Octopus Jenny

Grandma's Chicken Casserole

2011-02-06T15:40:00.000-08:00

I made this last week. It was a winner, and it opened up a whole world of casseroles made with noodles and cream of chicken soup. So many tasty, fattening possibilities!

Chicken Casserole

1 8-oz package wide egg noodles
4 chicken breasts or equivalent amount of whole chicken
1 10-1/4 oz. can cream of chicken soup
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 tsp curry powder
1/2 cup grated cheese
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1 tablespoon margarine, melted

Cook chicken until tender and debone and cut in bite-sized pieces. Cook the noodles in the chicken broth until tender and drain. Mix chicken soup, mayo, lemon juice and curry powder to blend. Grease 9x13" casserole and place one half of the noodles, chicken and the soup mixture; then another layer of each and cover with grated cheese and bread crumbs fried in the margarine, if you wish. Bake for 30 minutes at 350.

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I made this pretty much as written, except that I doubled the lemon juice and the curry powder and did not fry the breadcrumbs. Also, there was no chicken broth to work with (not sure what Grandma meant there), so I pan-fried some boneless chicken breasts. It was tasty, though Jeff thought it would have been better without the doubled curry. I know there are about a gazillion variations on this recipe, and I'd like to try creating a healthier, lower fat, spicier version. Maybe cut the mayo, add some garlic, roasted green chiles and chopped scallions? Also, roasted hicken would add a little flavor. All in all, an easy weeknight dinner and good jumping off spot for future improvisations.

Great Aunt Pearl's 24-Hour Salad

2010-12-19T21:08:00.000-08:00

This "salad" of marshmallows, whipped cream and fruit (recipe below) inspired a lot of good Christmas party conversation. I brought it to two different parties, with full disclosure that it was my great aunt's recipe from the 1960s. (I think the 1960s part went without saying. It did look a little out of place). The photo to the left is from a Betty Crocker cookbook for a similar 24-hour salad, and looks pretty much like what I made.

Making the salad was a little more challenging than I expected. I did all my shopping for this at Whole Foods, which meant that I had to buy the organic, preservative-free but extremely sweet and oddly stiff eco-marshmallows that Whole Foods sells. Once I got home and gave a few of them to my daughter and her visiting friend, I dug down further in the bag and realized they were moldy. Yuck! I guess preservatives do serve a purpose. I would rather have ancient, rock-hard mini marshmallows than mildewy ones. This inevitably led to a confession to the playdate's mother that I had fed her daughter moldy marshmallows. Happily, she took in it in stride, and both little girls' immune systems (and mine) kicked in to save us from a night of puking. Jeff brought home a bag of traditional, preservative-enhanced marshmallows to fill the void.

Also, there aren't any white cherries to be had in December (and I'm not sure if I've seen them any other time of the year either), so I went with canned pie cherries.

Next came the strangest part of the recipe - the cooking of the egg-and-lemon substance that binds the salad together. I'm not used to making lemon curd (which is essentially what this is), and I wasn't sure what it was supposed to look like when it was fully cooked, so I cooked the hell out of it. I didn't want to give anyone salmonella. Maybe because of this - and maybe not - I thought the salad ended up with a strong eggy taste that I found kind of disgusting. I'm not used to the combination of fruit and eggs. (Is anyone?)

I wasn't sure if the eggy taste was "right" or not, but my first taste tester (our babysitter) said that it tasted exactly like the salad her grandmother used to make. And when I brought it to the first party, people really seemed to like it - to my surprise. The great thing about it was that it led to a lot of good conversations about recipes of the sixties, relatives, family recipe collections, etc. The reaction at the second party was just as good. People liked the crunch of the slivered almonds and the fact that this recipe really isn't too sweet, despite the marshmallows. Interestingly, our French acquaintance Sebastien ended up being its biggest fan; he ate four servings. French food isn't big on marshmallows, so maybe it was the novelty.

So the salad was a success, even though I didn't like it much myself, due to the eggs. If I make it again, which I might, I'll find a way to bind it together without them. I'll also add more almonds and maybe some apple to give it more crunch.

I did a search for 24-hour salad and found that this recipe is still alive and well on the internet. Apparently, it was very popular at one time; and most of the recipes do contain eggs. Another blogger who is exploring mid-century recipes wrote it about a slightly different version here. Most of the versions I found (like this one, which hilariously labels it as Italian) call for vinegar and egg yolks instead of entire eggs. Gotta love the (computer-generated?) text that goes along with this:

Its surprising to know that you have not tried my 24 Hour Fruit Salad recipe yet. This recipe is ideal for people on a Low Fat regimen. This compelling 24 Hour Fruit Salad is the Side Dish of choice for a winning meal... The Italian 24 Hour Fruit Salad is a delight to serve and enjoy. I will look forward to your feedback.

Right, because anything made with whipping cream, marshmallows and butter has got to be low fat, right?

[Recipe to follow; I have mislaid my cookbook!]

Great Aunt Lee's BBQ Ribs

2010-12-09T10:01:00.001-08:00

Great Aunt Lee's BBQ ribs recipe came as a relief after the chicken 'n' chips fiasco. It was really good, and I can definitely imagine making it again. I'm not posting the recipe at the moment because I don't have it with me right now, but it involved vinegar, ketchup, "meat seasoning sauce" (I used BBQ sauce), molasses, and onion soup mix. It inspired me to make something I rarely make - not particularly healthy (did they even have healthy food in the sixties?) but definitely tasty. If I made it again I would add some liquid smoke. 8 out of 10.

Goodbye, annoying old chicken coop

2010-12-07T16:39:00.001-08:00

Today I finally managed to dispose of my old chicken coop. A volunteer from the Portland Backyard Chicken group picked it up with her pickup and drove it down to a family in Salem who needs a chicken coop. I'm glad to be rid of it. After two raccoon attacks, it just had bad mojo. Plus, it was a lousy design. I hope the new owners manage to reinforce it (I did warn them) and tweak the design so that it works for them. Meanwhile, our occasional landscaper Jose is coming tomorrow to help dig out the ditch around the new coop so I can install the hardware cloth and bury it a foot deep. I also bought a beautiful double-glazed, six-paned window today at the Rebuilding Center that I am going to incorporate into the henhouse design.

Great Aunt Lee's Chicken and Chip Casserole: Never Again.

2010-12-07T16:33:00.001-08:00

This isn't the kind of recipe I usually gravitate toward, but I was looking for something easy to make for one of Melina's swim class nights (for some reason they only offer her class at 6:15 p.m.) and this sounded tasty and filling, if not exactly healthy. I think this is the first time I've ever actually made anything with cream of (anything) soup. If I keep up with my goal of cooking everything in this cookbook, it certainly won't be the last.

Great Aunt Lee's Chicken and Chip Casserole

2 cups cooked chicken (I used Trader Joe's precooked chicken)
1 cup diced celery
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
2 Tbsp minced onion
1/2 cup pimento-stuffed olives
3 hard cooked eggs, chopped
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup bottled French dressing (I used Thousand Island)
1 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 can condensed cream of chicken soup
2 cups crushed potato chips

Combine and bake for 20 minutes at 450.

Results

This was just... weird. With all due respect to Aunt Lee (who was really just doing her best with the recipes that that the 1960s provided, and who actually pushed the family's envelope a lot when it came to food), it is hard for me to imagine that this dish was ever considered appetizing. I was expecting all of the ingredients to come together to form a "more than the sum of its parts" whole, bound together the culinary glue of cream of chicken soup, mayonnaise and French dressing; but instead, it ended up being a random crunchy boiled stirfry with only a grayish brown gravy holding it in common. And let me say, hard boiled eggs and olives are just strange together. Honestly, it didn't taste that bad, and I had a few helpings, but after a few minute of looking at all the little chunks in the gray gravy, I just couldn't take it any more. The only good things about it were that a) it was pleasantly crunchy; b) it didn't taste too bad; c) it had a nice combination of vegetables and protein; and d) it gave us all a good laugh, and Jeff played a joke on Melina using it as a prop. Nuff said.

Score: For a blind person, 6; for a seeing person, 3.

Great Aunt Billie's Artichoke Bake - A Good Vegetarian, Gluten-Free Potluck Recipe

2010-12-05T14:31:00.000-08:00

For my first recipe, I thought I'd start with something that was both easy to make and easy to eat - Aunt Billie's Artichoke Bake. I made this for my book club, which includes one vegetarian and one gluten avoider. (Billie was always the life of any party, and I know she would have loved our book club). We just read The Help, so we had a southern-themed potluck. Since California is south of Oregon, I figured this recipe qualified:

Great Aunt Billie's Artichoke Bake

4 jars marinated artichoke hearts (drain, save the juice from 2 jars) Simmer in juice for 5 minutes:

1 large onion
2 cloves of garlic

Beat 8 eggs lightly. Add:

1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp hot pepper sauce
4 tbsp parsley

Chop up artichoke hearts. Add 4 cups sharp cheddar cheese, shredded. Fold everything into eggs. Pour in greased pan (7x11) and bake at 35o for 30 minutes until solid. Cut into squares. Note: "Great for parties."

I made this pretty much as written, although my dear husband bought the wrong kind of artichoke hearts (non-marinated ones in a can). I figure that Aunt Billie probably had to deal with similar upsets. I halved the recipe (making enough for seven adults) and added a bit more oregano and hot sauce. It felt wrong to simmer the onion and garlic in the artichoke juice instead of in olive oil, but I did it anyway.

The recipe resulted in a very tasty crustless quiche which disappeared pretty quickly. If I were going to make this again, I would sautee the onion and garlic in olive oil, add some canned Ortega-type green chilis, use the right kind of artichokes, and drain the liquid off before baking (30 minutes wasn't quite long enough to evaporate it all.) All in all, I would give this an 8 out of 10: easy and tasty. What's not to like?

Exploring the foods of my recent ancestors

2010-12-05T14:10:00.000-08:00

For this Thanksgiving, my talented and thoughtful mother put together a collection of family recipes from her mother and her mother's three sisters. It's an amazing book with photos, stories, reminiscences, and scanned recipe cards - most definitely a keepsake. It contains 13 breads, 17 salads, 38 main dishes, 17 cakes, 11 cookies, 9 pies, 12 other sweets, and 22 other miscellaneous delights. Most are from the 1960s and 1970s, and most serve a crowd. I believe my mom is putting together a Facebook page for the book, and if she does, I will post it here.

I thought it would be an interesting idea to commit myself to make every recipe in the book. (I know I recently tried unsuccessfully to do that with an issue of Gourmet, but I think this is more likely to happen). Not only will this honor my recent ancestors Cecile, Billie, Pearl and Lee by replicating their culinary efforts, but it will also be an interesting look into the changing nature of food - both during their lives and in the years since. In other words, a lot of the recipes involve jello, and a lot involve marshmallows, and some involve jello and shrimp both at the same time. Being a Portlander in 2010, surrounded by other Portlanders with our collective concerns about gluten, levels of organicity, free-range everything, chemicals and food allergies, it is going to be a real challenge not only to make this stuff, but to get people to eat it. It will be an adventure in culinary anthropology as well as geneology, and I expect most of it will be delicious, too.

I am going to try stay true to the recipes, although I can make changes that will make it more likely for the recipe to actually get eaten. For example, I can divide a recipe in two, I can use organic ingredients, I can increase the amount of spices added (but not the type), and I can reduce the sugar in some recipes if I think it will entice people to eat them. (I'm thinking of the 3-bean salad with 3/4 cup sugar. That's just not going to happen.)

Chicken catch-up

2010-12-05T14:08:00.000-08:00

Well, I haven't posted on here since September, which is pretty bad. Unfortunately, Raven & Sabrina are no more, thanks to a raccoon attack in September. Dolley is living at my coworker's house until I can build a nice new raccoon-proof coop. I am building the coop now, and I expect to have it done by spring. I'll try to post a few photos here as the coop comes along.

2010-09-06T09:52:00.000-07:00

This is Sabrina. Or maybe Sabrino. For the last three days I have been awakened by the sound of a rooster - first, an early attempt at crowing, and as the days have gone on, more and more like the classic "cock-a-doodle-do." At least he (?) only crows once or twice (usually at 7 a.m.). I'm still hoping Sabrina might turn out to be a confused hen, but it's looking less and less likely every day.

A raccoon attack

2010-05-26T15:45:00.001-07:00

Last week was really hard on our chickens. On Friday night at about 3:00 a.m., I was awakened by the most horrible bloodcurdling noise from the back yard. I feared the worst, so I ran around searching for my bathrobe and a flashlight, but I couldn't find them so I ended up running out in the rain in my PJs, with no glasses and just a wind-up flashlight.

I heard thumping in the coop, and when I threw upon the lid a raccoon rushed out, ran into the bushes, and started hissing at me. I hissed back. I was under the influence of massive amounts of adrenaline, and Jeff says I was screeching like a lion was eating my innards. It's amazing all of the neighbors' lights didn't go on. (I talked to one neighbor later who didn't hear a thing). To add the chaos, the cat was sitting outside growling and grumbling at the raccoon, and I was afraid they were going to fight.

When I opened the coop, Martha was sitting on her perch, unscathed. I grabbed her and ran inside and put her in a box, yelling for Jeff; Jeff came down and I told him I was sure Dolley was dead and to look for her. Jeff shooed the raccoon off and said he saw Dolley lying in the run. I told him (rather hysterical at this point) that he was going to have to kill her if she wasn't already dead. Jeff picked Dolley up and brought her in, and she was so ruffled and bloody that we couldn't even find her head - I thought she might have literally lost her head, like Mike the Headless Chicken. After a few moments her head became visible. She had been wounded terribly on the back of the neck, though we couldn't see it then. We put her in a box in the basement. Later I tried pouring hydrogen peroxide on her wounds, but it was too traumatic for both of us so I stopped.

The next morning I tried to find a vet that would take her and fortunately found a great emergency veterinary clinic in Tualatin that took her right away. They stitched her up (apparently they get a lot of chickens and pet turkeys). It cost $175, which I thought was reasonable given that she is a real pet now.

