Getting ready to fall
Cotton among the raspberries
Falling among Larkin
Cotton among the Stellaria mediaSunday, July 8, 2012
Cotton
Getting ready to fallCotton among the raspberriesFalling among LarkinCotton among the Stellaria media
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Transition
Lots of things going on... I finished up at the music studio in lae May. It was predictably, over-emotional saying good-bye to 30+ students and their parents, which actually had been happening for weeks. What was really hard was having a beginning voice teacher sit in on lessons for a week. I have several students who are in a tricky stage technically and I have already seen a decline in one that I gave up a month ago (breath control). Still, I have to let that go and move on.
Now I am in the process of submitting a bid for the temporary position I have been occupying for the last couple of months. It is a big process and I hope to be done with it tomorrow except for the typing test.
Postscript: I have the position permanently now and am extremely happy with it. I am slowly starting to meet the others who are in similar positions within the company and they are very welcoming. The certification test is similar to any pre-professional test, but contains a lot of info that I won't use, but also will come with a generous raise, so it will be well worth the effort. Seem like I have been studying hard the last five years, building those new brain connections!
The snow melted awfully fast. There is a word for it where it swirls and disappears especially on the highway. We did not have any of the flooding problems that all expected, thankfully. Summer did take a very long time to get here and we have had more than our share of rainy, cloudy, cool days.
Still, most of the rest of the country is suffering with triple-digit heat and humidity and I would rather have this.
4th of July will be quiet. One sister is back East, the other always entertains her mother-in-law on that day. The lad will be off the day before as will I, so that's when we will celebrate, probably with a BBQ.
A friend gave us a silver and the lad smoked it on the grill and it came out great!
Now I am in the process of submitting a bid for the temporary position I have been occupying for the last couple of months. It is a big process and I hope to be done with it tomorrow except for the typing test.
Postscript: I have the position permanently now and am extremely happy with it. I am slowly starting to meet the others who are in similar positions within the company and they are very welcoming. The certification test is similar to any pre-professional test, but contains a lot of info that I won't use, but also will come with a generous raise, so it will be well worth the effort. Seem like I have been studying hard the last five years, building those new brain connections!
The snow melted awfully fast. There is a word for it where it swirls and disappears especially on the highway. We did not have any of the flooding problems that all expected, thankfully. Summer did take a very long time to get here and we have had more than our share of rainy, cloudy, cool days.
Still, most of the rest of the country is suffering with triple-digit heat and humidity and I would rather have this.
4th of July will be quiet. One sister is back East, the other always entertains her mother-in-law on that day. The lad will be off the day before as will I, so that's when we will celebrate, probably with a BBQ.
Resting and Reflecting
It's Sunday, July 1st. We are way behind in our gardening this year, because of the passing of Pak, the slow start to summer, and the mosquitoes, which are ferocious this year. The paper says they are not any worse than usual, but apparently the conditions in our back yard, front yard meet swarming biters perfectly. There is no other word for it: they swarm.
The lilac bush, really a tree, is gorgeous this year and the blossoms smell incredible. It is more pink, than lilac. The Irish is allergic to the smell unfortunately.
Fishing is poor this year. Most areas are closed including Ship Creek, but we are hoping the silvers will run around the 15th of July. Some folks I know took a halibut charter out of Homer and ended up with about 19 pounds per person, but that seems like a pretty high cost, and I don't know how the vertigo would be on a boat. 10th& M Seafood and New Sagaya always have beautiful fish for purchase.
The cottonwood buds are over and cleaned up. They were terribly sticky. The cotton is starting to form now and I belive I am allergic to this. I don't mind picking these up for they at least can be burned. One of our friends was telling us the Hydaburg folk use the cotton to smoke their fish with.
We are fully light now, actually have been losing daylight since Solstice. First 5 seconds, now nearly 2 minutes per day. The year has a rhythm to it up here and I am sure when darkness comes we will all look forward to more rest. But for now, the white light in the night is here along with extra growing time, fishing, berrying soon, and all the other benefits of living in AK in the summer, including driving on ice- and snow-free roads.
