It has been a long time since I’ve been cycling in Holland. And yes, I do get tired of all the posts about how awesome urban bicycling is there and how it pretty much stinks everywhere else (except Portland). The only problem I recall with this design when I experienced in Amsterdam was actually as a pedestrian— there are so many bicyclists that it was often hard to get across the bike lane to cross the street!

I am often in bicycle lanes throughout Seattle. Over the last several years, after another right-hand turn fatality, many of the crossing are getting a splash of paint. It’s meager for sure, but what I’d also like to see is some ticketing for cars that cross or park in this zone. It’s often safer to ride in the street, and cars don’t get this, than in the bike lane,s if there’s a lot of parking going on, UPS deliveries, and bus stops. It doesn’t help that we have many types of bike lanes in different parts of the street (2nd Avenue! What a mess!) Until we start to get serious about more dedicated bike lanes —and we’re not going to get folks really riding in numbers that build sustainability until we have them— we ought to be enforcing the idea that bicycles have a right to the road.

I’ve never been a regular here, stopping by only when I’m feeling a bit worn down while running errands on this edge of Capitol Hill. But if I had to pick who makes the strongest coffee in Seattle, it would have to be Bauhaus. One cup, I’m high. Two cups, I am dangerous.

Big windows, a great corner for people watching and chairs outside when the weather is nice, and a view of the Space Needle that I never remember until I am sitting in there.

Ours has been a fairly fast growing shrub, adding over a foot a year. It’s got a lovely branching shape, a short intense burst of white spring flowers, edible summer fruit and then vibrant fall color. In our garden, there is always something a bit more eye-catching happening, maybe the bright yellow daffodils catch your eye first or you find yourself like the bees drawn to the late asters, but tucked out in back, the Serviceberry goes about it’s four-season work as one of my favorite plants in the garden.

I was sitting in the office a few nights ago when I heard a strange sound. If I’d been watching a movie or listening to the radio, I would have missed it. As I’d just moved the rabbits back outside together, I thought perhaps they hadn’t bonded at all and were fighting. As I reached the kitchen door, I could see they were fine, but then I remembered: I’d let the chickens out and had forgotten about them.

I grabbed a flashlight and headed back to their open run. Three chickens were sitting on the coop, two were missing. I could hear a struggle. When I rounded the corner of the run, I was startled to see little Dietrich in the mouth of the largest raccoon I’ve ever seen. The raccoon was trying to climb out of the run with the dying chicken held firm in it’s mouth. The only way out though was to get past me and back out the open door. I didn’t want to get into a cage fight with a hungry raccoon.

With one hand on a waving flashlight, I scooped up the other frightened chickens and stuffed them in their coop, quickly latched them in and then backed out of the run. Where was Anastaisa? I could hear her faintly and assumed that another raccoon or two were getting ready to feast on the other side of the fence. I walked around the block, peaked in yards as I could, but there was no sign of her. By the time I got back, Dietrich was dead, the culprit was in the tree watching me, and I was still missing a chicken.

Dietrich started our chicken flock two years ago. I’d seen a picture of Silver-Spangled Hamburg in the book, The Fairest Fowl, and was completely smitten with it’s large black and white polka dots. When the list of breeds came out in the that spring, there was only one shipment with these little “Pheasant” chickens in, so that’s the day we went to get our chickens. I picked up her limp body, her beautiful feathers now smeared with blood and mud, and with great regret at my forgetfulness, walked over to the yard waste container. It was then I finally found Anastaisa, trying to hide under the deck. Anastaisa was never as clever or as skittish at Dietrich, so it was easy to scoop up the frighted bird and get her back into her home with the others.

When our neighbor heard of the Night of the Marauding Raccoons, she offered us one of her chickens as they’d bought too many in the spring, when the chicks are irresistible and tiny. Beatrice is a Buff Brahma, a large breed known for being gentle, good egg-layers with distinctive feathers on their feet. She now at the very bottom of the pecking order, with Bland Ambition, our other Buff Brahma and former bottom girl, being particularly thuggish. Of course, those two lowly hens are the biggest chickens we have and they could easily push around the other three if they only paired up. Ah! But then I don’t think like a chicken!