So now she is living in a big dog crate in the play room, and I have to feed her three or four times a day and give her antibiotics twice a day. She is improving; she has taken some small supervised outings into the yard, where she has pecked at bugs and flowers, but she tires easily. I am hoping that soon she will be able to feed herself, because I don't really have the time and patience to sit for hours trying to feed a chicken (although I have anyway. I signed up for it).

The whole thing leaves me with many conflicting feelings. It's a lot of work to put into a chicken; if it happens again I don't know if I would go to so much trouble, although I don't know if I could just let nature take its course. Sometimes I think it might be better just to give the girls numbers and take a more farmerly attitude. On the other hand, it is rewarding to see such a maimed animal recover, and it makes me respect chickens more. They are surprisingly resilient. But after putting so much effort into rehabilitating Dolley, I don't think I can eat chicken for a long while. It just doesn't make sense to me now - plus it kind of disgusts me. More tofu coming our way!

A chicken lost

2010-05-26T15:39:00.000-07:00

A week or so ago, we lost our chicken Abigail to an unknown illness. She had been steadily getting more confused - she couldn't find her way out of the coop - and when I finally checked her out she had lost a lot of weight. She had an appetite, and her comb was red (usually a sign of health), but she had diarrhea. I gave her vitamins and electrolytes in her water, hoping that might help, but when we came back from riding Portland Sunday Parkways she had died. I was a bit sad, but Abigail had never really bonded with me and she was somewhat of a bully to her peers, so I wasn't heartbroken. Melina was completely unfazed and very excited about the possibility of getting chicks. Jeff buried Abigail under the Buddha statue in our yard, where she rests to this day. (By the way, I had the other two hens tested for worms just in case that's what felled Abigail, but they both got clean bills of health).

First lost tooth

2010-05-26T15:31:00.001-07:00

Melina lost her first tooth just a few days after her fifth birthday. It came out when she was roughhousing with her dad, and the Tooth Fairy give her $5 for it. When she saw the $5 bill she said, slightly disappointed, "I already have one of these." She hasn't quite gotten the grasp of money yet.

Princess out, pirate in

2010-05-26T15:29:00.000-07:00

Melina informed me the other day that she is done with princesses, and now wants to be a pirate. She also told me that a certain kid at preschool wanted to play princess and knight with her, but that she would only play that with Quin. She and Quin have a very special relationship.

Melina turns five

2010-05-26T15:13:00.000-07:00

On May 1 we celebrated Melina's fifth birthday - a little late - with a potluck at the park. It was her second birthday party (the official one took place at a restaurant, with her parents and grandparents, on the actual Day Of). Unfortunately, the weather was cold and windy - not that the kids really minded. The highlight was the breaking of the giant kitty pinata, which turned out to be incredibly resilient and took at least three rounds of whacking by every kid present. The second highlight was the cake, a sheet cake from Fred Meyer, and which turned out to be surprisingly good.

Melina had been waiting to turn five for about half a year (in March she proudly told people she was four-and-eleven-twelfths, and then four-and-ninety-nine-one-hundredths). There was a lot of competition among her friends over who would turn five first. Several of her friends went before her, which was always a source of angst.

Now that she is five, she suddenly looks older and taller. She is almost a young lady now. That's about the only change so far. However, last Saturday she rode with us on the Portland Sunday Parkways loop, and actually rode six miles on her bike with training wheels. (Jeff pushed her up some hills). No way she could have done that when she was four!

A couple of milestones

2010-03-12T11:31:00.001-08:00

Melina has passed a couple of important milestones lately: she doesn't need pullups anymore, and she can buckle herself into her own car seat! Yay! She also rode her bike to school for the first time the other day (I went with her) and rode her bike around the block alone with her friends for the first time. And her two bottom front teeth are loose. Time keeps marching on!

A correction on lead

2010-03-12T11:16:00.000-08:00

I just noticed that in my last discussion of lead in eggs I failed to mention that my calculations were off by a factor of 10 - as the chemist wrote, "Your egg results are 0.2 to 0.4 ppm (ug/g) not 2-4 ppm! Therefore 0.4 ug/g from a 18 g egg would be 0.4ug/g * 18g (g canceled out) equal to 5.8ug (micrograms) per egg yolk." For an egg with 0.2/ug/g that would be 2.9 ug/yolk, I think. (Anyone with more knowledge of microchemistry than me is welcome to check my figures!). According to the FDA, the average adult takes in 2.5 ug of lead per day from dietary sources (1994-1996), compared to 38 ug per day, on average, between 1982 and 1984 and presumably before (!). (That's because lead was removed from cans). In Australia, the PTTIL (provisional tolerable total intake level) - the amount safely consumed per day - is less than 75 ug/day. I believe the US PTTIL is similar. (This level was determined in order to figure out how many oysters people could safely eat a day).

So I guess what this all means - to me, anyway - is that it's OK if we eat an egg from our chickens once in a while. We shouldn't eat more than seven a day. The fact that my blood test for lead came back "zero" after many months of eating our eggs confirms that. For kids it's still a different matter, though - kids don't get rid of lead in their bodies as well as adults and their tolerance is much, much lower.

Another egg lead test

2010-03-12T10:49:00.001-08:00

I had our eggs tested for lead again, and they came up pretty much the same as last year - .2 and .3 ppm (last year the results were .2, .3, and .4 ppm). The chemist washed one of the eggs before testing it and ended up with the lower result. She suggested that we wash the eggs in the future before eating them. That lower result could also be because the egg came from a different chicken, but I often wash our eggs anyway because they tend to get dirty. (By the way, if a backyard egg is dirty you should it in warm water - cold water pulls bacteria into the shell. No need to wash a clean backyard egg. Wash eggs just before using, because eggs have a natural coating that keeps them fresh. You don't need to wash store-bought eggs at all - they have already been washed.)

So, disappointingly, fencing off the neighbor's garage didn't help. The lead must be in the soil of our backyard, which reinforces the need for Melina to wash her hands after playing in the dirt. Which she doesn't do much anyway, preferring to climb trees.

These results aren't terribly bad from an adult perspective (we could eat something like 7 eggs a day without reaching the maximum level recommended by the FDA) although of course lead isn't good in any amount. The benefit of eating backyard eggs (higher Omega-3s, etc.) might arguably outweigh those risks. But it looks like it's still store-bought eggs for Melina.

The tooth fairy already?

2010-02-26T16:20:00.000-08:00

Melina just informed me that one of her teeth is loose. She says "I think that means I'm getting older." I think it does. It also means I have to get over the willies I get whenever I think of loose teeth. Guess I'm going to be seeing a lot of them (twenty, to be exact) over the next few years.

A visit to the farm

2010-02-26T15:57:00.000-08:00

Today we went down to Woodburn with our friends Rafaela, Maya and baby Tobias to visit the farm where our beef came from last year. The farmer, Karen, grew up on a farm in Australia. She buys grass-fed cows from local farmers and then raises them for a while on her farm before selling the beef to people like us. We arrived at her farm on a rainy day and slogged across the pasture to the cow barn, admiring the chickens on the way. (Black sex-link hens are really striking... maybe I'll have to get one of those next). It was very muddy - I was glad I had tall rubber boots on. Melina was definitely not into the mud so I ended up carrying her over the worst parts. We met the two cows, Opal - and I can't remember the other one's name. Opal is very affectionate. (And she is not destined for anyone's freezer... at least not in the near future). She's pregnant (the father is a German bull) and due next month. We rubbed Opal's back for a while, checked out the milking barn and the hay bales, visited a calf named Lollipop and went back to the house to drink some Australian tea. All in all a fun adventure, although Melina hasn't taken to the farming life quite like I was hoping she would. Maybe when I start my goat farm...

Melina and Josie

2010-02-23T21:33:00.000-08:00

Melina and her friend Josie love digging around in the costume trunk. They came up with these costumes completely by themselves.

About the Twitter feed

2010-02-20T15:21:00.000-08:00

I just added the Twitter feed to my blog. I do a fair amount of Twittering for work, but I also have my own personal Twitter account. Often I accidentally post work Tweets on my personal account (it's too easy to do using the program I use) but I try to use my personal account mainly for articles that interest me - usually about backyard chickens, climate change, gardening, honeybees, and getting kids outdoors.

Free Range Kids

2010-02-20T13:33:00.001-08:00

I just finished reading the book Free Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy. This is the mom who let her 9-year-old ride the subway alone from Bloomingdales home, and was subsquently skewered by the press for being "America's Worst Mom." Needless to say I loved the book. I remember spending hours and hours playing in the woods when I was a kid - there was an empty lot across the street that connected to some woods which connected to a cemetary (even cooler), and we used to climb around back there for hours with no parents hovering over us. I don't remember exactly how old I was at that point, but probably about seven. It bothers me that there's no equivalent place for Melina to play here - no wild places within walking distance.

But even if there were local wild places, times have changed. Pedophiles are hovering behind every other tree, right? Well, actually, they're not. Skenazy uses well-researched data to show that things are about as safe now for kids as they were when I was a kid roaming in the woods. (And guess what? There *were* pedophiles back then, but we didn't hear about them 24 hours a day on Fox news, and we didn't get alarmist emails from our aunts warning us to never park next to white vans...)

One statistic presented by Skenazy stood out for me: According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (the very same ones who put those scary pictures on milk cartons), the chances of any one American child being kidnapped and killed by a stranger are .00007 percent. If you *wanted* your child to be kidnapped, you would have to keep them outside unattended for - get this - about 750,000 years. A child is 40 times more likely to be in a fatal auto accident (not that that is particularly comforting, but how much do we worry about driving the car?).

And another interesting fact: people in other countries - even countries that are less safe - are not nearly as paranoid as we are. Kids in most countries walk to school - even without parents along! How's that for revolutionary? Playgrounds are unsupervised! And in Denmark, people routinely leave their kids in strollers outside restaurants while they eat. A Danish woman tried that in New York and almost got arrested.

Skenazy also presents well-reasoned arguments for letting your kids encounter germs, eat raw cookie dough, trick-or-treat on Halloween, play in the woods, and do other normal childhood activities that our culture regards with excessive paranoia.

All in all, this book was a huge breath of fresh air for me (the other women in my book club loved it as well). The only thing I didn't like about the book was that sometimes Skanazy seemed to pick worst-case examples as counterpoints to her arguments - examples that are too easy to dismiss if you don't know people who match them. I got the feeling that most of her examples came from wealthy Connecticut suburbs - definitely not Portland, where people tend to be slightly more laid back. I don't know anybody who won't let their kid walk three houses down to a neighbor's. However, I still got a lot out of this book. (And yes, I can hear my mom worrying that I'm going to let Melina walk across Portland alone or go on a three-day solo vision quest in the wilderness. Don't worry, mom. I know there are still bad people out there. And Melina is only four... the vision quest can wait until at least 12.)

To learn more about Free Range Kids and the movement it has inspired, check out their website.

But first, an update

2010-02-20T13:06:00.000-08:00

Melina is all of four-and-three-quarters now. She seems to have grown beyond her scared-of-everything phase, and it's hard to pinpoint exactly what phase she's in now. She pretty much wants to be playing with her friends *all the time,* which can be exhausting. When she has friends over I tend to do a lot of refereeing, although I generally try to keep out of the minor squabbles. She still wants to be with her friend Quin all the time, although Quin seems to be entering a sort of "girl germs" phase and would rather play with boys. That is, unless Melina wants to stand in as Princess Leia - that's always acceptable. Melina also likes to play with her eternal friend and sparring partner Amanda, as well as several cute little girls from preschool, and our neighbors across the street.

When Melina's not playing with friends we are frequently doing out door activities. It's been an incredibly warm winter, but we've managed to go skiing several times (often with other families with kids). Last weekend we went with 20 other friends to a "cabin" in Sunriver (a very large, sprawling cabin), with very high hopes of skiing every day, but unfortunately I was attacked by some sort of intestinal bug and spent most of the weekend a) lying on the couch reading b) lying on the couch watching the Olympics c) lying on the bed sleeping and d) lying on the bed bemoaning my fate. Jeff got a nice day of skiing in, and Melina got a trip to the High Desert Museum with some friends, but neither Melina or I saw any white stuff to speak of.

Melina is getting to be a pretty good skiier, though. Like everything else, it all depends on her mood. When she's in a good mood she's a great skiier. She falls, and she doesn't complain; she tackles the "backcountry" with gusto (she likes to ski through the trees instead of on the groomed trail); and she can go down minor hills without mishap. When she's in a bad mood, she spends most of the time in the sled complaining bitterly about the cold. That's why we've been going skiing with other families lately - it seems to improve the mood. (Are all four-year-olds this moody and fragile?)

In February we went to a different rental cabin with a different group of friends. It was beautiful, rustic, and quite a bit more relaxing than the Sunriver trip would prove to be. We had about 4 inches of new snow while we were there (the first photo is of Jeff and Melina standing in front of our car when we got back to the sno-park). Melina had a lot of fun playing in the snow with the other kids.

I usually take advantage of the long car trips to Mt. Hood to knit. I've knit several hats lately and I knit the one in the second photo for Melina. I also knit a ridiculously complicated scarf for a friend... maybe I'll post a photo before I give it away.

On the chicken front, today I finished siding the chicken coop with cedar shingles. It looks pretty random - shingling in a neat yet random way is a lot harder than it looks - but it's a vast improvement over the last look, which was a combination of tarpaper and red-painted plywood. I don't think the chickens appreciate it much (we haven't been getting many eggs lately) but the rest of us do.

Another month, another pledge to do better

2010-02-20T13:03:00.000-08:00

So my friend Becky informed me that she missed my blog posts, which finally pushed me far enough over the cliff of procrastination to actually post something here. I won't go into all of the details about why I haven't posted; nothing major, just distracted by life in general. I realized that I do have some pretty strong feelings about parenting stuff lately so maybe I will try to express some real opinions here instead of just reporting on what's happening in our lives.

