Life's a Stitch

Last week’s post was absent while we camped on the Oregon and Washington Coast, passing through places whose names conjure up tough times on the foggy, rocky sea: Dismal Nitch, Cape Disappointment, Heartbreak Trail, Deception Pass and a ray of hope at Never Give Up Road.

Geocaching at the 1906 wreck of the four masted Peter Iredale (Fort Stevens) was soggy:

But the mushrooming was fruitful:

Thats a King Bolete, more commonly known as a variety of Porcini. This week, here in BC, someone found one that weighed over six pounds! It was the size of a basketball.

What a great day – geocaching and mushrooming. It’s all about the thrill of the hunt for me, C is not a fan. He hates when I bring home mushrooms that get thrown out for lack of positive identification. I told him he’d hate it worse if he got sick on an unidentified fungus.

Camp cooking included chicken and cheese pupusas on the camp stove:

 And campfire pizza:

At another geocache it was my turn in a frying pan – the world’s largest cast iron skillet.

The last time we were there, Bryant was ten weeks old. We’re not waiting another 28 years to return and plans are in place for next year’s visit.

Time to give C some space for his creative retirement activity – garden art. Part of the fun is combing the beach for interesting wood and sifting through thrift at the local stores. This is a 65th birthday gift for his sister. The vase on the bottom can actually hold flowers:

Unfortunately his stash of unusual wood, stored tucked behind a board on the side of the house, was stolen during the finishing stages of the house.

Can’t forget treasures foraged from neighbourhood free piles combined with construction debris and dollar store buckets:

Not that I’m planning on starting another kitchen from scratch. Nope, I’ve had the good fortune to say I’ve been there done that. Twice. Each time is a learning experience and there are inevitably things you’d do differently. Maybe, if you’re planning a new kitchen you can learn from  my experience.

Most of the issues involve the appliances. I’d pay more attention to details next time. We had the opportunity to purchase a builder’s package at a substantial discount so we went for the step up to the JennAir line, Kitchen Aid’s fancy brand. Here are my issues, admittedly gold plated. 

1. Wall oven – the temperature can only be set in 25 degree increments. No such thing as baking at 365. Your choices are 350 or 375. Here, wall ovens only come in electric. I miss my gas oven, particularly the speed at which it preheats.
2. Cooktop – we thought we were upgrading in size by purchasing a 36” cooktop, which is gas. Only issue is that the controls are on the right, instead of in front, so the resulting six burners are on a surface the same size of a standard stove. 
3. Panasonic microwave – not the one we chose, but substituted when our original choice was discontinued. This one is quite attractive with infuriating controls and is clearly a case of form over function. It’s mainly knob driven and can mostly be set in increments of 10 seconds. The knob is turned until you reach your desired time unless use a programmed button. Pain in the neck.
4. Dishwasher – have again gone for the third rack on the top expressly for cutlery. Highly recommend this design. A little preplanning while loading lets you scoop up your forks, spoons or knives all at once when unloading. Have to laugh that we carefully planned the height of the wall oven so as not to be bending to lift heavy items in and out, but the bottom of tall tub dishwasher is nearly on the floor. Didn’t think about that.
5. The kitchen sink is under mounted and very deep. It’s also quite flat on the bottom requiring extra spraying of water to coax stuff down the drain.
6. Don’t know how it happened, nobody asked my preference, but that darn corner cabinet has a clumsy bifold door. Not that I would have spent the hundreds extra on a “magic corner,” but I don’t mind a regular door with a deep cupboard.
7. Could have probably done without the pendant lights over the island. I’ve never used them. They are much too bright and pot lights would have been as effective, easier to clean and less expensive. We’ll need to add a dimmer to make them work.
8. I’d skip the Shaker style cabinets, particularly the darker painted ones. The little rim, technically called the rail, requires constant cleaning/dusting. C says we had a choice of a 45 degree angle and we chose the 90. Was I at that meeting?

But bottom line, it’s a great kitchen cooking-wise and isn’t that what counts? And it’s probably one of the only aspects of this rebuild that came in on budget.

On the theme of do-overs, I’d change nothing on recently finished painting #2 from my workshop with Lian Yuan Zhen. 

People told me that in retirement I’d have so much to do, I’d wonder where the time went. So true. How did I ever fit a day of work into my schedule? 

Deep breath. One thing at a time. Fortunately mostly good these past two weeks.

The first good thing was the opportunity to participate in a three day workshop with Lian Quan Zhen – physician, architect, artist, vegetarian Buddhist, skilled teacher and in-class comedian.

Instead of the photo realistic style I’ve adopted, this involved giving up control of your paint by pouring, splattering and blowing the colours across the paper. And you only used the three primary colours. How scary is that? If you’re me….very.