When the tsunami comes, Ocean Shores will be swept away, there can’t be a piece on it more than five feet above sea level. But if you’re lucky, you might well be staying on the fourth floor like we did at the Shilo Inn. It was a Thursday in the off-season, completely empty and my pal Lisa and I enjoyed the steam room, suana and jacuzzi in peaceful quiet. I would imagine that this would have been nearly unusable in the summer if you have an allergy to listening to screeching kids in a concrete bunker like I do.

We had an excellent breakfast at Our Place before driving around in a torrential downpour. It was too bad because I do enjoy looking for birds at the Oyhut Wildlife Area with its view across the bay toward Westport. I picked up some oysters for stew at Lytle Oysters and some razor clams to fry. We did a bit of thrifting in Hoquium and tried waiting out the storm. Finally, we had a stop and walkabout in Olympia, where we had decent hamburgers at Cascade and looked at comic books.

It had been years since I’d been to Ocean Shores. We normally head south at Aberdeen to the quieter beach at Grayland. As we were driving away though, I was already thinking that I’d gladly come back for a night or two on my own later in the winter to take advantage of the quite “spa”, off-season prices and lack of crowds.

Untitled Painting from Ed's Bauwerke Series

FINAL WEEKEND! GO NOW!

Ed Lisieski has a fondness for the war box, the ranch home, the simple shapes that defined post-war housing. I have written about Ed Lisieski’s paintings before here and here, but this latest hanging shows a dark departure from the previous work. Gone is the humor and the lightness to work, now replaced with distinct melancholy of impermanence.

As a show it’s not deep (enough), and I’d have liked very much to see more examples of his work as Bauwerke shows an artist emeshed in process: there are the buildings, the bones, and then the ghost of them. In a larger show, we might better understand the how the artist paints through the form, seeking the best representation of “house” or “home”, but alas, in this small set of paintings all we grasp at is that the artist has been fundamentally changing the way he has been painting and exploring the same object for well on a decade.

I would suggest that in this small sample, we’re witnessing is perhaps the end of the form for Ed. It’s not clear where he might take it next. He worked in constructions, in bright palettes, and in this show, we’re looking at lines, structure and finally erasure. It’s lovely stuff and his material is as rightly jagged as ever.

This is the first show where I was vastly stuck by the difference in luminance between the show poster and the actual work. Perhaps it has taken many years longer than other lookers, but the truth is now I am most used to seeing work through my monitor and with this work, done in blacks, is much duller and contains a different type of question (burnt), than how it represents on the screen, it’s blacks glowing, rich, and deep. This wasn’t high contrast work in person and in that light. What I am struggling with is that it was fundamentally very different in person, so that where I was expecting drama, I got conversation.

Go see them:

Caffe Ladro
108 Union Street
Seattle, WA 98101

Rosa Rugosa Rose Hips

On our recent bike ride to Harbor Island, our last stop was at the Port of Seattle’s Terminal 18 Park. It’s a narrow strip of waterfront access, perfect for watching the barges head under the West Seattle Bridge. It is also landscaped in Rose Rugosa, a rugged shrub that I know as “Beach Rose”.

Vic was entranced with its large and eye-popping fruit.

“What are these?” “Rose hips”, I told him. “Like in tea?” “Well, not exactly…”

Many of the bike trails in Seattle are lined with Rugosa, and while I’ve often thought of using them for something, I had never gotten around to actually doing it. With Vic standing there and excited to eat them, we quickly harvested several pounds and brought them home.

Cleaning the Rose Hips

It’s unlike anything I’ve ever tasted. It’s got a slight citrus punch to it, but imagine, if you will, being combined with flavor of licking the outside of a ripe nectarine, but not actually taking a bite. It’s fruity and yet delicate. It’s not floral at all. Ending up with only six jars, it’s likely that I won’t be giving it away. It’s that good.