Wimping out

2009-11-09T21:32:00.000-08:00

OK, so I seem to be wimping out on this Gourmet project. There are a few reasons: first, I picked the wrong issue. The June 2009 issue of Gourmet is centered around a huge Mexican feast for 30 people, and I realized (too late) that it was completely impractical for me to try to make most of the recipes unless I was actually planning to have a Mexican feast for 30, which I wasn't. Second, the season is now wrong for summer recipes, although I may try some of the grilled steak recipes now that I have 50 pounds of beef in the freezer. Finally, there are just too many mushroom recipes, and it bugs me that I'm not going to make them. I don't like mushrooms, so what am I supposed to do about a recipe for portobello burgers? Make it and give it away? I suppose I could do that, but I'm not sure if I'm quite there yet. Also, I am now addicted to my Quick and Easy Vietnamese cookbook, and I can't bring myself to focus on Gourmet. Vietnamese is so much more interesting to me right now. Maybe I'll try again next summer. For now, I'm taking some time to consider what "commitment" really means to me.

Ballet and hot lava

2009-11-09T21:06:00.001-08:00

For some reason I've been finding it hard to write about Melina lately. I think it's because she's constantly changing - it's like trying to describe the flight of a dragonfly around a lake. Up, down, around, stop, go backward. Like trying to nail Jello to a wall, although that sounds a little too violent.

Melina has a few new friends that she's been hanging out with. Currently she seems totally in love with the neighbor boy Quinn, and wants to be with him constantly. She has been demanding to see her old friend Amanda as well, and yesterday she spent a few hours playing with her friend Josie. This sort of play is always full of ups and downs. At one point the friends will be hugging and giggling, or concentrating on their little made-up dramas, and the next moment one will declare that she (or he) will never, ever, play with the other again. It's kind of exhausting to watch.

Melina is also going through a "scared" phase. As in, scared to go to the bathroom alone; scared to get dressed alone in her bedroom; and scared for *me* to go to the bathroom alone. From what I've observed, this is a normal phase, but it is exasperating because it means that I can never get more than 15 feet away from her at any time. On the other hand, she is also in a very affectionate phase, full of hugs and kisses. She assures me that she loves me (and her dada) all the way up to Jupiter, around Jupiter eleventy times, all the way back down to the earth, through the hot lava, out through China, and back through the earth to our house. (Speaking of hot lava, I've noticed that four-year-olds all seem to be obsessed with hot lava for some reason. It comes up regularly in conversation).

Ballet class started a few weeks ago, and remains very popular. Melina was so upset that ballet class was over (after half an hour) that I signed her up for the ballet-and-tumbling class right afterward. (I was running out of ideas for things to do anyway). So now on Fridays we have about 2 hours of nonstop ballet, dancing, tumbling and random chaos. The ballet teacher teaches - get this - more than 30 classes a week. I think she said 39. I can't imagine. Each ballet class is like herding cats - gently chiding, guiding, encouraging, rebuking, drawing out, and generally leading a small crowd of mostly pink-tutu'd preschoolers who all have their own agenda. It's something to see. Melina loves it, except when she gets tired. She is also still taking swim classes, which she also loves, although I am getting tired of the routine. So hard to make everyone happy!

Domesticity

2009-11-08T20:29:00.001-08:00

OK, so I haven't posted in what, about four months? Let's just ignore that and move forward, shall we?

The season has turned, and with it, our attention turns to domesticity. It's always amazing to me how my life changes so abruptly around October. In the early days of October we still talk about attempting one last backpacking trip - trying to extend our summer adventures as long as possible. By the end of October the focus has completely shifted to Halloween, cooking, baking, and domestic construction projects (for Jeff). I suddenly get the itch to make cheese, limoncello, fruitcake, and chocolate chip cookies. I really wonder what my life would be like if we lived in place without seasons. I think I would feel completely at a loss with the sun shining and the palm trees waving outside the window in November.

As part of this sudden domestic energy, I bought an eighth of a local (<100 mile), grass-fed, organic, lesbian-raised cow. I figure it is pretty much the most politically correct meat I could possibly buy, although of course it would be more politically correct not to buy meat at all. But I do like a good hamburger once in a while. So now we have about 50 lbs of meat in the freezer in our basement: 12 lbs of hamburger, 3 huge long summer sausages, about 6 lbs of Octoberfest bratwurst, many different varieties of steaks, probably a few roasts, and stew meat and soup bones. I never, ever eat steaks, and I don't have the slightest idea how to make a good steak, so that will be a challenge. Also, I put in an order at Afton Field Farm in Corvallis (also <100 miles!) and bought three whole chickens, three pounds of ground lamb, some sliced ham, and some honey. Vegan we ain't.

I have mixed feelings about all this meat; one hand I know we would be eating meat anyway, so I might as well buy local meat from animals that until recently were quite happy. It is also healthier meat, since it is all grass fed and relatively organic. But I wonder if raising Melina around all this meat is going to make her into too much of a carnivore. She already knows (and seems completely unphased by the fact) that hamburger comes from dead cows and chicken comes from dead chickens like the kind we have in our backyard. (In contrast to my acquaintance whose daughter cried for half an hour and refused to eat meat after she discovered the facts.)

Whatever the outcome - either we get completely sick of beef and never eat it again, or we become dedicated carnivores with high Omega 3 levels - we will somehow need to slowly work through all of the little white-paper-wrapped packages in our freezer. I made hamburgers the other night as a first volley in the effort, and they were fantastic.

Speaking of chickens, our chickens are not laying now at all. Dolley looks really bad these days, with half her feathers missing and pointy quills sticking out everywhere. It has been raining nonstop for days and the girls are all huddled up in their coop looking miserable. At times like this I'm glad they have small brains.

Gourmet Project: Shrimp Rub and Basil Caesar Salad

2009-07-28T15:30:00.000-07:00

Before I start, I have to mention Cooking the Books, a website dedicated to "cook-through bloggers." Wow, I had no idea I was in such good company (or that there was a name for this type of effort). These are folks who are cooking their way through entire 1000-page cookbooks, and make my small effort seem puny by comparison... although I must say it's hard enough for me. I've been tempted to bail several times, or switch over to another issue of Gourmet (the August issue has some fantastic recipes). But since part of this effort is to practice the art of commitment, I am going to stick through it even if I have to give away the mushroom burgers I make... because I really don't like mushrooms.

So yesterday, when it was 101 degrees outside and 91 in our kitchen, I worked my way through the shrimp spice rub (#6) and basil Caesar salad (#7).

The shrimp spice rub should have been easy, except once again I didn't read the recipe the entire way through (when will I ever learn?). I added all the ingredients together and then realized that the coriander was supposed to be toasted. It took me about 20 minutes to fish the coriander seeds out of the other spices (it is possible). After that, it was all downhill until I tried to figure out what to actually do with the rub. How do you rub slimy shrimp? Do you rub them before you grill them, or after? Turns out you just mix the shrimp with the rub before cooking them, just like a marinade. I'm not actually a huge shrimp fan (shrimp are insects, after all) but this was pretty good. I will use the leftover rub with fish - halibut would be good.

The basil Caesar salad was great, despite the fact that you have to make your own croutons (which is really easy, but I could have done without turning on the oven at all.) It calls for a raw egg, so I used one of our girls' eggs - Dolly, I think. I figure that if any of us were going to get salmonella from our chickens, we would have already done so.

All in all, a great combination for a hot day. We ate outside on the deck; Melina (as I expected) refused the shrimp and had a lamb patty with bread instead.

Gourmet project: Ketchup

2009-07-21T11:27:00.000-07:00

I haven't given up on my goal of making everything in the June 2009 issue of Gourmet, although I've been sidetracked by a new Vietnamese cookbook I bought. I might have to make everything in there, too. Last night I made Gourmet's ketchup recipe for our work barbeque on Wednesday. It was pretty easy to make, although there were a lot of spices to round up. I'm not quite done - I still need to puree it. It is much more sweet and spicy than regular ketchup (more like a pureed chutney, which is probably how ketchup originally started out). If I made it again, I would add less sugar. I'm sure I'll get some reviews at the BBQ Wednesday.

Mexico

2009-07-13T21:40:00.001-07:00

Our first adventure of the summer was a trip to Mexico this June. For some reason that is still not completely clear to me, we decided to go stay at a resort in Cabo San Lucas. We're not really the "resort" type - that is, I have always sort of looked down on people who stay in resorts as lacking adventurousness. But when you have a four-year-old, resorts start to sound a lot more attractive. And we had friends who recommended this one, so we went.

We flew into Cabo San Lucas (I refuse to call it "Cabo") on a clear, hot day. Almost every day there is clear and hot, so it wasn't unusual. When we deplaned (using a rolling stairway), I was struck by the sudden brightness and heat. We had heard that we would be tackled by timeshare salesmen as soon as we deplaned, but that wasn't the case. Looking back, I think we went out the wrong exit - or perhaps the right one. Anyway, I had practiced saying "we already have one" in Spanish (something like "ya tenemos una") but I didn't need to say it that day.

For some reason, on every single leg of our trip there and back, we were seated in the very first row behind first class. This happy arrangement meant that we were first off the plane and therefore first in line to go through customs, which is a huge time saver. Customs was painless in both directions; both Mexican and U.S. officials were cheerfully matter-of-fact and uninterested in our personal details.

After arriving, we went to pick up our rental at Europcar. Melina and I wandered around looking at the Mexican sodas in the refrigerated case and the ants crawling in the sidewalk. They were very fast ants, much faster than their Oregonian counterparts. Meanwhile, Jeff was exposed to our first (of many) timeshare pitches, and also his first experience handing over a little bit of cash under the table for a reduction in the weekly rental car rate. We ended up with a pretty good deal for our little red hot chili pepper car, although there was some confusion about whether we really had insurance. All the while, I was happy to fall back into that traditional gender role that says that the man makes the car insurance arrangements while the woman takes care of the child. It can be pretty convenient.

We drove into the city - first past mountains and big (saguaro?) cactuses, and then past a jumble of resorts, shacks, construction sites, and chain stores. There is an Applebee's in Cabo San Lucas. And a Home Depot (heaven forbid). And a Costco, which we went to despite my distaste for going to a Costco in Mexico (isn't that like going to a McDonald's in Bali? I mean, what's the point?). But we had a week of groceries to stock up on, and a Costco card, so it made sense. I was relieved to see that the Costco sold large quantities of tortillas.

And then we were at the resort - the Villa del Arco. It is a large, luxurious, brand spanking new place with several pools (one with a pirate ship in the middle, with a snack bar on it). We had to sit though another time share pitch, right off, which was annoying; but the staff were helpful and the place was beautiful. We had a one-bedroom suite, and Jeff's mom (who arrived the next day) had another one-bedroom suite next door. It was clean, spacious, attractive... not terribly soulful, or quaint, but very comfortable.

The next several days were spent mainly by the pool. On Monday we picked Jeff's mom up from the airport, made another trip to a grocery store (and endured another time share pitch from a persistent person working the tourists there), marveled at all the interesting groceries, and bought a bunch of milk products that Melina eventually refused to consume. The milk there is processed differently (like milk in Europe) and has a different flavor that Melina hated. She ended up eating a lot of beans, rice, and watermelon.

Melina absolutely loved the pool, though. It was very hard to get her out. She got very good at swimming underwater, like a seal, for about 10 feet; emerging sputtering, gasping, and flailing (and attracting a lot of attention); and then going back underwater for eight feet or so before finally petering out and needing help. Several times I had to explain to people that she wasn't drowning. By the end of the week she could go all the way around the pirate ship without a parent in the water next to her; she would just grab on to the side of the pool when she needed a rest.

I liked the pool, too, but I preferred the ocean, which was just a few feet away. The water there was so warm and blue compared to the ocean here, and you could float like a jellyfish. Once I swam out about 50 feet (which made Melina nervous) and waited for the tide to wash me gently back to the shore. It took a while. We were in the Sea of Cortez, so there was no undertow and no riptide. No jellyfish or sharks to worry about either - or if there were, I just didn't worry about them.

Jeff and his mom had fun as well. Jeff spent a lot of time in the pool with Melina - alternating between the pool and the hot tub - and Barbara liked to sit by the pool reading a book and sipping a margarita. Thanks to a misunderstanding (having to do with a timeshare presentation Barbara attended for us), we ended up getting about six vouchers for free margaritas. There aren't many things more delightful than sitting by a pool under a hot subtropical sun reading a book about teen vampire love and drinking a margarita.

We took a couple of day trips - one to Todos Santos, one to San Jose del Cabo, and one to Lover's Beach (or Land's End), the point that divides the Pacific from the Sea of Cortez. Todos Santos is known as a cute little artsy village to the north, on the Pacific. It was cute and artsy, and for some reason most of the day was spent going around a single square block. First we had tacos, and then we went to a cafe and had smoothies (tamarind!), and then Melina had to go the bathroom several times (four, I think) - interspersed with window shopping for trinkets, and admiring a white cockatiel - and then we went to a church, and I bought myself a little silver necklace, and then it was time to go to the beach. It was a vast hot white beach with roaring waves and several interesting dead things (including a dead porpoise), as well as little crabs that dug holes in the sand. We stayed there for a while searching out treasures and then headed back down the dangerous narrow highway back to Cabo San Lucas.

Our trip to San Jose del Cabo wasn't quite so pleasant. I think it was my least favorite day, in part because it was extremely windy (the weather was being affected by a distant tropical storm) and I got a migraine. We went to Playa Santa Maria, which is billed as one of the best snorkeling beaches in the area. What we found, unfortunately, was a small, windy, shadeless beach crawling with persistent vendors and dwarfed by a huge, ugly, depressing construction zone - no doubt the future site of some exorbitantly expensive resort. It made me feel guilty for contributing to the development of this beautiful area. And needless to say Melina had to go potty several times, and there was nowhere to go other than the construction site. We did manage to snorkel, and saw some fun fish, but the corals were dull (if not dead). My migraine came on (though not a terrible one), and eventually we left to go to San Jose del Cabo. San Jose del Cabo is supposedly more "authentic" than Cabo San Lucas, and that may be the case, but it seemed just as touristy to us. We did find a good tacqueria where we had "queso fundido" (spicy meat mixed with melted cheese) and jamaica (a hibiscus drink) and tried unsuccessfully to get Melina to eat bean-and-hotdog soup. I'm pretty sure that's when I got the tummy ailment that affected me later.