Yesterday after slogging through Chapter 1, part A for a certification test I am taking, I made home-made noodles. I have lost my urge to cook, for some reason. I hope it is only dormant after working so many hours for so long and the Irish and I are on completely different schedules and can eat together only twice a week. It is important to choose and care about what goes in to the body, and take time to prepare it carefully. Although we don't eat preserved foods, our meals haven't been balanced. Salad only or just berries for breakfast or pork chop and potato and no green. I have gotten sloppy since we eat alone.
The Japanese have the right idea with their beautiful Bento box preparations. Who has time for that, I say? Oh well, will make a pact to eat really well three times a week and go from there.
OK, back to the books!
Fishing is poor this year. Most areas are closed including Ship Creek, but we are hoping the silvers will run around the 15th of July. Some folks I know took a halibut charter out of Homer and ended up with about 19 pounds per person, but that seems like a pretty high cost, and I don't know how the vertigo would be on a boat. 10th& M Seafood and New Sagaya always have beautiful fish for purchase.
The cottonwood buds are over and cleaned up. They were terribly sticky. The cotton is starting to form now and I belive I am allergic to this. I don't mind picking these up for they at least can be burned. One of our friends was telling us the Hydaburg folk use the cotton to smoke their fish with.
We are fully light now, actually have been losing daylight since Solstice. First 5 seconds, now nearly 2 minutes per day. The year has a rhythm to it up here and I am sure when darkness comes we will all look forward to more rest. But for now, the white light in the night is here along with extra growing time, fishing, berrying soon, and all the other benefits of living in AK in the summer, including driving on ice- and snow-free roads.
Yesterday after slogging through Chapter 1, part A for a certification test I am taking, I made home-made noodles. I have lost my urge to cook, for some reason. I hope it is only dormant after working so many hours for so long and the Irish and I are on completely different schedules and can eat together only twice a week. It is important to choose and care about what goes in to the body, and take time to prepare it carefully. Although we don't eat preserved foods, our meals haven't been balanced. Salad only or just berries for breakfast or pork chop and potato and no green. I have gotten sloppy since we eat alone.
The Japanese have the right idea with their beautiful Bento box preparations. Who has time for that, I say? Oh well, will make a pact to eat really well three times a week and go from there.
OK, back to the books!
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Mushrooms on toast
We are at the dining room table. The Irish is reading aloud to me snippets of the Sunday paper while smoking silver salmon with apple chips. Mmmmm....Our friend Jim is coming over for a BBQ today. We hope we will be able to sit outside although the mosquitoes are atrocious.
So I must be recovering from working 80 hours a week for the past 18 months as I have been musing about mushrooms on toast. It has long been popular in the UK and I used to think yuck, how unappezing. All the Miss Marples, Poirots, Wimseys, Harry Potters and all the others eating mushrooms on toast for supper. Remember how hobbits turn absolutely bloodthirsty about mushrooms and how they risk life and limb for the delectable mushrooms in Farmer Maggott's field? JRR Tolkien had to get that from somewhere and now we find out there is a long love affair with this humble vegetable.
Those of you who know me know I love to cook, but the Irish has actually been doing most of it for a long time now. Anyway, one night a few weeks ago we had some leftover mushrooms and I made toast and tried it and lo- it was delicious.
Apparently it is a bona-fide dish, made even more famous by the famous cook Jane Grigson, who celebrates each ingredient - in this case field mushrooms. Here she reprints a recipe from Shilling Cookery for the People, first published in 1854 by Alexis Soyer, the great chef of the Reform Club.
'Being in Devonshire, at the end of September and walking across the fields before breakfast to a small farmhouse I found three very fine mushrooms, which I thought would be a treat, but on arriving at the house I found it had no oven, a bad gridiron and a smoky coal fire. Necessity, they say, is the mother of Invention, I immediately applied to our grand and universal mama, how I should dress my precious mushrooms, when a gentle whisper came to my ear...'