First Time Using New Cuisipro Food Mill

8 pounds of rose hips
Water to cover rose hips in a big pot
Sugar equal to the amount of juice you get
Juice from 2 Lemons
Pectin: optional

Clean the rose hips, breaking off the stem and old withered flower bits. If your rose hips appear to have any holes on them, you ought to be slicing them open and looking for worms. One batch I gathered were infested with that damn’ed coddling moth I think! Throw out any bruised or otherwise nasty pieces or feed them to your chickens. You will notice that the Rugosa hips are mainly seed and thistle (which is why you need so much!), but don’t try to clean out the seeds!

Instead, once you’ve got clean fruit put it in a large pan, cover with water. Bring to boil on medium heat and then simmer until the roses are cooked. This ought to take about an hour.

I then left the pot in the fridge for two nights with all the hips soaking because I got busy with other things. You could do this with no harm done, or just proceed to the next task!

Press the rose hips through a food mill to get a first pass at all those seeds. Once you’ve got your pulp extracted, hang it in a jelly bag undisturbed for several hours to get your liquid. It will be a pale orange color. Resist the urge to squeeze that jelly bag. It will cloud your liquid.

Now we’re on to jelly making! In a large pot, combine the juice (I got about about six cups of juice) and an equal measure of sugar and the juice of the two lemons. Bring to a boil that won’t stir down and then cook until you get to jell phase. I finally bought a thermometer to check when I get to 240, but it doesn’t work with my pot, especially for a small batch of jelly! Drats! So I use the cold plate test once I think the stuff is getting there. Still my jelly turned out less jelled and more like honey, but heck, that just gives it a different allure.

If you were going to use pectin, I would recommend the liquid pectin and I would bring to boil, boil for a minute, add the pectin, bring back to a boil for another minute and then call it good.

Now all that’s left is to get it into your clean hot jars and put it in the water bath for 10 minutes.

Rose Hip Jelly and Tea out in the Garden

My new friend looking for night vision grew suddenly shy when I asked about school. “Next year,” her dad said. And then they wandered off to find that bright moon, and in the distance, I could hear her, “There it is!”

I own a domain called, “www.everydayadventurer.com”. I was thinking about this quite a bit this weekend as I have a good friend on a junket in Zanzibar. I’m not going on junkets because I am too lazy and don’t want to live in Twitter. And I am too lazy. I’ve never turned on “Everyday Adventurer” as it’s hard to make every day an adventure, though it’s what I apsire to…a thankfulness that every day has something to grasp and call “adventure.”

This weekend was more aspirational that adventurous. There were no zebras, no need to improvise funny sign language, no life changing revelations. It’s a mere eighteen miles from the ferry dock at Bremerton to Scenic Beach State Park on the far side of the Kitsap Peninsula. But I’d never Seabeck, have rarely even bothered to go to Bremerton, and adventure is what you make it.

In less that thirty hours, we managed to learn what it takes to have a mobile bakery from the fine folks of Loaf & Round Bakery, get the best camping spot at Scenic Beach State Park thanks to Ranger Steve, do some meditation, eat some dangerous cheese, pull my back, wake up to deer nibbling the grass near your feet, eat a good sandwich, and break my bike. That is my friends, is adventure. And while I wish I could honestly say, “It’s an everyday adventure”, it’s adventure close to home and doable for folks in moderate health and stout hearts.

Scenic Beach State Campground
9565 Scenic Beach Road NW
Seabeck, WA 98380

Reservations are needed in the summer: (888) 226-7688 or https://secure.camis.com/WA/ScenicBeachStatePark
Open year round. Bike/Hike site is evidently a mess, but the rangers put us in a day use spot with a view of the beach that was AWESOME! Thanks!

Crab Apple Jelly

I can’t think of a more old-fashioned jelly than crab apple. It’s got a certain foraged allure, never mind that people used to plant crab apples to harvest them. These days, it just seems like an after thought, doesn’t it? A few blocks from me, an entire block is planted in these trees with almost all of the fruit rotting.

I wouldn’t have gotten around to making this, except that a woman that I met in our foraging class was kind enough to bring me a bag that she had picked.