Our two best days took place right around Cabo San Lucas. On Wednesday we walked down the beach toward town, and through the beach party zone. It was a crazy place, especially that day, when the distant tropical storm was sending up huge waves that would crash and roll right up to the beachside bars. People would scream and laugh and run up the beach whenever a wave came up. Meanwhile, announcers on loudspeakers were inviting people to have drinking contests with the bartenders and offering free tequila. It was probably around noon; we wandered though the crowd of girls in bikinis, vendors in white selling sunglasses and bracelets and fake silver and toys, drunk frat boys, tourists, water taxi operators, surf fishermen and children. Although it wasn't exactly my scene, I thought it was hugely fun. Eventually we wandered past the crowds and found a relatively protected beach where we could swim. We set up next to a local woman whose husband was fishing in the surf. Melina played in the sand with her Ya-Ya; Jeff snorkeled; I pretended I was a jellyfish.

My other favorite day was our last day, when we took a water taxi to Lover's Beach. We had been meaning to do this for days (we got free tickets out of the timeshare presentation), but the surf had been too rough and nobody was landing at the beach. We found that we weren't the only ones who had been waiting to go there, so we ended up going at 3:00 p.m. and only had an hour to spend there. (While we waited, Melina had her hair braided by a woman on the beach. I was astounded that she would sit still for so long. She still has some of the braids). When we finally got into our glass-bottomed water taxi and arrived at Land's End, I was impressed. It really is beautiful. The rough waves (still churned up by the storm) were crashing against the rocks; there were fish for Melina to see down below the boat; there were sea lions (which delighted Melina) - and the beach itself was beautiful, with huge rock formations and cliffs. We explored the beach, and then Jeff and I did some snorkeling. At first it was a little bit scary, because of the rough water, but once we got down below the waves, it was fantastic snorkeling. I saw angelfish, parrotfish, long skinny needle-like fish, a few small rays, schools with hundreds of white and grey fish, and small electric blue fish. We tried to sneak up on a floating pelican (not easy). I could have stayed in the water for much longer, but it was soon time to head back to the beach, and Jeff was cold. (Snorkeling is the only time I feel like I have an advantage over him in the body fat department. He gets cold in about a quarter of the time I do).

That night was our anniversary. First we went out to a favorite tacqueria with Melina and Barbara, and then Jeff and I went out together. We wandered around the tourist stores for a while, doing a little shopping, and went to our favorite restaurant (Mi Casa, which is a veritable museum of folk art with fantastic food to boot) and had the world's largest margaritas in their beautiful, private bar. Then we did more exploring, which was somewhat romantic (it is worth noting that the uneven sidewalks in Mexico, combined with margaritas, make for some interesting walking. I think every home and business must be responsible for its own sidewalk, because none of them line up. There is no coordination whatsoever). A chihuahua almost bit me at a coffee shop, which provided some additional spice to the evening. Eventually we headed home, not too late, because unfortunately we had to leave the next morning.

And just let me say that a hangover, plus a mild tummy bug, plus an airport and luggage and an energetic four-year-old, is not a good combination. I don't think there are many things more miserable than thinking you're going to throw up in the middle of a busy airport - except perhaps actually doing it, which I didn't. But I felt like I was going to all day long.

And finally, we were home. Tan, braided, sandy (just today I found a bunch of sand in the bathtub), queasy, tired, somewhat relaxed, but happy enough to be home. It was a fun time.

Note: I'll post photos when I can - they are on a different computer.

Some blog thoughts

2009-07-13T21:31:00.000-07:00

I haven't written in a very long time. I find that more and more of my energy goes into writing Facebook updates and fooling around with Twitter, in part because of the instant gratification of getting comments (especially on FB). It seems so much more interactive than this blog, where I very rarely get a response to what I write. I suppose if I wrote more (or if I wrote about things of more general interest) I would get more comments. Either way, this blog serves more as a journal - first a journal of my pregnancy, and now of Melina growing up, and a journal of the non-Melina things that interest me. But of course a traditional journal is private, and this is public. I have a lot of mean-spirited, irresponsible, irrational, excessively deep and private thoughts that don't make it to this page. So I guess I need a handwritten journal as well. A private handwritten journal, a public blog, a breezy collection of FB updates, and perhaps a Twitter feed as well. That's a lot of recording.

Melina in a tree

2009-06-05T21:29:00.000-07:00

Grilled skirt steak and arugula salad with Rocquefort and Catalina dressing, and Salvadoran grilled corn

2009-05-28T20:43:00.000-07:00

Recipes 3 and 4 of the June Gourmet Challenge.

Grilled skirt steak salad recipe here
Salvadoran grilled corn recipe here

This was a surprisingly easy and tasty dinner. I prepared the salad dressing and the corn dip in advance, while Melina was distracted, and the actual grilling of the corn & steak took about 10 minutes. Jeff and I both thought the dressing for the corn tasted like Burger King's special sauce; but I didn't mind. I love grilled corn - it is so much easier to prepare than boiled or steamed corn on the cob, and it's so good with a squeeze of lime and some salt and pepper. The steak salad was great, too. I don't usually go for steak, but this was good. Skirt steak is very thin and it grills up fast. It went very well with the Catalina dressing (which I would make again) and the blue cheese.

Melina liked this meal a lot. She is a "single ingredient" girl - she doesn't like when things are mixed together too much, so she basically got corn, steak, and bread. I think that's pretty typical for a 4-year-old. The chickens enjoyed the leftovers too - they go crazy for corn on the cob. So all in all, we were very satisfied. There was a minor drama when Melina spilled juice in her lap, but it was over quickly.

Another lead test

2009-05-26T20:53:00.001-07:00

I got the results back from another lead test today. This one had me test the floor of the play room and the window sill in Melina's room. Interestingly, the test results said "No lead dust hazards identified in samples." Granted, the surfaces were pretty clean, but still I was surprised. Good to know, though. I guess I can let Melina eat off the floor after all.

Spaghetti with Smoky Tomatoes and Onions

2009-05-26T20:30:00.000-07:00

Recipe #2 in my effort to make everything in the June 2009 issue of Gourmet.
Link to the recipe

This is a seemingly simple recipe that took about 30% longer than expected. Granted, I'm in a bad mood today, but I found it stressful to have to run back and forth between the grill and the pasta pot. Plus, oily onions are hard to grill because they fall apart and slip though the grill. However, Jeff liked this a lot. Melina only ate the plain spaghetti, along with a hot dog that I microwaved for her. (I was too busy with this recipe to make her anything remotely healthy).

All in all I thought this was too much work for the somewhat bland result (though if I were in a better mood I would just say it was subtle). I like the idea, and I think with double the garlic, double the basil, and double the cheese - and a healthy dose of salt and pepper - it would be better. But given the work and oiliness of it all, it was unsatisfying to feed to Jeff, who was distracted by an annoying computer problem, and Melina, who spent dinner time experimenting with how much she could burp (and say "excuse me") and get away with it.

Romaine, Grilled Avocado, and Smoky Corn Salad with Chipotle-Caesar Dressing

2009-05-25T20:47:00.000-07:00

Link to the recipe

Although this ended up being a good salad, I started my experiment off on the wrong foot by completely forgetting to add the chipotle peppers. I put them in the microwave to thaw (because I keep leftover chipotles in the freezer) and I never got them out. I also forgot to add one of the avocados, but for two people, one avocado was fine. (This absentmindedness can be attributed to the fact that Melina was running around outside unattended, and Jeff was loudly sorting through the recyling in the kitchen while I was cooking.) The recipe said this would take 40 minutes, but it only took 20. It was a fine summer salad, but I think with the addition of chipotle it would be much better. I will make it again later in the summer with all of the ingredients.

A Culinary Challenge

2009-05-25T20:43:00.000-07:00

Just for fun, I've decided I'm going to make every recipe in the June 2009 issue of Gourmet. I've thought for a while that this would be fun to do, and the June issue had so many good-looking recipes that I decided to go for it. It focuses on Mexican street food, grilled foods, tofu, and steaks, and it doesn't have many recipes that neither Jeff or I will want to eat. I will post links to the recipes (if available) and reviews as I progress through this issue. Rules: There is no time limit (though since a lot of these are grilled, I should do them in the summer) and I can occasionally substitute minor ingredients if needed.

Melina's boyfriend(s)

2009-05-25T20:19:00.001-07:00

For the last three out of four weeks, we've been hiking with our friends Sibelia & Simon and their three boys. Melina LOVES these boys (she has said several times that she wants to move in with them). On our first outing we went to Lower McLeay Park and Melina had fun running down the trail at top speed with the boys. It made me a little nervous not to have her anywhere in sight, but Sibelia (who has retained her sanity up to this point) to me to just relax and know that Melina has the presence of mind not to jump off any cliffs. (Not that there were a lot of big cliffs around, but the trail did wind along a streambank). Pretty soon we came up on them all playing at the Old Stone House (a castle-like ruin) down the trail.

Our second outing was to Silver Falls State Park, where there really are cliffs, so the kids had to stay closer. On the safe parts, Melina and her friend S.T. (short for Siddhartha) raced each other up the trail. Apparently they had some sort of contest going whereby if Melina won, she got a pet (like a bunny or a kitten). Apparently she won three pets, which luckily have not materialized yet.

After our hike, we went to a restaurant in Silverton. Melina and S.T. sat across from each other, apart from the rest of us, entertaining each other by blowing bubbles in their milk and stuffing French fries into holes in the floor. (We discovered this part later).

Yesterday we went for a "snow hike" around Lost Lake on Mt. Hood. This was a 3.5-mile hike, which was pretty ambitious to begin with, but it turned out that half of it was still covered in deep snow. We managed to do it anyway. Melina and S.T. raced each other where possible, and the boys had fun whacking bushes with sticks. Only one person fell into a hole and nobody slid down the steep snow field we had to cross above the lake. By the end everyone's feet were soaking wet, and we richly deserved the ice cream bars we got at the little country store there.

The only drawback to all of this running through the woods like a wild animal is that now Melina expects that level of freedom whenever we go hiking with friends. It's a matter of teaching her that some people have different rules than other people do. I have a few friends who are very easygoing, relatively underprotective types (well, not necessarily *under* protective, but not overprotective) - and others who like to have more control. Finding a balance between these different parenting styles is a constant challenge.

Lead: Next steps

2009-04-25T19:52:00.001-07:00

NOTE: Please see followup discussion and correction here. My estimation of lead per egg was too high by a factor of 10.

So after a few days of obsessing about lead, talking about lead, and researching lead, I've come to a few conclusions.

1. We're not eating our eggs (at least, the yolks) until this thing gets cleared up. The 'total maximum daily load' that an adult should have for lead is 75 micrograms, and I figured out that one egg is about 54 micrograms. For kids under 7, the limit is *6* micrograms (and for pregnant women it's 25). So while I suppose Jeff and I could eat an occasional egg in desperation, Melina won't be getting any. Yolks.

2. I talked to my neighbor about having the lead paint safely removed from the side of her garage, and she seemed open to working on it together, so I'm going to research paint removers and follow up on that. Meanwhile the chickens are fenced off from that area. Once the lead paint is removed I'm going to remove at least 6" of topsoil in that area and replace it with compost. The soil could use some amending anyway!

3. I'm going to do soil tests on about 6 spots in our backyard to get an idea of where the lead is. I have my suspicions. Hopefully, it will be concentrated around the house, which it normally is. I'll fence those areas off.

4. I'm taking Melina to a naturopath (who is also a friend) to talk about ways to reduce lead in the body through diet and supplements. Apparently there are several effective methods out there.

5. I may still cook with egg whites from the girls, since egg whites don't take up lead at all. I will look into composting the eggs. Soil naturally has 50-100 ppm anyway, so adding an egg with 2 ppm isn't going to make a big difference. Also, someone told me you can make paint out of egg yolks. Maybe I'll take up a new hobby. It would be ironic if I had to stop eating the egg yolks because of lead paint and so I started turning the yolks into paint.

5. In about 3 months, I'll get Melina and the eggs tested again.

6. I'm going to stop obsessing now.

I'm heading out to Ithaca, NY for a few days to give a talk to seven undergraduates at Cornell (!). It will be good to have a complete change of scenery and focus on something besides heavy metals for a change.

More lead results. Bad news.

2009-04-23T20:39:00.000-07:00

I got our egg lead test results back today. Unfortunately, they were not good. They showed .2, .3, and .4 parts per million (see technical notes below).

I'm not really sure what to do at this point. These results are very depressing, considering that I have so enthusiastically fed Melina backyard eggs for the last 2 years. Her levels aren't overwhelmingly high (3) but they are still of concern, according to her doctor and the Portland Lead Line. It is upsetting that I thought I was doing something so healthy and it turns out that it was actually harmful - and it is also upsetting because I am very pro-urban chicken and I don't want to dump a big wet can of worms on the whole movement. So to speak.

I don't want to get rid of my girls, but at this point I don't have much appetite for their eggs and I am not planning to feed them to my daughter until I know they don't have lead in them. I can't even compost them because I don't want lead in my garden (which is in a raised bed with new soil). Lead is present in the shells as well, so I can't refeed the shells to my girls. So I guess the next step is to test my soil, figure out where the lead is (if possible) and either remediate it (replace the top foot of soil) or fence it off from the girls. All of this sounds really expensive and difficult (anyone have a small backhoe or a strong back that I can borrow?).

So does the average backyard chicken owner need to worry? From what I've read, if you live in a house built after 1978 or your chickens are well away from any source of lead paint and you do not live in a Superfund site, you're probably OK. If you're an adult, you're probably OK, though you shouldn't really be consuming lead either. If you have small children who you are feeding eggs to, you might want to get them tested. The place where I got mine tested (Wy'East) said that they had recently tested other backyard eggs that showed no lead at all.

Technical notes for people who are REALLY interested:

The lead level in my eggs was very similar to the eggs tested in the only academic study I'm aware of. Their highest egg yolk lead level was also .4 ppm (400 ppb), which lead them to conclude that "Eggs and chicken tissues containing significant concentrations of lead are a potential human health hazard, especially to young children. Repeated consumption of contaminated eggs from a family owned flock could provide a continuing dietary source of lead." As a control, they tested eggs of chickens that had not been exposed to lead paint, and their levels were much lower. Lead does not naturally occur in chicken eggs, so these levels *do* represent a problem.

Our lead results

2009-04-17T16:59:00.000-07:00

So I just got back the results from our blood lead tests. They are good - my level was 1 (which is the lowest you can get) and Melina's was 3. Three is not particularly high (10 is the threshold for "high") but it does mean she's coming into contact with lead somewhere, which is not surprising given all the stuff she puts in her mouth and eats off the floor. The doctor recommended doing a followup test in 6 months or so to make sure her levels aren't going up.

I also found out my cholesterol was a bit high (because I had eating a big fat slice of cheese pizza a few hours before the test, and a hamburger the night before, no doubt). My cholesterol has always been low so I'm not too worried about it. Melina's levels of everything were good except that she was a bit on the low side for iron, so we will work on getting spinach & beef into her.

So this is a relief. I still plan to get our eggs checked to see if that's where Melina's lead is coming from, and just out of curiosity. I won't worry about eating them myself.

Olallie's Birthday

2009-04-16T11:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we had a small private party for Mr. O's tenth birthday. Jeff had some work stuff to do so it was just Melina, Olallie and I. Melina and I made a pavlova (no egg yolks!) and I gave Olallie some kitty junk food. We also gave him some kitty toys which he sniffed and then ignored. (I'm passing them along to Jess's cat). I think he had a good time. At least, he did while he was eating his cat food. Not sure if he enjoyed Melina and I chasing after him to force him to enjoy the festivities. The pavlova was great, too.

Unleaded chickens

2009-04-14T15:38:00.000-07:00

...Or, "One more thing to worry about."

Recently it was brought to my attention that chickens pecking around in the backyard of older homes can be a lead hazard. In particular, they like eating paint chips. Since reading this, I've noticed that our neighbor's garage has peeling paint, which I tested yesterday - positive for lead. For the past few days I've been obsessively researching lead, lead poisoning, lead uptake, and lead removal. I've learned a few things.

There haven't been many studies of this issue. One study (easily Googled) found that chickens that had been eating paint chips had lead in their egg yolks ranging from 20 ppb (parts per billion) to 440 ppb. There was no lead in the whites, but lead did concentrate in the shells (which we don't eat, but which I have been re-feeding to my chickens). So, what does that mean?

The FDA sets an acceptable limit for lead in candy that is frequently eaten by children. (The limit is in place because lead is so prevalent in our world that setting the limit at zero would be prohibitive). Their limit is .10 ppm (parts per million). In contrast, the most highly leaded egg in the egg study had .44 ppm, exceeding the FDA limit.

Lead is particularly a problem for children - in part because they absorb more lead, they retain it longer, and they are developing. Apparently 99% of the amount of lead absorbed in an adult’s body will leave the body through waste within a couple of weeks, while only 32% of the lead absorbed by children’s bodies leaves as waste.

It is interesting to note that average blood lead levels for both children and adults have dropped more than 80 percent since the late 1970s. "This is believed to be the result of removal of lead from gasoline as well as from other sources such as household paint, food and drink cans and plumbing systems."

In addition, proper nutrition provides protection against lead, which may be one reason that lead poisoning is prevalent in low-income neighborhoods where there is a combination of poor nutrition and peeling lead-based paint.

So am I worried? Sure. One study notes that "Elevated blood lead levels are associated with lower IQs, impaired growth and neurological development, and behavior problems." However, lead often doesn't produce any symptoms at all. Melina certainly doesn't have any of these symptoms, but I'm planning to get her lead levels tested anyway - something I should have done when she was younger anyway.

In addition, I've fenced off the area around my neighbor's peeling garage wall, so our chickens won't be tempted to dine on paint chips. I've looked into having the paint removed (safely), but it would cost around $800 so I want to know if we actually have a problem first. I'm considering getting a few eggs tested for lead - it costs $30 an egg. I doubt they would come out absolutely "clean" so at that point I would need to decide at what point the nutrition from a fresh egg balances out trace amounts of lead.

I have to say, all of this is just such a bummer. I love my chickens and I was so happy thinking that I was doing something so very healthy for my family. At this point, I haven't eaten one of their eggs in a couple of days. I think it's probably fine for Jeff and I to eat them, but I am hesitant to give them to Melina (although I suppose an egg-white omelet would be OK, since the lead is all in the yolks). Or maybe I'll just start making lots of meringues and Pavlovas until I know whether our eggs are safe to eat.

Two plus three

2009-03-13T21:05:00.000-07:00

Melina amazed me today by knowing that if we have two cars and we add three more, that makes five. And then she knew that if you had four cars and you took two away, you ended up with two. But then she figured that four plus one equals six, so we're maybe not in genius territory, but still I was pretty impressed. PLUS she graduated from Penguin to Otter in swim class the other day. Just a few observations by a proud mama!

Melina and Dolley

2009-03-13T20:58:00.000-07:00

Bread disasters

2009-02-26T22:21:00.000-08:00

I've been into making my own "five minute artisan bread" lately. The first couple of times it was great, but then I entered some sort of disastrous bread vortex where no matter what I did, it turned out strange and horrible. One time I added too much water (it's hard to pay attention to a recipe when you're being interrupted every 30 seconds) and it turned into this moist, sticky glop that actually broke my pizza stone. Another time I didn't add enough water and it ended up being a dense, lumpy brick. Another time I didn't cook it long enough for some reason (although I did it exactly the same as I had every other time) and when I cut it open the interior was still raw, like some sort of disgusting white flour truffle. And then there was the time I didn't mix the dough well enough, and I tried to make naan, which ended up being like a lumpy sponge soaked in butter.

Tonight I made it again. I forgot to add the water at the last minute to create steam (for a crispy crust), and it was sort of flat and dense, but at least it was tasty and cooked all the way through. Dipping it in olive oil helps.

The most annoying thing of all is that no matter what I do or how I do it, it always seems to come out lopsided. I've seen my friend Sue's perfectly round, shapely "boules;" in comparison mine look like they've been sat upon by a large pig. I just don't get it.

Gardening begins

2009-02-26T22:14:00.001-08:00

So I planted my first seeds during a warm spell this February - mostly arugula, plus some snap peas. So far, nothing has come up, but I'm giving it time. I bought a grow light and two little cold frames from Ikea, and I have a few tomato starts that I move around depending on the quality of the sunlight. I'd like to grow some corn this season (maybe in Jess's back yard) and I'm thinking of installing another raised bed, though I'm not committed to the idea yet. I'm also itching to get another chicken, but I think the carrying capacity of our backyard has already been reached, chicken-wise. Also, they are at peak egg production now so we don't really need any more eggs.

Melina seems mildly interested in the garden's progress. I asked her if she wanted a garden of her own and she said she wanted to plant oranges and bananas. Hmm. Maybe I can interest her in some cherry tomatoes, snap peas and strawberries?

The "pretend Sanju"

2009-01-26T15:41:00.001-08:00

Yesterday we went skiing with Melina at Teacup Lake, and while we were in the warming cabin we met up with Melina's preschool friend Sanju. Melina was in a pretty bad mood, but I was surprised that she wasn't more friendly to Sanju and that they didn't seem to want to play with each other. In fact, they both seemed really shy and surprised to see each other out of context.

Later, in the car, Melina said that that was the pretend Sanju. Because obviously the real Sanju lives at the preschool and never goes anywhere else! This would explain the reticence. It's funny how preschoolers find ways to explain new situations. I wonder what will happen when Sanju tells Melina she went skiing yesterday!

Speaking of skiing, yesterday was one of our most difficult ski outings with Melina. She was grumpy, and it was unusually cold - around 19 or 20 degrees. We bought handwarmers and toe warmers for her, but the handwarmers were "uncomftible" so she kept trying to take off her mittens. No matter how many times we explained that her hands would get cold if she took off her mittens, off they came. Finally she resorted to holding the handwarmers and keeping her hands inside her sleeves.

Toddler mittens are a big pain in the neck. To be insulated enough, they must be so bulky that the kid can't grip anything well, including ski poles. Melina always has to have her ski poles, but she can't hold them with mittens on, so there's no way we can win. And then when she is in a good mood and her hands are warm, she entertains herself by trying to clear all the snow off the trail (good luck) or stopping every 10 seconds to clean the snow off the top of her skis. This is especially fun - and exasperating - when it's snowing hard.

Meanwhile, we are continually passed by five- and six-year-olds who are already adept at skiing. So apparently it does pay off, but this has to be the hardest year!

Chicken update

2009-01-26T15:39:00.001-08:00

The chickens are doing well (unlike Sue's poor chickens, who all got eaten one night by a raccoon). During the recent cold snap I started lighting up their coop with a heat lamp, and perhaps as a result we started getting eggs again. It's nice not to have to buy them. The chicken coop upgrade is still incomplete; I'm waiting for warmer weather to finish putting the siding on, but the chickens already seem to appreciate the extra space.

Mouse in the chicken feed

2009-01-26T15:28:00.000-08:00

The other day when I opened the chicken feed bin I was startled by something brown flinging itself into the air. I shrieked (to my embarrassment) and slammed the door back down. Then I slowly lifted the lid. It was the cutest little brown-eyed field mouse, and it was desperate to get out of the land of plenty and back on the ground. It must have been very well fed. I showed it to Melina, who said "It's so cuuuuuuute!" Jeff happened to be wearing work gloves, so he came over, admired it, scooped it out, and sent it on its way. I can't imagine how it got in the bin in the first place - it would have to jump pretty high, but having owned mice in the past I can attest to their high-jumping abilities.

By the way, this is not the mouse, but it looks a lot like it.

Swim classes

2009-01-26T15:26:00.000-08:00

Melina is still taking swim classes. She's actually getting to where she can swim about 10 feet under water, but she can't raise her head up to breathe unless she's standing on something, which is a problem. Still, it's impressive to see her swimming along under water like a little penguin.

The woman in the TV

2009-01-26T15:16:00.000-08:00

The other day I thought it would be fun to see if Melina would do an exercise video with me. I put in the Bollywood Workout, which has a lot of fun jumping and spinning, but I noticed that she kept hiding behind me. So I switched over to a yoga video, and then a Kundalini dance workout, but Melina was acting strange and shy the entire time. Finally I asked, "Do you think those people are watching you?" She nodded. "So you think there are people inside the TV?" She nodded again. I tried to assure her that there weren't people inside the TV watching her, but she insisted there were. I tried to explain that real people couldn't fit inside the TV, but it didn't matter. As of today, she still believes there are women dancing inside the TV. I asked her later where they went when the TV was off, and she said they went to sleep. It's really hard to explain how a TV works to a three-year-old.

Ice storm II

2008-12-21T22:36:00.001-08:00

Ice storm

2008-12-21T22:36:00.000-08:00

Our house in the snow, 10:00 p.m.

2008-12-20T22:39:00.000-08:00

The Arctic blast

2008-12-17T21:13:00.000-08:00

For several days now we've been blessed with a chill arctic wind coming down from Canada. This means several things. First of all, it means the chickens now have a red heat lamp in their coop, which keeps it surprisingly warm and prevents their water from freezing. For about 48 hours they refused to leave their inner sanctum, though yesterday they went out in the snowy yard for a few hours. I can't imagine what they do in their coop all day, huddled in a 4x4 foot space. What goes through their little chicken minds? They are not laying eggs now - haven't been since November - but I'm hoping that in late January we'll start seeing them again.

It also means that the hummingbird food, which I just started putting out around Thanksgiving, is freezing up. We have two or three resident hummers (Anna's Hummingbird is the species, I think). For a while I was having to thaw their food out twice a day so they could get some sustenance. It's amazing that birds with such tiny bodies and minimal insulation can survive a cold winter like this. Here's an interesting article on winter survival of hummingbirds.

In addition to these two aviary facts, this cold blast means a) it takes about half an hour longer for us to get out of the house, due to the multiple layers, hats, mittens, boots, etc., required; and b) preschool has been cancelled several times, which means I don't go to work. So we've been doing a lot of baking and crafting and visiting and watching more movies than usual. And Melina's two-week winter break from preschool hasn't even officially begun!

A Penguin

2008-12-17T21:08:00.000-08:00

Melina is now a Penguin, which means she passed the "Goldfish" test and now has Kyle as her teacher. The first time she saw Kyle she decided she didn't like him ("Kyle's not my friend"), but now she absolutely loves him. This morning one of the first things she said was "When do I get to see Kyle again?" He is pretty funny and a pretty good teacher. Melina is actually doing some swimming now - she can swim by herself for about three feet. It's something to see! I fear for the next semester, though, when she might have to have a different teacher.

Melina's swimming classes

2008-11-07T21:29:00.000-08:00

Melina has been taking swimming classes every Tuesday and Thursday at the local pool. Unlike her previous classes, I don't have to go in the pool with her, which is nice. There is the option of sitting in the hot tub and watching the lessons from there, which is also nice.

Melina seems to love swimming. She is very enthusiastic about putting her head underwater (she even does it in the tub), but slightly less so about blowing bubbles, which is a prerequisite for the next step up - Penguins (she is currently a goldfish). I need to get her to practice blowing bubbles in the tub. She has to do it for five long seconds, which is actually a long time to blow bubbles if you try it.

I like the idea of her learning to swim so young. We're around water enough that Melina really needs to learn how to swim. Then someday we can take her sea kayaking!

I had to buy eggs!

2008-11-07T21:23:00.000-08:00

We have not gotten any fresh eggs for two or three weeks now, and I actually had to go and buy eggs this week. All three chickens are molting (which they do every fall). Dolley is molting so vigorously that every time she flaps her wings, feathers go flying. I had to spray all of the wet feathers off the deck today. The funny thing is that when they're not laying eggs, the chicken are a lot harder to catch. They're not as tame, and they won't stop and let you pick them up - even Dolley. So I have to wait until they are somewhat asleep on the porch railings before I can pick them up and put them in their coop. (They still refuse to go into the coop by themselves).

