Deer tracks, running the bridge, and olives in the enchiladas.
We’ve been seeing deer tracks in the sand most mornings. Sometimes the prints just end as if the deer leapt forty feet east. A mystery, like the tracks in sand in Denzel Washington’s marvelous early film Mighty Quinn.
Locals mostly hate the Fourth of July. Too many people, loose dogs, and illegal fireworks going off at all hours. During my run this morning, a dog charged me, barking deeply, and the owner didn’t even apologize. But also a great many brown pelicans, sand all the way around Hug Point, and Gary built a fort. Some bad news, but good food. Education.
When we were in college in the early 1970s, my future husband and I used to take the bus to downtown Seattle and walk through the city, visiting 5 and 10 Antiques sometimes, where my mother worked part time. I have a necklace from that shop. We always went to what Gary called the “Pubic Margaret.” Then we worked our way down First Avenue pawnshops, looking at guitars. That was our Saturday habit for ten years.
My baking began on Monday with four loaves of cranberry bread and a chevré cheesecake (that last only because the goat cheese needed to be used and I wanted to strain Greek yogurt for whey to use in pie crusts. On Tuesday, I roasted Delicata squash for Gary’s “pumpkin” pie. (I have made pies with canned pumpkin, fresh sugar pumpkin, acorn, and other squashes. I find actual pumpkin to be nearly tasteless. Roasted Delicata has flavor.) I also roasted and mashed sweet potatoes—which are the exact same thing as what Americans call “yams.” (Actual yams are huge vegetables, a traditional Nigerian staple, and not sweet at all.) Yesterday, I made bread-free dressing, applesauce, cranberry/chili sauce, and two kinds of twice-baked potatoes, including without dairy. Today I hope to caramelize a honey, turmeric, and seed topping for the sweet potatoes, and roast acorn squash for Friday.
An unplanned flight, my adventures eating a Home Ec Thanksgiving dinner, and best wishes…
This is what happens when you bake weekly for almost three years. A high rounded loaf just the way you assumed it would come out of the oven. Without support beyond experience, bread is the result of healthy ingredients and practice. That’s the way life goes, I think. We work at it, do the best we can, and we eat what we take from the oven.
About 10″ across and 5″ tall, I “wind up” the dough to shape a loaf without a pan. It was baked in the middle of a flat pizza pan. (Even the Haystack loaves had special pans with short sides providing some support and structure.)
Continue readingYes, today I am a septuagenarian, seventy years old. (Please don’t say “seventy years young”—I find that too sticky-cute and somewhat insulting. I’ve earned my years.)
[intended as] First post in over a month. Retirement, running, carving, canning, Facebook, and reparations, in no particular order. And the skink.
I meant to write this post the other day, which was the one-year anniversary of receiving the keys to our Portland Condo. Instead, I baked, worked on a manuscript for a friend, napped, ran two miles and walked another.
About running at nearly seventy…
I start this post sitting on the sofa just before 8am. It’s wet out but no longer dark. A reminder: If we were on DST all year around, it would be dark here until almost 9am. Apparently golf courses would make a bundle from after-work greens fees and candy companies are certain that a longer afternoon helps their sales during Halloween—they are the two biggest lobbyists wanting high noon to happen at 11 in the morning.
Anyway.
Mount Hood was white and brilliant in sunrise as we ate breakfast. I had made a frittata with the last of the eggs, thawed sweet bell peppers that needed to be used today, and the remainder of a wedge of really great Rogue River Creamery blue cheese. I am trying to empty the fridge before we go back to the beach tomorrow. (Tricky because we thought we would have company last weekend and bought fresh veg accordingly. I still have a bit of spinach and a big bag of mixed greens that need to be consumed, immediately.)
Attention is the beginning of devotion.
—Mary Oliver
I had to think hard about what happened in 2021. It was not a terrible year, not even a bad one. “Inconvenient”, as a friend suggested in 2020, a year that felt much worse. So goodbye to two years of pandemic and hello to a third. I have plans.
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