Soyer cooked them on toast, on a stand close up to the fire, with a glass tumbler inverted over them to keep off the taint of the coal smoke. It also kept in all the delicious juices. Here is his method adapted to our happier circumstances.
Wipe the mushrooms, which should be fine large ones, and remove the earthy part of the stalk. Place them, stalks up, on rounds of toast which have been spread with clotted cream. Season them and put a little more cream onto the caps. Arrange toast and mushrooms on a baking sheet, and invert onehuge or several small Pyrex dishes over them. Leave for half an hour in a fairly hot oven. 375-400 degrees.
'The sight when the glass is removed, is most inviting, its whiteness rivals the everlasting snows of Mt. Blanc, and the taste is worthy of Lucullus. Vitellius would never have dines without it; Apicius would never have gone to Greece to seek for crawfish; and had he only half the fortune left when he committed suicide, he would have preferred to have left proud Rome and retire to some villa or cottage to enjoy such an enticing dish.'
I wonder what 'the People' made of such learned flights of culinary fantasy, and hope it did not put them off the recipe, which is the ideal way of treating our precious field mushroom.
-Jane Grigson English Food
So I must be recovering from working 80 hours a week for the past 18 months as I have been musing about mushrooms on toast. It has long been popular in the UK and I used to think yuck, how unappezing. All the Miss Marples, Poirots, Wimseys, Harry Potters and all the others eating mushrooms on toast for supper. Remember how hobbits turn absolutely bloodthirsty about mushrooms and how they risk life and limb for the delectable mushrooms in Farmer Maggott's field? JRR Tolkien had to get that from somewhere and now we find out there is a long love affair with this humble vegetable.
Those of you who know me know I love to cook, but the Irish has actually been doing most of it for a long time now. Anyway, one night a few weeks ago we had some leftover mushrooms and I made toast and tried it and lo- it was delicious.
Apparently it is a bona-fide dish, made even more famous by the famous cook Jane Grigson, who celebrates each ingredient - in this case field mushrooms. Here she reprints a recipe from Shilling Cookery for the People, first published in 1854 by Alexis Soyer, the great chef of the Reform Club.
'Being in Devonshire, at the end of September and walking across the fields before breakfast to a small farmhouse I found three very fine mushrooms, which I thought would be a treat, but on arriving at the house I found it had no oven, a bad gridiron and a smoky coal fire. Necessity, they say, is the mother of Invention, I immediately applied to our grand and universal mama, how I should dress my precious mushrooms, when a gentle whisper came to my ear...'
Soyer cooked them on toast, on a stand close up to the fire, with a glass tumbler inverted over them to keep off the taint of the coal smoke. It also kept in all the delicious juices. Here is his method adapted to our happier circumstances.
Wipe the mushrooms, which should be fine large ones, and remove the earthy part of the stalk. Place them, stalks up, on rounds of toast which have been spread with clotted cream. Season them and put a little more cream onto the caps. Arrange toast and mushrooms on a baking sheet, and invert onehuge or several small Pyrex dishes over them. Leave for half an hour in a fairly hot oven. 375-400 degrees.
'The sight when the glass is removed, is most inviting, its whiteness rivals the everlasting snows of Mt. Blanc, and the taste is worthy of Lucullus. Vitellius would never have dines without it; Apicius would never have gone to Greece to seek for crawfish; and had he only half the fortune left when he committed suicide, he would have preferred to have left proud Rome and retire to some villa or cottage to enjoy such an enticing dish.'
I wonder what 'the People' made of such learned flights of culinary fantasy, and hope it did not put them off the recipe, which is the ideal way of treating our precious field mushroom.
-Jane Grigson English Food
Friday, May 4, 2012
RAIN
We actually got rain today - real rain, not snow, the first of the season.
It smelled so good and kept the dust down!
The daffodils are blooming in the back yard and the rhubarb is up.
Life's good!
It smelled so good and kept the dust down!
The daffodils are blooming in the back yard and the rhubarb is up.
Life's good!
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