Speaking of which, I have been working on enhancing their coop. I built a pitched roof and put it on top of the square box that is their coop. This lets the rain run off (before it just puddled up and dripped down the middle seam). It also looks nicer, and it gives them more vertical room inside. It's also easier to clean, but not as easy to take the eggs out. I may have to cut a trap door so I can remove the eggs, but at the moment that's not an issue. I'll post photos once I'm done with the redecorating project.

Volunteering for Obama

2008-11-07T20:50:00.001-08:00

I did a fair amount of volunteering this election season. In all, I registered 17 new voters (it took about 12 hours), spent about 7 hours canvassing, and drove one man to the county elections office. It's not much, really, but it was all I could manage given my schedule. I didn't want to sit on the sidelines for such an important election, and I'm glad I got involved.

My second day of canvassing was interesting. Turns out the woman I was canvassing with was a stripper as well as a science fiction writer. Since I had never met an actual stripper before (to my knowledge), I had a lot of questions. Turns out stripping is a job like many others. She considered it an art, and not a very well paying one. In all, she wanted to leave the business, but found it hard to find a decently paying job that she wanted to do.

The last day (Election Day) was the most interesting. In the morning I knocked on doors with another woman (who turned out to be the mom of one of Melina's co-preschoolers). We were canvassing in an upper middle class part of Portland where there were lots of Obama signs, and people seemed to be politically motivated. Together we knocked on something like 65 doors, but only about 8 had anybody home. I didn't feel like I had gotten a lot of votes out, but I did manage to catch a cold in the chilly weather.

After canvassing, I went back to the Obama office. It was a beehive of activity. One of the things I liked about volunteering for Obama was the diversity and the cheerfulness of the crowd. There are some pictures here. People were cheering and honking; the kitchen was full of donated food for the volunteers (ribs, fried chicken, chili, Indian food, pastries, donuts, and a cake I donated, among other things); and there were red, white and blue handpainted signs everywhere. It was a happy, hopeful place to work, and I was sorry that with the registration and the canvassing, I couldn't hang out in the office more often. But it was so crowded I always felt in the way there anyway.

After loitering a while in the office, I was told that a guy needed a ride to the election office to get a new ballot. His name was Gary; he was black. He needed to go home and put away some groceries, so I met him later on the corner near a new low-income housing development. When I got there, he asked if there was going to be a line. I said there probably would be, and then he wavered, telling me that he didn't really have to go now; he would just take the bus later. Well, I had a feeling that meant he wasn't going to vote, so I said something about him not wanting to miss this election, and said it was no problem for me to take him. Finally he came down and met me at the corner.

On the way to the election office, he told me his life story. He was in recovery and he had just relapsed; he was kicking himself over it, but he had faith that he could get back on the wagon. He had been homeless last year, but with some help he had managed to get one of the new apartments in this development. His big lesson was learning that he couldn't help everyone who wanted to stay at his apartment; people took advantage of him because he couldn't say no. He told me he was thinking about getting his G.E.D. He was very emotional about the election; he was inspired by Obama and said he cried when he visited to the Obama headquarters. He was a big, rough-looking man, but from my brief contact with him he seemed to have a heart of gold. He told me over and over how grateful he was that I had gone out of my way to take him to vote. I dropped him off at the end of the long line waiting to get into the election office. He looked like he was about to make a run for it, but in the end he did stay in line. I didn't find out if he voted, but I'm pretty sure he did.

I would never have had an experience like that if I hadn't volunteered for Obama. I don't know what I'm going to do now, but I would like to stay involved somehow. I hope the grassroots energy of this election doesn't dissipate. I will do what I can.

Political activities

2008-10-09T21:28:00.000-07:00

So I know I've been really lax about updating the ol' blog lately. Part of the reason is my obsession with the election, which has me surfing the web wayyy too much. I've been volunteering to register voters for a few hours every week; so far I've registered 11, of every persuasion. It's interesting work. I've volunteered at four different places - a post office, a farmer's market, a transit center on a weekday, and the same transit center on a weekend; and a grocery store. The PO was the most productive spot; I registered five people in two hours. Every other place, I've registered about one person per hour.

The difference in the transit center on the weekday, versus the weekend, was striking. On the weekday, it was mostly young people or people who were not working for one reason or another. Most people wouldn't look me in the eye; they wouldn't talk; they seemed in general like they wanted to have nothing to do with me. On the weekend, it was a much different crowd - more families, more people of a higher socioeconomic status, and more people interested in chatting. I had a long talk with an ex-felon carnival operator, and an enthusiastic liberal guy on Vicodin (he had broken his arm in a scooter accident). He gave me stock tips and told me how hard it was to invest in gold.

In general, most people were either completely indifferent to me (and wouldn't look me in the eye), matter of fact ("I'm registered, thanks"), or very enthusiastic about voting. I had a few people who seemed suspicious (one asked me what state I was from, of all things). A couple asked me who I was voting for. And quite a few said they didn't want to register, didn't want to be involved - as one said, "they're all crooks."

There were a few registrants that I was proud of. One hadn't voted since the Nixon administration. He said he didn't want to vote, but I cajoled him and he actually took a form home and said he might fill it out. The other, a contractor around 47 years old, had never voted and never registered. He was excited and proud to be doing it for the first time. That made my two hours standing in the cold in front of Albertson's worth it.

At Sue's wedding

2008-09-30T20:08:00.001-07:00

2008-09-30T20:08:00.000-07:00

Sue's wedding

2008-09-30T20:07:00.001-07:00

Sue and her bridesmaids

2008-09-30T20:07:00.000-07:00

Firedancing at Sue's wedding

2008-09-30T20:06:00.000-07:00

Chapman Swifts

2008-09-18T21:38:00.000-07:00

Here's a trailer for a documentary about the Chapman swifts. We went there last week and had a picnic with Aaron. It's getting to be such a scene - hundreds of little kids racing down the hill on cardboard sleds, people with elaborate picnics... I'm surprised all the food trucks don't show up. I used to live across the street from this school in the early-to-mid 1990s, but there were no swifts then. I do have fond memories of barreling down the hill on a surfboard with five other people, one snowy day.

A close encounter with a raccoon

2008-08-30T21:45:00.001-07:00

The other night I stayed up way too late watching the convention, and, feeling lazy, decided the chickens would be OK sleeping on the deck that night. (For some reason my chickens refuse to return to the coop at dusk, unlike the vast majority of chickens worldwide). So at 3:30 a.m. my mommy-powered ears heard a "squawk!" and a THUMP. I jumped out of bed and ran downstairs in time to see a black shape slinking off the deck. It was about the size of Olallie (who is a huge cat), but it moved like a raccoon. I was relieved to see it didn't have a chicken in its mouth. I got a flashlight and went to investigate. Dolley was sitting on the deck table, but the other two were gone. After some searching around, I found Abigail in between our house and our neighbor's house, sitting next to a pile of her own feathers, but apparently unscathed. I put them both back in the coop and searched around for Martha. I couldn't find her anywhere, and I feared the worst, but just as I was going to go back to bed she came walking out of some bushes around the side of the house. Phew! We were really lucky. I solemnly pledge never to let them sleep on the deck again. And, not coincidentally, they have avoided sleeping on the deck railing ever since. (But they still haven't found the coop).

Llama packing travelogue: Day 1

2008-08-29T22:22:00.000-07:00

(Taken from my notes).

Another long drive to Baker City. As on our last trip, we stopped at the New York City Sub Shop in The Dalles, where they make good subs on home-baked bread. Briefly drawn in to a monster truck show on TV. Melina keeps asking why they are called "monster" trucks.

Leave the Dalles at 2:40. Looks like we're driving into a thunderstorm.

The one-hour stretch from Baker to Halfway is gorgeous. The road winds through sagebrush-covered hills, following a stream through green fields filled with cattle. It's dusk and a big dark thunderstorm is on our tail; the landscape alternates between glowing yellow hills and purple sky in the saturated evening light.

Spent the first night at the Halfway Motel (the cheapest option, at $70). Clean, basic rooms. The other guests are a group of bikers (motorcycle bikers) and some Germans. We roll in with the storm, lightning flashing around us. We pass the luggage in though the first story window and go for a walk around the little town. It's a nice little place with lots of quaint old storefronts and wood buildings. There are flowers everywhere, in window boxes and front yards. There's a quaint inn, a tea garden, an acupuncturist, a newspaper, a restaurant or two, a few gift shops and mercantiles and a seedy bar. Several buildings are painted in funky colors, or otherwise decorated in unusual ways. On the other side of the buildings along Main Street there is open space back to the fields and mountains.

We stop and talk to a woman about her cats; she has 11. She knows the llama ranchers and gives us directions to their ranch; we talk about Portland and the weather. The storm has passed. I would definitely come back to Halfway. We asked if the winters here were bad; she said no, not so bad -- it only got down to -15 a few times last year, and there were four feet of snow for most of the winter. But not too bad.

Llama Packing: Day 2

2008-08-29T22:21:00.000-07:00

Slept fairly lousily at the hotel, as expected. Too bright, plus smoke filtering in from some unknown source (though only I could smell it). Melina woke at 4:00 a.m. and wanted me in the bed with her, so I switched beds, but didn't go back to sleep until 6:30 or so; she woke at 7:15.

Found a good grocery store to make up for the fact that we forgot to go to the store in Baker City for last-minute supplies. I was happy to see fresh vegetables. As we were wandering through the cramped little store, I heard what I thought was a sad or wounded dog squealing in the back, behind the meat counter. I thought, well, it's such a small town they probably let their employees bring their pets to work. Found out later it was an employee practicing his elk call, much to the amusement of the checkout lady.

After stocking up on non-perishable vegetables (like zucchini), we drove to the llama ranch. There we were met by Raz, his wife Louise, and another woman who lived on the property. The two women were working in their beautiful, flourishing, verdant vegetable garden, which was fertilized by a steady supply of llama poop. I was extremely envious. The garden was surrounded by fruit trees, and there was a chicken coop nearby. Melina "helped" in the garden while we packed and repacked the llama panniers, weighed them (they must be equal on both sides of the llama) and learned the basics of packing and managing a llama. I begrudgingly gave up half of my Trader Joe's cookies to save space. I should have given up more; as usual, I packed enough food for an extra army.

Finally, we went to round up the llamas - an operation requiring three people (not us) and a very long piece of rope. Soon Raz et al. came back with two dark brown llamas, Nigel and Velcro. Both are extremely laid back; Nigel is the "ambassador llama" who accompanies them to REI, and is used to curious kids and newbies. Jeff did manage to get one of them (Velcro?) to spit when he was learning to attach the halter, though (luckily he spat at a tree, and not at Jeff).

Raz loaded the llamas onto a truck, and we headed off to Summit Point trailhead, a very steep and rough road. Raz stopped to let his wife out so she could pick huckleberries in the woods, and we continued on.

When we arrived, we loaded the panniers onto the llamas (Jeff getting to be quite a pro at this) and loaded Melina on to Jeff's back. I led Nigel and Velcro by a rope over my shoulder. They are so well-trained, it was easy to forget they were even there. Nigel (in the lead) stayed about two feet behind me the entire time. We would stop for a rest; I would move away; Nigel would follow, like someone at a cocktail party with a poor sense of personal space. Then there were a few times when Nigel refused to move--a protest against leaving a favorite grazing area, I think. A few firm words and tugs and we would (usually) be on our way. It was hard to remember that you're never supposed to look a llama in the eye: they take it as an insult, or perhaps a challenge. Given the huge size of their limpid brown eyes, it's very hard not to do.

After getting into the groove a bit, it became clear that this wasn't going to be a fast hike. The llamas need to rest about 10 minutes out of every hour, and since we had packed them so fully, we needed to go extra slowly. I, being in charge of the llamas, had to make sure we didn't stop in a field full of lupine, which is poisonous to llamas. This was a challenge because lupine is by far the most common plant around, with multiple varieties in different colors and forms. I was wondering where we were ever going to find a lupine-free zone to camp--until we came to the Meadow.

The Meadow! I never expected a meadow like this. A high altitude alpine grassland, a mile long and half a mile wide, interspersed with stands of pine, surrounded by high granite peaks, and topped with an endless sky scattered with thunderheads. Absolutely gorgeous.

After some wandering around, crossing streams and trying to avoid poisonous plants, we set up our camp near a lone pine and a small creek. Melina busied herself arranging rocks and making various foods out of dirt. And then Jeff realized he had forgotten the water filter.

So we boiled some noodles in stream water, and I made a pasta puttanesca that Melina refused to eat, and Jeff convinced me that he should run back to the car (three miles) to get the filter. This is the kind of thing that fills me with dread: all sorts of visions of Melina and I alone in the wilderness, Jeff having disappeared without a trace; the wolves circling. I was comforted by the fact that there's a staffed lookout tower 2.5 miles back, so if there was an emergency we could go there (and believe me, I had visions of strapping Melina to my back at midnight and pounding on the startled lookout's door...) Anyway, I "let" him go and tried to keep myself occupied for the next two hours, doing dishes and reading to Melina and not letting her know I was nervous even when a pack of coyotes started up a lusty howl feet from our tent; and even when the pounding hoofbeats of some unknown creatures alarmed the llamas into standing up and pointing, llama style, at the sound. Outside, I lit a candle and an LED light as a beacon for Jeff when the sun went down.

After about an hour and 45 minutes, just as it was getting truly dark, Jeff returned. Yay! He told me he had been followed by an owl and had seen a herd of deer or antelope nearby. He took over the job of reading to Melina, and I went out to look for the owl and to get us some water with the filter.

The owl--or owls--found me almost immediately. There were two of them, and with my headlamp I could see their whitish underbellies. [Talking to a friend later, I figured they must have been short-eared owls.] They circled me several times in absolute silence, their wings making not a sound. Finally one of them made a creaking call, like a squeaky wheel, three times. After a few more circuits, they flew away.