Well I got up my nerve and orchids were the first of two subjects we learned.

The challenging aspect, these past two weeks, was the demise of my 2011 MacBook. It was the device of choice for my blogging activity. Bear with me while I resort to IPad posting.

 

 

Years ago we heard about a couple who planted a few apple trees in their front yard. After several years they had so many apples they had to enlist family and friends to help with their apple problem.

Something about that appealed to me. I wanted a fruit problem, too, so I convinced C to plant a three peach trees; visions of pies, preserves and chutney dancing through my head. The cost of soil preparation, trees and blossom drop prevention spray far exceeded what we would have spent on peaches for years to come. But the thought of homegrown freestone fruit was my siren song. Bottom line – no peaches. Not a single one.

Our new house, replete with three strips of plantable dirt, renewed the fruity song in my soul. I’ve opted for a blueberry problem. My neighbour says, sure you’re going to have a blueberry problem, it’ll be keeping out the birds and raccoons. Not to be deterred, Chuck and BIL Greg, humoured me with their hard work.

It started with home grown soil testing, they guys having overlooked the test kit on the shopping list.

 

Listening for the fizz.

The verdict? Neutral  soil requiring the addition of Organic material and acidified. Note to self: don’t mix the two concoctions together unless you want to clean up the eruption of a dirt volcano. They contained baking soda and vinegar, the ingredients for the lava of grade school science projects.

 

The finished product.

 This  year’s chutney project using store bought fruit, both blueberry and peach.

The trouble with making fresh pasta is you to make pavlova. Never fails. C sees the extra egg whites and asks if he's getting Pavlova. The opposing scenario occurrs when we start with Pavlova and have a load of extra egg yolks, then we had to make creme brulee. Lovely problems to have.

With a new house our yearly influx of summer guests has started. I love living in Beautiful British Columbia. We had a fraction of visitors when we lived in Nebraska oh so many years ago. Go figure. Even if people aren't coming here with the purpose of staying with us, it's the departure point of many Alaskan cruises, and it's easy to fit in a visit on either end. Keep that in mind if you're coming this way. It's an easy public transit ride from our house to the port or airport.

Back to the two P's – pasta and pavlova. Last week we had a houseful, including two surprise arrivals, SIL KC and prodigal son, Bryant. M's high school friend joined the fray and M gave us a lesson in homemade pasta, using my free KitchenAid mixer and eBay pasta set. 

Notice the drying rack, so fancy and stainless to match the appliances? It's my old laundry drying rack, perfect for the job.  Then came the Pavlova.

This weekend Blogless Marsha is here and we put the kitchen to the test with foodlab's New York style pizza crust, from their post "Three Doughs You Should Know."

One of them was made with fresh pesto from our decktop basil crop.

I feel this post is turning Lifesastitch into a food blog, so to anchor it back to its original purpose, here is Marsha knitting her beautiful Metronome shawl.

Tonight we'll have a P&P dinner – pasta and, you guessed it, pavlova.

 

 

 

 

My turn for some painting. Finally. We've settled enough into our house, having located all the boxes of art supplies, that I've gotten back into more frequent painting.  In our house design, we created a den-sized "studio," just for me, a complete luxury that lets me close the door on the mess task oriented clutter that accompanies creativity. In my ongoing attempt to diverge from my hyper-realistic painting style, I took a course in loose and lively irises. When I got home from the class I scrubbed out a good portion of the very dark background and re-did it. Who says you can't correct watercolours? 

The second was a wee little painting of the lily pads at our vacation hangout in Washington. It was a 75th birthday gift for a friend who also spends a good deal of time there.

I'm so appreciative for that little space for art to call my own.

As promised in my last post, here is the recipe for M's wonderful outside art activity that kept both kids and grown-ups occupied.

Soap resist painting:

Supplies (all obtained at a rural Dollar General):

1. Foam board, the surface for your painting: The instructions called for watercolour paper, but as this was primarily a children's activity we opted for a lower cost base. C experimented using a rock. As I remember from our camping years, there's always someone in the group who wants to do it differently. That's what creativity is all about.
2. A plastic drop sheet
3. Acrylic paints (matte) and brushes
4. Thick dish washing liquid in squirt bottles, not the cheaper thin kind
5. Black spray paint
6. Water hose with spray nozzle

Instructions:

1. Paint the board completely with random colours and let dry.

2. Place painting on drop sheet and using the squirt bottles stream the soap onto the painting in whatever pattern you choose, making sure you don't cover it completely with soap. The soap acts as a resist and wherever you apply it will remain colourful, everything else will be covered with black spray paint.

3. Spray completely with black spray paint. Let dry completely.

 

4. Using hose with the nozzle, spray off the entire painting.

 

Voila!