Crab apple jelly is very easy to make. But if you’re in Seattle, you need to know about two pests that might be in your crab apples: the coddling moth and the apple maggot. These pests also show up in our local apples, pears, and I even think that damned moth is in my plum. It is easier to notice the coddling moth as the larvae bites a hole into the apple and then burrows into the center pips, leaving a trail of poo, usually in the bottom of the fruit. You can easily cut around a coddling moth and the bad fruit. The apple maggot tunnels throughout the fruit, and when you cut it open, it will look like a crazy network of brown varicose veins. If you’ve got apple maggots, there’s nothing to do but give the fruit to your chickens.

My crab apples had both of these pests, so by the time I cleaned the eight pounds of fruit I had, I was left with only 2 1/2 pounds of fruit to cook. That’s a terrible ratio, but probably the nature of using foraged street fruit. The result was certainly worth the effort and I’m inviting you to come eat crumpets with me before our garden goes to bed.

Here’s our forage tour leader’s recipe:

J.T.’s Crabapple Jelly

1. Gather crabapples.

I like to gather a lot, enough to fill my big stockpot. If I’m going to
make jelly I want more than a couple of jars! This year we gathered 8
3/4 lbs. of crabapples.

2. Rinse crabapples. Cut them in halves or quarters, putting the cut-up
apples in your jelly pot. Discard soft or wormy pieces.

I do not destem or deseed the crabapples.

3. Fill pot with water just to the level of the top of the fruit. Cook
uncovered until crabapples can be pierced with a fork.

4. Strain juice through jelly bags. Pour juice into clean jelly pot.

5. Bring juice to boil. Add scant cup of sugar per cup of of juice.
You can use up to a cup of sugar per cup of juice, but I like a tarter
jelly.

6. Simmer until jell point is reached. With the amount of juice I use,
this takes a couple of hours. If you have a small batch, it could jell
in less than half an hour.

7. Place into hot sterilized jars and seal.

8. Enjoy your beautiful jelly!

Take care,

J.T.

Here’s the basics, so you can organize your own.

1. Picnic organizers invite people they know to be table captains. They work to find a proper “secret” location (and with 250 people at this small gathering, that takes coordination with the city). They find a band. They get some sparklers. They establish the rules: dress in white, be fancy.
2. Table captains organize tables of six, eight, twelve, whatever. The tough bit is finding your pals who are truly going to play the game: no mean feat, in a casual city like Seattle, where folks often have a tough time managing simple costume parties. They get the table ready, and establish the menu for the table.
3. The organizers then tell the table captains, an hour before the picnic, where it’s going to be. The table captains swing into gear to get their table there and set up on time.
4. Table is set and at 7 pm, the assembled diners wave their white napkins in the air, not in defeat, but in a grand gesture of joie de vivre!
5. The picnic commences, the champagne is sipped discretely, until a set time when the sparklers are lit to signify the dancing has begun and dinner is complete.

Here’s what the dinner in Paris looked like and here’s a link to the New York Times’ article on organizing one in New York City.

I don’t know about you, but who needs the fancy Louve or Notre Dame? Seattle’s was awesome! Thank you Lieberman-Cohens and all the folks we supped with.

Hot Pepper Jam & Ginger Pepper Marmalade

My bike riding pal Larry dropped me a note last week to see if I’d spend the morning with him showing how to make jelly. “I haven’t killed anyone yet!”, I cheerfully told Larry when he arrived. This was meant to assure him.

Canning is scary. There are times when I open the pantry and think to myself, “How long has that been in there?” or look closely at a jar and wonder, “Is this how this should look?” I just had batch of Green Apple Syrup that I threw out as it seemed that is was getting cloudier, not a good sign and not worth the risk. However, it was worth the exploration.

The basics for canning are pretty simple: keep it clean, keep it organized, and clean some more. You don’t need anything fancy to do it, just a box of jars and a couple pots, one to make the jam and one to boil jars in. There are tools you can buy like funnels and jar tongs that make canning easier, but if you’re just trying it out for the first time, you’ve likely got everything you need.