I investigated the bog where I had been directed to get water, found it to be disgusting, and went back down a hill to a small stream near our camp. In the dark it seemed three times further away; I was disoriented and glad I had brought a little LED candle to use as a path marker at the top of the hill. I kneeled by the creek in the dark, filling our bottles, and trying not to look like prey to a mountain lion. Halfway through, I saw something move in the stream, and realized I was drawing water directly downstream from a big warty toad. As I was kneeling down to look at the toad I heard a whooping sound nearby. Spooked, I darted back to camp, and Jeff confirmed that it was a coyote.

So now Melina is in bed, Jeff is bundled up head to toe in a sleeping bag looking at the stars, and Velcro and Nigel are sitting contentedly in the field. They seem so easily pleased; they don't need much. Just grass and water and fresh air, at least for today.

Llama Packing: Day 3

2008-08-29T22:18:00.000-07:00

A perfectly lovely day. Instead of moving camp as we usually do, we stayed in the meadow. Had fried potatoes, zucchini, onion, summer sausage for breakfast; Melina refused to eat it. I'm not sure what she lives on. (I did make her Top Ramen for dinner, which she wolfed down). For our day's entertainment we decided to hike to the top of a small nearby mountain. Jeff had Melina on his back so we went slowly, bushwhacking up the grassy slope. About two thirds of the way up it got steeper, so we stopped for a break and took turns scrambling to the top alone. On the near side we could see our tiny campsite, with the llamas, in the vast meadow far below; on the far side was a severe landscape of rugged granite mountains and glacial cirques. You would never guess, standing in this peaceful meadow, that the other side of the mountain would be so forbidding.

Afterward, we scrambled back down to our camp (much easier than going up) and attended to various camp chores (dishes, laundry, watering the llamas, dinner). I had a hot cocoa with kahlua. We went down at the creek to wash the dust off Melina (who had been taking dust baths, very much like a chicken), and returned to our camp to find it overrun with cows. There were about 15. They had been circling for a while, and finally, in our absence, they got up the nerve to come stare at the llamas. It was funny to see how the calves were fascinated by the llamas, while their mothers rolled their bovine eyes and ambled away, unimpressed. The herd wandered off when we returned, but is now camped out on the hill above us. The llamas are bedded down, an untouched bowl of water between them (they seem amazingly indifferent to water). When I look over with my headlamp I can see their eyes glowing.

No coyotes tonight, at least not so far. Instead I can hear Melina begging for "a really really scary One Day about goblins" as Jeff tries to get her to sleep.

Llama Packing: Day 4

2008-08-29T22:15:00.000-07:00

Spent a cold night in the solo tent, where I thought I would sleep better. Woke at 5:45 a.m. to a loud MOO five feet from my head. Heard Jeff get up and shoo the cows away ("chya! chya!") After five minutes of listening to their hoofbeats and grumblings near my little tent, I decided I had to see them, as well as get up to pee. There's nothing like peeing in a meadow with 30 cows lined up staring at you. I shoo'd them away more and eventually they wandered off. As I crawled back in the tent I noticed frozen dew on the camp chair outside.

I went back to sleep and awoke at 8:15. I was surprised to hear coyotes partying in the distance; I didn't know they howled in the daylight.

After a long morning packing up the llamas (and readjusting their packs), we hiked out of the beloved meadow and over a scary, exposed mountain pass to Pine Lakes. We almost camped in an alpine meadow above the lakes (something I would never have considered, incidentally, if we didn't have the llamas), but we decided to hike down to a more traditional "developed" campsite near the lake itself. We built a campfire, made tea, had Indian food (Tasty Bites) and a glass of wine, and settled in. Had to search the campsite (fruitlessly) for Melina's stuffed kitty, which she is suddenly attached to; hope to find it tomorrow. For now, campfire and moon shining on lake. Very cold, though--we will all sleep together in the tent tonight.

Llama Packing: Day 5

2008-08-29T22:10:00.000-07:00

Spent the day at Pine Lakes, exploring. Two other backpackers came through, but didn't stop. Wandered around granite rock garden landscape; Jeff swam in lake, jumping off high rock. Melina seemingly bent on self-destruction, climbing and jumping off large boulders. Uneventful, yet pleasant--though I was a little grumpy, mostly because I was dreading the exposed and steep climb out. Tomorrow we rise at 6:30 a.m. (!) for our 7.5-mile hike back to the car.

Llama Packing: Day 6

2008-08-29T22:08:00.000-07:00

Woke at 7:00. Due to our newly acquired organizational abilities, we left camp at 10 a.m., a minor miracle. It took us about an hour to crawl out of Pine Lakes basin (including time for me to have a few small panic attacks on the trail). Then for four hours we descended from the pass, stopped at a roaring spring for water (unfiltered), ate lunch in a cow-infested pine stand in the meadow, and traversed the last hill before descending to the trailhead. We arrived at 3:20. Raz met us with the truck (we had called him from a high point on the trail). We said goodbye to our trusty llamas (who didn't exactly seem heartbroken) and headed back to Baker City. With my gift certificate (see June travelogue) we got the Honeymoon Suite at the Geiser, which was a fantastic windfall after five days in the dust. Melina's bath water was nearly opaque, in part due to the laundering of her kitty, which was a dust sponge.

Ate at Barley Brown's brewpub in Baker City and replenished any calories we may have burned off.

Llama Packing: Day 7

2008-08-29T22:05:00.000-07:00

Breakfast at Mad Matilda's, ice cream at the local soda fountain (long promised to Melina), and then up I-84. Stopped at Emigrant Springs State Park (Melina: snake park? steak park?) and then continued on to the little town of Echo. Stopped for lunch at the Red ___ Deli (can't remember the exact name); Melina refused to eat anything healthy. By this time, getting road-weary and ready for home. Have driven this endless stretch of I-84 four times this year; starting to feel like a long-haul trucker. Cannot think of new stories to entertain Melina; must find new forms of automotive entertainment.

And there, exhausted, I end my story.

Llama packing: the movie

2008-08-15T21:14:00.000-07:00

Dolley

2008-08-06T23:23:00.000-07:00

Here's a photo of Dolley (this was supposed to be a video, but for some reason it didn't work!).

My berry crumble recipe

2008-08-05T23:01:00.000-07:00

I've had a lot of requests for this. It is fantastic on just about anything, and only takes about 10 minutes (plus baking) to make.

1 stick butter
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup regular or quick-cooking oats (not instant)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
Berries or fruit

Blend the first six ingredients, preferably with your hands. Put berries or fruit in an oblong baking pan. I usually use frozen berries. Drizzle fruit with honey; sprinkle with oatmeal mix. Cook at 350 for about 20 minutes (for frozen berries), or until crumble topping starts to brown.

This is from the Fanny Farmer cookbook (all except the honey!)

Impetigo

2008-08-05T22:01:00.000-07:00

Supposedly, Melina has impetigo this week. It manifests as a sort of scab near the mouth and nose. She had a runny nose for a while, and a scab formed under her nose. I thought it was just a scab, but she was turned away from preschool (much to her disappointment) and we went to the doctor yesterday, who confirmed that it was impetigo. Fortunately, it is easy to treat, and the scab has already cleared up. (She was allowed to go to preschool today, too). Honestly, I still think it was just a scab. But whatever. It is very contagious and it can be pretty nasty if it's left untreated, so if it was impetigo, I'd rather know before the backpacking trip later this week.

Miscellaneous adventures

2008-08-05T21:58:00.000-07:00

I haven't been posting much lately, but we've been busy. We've gone berry picking three times together this year (Melina went an extra time with her preschool); we've been swimming a lot; we went to the Oregon Country Fair (Melina's fourth time!); we've done some backpacking trips and lots of gardening and socializing and outdoor concerts. Right now we're getting ready for our next adventure - a llama packing trip to the Wallowas. I'm sure I'll have plenty to post about when we get back.

Denniphur and Deff

2008-08-05T21:52:00.000-07:00

Melina has suddenly started calling us by our first names. I swear she used my name 80 times today. It's one thing to constantly hear "mommy? mommy?" but another thing to hear your given name called out over and over, from every part of the house. With Jeff, she alternates between Da-da, Daddy, Dad, and Dzeff - with me it's usually Mommy, Mom, or Denniphur. I wonder if this is a typical phase? She's also started mimicking me saying "Jeh-eh-eff" when Jeff takes a turn too fast in the car or commits some similar act of foolishness. And yesterday at Trader Joe's she said "Mo-o-om, you NEVER let me have ANYTHING I want." I felt like I had a teenager on my hands.

Our Eastern Oregon trip (part I)

2008-07-08T21:22:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago we went on our first backpacking trip of the season, to Eastern Oregon. Normally we wouldn't go so early in the year, but Melina's preschool was on break so it was a good time. The weather turned out to be great (it was over 100 there a week later) and, apart from the ticks, a good time was had by all. Here's the trip report I wrote while we were on vacation.

Day I: Portland to Baker City

A five-hour drive broken up by a sub sandwich in the Dalles. Melina keeps up random conversation ("Is that boat sinking? Why are we going to the hotel this way? Is the hotel invisible?"). Jeff tries to explain the huge wind turbines we pass in the Eastern gorge. "Where did it go, on a big pole? Just like the car? Did it go up in the air? Is that how it's supposed to be, like that?"

Baker City: arrive at the Geiser Grand Hotel at 6:20. Motorcycle rally! Hundreds of Harleys and other motorcycles lined up in rows in the streets around the hotel. In the front, a stage with HELL'S CANYON RALLY in big letters, and a cheering crowd in black leather and skimpy teeshirts, horned helmets, skin-tight lace, and black German-style helmets. They're raffling off two pistols! Behind the hotel, a beer garden with another set of loudspeakers.

At first, we are freaked. When I made the reservation yesterday there was no mention of a biker rally. The lady at the desk tells us we can't get a refund because we made the reservation yesterday; I tell her we didn't know what we were getting into. We go up to see the room. The hotel is beautiful, a newly renovated turn-of-the-century (or earlier) gem with a second floor gallery looking down into the dining room; above, a stained glass ceiling. On the third floor, there are ghosts, but we get a room on the second floor that is well soundproofed, large and comfortable. After settling in (the staff is relieved) we go for a turn outside, checking out the characters and the bikes. Melina is a little scared of the motorcycles at first, but soon warms up. I want to take her photo with one of the scarier-looking bikes but I'm afraid of her tipping it over, with dire consequences. Actually, though, the crowd is well-mannered, mostly middle-aged couples with a few rough edges. Dinner is hot dogs and sauerkraut at a corner soda fountain. Melina is now completely wound up; as I write this I'm in the smoky library waiting for the all's-clear from Jeff, who is putting her to bed.

The next day: the night was not so bad. The stage behind the hotel closed around 11:00. People in the bar talked loudly until late, and smoke filtered in under the door, but the circumstances are unusual. Melina slept until 9:30-10:00 on the double bed; no major traumas. In the morning we packed and repacked and ate breakfast at Mad Matilda's coffeehouse. Excellent food and coffee!

Part II: North Fork John Day Wilderness

2008-07-08T21:15:00.000-07:00

On Saturday we drove up past the historic little towns of Sumpter and Granite, to the Granite Creek trailhead. This area was the center of goldmining activity for about 100 years and there are big piles of rocks left over from dredging activity, plus lots of dilapidated cabins and mining equipment scattered about.

The Granite Creek drainage was beautiful and parklike, with Ponderosa pines, huckleberry bushes and grasses. Granite Creek itself was swollen with snowmelt, and was more of a roaring river than a creek. The area is quite remote and unvisited at this time of year; we saw nobody on the trail, though there was one car at the trailhead. Unfortunately my ability to enjoy the setting was hampered by a) a wicked case of PMS; b) Melina's incessant whining; c) an [unfounded] fear of rattlesnakes; and eventually d) the fear of never finding a camping spot. We noted (after hiking several miles in) that our Sullivan guide did not show any camping icons on this trail. At the very lowest point, when we started bickering about whether to continue on or retreat three miles back to the trailhead (low blood sugar was setting in), I walked ahead. Suddenly I saw a big white Newfoundland dog bounding through the bushes - at least, that's what I thought, until I realized it was a blonde bear. It stopped about 100 feet away from me and looked at me; I stared back and waved frantically to Jeff to come see, but he was too far behind me. I yelled "bear!" as quietly as I could, which of course spooked the bear, who ran off at top speed, its huge blonde rump wobbling through the undergrowth. It truly was a blonde bear - yellow, darkening to brown at the ends. I had never seen a bear this close, except from a car. Luckily it seemed very wary of us and therefore less likely to raid our camp.

Immediately after, a white-tailed deer ran toward us (probably spooked by the bear), saw us, and headed away.

We found a flat space to camp at the tip of a bluff where the bear had disappeared. Coincidence? I think not.

Part III: North Fork John Day Wilderness, contd.

2008-07-08T21:10:00.000-07:00

On Monday, after a restless night where I worried about bears and falling trees, we decided to scout ahead on the trail. And wouldn't you know it, there was a *beautiful* campsite about 1/4 of a mile down the path. A large, grassy field; a sheltering tree; the convergence of two rollicking streams; the remains of a mining cabin; and even an old (but serviceable) outhouse. Little did we know, but it was also crawling, absolutely crawling, with ticks. (By the end, Melina and I were bitten by three ticks each, while Jeff got away with one; that's not counting the dozen or so we picked off before they could attach. Luckily they're not the kind that cause Lyme disease, though - just Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Which none of us have.)

Later that day we hiked further along the trail to the old Gutridge Mine. Melina was very excited about seeing the "scary mine," and we were all disappointed when it proved to be nothing but several large piles of rocks. Still, we did spend some time relaxing and playing along the river. That night I slept horribly, feeling ticks crawling everywhere. In the middle of the night Melina started coughing with a croupy, seal-like bark that made my blood run cold (visions of a midnight trek to the trailhead), but it was just a passing thing and never reappeared. (Did I mention that Melina got a cold on the first day of our vacation?)

On Tuesday we retreated from the ticks and headed to our Forest Service rental cabin, the Fremont Miner's Retreat at the old Fremont Powerhouse near Granite. Ironically (considering how remote we were), we had to rush out to the car and drive fast in order to find cell service so that we could call the Forest Service before 4:00 and get the combination to the cabin lock. I found a tick on me in the car; I asked the ranger about them and she said that if you want to avoid ticks, you pretty much have to stay in town.