Look at our happy campers and their clever crafts instructor:

Many years ago we were a camp family. C was the Executive Director of a non-profit summer camp, I was the relief cook, E at age 4 took her first out trip and came back happy for the experience of putting her bare foot in her boot already occupied by a giant banana slug. M took her first steps in the dining hall, and well, B got his beginnings at camp, so to speak. 

The camp life has stuck with us, and our place by the lake in WA is known as Camp Heatherbrook, with Uncle Chuck as director and me as the cook. Both E and B worked many years at the camp they attended as kids, both in cabins as volunteer leaders, then she as the camp nurse, and B, the skateboard instructor. When we have large camplike get togethers the daughters do a great job leading a craft project for the kids. Remember the egg on canvas painting two Easter's ago? More on the project in the next post.

We had an opportunity for family camp while attending C's 50th high school reunion. Yes you read that correctly, 50th high school reunion! I remember friends' parents going to their 40 and 50th and thinking they must be so old. But here we are at that stage and it doesn't seem all that bad. People had a difficult time remembering C, as way back when, he had hair on his head and none on his chin. Some people recognized him as looking like his father in his younger years.

Auntie E did a fine job of organizing the sleeping arrangements, well stocked kitchen and adult area, "the room of illumination," a bar set up in the library.

The kitchen was so well stocked we renamed the experience Fat Camp, not for the traditional purpose of weight reduction, but quite the opposite. Advance trips to Costco yielded giant bags of Boom Chicka Pop, as tall as some of the grandkids, 2 for $5. There were endless kettle chips, soft Aussie style licorice, cookies and frozen yogurt. And lots of red wine, scotch for those who partake and rum. Surprisingly I lost almost a pound probably due to the walks around their rural "blocks" in farm country, which came out to an even five miles.

Uncle G was an excellent walking partner, muffin baker, groundskeeper (keeping the grass mowed, a huge proposition on their property), the yard fogged for bugs, and running a shuttle service for those who absolutely needed things from town. We Canadians appreciated Fleet Farm, their version of Canadian Tire with a farming twist plus a clothing department.

 There was even an out-trip to a friend's lake spot.

More fun in the water.  Those kids are growing so quickly – Grandsons Rye, 6 and Parker, almost 3, with some of the cousins:

Rye even got to spend some time with his Dad and cousins fishing on the Mississippi.

The little ones appreciated the acres of freedom combined with butterfly nets that caught frogs, lightening bugs, minnows and  moths.

Free range kids:

 

One evening Rye and I were sitting together, a rare event given his level of activity. He looked out over the fields and exclaimed "Oh my goodness!" "What," I asked. He replied wholeheartedly "It is SO beautiful." Here's his Rye's eye view:

Nest post: Mari's cool camp art project. 

Or in this case stuff out, stuff in. First some background: when the kids were small we moved from a 2300 sq ft house to one that was 1800. Adjusting to the smaller space we adhered to a strict rule that if something new came into the home, something of equal bulk had to be disposed of. This worked well until ten years later when we moved to a 3200 sq ft house, a quarter of which was unfinished and served as a storage area. The stuff in, stuff out rule went out the window, or  more specifically, into the storage area. Our stuff, our kids' as well as their friends'. As we were moving we discovered boxes belonging to five additional people. 

Technically our new house is the same square footage as the previous one, however, the bottom level is a rentable suite, so we're downsizing again. We did a fair job of paring down, but now have to bring in a few replacement items without the worry of enforcing the "rule." First was a dining room set, the old crumbling chairs set into the free pile, and the table given away. Being over budget on our renovation, we watched Craig's List, our requirements being eight chairs with lumbar support and an extendable table. Mission accomplished. We found a vintage teak Danish Modern set with eight chairs. It is however, missing a leaf, but if we need the extra table room we'll use a similar sized board and cover it all with a tablecloth.

My next project will be to re-cover the seats:

The other item belonged to stuff out without the intention of replacement. I was the proud owner of a pro series KitchenAid mixer in cobalt blue. It was considered kitchen art, pretty to look at, but hardly used as it was so tall it was difficult to move out from under the upper cupboards, plus I'm not much of a baked goods person. I happily gave it to my daughter and her keen-to-cook husband. 

In a twist of fate I found myself the owner of a brand new, smaller series KitchenAid mixer in Cocoa Silver, that matches my new kitchen perfectly. It wasn't just fate, it was an example of excellent customer service. We selected a builder's package of appliances and the refrigerator is backordered until August. Without asking, the company offered us a loaner fridge, a partial cash refund for the inconvenience, which paid for the dining set, and the gift of the mixer. Time to expand my baking repertoire.

Truth be told, we still have lots of boxes to unpack yielding stuff that needs getting rid of. It's overwhelming, but we're plugging away slowly but surely.