Life's a Stitch

I remember these feelings of the initial stages of grief from when my dad died when I was 16. It was a monumental event, but the world around us didn’t stop.  Our family was consumed in a vacuum of grief while the rest of the world continued on. Noises seemed louder, traffic quicker. Loss takes a lot of energy and moving through it can feel like wading through grey jello. 

This week we found comfort in a simple task – berry picking. It’s blackberry time in the Pacific Northwest. They’re sweet and juicy and the air is scented with fruit fermenting on the vine. I find their flavour heavenly, but the seeds annoying. Our solution is an amazingly simple seedless jam, made of three ingredients: berries, sugar and lemon juice. 

Naturally high in pectin, blackberries gel beautifully using a ratio of  under .25:1 sugar to fruit. I’ve seen pectin added recipes that require a 1:1 ratio of sugar and fruit. This recipe produces a burst of fruit flavour in a deep amethyst coloured seedless jam.

Five pounds of berry goodness:

made five cups of delicious jam:

Simple Seedless Blackberry Jam

5 lbs blackberries

3 C sugar

juice of one lemon

1. Sprinkle the sugar over the berries and let sit in the refrigerator over night.
2. Prior to cooking, sterilize five 8oz jam jars.
3. Heat berries in Dutch oven until hot and soft.
4. Remove seeds by mashing through a metal strainer or using a food mill with holes small enough to trap the seeds. We also squished the leftover pulp through a fine cotton cloth.
5. Add the lemon juice to the strained liquid, bring to a gentle boil, and cook until thickened. This can take awhile, this batch cooked for at least 40 minutes. Use the sheeting test to determine when jam is done. It will continue to thicken once it’s in the jars.
6. Ladle into sterilized jars, cover with seals and rims, and process in boiling water for ten minutes. There are lots of online instructions for hot water bath canning. Don’t be intimidated, it’s easy and so worth it. I own no special equipment, using a large stew pot and veggie steamer basket for processing.

There’s  a lot to be said for comfort food.

Today we picked another seven pounds.

Though few of us old time bloggers are left, absences in posting leads remaining followers to imagine possibilities, tragic to amazing. In this case it is the former. 

Camping, 12 nights in a row, it’s my new record. You can teach this old dog new tricks. I’m enjoying it. There are a few things I didn’t like, as in one day of rain so heavy, we watched a mouse running from underneath one car to the next in WalMart parking lot, so as to avoid  getting drenched. And I could do without campsites that are nothing more than gravel parking lots, which only accounted for one night. Finally, abysmal traffic in Portland, OR, with no HOV lanes or public transportation from suburban communities.

There were far more highlights.  

Staying at the site next to Blogless Marsha and Dave, in their camping cabin at Dosewallips State Park in the Olympic Peninsula. It was there we saw a herd of 34+ elk, and a group of 18 bald eagles circling toward the shore.

Breathtaking Mount Saint Helens, from the observatory, on a clear day.

Being close to the ocean and indulging in halibut, crab cakes and pan fried clams.  

Walks in the woods, lots of opportunities for some Shirin Yoku of a couple of posts ago.  Woodworker C, was in his element, when by chance we pulled to the side of the road to eat lunch, and discovered the Burl Trail.

And the real highlight for me was the purpose of the trip. A four day course at the Oregon Society for Artists in Portland, with Lian Quan Zhen, the artist I studied with last year in Spokane. This class focussed on animals and landscapes. This heron is almost done.

It’s been great hiking weather in the Pacific Northwest, warm and sunny after some drenching rain, the perfect recipe for mushrooming. Two Sunday’s worth of walks in the woods produced fresh springtime Oyster Mushrooms.

These entwined trunks called for a painting. Might do this one larger. It’s a Sitka Spruce and a Cedar.

The biggest seasonal thrill was on the water as we watched  a pair of Grey Whales, right from our deck, two days in a row. They’ve been hanging out in our shallow bay on their way up the west coast. My neighbour, who has lived next door since the mid 90’s, said this is the first time she’s seen them. Turns out a major portion of their diet includes crustaceans and our local crab hit the spot. Maybe there are more available, after a section of our city’s pier was taken out by a major winter storm, and nobody’s able to crab from the dock.

The whales would not pose long enough for a photo while they were substantially above the water. But I managed to capture two fins.

I always knew a walk in the woods did something for me. Little did I know I was practicing the Japanese health tradition of Shinrin-yoku, forest bathing. This is an article from Time, that explains it well. It’s the one thing I miss from living in the rain forest, my almost daily forays onto the wooded trails. 

Living near salt water has it’s own therapeutic qualities. You can’t dwell on much else while watching whales so close to home. Granted it’s a rare event, but the ever changing sky and water are a feast for the eyes and soul for someone interested in colour and texture. There’s  probably already a Japanese term for walking by water.

Luckily there are parks and forests within a short distance, so thick as to form tree tunnels.

Here’s a tunnel of cherry blossoms, two blocks from home.

Last week, while walking the trails at Crescent Beach I saw this one:

It provided the perfect mix of passions: walking, forest bathing, tree tunnels and painting in my watercolour journal:

 

I thought retirement meant a more relaxed pace to accomplish the activities of daily life and extra time for the things you love to do. Problem is, my to-do list hasn’t retired and continues to grow daily, hence the title of this post. So here I am sneaking in a smidgen of blog time. 

An indication of busy-ness is the fact that’s it’s been a two pavlova month. One for Easter and the other, C’s standing request for his birthday cake. Two things you can count on in this family, Boston Cream Pie on my birthday and pavlova for his. The Easter one was huge. 

Here’s the recipe, so easy for such a decadent dessert.

Easter was packed with family time including four sessions of geocaching with my current recruit, grandson Rye.