Part IV: Fremont Miner's Retreat

2008-07-08T21:05:00.000-07:00

We spent Tuesday and Wednesday nights at the Fremont Miner's Retreat, a little bare-bones cabin in a settlement of about four other houses. There's a little pond ("Lake DePuddle"), a friendly ghost (in the house next to us), and an old electrical station that was used for mining operations. We went into the minimalist, ramshackle town of Granite for breakfast and had a good conversation with one of the locals, who told us all about bear and cougar sightings, trails, campsites, and how to mine for gold. On Wednesday we circumnavigated Olive Lake, which was more of a challenge than we expected because of the remaining snow and many downed trees. But all in all it was a mellow day, and finally a relaxing one.

On Thursday we left the cabin and had breakfast in the town of Sumpter. Afterward, we visited the Sumpter dredge, an impressive, gigantic contraption that was used to mine gold for several years. Later we checked in to the Geiser Grand Hotel again, getting the same room for a second night. (This time, we had a ghost sighting; see below). We took a walk to the park (where Melina had a bloody run-in with another girl, who hit her in the nose) and browsed through the very well equipped Baker City library.

Melina at Lake DePuddle

2008-07-08T21:04:00.000-07:00

Sumpter Dredge

2008-07-08T21:03:00.000-07:00

A ghost at the Geiser Grand

2008-07-08T21:01:00.000-07:00

Notice how the ghost does not appear in the mirror behind it!

Part V: North Fork Umatilla Wilderness

2008-07-08T21:00:00.000-07:00

On Friday we spent some time at Mad Matilda's Coffeehouse in Baker City (truly a first-class coffeehouse; they even roast their own beans). This Friday there were hundreds of cyclists in town for a stage race; I was surprised at all the goings-on in Baker City. It's a much more happenin' town than you would think.

After stocking up on chocolate, mints, and coffee beans, we headed north to the North Fork Umatilla wilderness. This is what I wrote that night:

Friday night, summer solstice, 9:05. Finally putting Melina to bed, completely punch-drunk. We are at a creekside campsite. It's still light enough to write by, plus I have a campfire going in front of me. Still quite warm.

The hike here was relatively brutal, despite being very level. Damage from the winter has not been repaired, so there was a lot of crawling over and around downed trees. Parts of the path were overgrown with itchy plants. Also, it was fairly warm and muggy, and the path never wavered from its straight, monotonous, claustrophobic route paralleling the left bank of the river (which was often too far away to see). There was so much dense greenery it is hard to believe that above us there are grassy plateaus.

Saw no wildlife, but many deer prints. No ticks and no mosquitoes!

Jeff ended up carrying Melina on his shoulders most of the way, because she toddles along so slowly and it was getting late. We figured our speed at 1.4 m.p.h., given waiting for Melina and climbing over/under/around downed trees. We passed one nice campsite at 2.7 miles, but it was too far from the creek, so we continued on and found a nice one 1.6 miles later. This is near the creek and has a nice firepit with a ton of firewood left by previous campers.

Saturday evening, 9:03. Slept horribly the previous night, for no apparent reason. Woke to cloudy skies, but we climbed up above the treeline onto the grassy hillsides, and our moods improved as the view grew more expansive. We hiked to a viewpoint at the end of Coyote Ridge. There were many wildflowers and much elk poop. Several small rain showers came and went; Melina fell asleep on Jeff's back during the first one and slept with Jeff's hat over her head. We saw one snake (a uniform brown) and a lizard or two, plus some interesting bugs; but no large wildlife. In camp, we are constantly serenaded by Swainson's thrushes.

Melina got busy cleaning the camp this morning. She found tufts of pine needles and used them to sweep rocks and dust off huckleberry leaves. She even cleaned our dishes in the river and wiped them off with a baby wipe.

On the hike, Jeff told Melina endless "one days"; I honor his fortitude.

------------------------

On Sunday we hiked out. This time it was sunny, and I was wearing long pants so I was immune to the itchy plants reaching out onto the trail. All in all, a much more pleasant hike. At one point, Melina dropped her orange Tigger somewhere, and I headed back to find it (meanwhile, Jeff had offered to buy her another one, which she readily agreed to). But Tigger was found lying by the side of the trail, and became the star of several One Days about mountain lions and monster cougars. After hiking out we treated ourselves to some gloppy iced coffee drinks in Pendleton and then zipped on home back to civilization and hot showers.

The next morning, I found a tick on my stomach!

Beetle on a flower

2008-07-08T20:59:00.000-07:00

Melina tidying the forest

2008-07-08T20:58:00.000-07:00

Mountain Woman and Melina (making a funny face)

2008-07-08T20:57:00.000-07:00

Strawberry flower

2008-07-08T20:56:00.000-07:00

Clarkia

2008-07-08T20:55:00.000-07:00

The Truly Bad Night

2008-06-12T21:08:00.000-07:00

Last weekend Jeff went off to a local zendo for a meditation retreat, leaving me alone at home with Melina for the weekend. It was the first weekend we had spent alone together, so I decided we should go down and visit the folks in Monmouth and head down to Corvallis and Eugene to catch up with some friends.

Well.

Things started going wrong the night before Jeff was due to leave. For some reason, Melina woke up three times during the night, and I was already pretty exhausted. We woke up around 7:30 and managed to get down to Monmouth and Corvallis without mishap, but I could tell Melina was getting overtired. She fell asleep in the car on the way back to Monmouth and slept until 5:00.

So, just in case you're not tuned into these things, these are the factors I had going against me from the beginning:

Da-da away. (Jeff usually puts Melina to bed).
Unusual sleeping arrangements.
Mom exhausted.
Excitement of seeing grandma and grandpa.
Late nap.
Generally overtired.
Just gave up the binky.
Going through a "difficult phase" of many tantrums.

I started the process of putting Melina down at 8:00 p.m. In retrospect, we should have stayed up and watched the late movie, because Melina was completely wired at 8:00. But I plowed through several books, laid Melina on my chest, turned out the light, and waited. No luck.

At 10:00 I had tried just about everything but the failsafe: driving her in the car. We got in the car and headed over to a gas station somewhere between Monmouth and Independence to fill the tank, since my car was running on fumes. Several gas stations were closed (I didn't know gas stations ever DID close), but I finally found one and filled up. And then my car wouldn't start. Instead, it whined several times; Melina declared that she didn't like that noise. The gas station attendant came over and tried to push the car so I could pop the clutch and start that way, but since we were in a level parking lot he couldn't get much speed and it didn't work. Another gas station attendant came over with her car and together they jumped my car. (I just had to jumpstart my car a few weeks back after Melina left the interior light on all day - she is growing very familiar with the sound of a failed battery).

After this I drove around in the country a bit and she was out pretty quickly. But driving in the country with a questionable battery is not very relaxing (and the country around Monmouth is very dark and sparsely populated), so I turned around and went back to my parents' house pretty quickly - probably too quickly. In retrospect.

I knew that the game was up when I laid Melina down on the bed and she asked for water. I had left her water bottle in the car, of course. Mom went and got her a glass of water, which I knew wasn't going to work for Melina. Melina promptly spilled it in the crib, then pitched a fit because the crib was wet.

Again, I tried laying down with her, calming her down, singing, the whole works. By this time I was about to lose it myself. After about half an hour I decided to try the car again. This time we went for a longer drive, and Melina was completely sacked out when I came home and put her on the bed (the crib was still wet).

My friend Becky has a term - "rotisserie baby" - for what it's like to sleep next to a toddler, especially in a double bed. For the next two or three hours, I laid awake, alternately trying to keep Melina from falling off the bed and trying to keep from being pummeled by her feet. Around 2:30 I tried to pick her up and put her in the crib. And she woke up.

This time, all hell broke loose. It was a full-on tantrum, and I was beyond the end of my rope. In the end, I had to cave in and ask my mom to help, and hover outside the bedroom while Melina screamed within. It was one of those cases where nothing but "crying it out" was going to work, and I didn't have the mental fortitude to do it myself. My mom grimly and efficiently sat next to the porta-crib observing Melina's rising and falling levels of hysteria. Finally, finally, finally, Melina went to sleep. (Thanks, mom). I laid on the couch, still wired, until sunrise; at around 5:00 a.m. Melina hopped out of the crib and padded out to find me laying on the couch. I brought her back to bed and thankfully we both managed to fall asleep for a few hours.

It wasn't quite over the next day; I cancelled my plans to go to Eugene and decided to head home instead. On the drive home Melina screamed bloody murder from Salem to Wilsonville, until I finally pulled over because I was afraid I was going to ram someone's car out of frustration. I calmed Melina down in a motel parking lot and she promptly fell asleep when we took off again. She napped for an hour and a half and then had another screaming tantrum when she woke up.

Oh, and did I mention Jeff was a at a *meditation* retreat?

Given the previous 24 hours, I was dreading Saturday night's entertainment. To my surprise, Melina fell asleep easily after the usual routine and didn't wake up once during the night. She slept perfectly, and has slept perfectly ever since. We are all sane again. Thank God.

Bye-bye binky

2008-06-12T20:42:00.000-07:00

The binky is dead. Long live the binky!

A few weeks ago (a few weeks after Melina's third birthday), the Binky Fairy came and took Melina's binkies away, leaving a few nice gifts in return. (After many weeks of predicting the Binky Fairy's visit, we solemnly rounded them up, put them in a brass teapot, and left the teapot on the porch. In the morning, two Thomas train engines and a purple bouncy-balloon had miraculously appeared). The binkies themselves will take a nice vacation before being assigned to new babies around the world.

Melina took the transition surprisingly well. I was dreading it with most of my being, but there was only one bad night (unless you count the Bad Night several weeks later, which I will write about in a minute). Melina was sad on and off for about 24 hours; after that she squared herself to the new reality and marched on in her inimitable Melina way.

By the way, part of the impetus for this transition was a trip to the Dentist, who seemed irritated that we had allowed Melina to keep the binky so long. He pointed out how her mouth was being deformed and assured us we would need orthodontic work. (Other than that, the first real dentist visit was a walk in the park!).

Despite the Binky Fairy's thorough efforts to round up all the binkies in the house, I found one on my bedside table about two weeks later and found the all-time favorite "lellow" binky on the kitchen counter yesterday. I have no idea where it came from, but luckily I found them before Melina did.

Now if I could only get her to fall asleep in the car....

Ski girl

2008-05-22T21:16:00.000-07:00

Here's a photo of Melina from our last ski trip. I like her look in this photo - she looks so confident and direct.

Tulips

2008-05-22T21:05:00.000-07:00

I just really like this photo I took a few weeks back. It reminds me of an old Dutch painting.

Recent activity on Mt. St. Helens

2008-05-20T21:15:00.001-07:00

I just found this video and thought it was pretty incredible. They say Mt. St. Helens could rebuild itself within 100 years or so, and this makes it believable.

Melina and Obama

2008-05-20T21:02:00.001-07:00

I have been pretty much obsessed with the election lately and have dragged Melina along kicking and screaming (sometimes). Jeff has resisted my efforts, though he did commit to being an observer at a polling place with me tonight (more on that later).

On Sunday we went to the Obama rally in waterfront park, despite a wicked, wicked cold. To this day I don't know how I managed to rally myself, because I still feel under the weather. Anyway, Jeff went for a bike ride (it was a beautiful day) so Melina and I got on the bus and headed downtown. Apparently the line to get in was about 22 blocks long, but we rather dishonestly snuck in where it crossed a street (I had no idea where the end was). I figured that since I had waited in line to see Obama before, and had been turned away a foot from the door, I was entitled.

Once we got in, a kind volunteer directed us to a spot in the shade (because Melina was with me). (We were under the tree to the right in the picture above). Since we were there for about two hours, we got to know our neighbors pretty well: a friendly and interesting parenting educator who saved our spot while we waited for an hour to use the porta-potty; a troubled parent with a poorly disciplined preschooler who kept throwing plastic bottles into the crowd; and a tightly-wound young woman, apparently not a mom, who was obsessed with the troubled parent's misguided attempts to disipline her child, and who spent more time staring angrily at the mom than actually watching Obama. It would have been just SO interesting to get the three of them together to talk, although I don't know if I really would have wanted to be there.

Finally, Obama came to the podium (just as Melina was falling asleep in the Ergo on my back). The noise of the crowd cheering woke her up. It was so inspiring to see Obama and his family up there. It really was moving to see an African-American family (oh, can I just say "black"?) and know that they could (probably WILL) be the First Family come January. Let us hope.

The speech itself was the standard stump speech, and I don't remember most of it, but just the fact that we were there was significant. I don't know if Melina actually ever SAW Obama; I tried to point him out to her, but I don't think she quite got it, given that there were several thousand people between him and us.

So today we had another adventure in democracy. I volunteered to go over and be an "observer" at a polling place, specifically the Hollywood Library. Since Oregon votes by mail, polling places really aren't that exciting, but someone has to make sure the box stays there until 8:00 p.m. I went over with Molly and Melina; Jeff was going to meet me there when he got off work. Turns out that observers from campaigns must stay 100 feet (or 50 feet, I heard later) away from the ballot box, which means that I would have been across the street and unable even to SEE the box. I called HQ, who said I might as well go home until later that evening. After telling Jeff there was a chance I might be arrested (in my dreams), I returned to the library at 7:30 ingeniously disguised as a common citizen. In that persona I managed to sneak my way in, past the only library employee who knew my real identity, and pretend to peruse the children's literature (I even checked out three books just for effect), while glancing at the ballot box occasionally. Apparently I was the only observer there, although other polling places had up to four observers. At 8:00 they closed the polling place and I was able to confirm that democracy had been sufficiently safeguarded.

Throughout this whole election cycle, Melina has been more and more into Obama. Actually, I think she just likes the way his name sounds, and I suspect she thinks any black man is Barack Obama. She's always asking for stories about Barack Obama (one day about Barackobama?). They usually have something to with Obama battling a scary monster or going down the slide at the park. I have been trying to educate her about Hilary, too, but Obama is more fun to say.