Larry had a plan to recreate a hot pepper jelly he used to buy for sandwiches years ago in Ellensburg. Pepper Jelly is a great first jelly to make because it is very quick to prepare. To find a recipe, he first turned to the Queen of White Trash Cooking, Paula Dean, and then branched out to some other recipes found on the net. I encouraged him to bring the ingredients that would make it taste like the stuff he had in Ellensburg, so instead of lemons he brought limes and he brought some cilantro, though I had my doubts, because it was in the jars he loved long ago.

I’m no master canner and I can be a vague task-master presenting three different options for how to do one simple thing. In canning, like life, there are many ways to do a right thing that will get you to similar outcome. If you ever invite yourself over to make some jam, I hope you leave my kitchen with a few pretty jars and a big boost of kitchen confidence.

Larry ladling jelly into jars

Larry’s Recipe for for Hot Pepper Jelly (based on this one)

12 Jalapeno peppers only 1 w/seeds
2 orange bell peppers
1 1/2 cup vinegar (more if needed for taste)
6 cups sugar (adjust to taste)
1/3 cup lime juice
4 oz. Certo pectin
1 bunch finally chopped cilantro

Place chiles and peppers in food processor until finely chopped and starting to puree. The puree will give your jam the color, the chop gives your jam pretty flecks floating in it: get the balance you want! Combine the puree and vineagar and bring to a boil. Boil rapidly for 10 minutes stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and stir in sugar and lime juice. Return to heat, bring to boil again, stir in the pectin and boil again, stirring constantly for 1 minute. Quickly add the finely chopped cilanto. Bottle in sterilized jars. Give them a water bath of 10 minutes. Makes 10 half-pints jars.

Knox’s Ginger Pepper Marmalade (based on a Ginger Marmalade recipe found in Helen Whitty’s “Fancy Pantry”)

1/2 pound Young Ginger (it’s seasonal, found right now at Uwajimaya)
1 pound Hungarian Wax Peppers
6 cups water
1/2 cup lime juice
Zest from a couple of the limes
4 cups sugar
1/2 pouch Cetro liquid pectin

Young ginger is tender and has not developed the tough brown skin of the regular ginger you are likely familiar with. Look for it in the refrigerated section of an Asian market. Typically, it’s only available in the late summer for a few months. As far as the pepper, I chose the pale sweet Hungarian wax peppers for just a slight kick and to make sure my jelly would still be a pale gold color. You could use whatever peppers you prefer.

Stirring the Ginger Pepper Marmalade

Start by scraping the thin skin of the ginger. Slice or grate into thin strips. Quarter and seed the peppers and again, slice into paper thin strips. Put the ginger and peppers into a heavy pot, add the water and bring to boil. Cover and bring to a simmer for 1 1/2 hour, until the ginger and peppers are translucent and tender.

Scoop out the ginger and pepper shreds and add enough of the liquid to get three cups. Any extra liquid you have (and you will likely have some) can be mixed with a bit of sugar and water to drink. Larry was drinking it up as a cold remedy. You could freeze it for later if you don’t have a cold the day you’re making jam.

Add the measured ginger, lime juice, lime zest and sugar to a heavy pot. Bring to a hard boil over medium high heat for 1 minute. Stir in the pectin and return to a boil. If you use a full bag of Certo pectin, you will get a very stiff marmalade. If you like your jelly a little softer (I do!), then don’t use the whole bag.

Put into your clean, hot jars and process in a water bath for 15 minutes.

 

We were out to take a look at “DEAD: Unearthing the Shift in Funerary Practices from Home to Mortuary” at the White River Valley Museum that I’d read about in the Seattle Times. It caught my eye, as I’ve got a thing with gravestones and we’ve all got a date we won’t miss.

We rode out the Interurban as the much more pleasing Green River Trail is still destroyed with flood barriers. The Interurban is a straight shot down the center of the industrial warehouses and office parks of the Kent Valley. Low on scenery, but high on speed, it’s the fastest way I can think of for getting out of town on a bicycle.

The exhibit at the White River Valley Museum was small, and I’d not read the description close enough to understand that it was primarily on the rising trade of morticians. Still, they have several beautiful objects, like the removal baskets and an early embalming table from Moses Lake. The written content for the show was informative. The rest of the museum is set up with small historical replicas of downtown Auburn with store fronts, a caboose, and an cabin from the Valley’s early settlers. We were there over an hour and all found something new and compelling to chat about over beer. Of course, I should mention that the old ladies at the museum weren’t giving us beer… for that we turned to the “Spunky Monkey”, a sports bar within walking distance of the train station.

The White River Valley Museum
918 H Street Southeast
Auburn, WA 98002-6112
(253) 288-7433

Sweet smelling garlic chives

Joe Porter had a walker and wore a baseball cap. During the warmer months, he’d make a circuit of our neighborhood leaving the nursing home on the corner of Dearborn and MLK, heading up 26th to the Walgreens and then coming back down 25th. He usually had a small bag from Walgreens when he passed our house and a flower in his shirt pocket. I often crossed his path heading to the bus and he usually pretended not to be resting. This journey must have taken him several hours. Most people could do it in less than twenty minutes if they weren’t browsing too long in the drugstore.

He was hard to miss, but I guess I started paying closer attention to him when he started yanking flowers out of my front yard. It solved the mystery of how freshly planted violas were uprooted and why the front of our busy garden often seemed grazed. Earlier this spring I watched him snap off our neighbor’s only rose and attack with gusto a huge branch of a rhododendron down the street.

I have plenty of flowers. A couple years ago, I was cleaning up some crazy catmint and thought to myself, “I ought to take that old plant-stealing dude some of these instead of putting them in the compost.” So I made a huge, wild bouquet and walked it over. I didn’t know his name, but when I explained about the walker and the flowers, everyone there knew exactly who I was talking about. “That’s Joe Porter. He is always bringing flowers to his wife.” Turns out he and his wife shared a room in the nursing home and that she was too frail to go outside.

Today, I am making garlic chive oil. You don’t use the flowers for that as they’ve got very stiff stalks, so I made another bouquet for Joe and his wife with a few dahlias, salvia, grasses, black-eyed susans. I hadn’t seen Joe around the last couple months, but I’ve also been busy.

When I gave the flowers to the receptionist, she got a worried look on her face and then I knew. Joe Porter died.
“How is his wife?”, I asked.
“She is fine.”
“Could you just send these up to her then?”

I don’t know anything else about Joe Porter. I never made a point to say more than hello to him and I don’t know if he ever could tell, based on the flowers in our yard, that it was me bringing him flowers. I’ve never seen his wife who is upstairs somewhere. Sometimes, I think I ought to make a point to say hello and stay for a visit, but most of the time, I think maybe it’s nicer that some random flowers just show up now and again. I don’t know. It’s a puzzle I’ve not solved.

Sissy, Our Diabetic Hamster Eating Broccoli

This Christmas, that dream became reality and I became the surprised and sudden new papa to a dwarf hamster named Elizabeth.

In the eight months since Christmas, Elizabeth has become middle-aged. She no longer runs on her wheel all night, but instead takes short naps or cracks seeds between jaunts on it. About two months ago, it seemed that she was peeing a bit more and often up in the daytime drinking. Now, it’s a torrent of piss and she’s on a jag for her water bottle. It’s not likely we could leave her for three days without her running out of water. She is also a moody bitch and much more likely to bite you than do other hamsterish-things like wriggle about to escape your grasp.

Still reeling from the Pops vet episode, I turned to the Internets for wisdom. Turns out she has all the classic signs for diabetes which is common in these Campbell River Russian hamsters. The other day, I was biking by the small animal vet and stopped in for a quick chat. While they recommended I bring her in and get her tested (that would cost about $100), they did give me a bit of plan to get her into old age, maybe three or four months from now!

These dwarf hamsters are very cute, but they are also nocturnally busy animals, quite smelly, and not particularly nice since they are more wild than domestic. Throw in a predisposition to a disease that makes them even more smelly and moody and I can’t recommend these as pets. It’s just too sad to already be thinking of (and even a bit hopeful for) the day when I come into the office and find that I need to make a little coffin and plan a funeral in the garden.