Here’s Parker, demonstrating his three year old personality.

One more little travel journal painting, a combination of two photos I took in Suzhou, the Venice of China. Look carefully at the laundry on the left wall. It’s Chinese tradition, if this year on the Chinese Zodiac is the same as your birth year, you’re supposed to wear red underwear or socks throughout the year for good luck. One of our tour guides was born in the year of the pig, so we gifted him with autographed red undies. 

And I just finished a watercolour brush stroke class, where we learned to paint flowers to embellish cards and envelopes. It was calligraphy in watercolour. Not my usual style, but lots of fun and an opportunity to develop brush control.

In between the bills, taxes and insurance forms, there’s still plenty of time for the fun stuff.

Perplexing

So, why are there gas masks in hotel room closets? Someone in the group guessed their use was  for pollution. It’s smoggy, but not gas mask worthy. I thought maybe for protection in case of attack. You never know with the state of the world and China’s proximity to threatening regimes. The real answer? They are there to protect you in case of fire. 

Scary

Fire fighting methods on a river boat. It’s a good thing they furnish gas masks, better yet that the shore appeared to be within reasonable swimming distance.

Charming

Air China’s safety video features a friendly panda and upon landing, the flight attendants stand at the front of the cabin to thank passengers with a respectful bow. Nice touch.

Endearing

The giant pandas at the Chungqing Zoo’s panda research and conservation program. Just our group of 32 and the pandas made for a memorable experience.

Industrious

The Forbidden City was built, start to finish, in only 14 years. That’s 980 buildings covering 180 acres, built by over a million workers in the early 1400’s.

The Three Gorges damn, the world’s largest power plant in terms of output, required the systematic relocation of 1.25 million people. An entire city was built to house many of them.

Guess  that’s what happens in the absence of an elected government.

China’s entire super highway system has been built since 2000, 132,000 kilometres (nearly 80,000 miles) worth.

And what about that Great Wall? A military fortification, 21,000 kilometers (13,000 miles) long.

More to come…

What to do when faced with 27 hours of flying, a six hour train ride and four days on a river boat, all in a two week period? You need to know that I’m not a big travel sleeper nor watcher of TV or movies (especially Air China’s selections this trip), so those don’t appear on my to do list. This trip I packed a book, knitting, and my well travelled art supplies. These were completed….

On a train:

A boat:

And a plane:

Most meals, other than breakfast, were not included in our tour, but the two most memorable lunches were. 

The first was in a family’s courtyard house in a Hutong in Beijing’s old town. A Hutong is a maze of attached one level houses and courtyards, built hundreds of years ago. We squeezed into a living room/dining room wallpapered with family photos and were treated to a typical homecooked meal served family style. It started, oddly enough, with a bowl of Bugles (chips) and a kind of sweet pretzel, followed by chicken in garlic shoots, stir fried celery, chicken in onions, homemade pork and carrot dumplings, potatoes in soy sauce, pakora like veggie balls, and carrots and garlic, all delicious.

Afterwards the mother of the house taught us to make dumplings and the father sang. 

We always turned our noses up at organized tours, but this was done really well, and this experience was one we wouldn’t have found on our own. The sad end to the story is that the area is under consideration to become a Unesco World Heritage Site. If it doesn’t achieve that status it will be torn down to make way for modern towers. The residents lose either way. When areas become heritage sites  the people often can’t afford to bring their homes up to the standards required and are forced to leave.

The other memorable lunch was a hotpot experience in Chongqing  (pronounced Chong Ching).

Before:

After:

If you plan to visit China, it’s worth noting that beer, often very light beer, is the drink you’ll be served at meals, or you can have full sugared Coke or tea. No wine was available by the glass, except on the ship ($9), and a bottle was expensive. We bought several bottles of wine at convenience or grocery stores. Australian or Chilean wine, typically low priced in North America, cost about $20CDN. Great Wall Chinese wine came in a few different grades. The $10 one was ok, but light, with the exception of one bad bottle, which we determined was probably poorly stored.

Another favourite meal was when we had the opportunity to stop in one of Shanghai’s downstairs food courts. 

#1 Chicken feet, though not as appetizing to me as the ones my son made for my birthday last year, which were boiled, baked and deep fried to salty crispy nothingness.

Julie, our reluctant tourmate:

One blustery night I craved a bowl of laksa. When I saw the sign I knew I had found my soup. “The pork in Canada is Laksa.”

There are so many ways to approach the subject of food, it may have to be in two posts. I could do it by the meal: brekkie, snacks, lunch and dinner, by the odd signage translations, or unusual offerings. How about we start with breakfast and snacks.

Our accommodation, no matter luxury or basic, included wonderful breakfasts. All buffets, there were traditional western choices and a wide variety of local items: congee (rice porridge), noodles, stir fries, steam buns and pastries. An example:

The steam bun pictured was filled with delicious rich, eggy, coconut custard. Didn’t see those again after leaving Beijing. The absolutely best thing to pass these lips in China, possibly anywhere in the world, were these “Net Red Dirty Bags” in Hongzhou. 

It’s a croissant made of chocolate pastry, slathered with ganache, rolled in cocoa powder. Once the word got out, our group wiped out their supply. Sometimes called dirty bread, I am determined to find these in Vancouver.

Snacks. How about frog on a stick? Or fresh market frogs?

I’ve eaten frog legs in my past, and yes, they taste like chicken, but silk worm pupae don’t. 

I got brave and popped one in. They taste like dirty wood. I chewed and chewed then it struck me, I should just swallow and get it over with. So I did. Silk worm pupa? Been there, done that, don’t need to do it again.

Variations on the familiar, zoom in to read the flavours:

And the unfamiliar: