding party:


The wedding was beautiful and we had a nice but short visit with family and friends. Overall, it was a long trip (11 days, 2 weddings, 5 beds slept in, 4 flights, and 1 lost suitcase), and while we had a good time, we were definitely glad to be back in our normal routine when we returned.

Wedding #1: California

Fred and I got home yesterday from, as my co-worker Michelle described it, "flitting about the country to attend weddings." Our first trip was to Los Angeles, where Fred's friend and college baseball teammate Brian and his fiancee Kathy were getting married.

We got in on Friday at lunchtime, Amy picked us up from the airport, and she and Christopher entertained us until we had to be downtown for the rehearsal on Saturday. We had a great time with them, especially since we hadn't spent much time together since we all got married two years ago (Christopher and Amy got married two weeks after we did). Below is a picture that Amy took of Fred and I at Zuma Beach near Malibu.


The wedding was on Sunday, and it was very nice. I really enjoyed meeting several of Fred's teammates from college. After the wedding, we spent two relaxing days with Fred's Aunty Jane in Redondo Beach. She was kind enough to drive us out to Claremont, where Harvey Mudd (Fred's alma mater) is located. It was fun to get to finally see all of Fred's old haunts, and Claremont is a really pretty town. Here's a picture of Fred and Aunty Jane at Harvey Mudd:


Overall it was a very nice trip. We flew out Wednesday for Missouri, where my brother Ryan and his fiancee Sarah got married on July 5. I'll write more about that trip soon.

Strawberry weekend

Fred's parents came up to Portland last Wednesday and stayed with us through the weekend. We had a great time. It's strawberry season here, and we made the best of it. On Saturday morning we went to the Beaverton farmers market-one of my favorite things to do in the summer. We bought a flat of Hood strawberries, and Sylvia and I made strawberry and strawberry-rhubarb jam while Fred and his dad put together an automatic sprinkler system for the crops on our patio.
We used a different kind of pectin that allows for less sugar since the berries were so sweet on their own. Maybe that's why the jam separated. I'm going to spin it as "fruit on the top" jam. It still tastes great, and I guess that's all that really matters.

Saturday night I finally got to try my hand at pie in a jar. I used the pie crust recipe from this book with all butter instead of butter and shortening. The recipe uses orange juice instead of water for liquid and has turned out nicely every time I've made it. The mini-pies turned out great as well. We filled them with some fresh strawberries, extra jam that didn't get canned, and cornstarch.


On Sunday afternoon we went to the International Rose Test Garden in Portland. It was a beautiful afternoon, and a great time to go see the roses.


On the way home we stopped at another one of my favorite places for another strawberry treat-made even better by buy-one-get-one-free coupons.


Later, we all pitched in and grilled up an excellent dinner--grilled cheeseburgers, grilled veggies, and roasted potatoes. Afterward, Sylvia and I had to try just one more strawberry recipe.


This one turned out to be the best of all. It's the best fruit crisp I've ever made-and quite possibly one of the best desserts. It has a strawberry and rhubarb filling with rosemary and cinnamon and an oatmeal/multigrain cereal topping. The rosemary in the filling isn't overpowering, and it makes the whole dessert taste unbelievably good. If you decide to try this one yourself, we did cut back the butter in the topping from 1/2 to 1/3 cup and it still tasted great.

Fred's parents left this morning, and we're are probably going to spend the rest of the week getting ready for our PDX-LA-St. Louis wedding extravaganza coming up. I think we're both in vacation mode and will be ready to head out of here on Friday.

Good eats

Our weekend ended up not being quite as lazy as I thought it would. We'd noticed that the paint in our bathroom on the wall and ceiling above the shower was cracked. We didn't think too much of it because we wanted to repaint in there anyway. Fred took Friday off, and when he started scraping the cracked areas, a lot more paint/wall texture came off than we had expected. Fred did most of the work on Friday, but we both spent a good part of Saturday finishing scraping and washing down the walls. We made a trip to the paint store, and are now prepared to prime the scraped spots, re-texture the walls, prime the whole room, and then paint. We're aiming to have all of this finished before Fred's parents come to visit next week, because we've taken over the guest bathroom until we finish ours.

I did get time on Sunday to do some baking. I made these garlic parsley flatbreads to go with the Greek lamb pilaf from this month's Cooking Light. Both recipes turned out really well.


In case anyone would like to try her (or his) hand at them, I adapted the recipe from my favorite cookbook. Here's the recipe I used:

2 c. white bread flour
1 1/2 c. white whole wheat flour
1 pkg. rapid-rise yeast
1 tsp. salt
1 1/2 c. warm water
1/4 c. olive oil (plus a few tablespoons for the tops)
2-3 cloves garlic
handful of parsley

Combine the flour, yeast, and salt in a bowl. Pour in the water and olive oil, and mix to make a firm dough (add more flour if necessary). Either knead by hand or with a stand mixer until smooth and elastic (about 5-10 minutes). Form the dough into a ball, and place in an oiled bowl, turning the dough so the whole ball is oiled. Cover with a tea towel and let rise until doubled, about half an hour.

When the dough has risen, punch it down, and let it rest for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, finely chop the parsley and garlic cloves together until they almost make a paste (I suppose you could use a food processor). Transfer the parsley and garlic into a small bowl and add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, to make about 1/2 cup.

Split the dough into eight balls. Flatten each of the balls into a 6-inch wide disc (about 1/2-inch thick). Cover with a towel and let rise for about 25 minutes. When they've risen, poke the tops of the breads to dimple them, and then spread about 1 tablespoon of the parsley mixture over the tops.

Bake in a preheated 400 degree oven for about 20 minutes, after which the breads should be nice and brown on top, but still soft inside. Sprinkle the breads with salt and serve.

Pie in a jar

I think I may have just found what I'm going to do this weekend--make pie in a jar. Fred laughed pretty hard when I showed him the site and told him I thought it was the best idea ever. I bet he wouldn't laugh if I had my own jar of delicious pie and he didn't have one for himself.

There's something wrong with this picture...

Ah, late spring in the Willamette Valley. The picture above is blurry and probably unnecessary, but I wanted some photographic proof. This is the clock to our "weather station". In case you can't make it out, it's 54 degrees outside tonight--which has been pretty much the case all week. As a consequence, it's a chilly 65 degrees in our house. I'm sure we could remedy that by turning the heat on, but that seems pretty silly since it's already June. I'm ready for some sun. If we can't get it here, we're at least headed for some (hopefully) sunnier locations later this month.

Aside from the weather, we've been well but busy (Fred more so than me), and I spent my first day in the field in a very long time on Tuesday. It turned out to be an 8 hour round trip for about 3 hours of work, but it was a nice break from the office. I'm looking forward to a lazy weekend at home. Who knows, maybe we'll finally get our upside down tomato plant planted.

Joseph

Fred and I just got back from our anniversary trip to Joseph, Oregon. The weather was rainy for most of the trip, but we still had a very good time. We stayed at a nice bed and breakfast with helpful hosts and great food.

Hiding behind the clouds in the picture above are the Wallowa Mountains, which sadly remained hidden most of the time we were there. But there was sun this morning, and we found out what a nice view our room had before we had to check out.

We were able to go on a few hikes, even though the rain and snow melt meant that creeks were full, the water was moving quickly, and several of the trails were closed. Our hikes were short and most of the views obscured by fog and rain, but the forest was still pretty with the first of the spring wildflowers blooming. Walking in the woods made me think of my grandpa, who would have enjoyed them-especially since the trails were also used by riders on horseback.

The town itself was small but nice and proved to be a great place for Fred and I to relax and enjoy our anniversary. We hope to be able to visit again sometime, although if we do, it will probably be later in the summer when there's a better chance for sun.

Cookies!

Fred and I are heading out to Joseph, Oregon (in the far Northeastern corner of the state) on Friday to celebrate our anniversary. It's going to be a long drive, so I decided to make some cookies to sustain us along the way.


I tried a new recipe for peanut butter and jam cookies out of my favorite cookbook, How to Be a Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson. It's basically a peanut butter cookie with an indentation that is filled with jam when the cookies come out of the oven. I used the jam that we made last summer from the blackberries we picked in the neighborhood behind ours. And yes, one of the eggs in the carton above is green. My co-worker Sharon has chickens, and I buy eggs from her whenever I can. The green eggs come from Araucana hens and are as pretty as Easter eggs without having to dye them.


Anyway, the cookies turned out well. I'm sure any peanut butter cookie recipe and jam would work. They might end up being a little messy for a car trip, but we'll bring extra napkins and hope for the best. And we won't have to worry about the peanut butter sticking to the roofs of our mouths.

Dead tree

For those of you who may have worried that Fred has moved to Oregon and become a tree hugger, I offer the following evidence to the contrary:


To be fair, Fred is merely euthanizing another poor plant that I managed to (almost) kill. For those of you who have been over to our house, this is the Norfolk pine tree that used to live on our landing. For a couple of months now it's been suffering dropped needles and dead branches. I'd been holding out hope that the spring sun would revive it, but that didn't happen, so we had to put it out of it's misery. Now we just have to think of of something to put in the landing that we won't kill.

A walk in the park

The weather here has been strangely warm. Fred and I decided to take advantage of the sun today and go for a short hike through Forest Park in Northwest Portland up to Pittock Mansion. The mansion was built in the early 1900s by the editor of the Oregonian and has one of the best views in the city of downtown Portland and Mt. Hood.

There were a lot of people out on the trail, but it wasn't too crowded to be nice. About half a mile into the hike we came across the old stone house, pictured below. I don't know anything more about it, but it would be interesting to find out where it came from.


We made our way up to the mansion and had a nice picnic lunch looking out over Portland. We didn't take any pictures of the view because it was a little hazy, but we did get one of the mansion.


Overall, it was a nice hike, and we look forward to more exploring throughout the summer.