Bargain hunter

Steve has the best luck when it comes to incredible finds at the local Goodwill. He regularly finds name-brand, expensive merino wool shirts (in his size!), Patagonia and Pendelton button down shirts, Marmot t-shirts, and other good deals, all in near-new condition. Well, the other day he found this cookbook!

 

It's the Ovens of Brittany Cookbook - from the Ovens of Brittany restaurant in Madison, WI. The restaurant closed years ago - either while I was a student there or shortly after. It's funny that he found their cookbook all the way out here. I haven't made anything from it yet, but there's a few recipes I'd like to try...they were known for their pastries and baked goods, and there's several in the book that sound good.

Feels like spring!

Sorry for the lack of pictures lately. I'm coming up against a deadline for school so it's been hard to do anything else. This weekend, though, the weather is gorgeous and we've been busy!

Friday night we picked up some herb starters and lettuce and basil seeds, then Saturday afternoon I took a break from writing to plant them. It was in the 60s outside, and fabulously sunny.  We now have pots of thai basil, italian basil, rosemary, lavender, dill, oregano, thyme, mint, mixed lettuce, and our California buckeye tree that we planted this winter from a seed and is now almost 3 feet tall.  Here's what some of them look like on our front porch, which is pretty much the only place we get sun that's 'our' space at the condo:

A friend recently gave us some of their sourdough stater that they've had going for more than 10 years. I've never worked with sourdough before, but was excited to try. We had friends over last weekend for dinner, so I made two loaves of sourdough bread (rustic rounds) to go with dinner and followed a recipe from a good baking book...and they turned out great! We sent the leftovers home with out guests. Then this weekend I had to feed the starter again, and it turns out I hate throwing away the extra, so I made sourdough-cornmeal waffles on Friday morning (I don't work Fridays, I do school work, so I can do crazy things like make waffles). Then Saturday I had a second container of starter left over from last weekend, so I improvised a foccacia-like bread, with garlic and rosemary inside and asiago and smoked sea salt on top. It was the best bread I've ever made!  We dunked it in good balsamic vinegar mixed with olive oil. I think I'll use some today to make us a ham and cheese panini.

Happy Easter everyone!

A fishy conference

Last week I was at a great, but exhausting, fisheries conference in Newport, OR. It was really fun to catch up with friends from all over the west coast, and to get to know my current coworkers better.

While I was at the conference, Steve was volunteering for a Puget Sound trawl survey with some of the people I work with! It sounds like they had spectacular weather and great food on the boat. But unfortunately, he started getting sick on the boat and is now vegging on the couch, trying to get better quickly since we have a date night tomorrow to see Pretty in Pink in the movie theater. : )

I didn't bring my camera to the conference, so I had only my phone for pictures. The conference hotel was on the beach and we also had great weather for a couple of days. The final social event was held at the aquarium in Newport, which was SO MUCH FUN. I took a gazillion pictures of fish.

Here's a few...the rest will go on facebook.

 This guy looks like he's smiling for the camera!

 Touch tank!!

 This is my happy place:

 Acting our age...

 Me and a bunch of my awesome coworkers:

 Selfie with friend and fellow Juneau student, Jane.

 Random pair of shoes on the beach...

 Agate beach, right in front of our hotel.

 Ah, sunset on another fabulous day.

 Trying to get a beach fire going...it took forever, but finally it took off.

Aaaaand now it's February

I would say that I don't know where time goes, but I do. School. Work. Work travel. Last minute trip back to ND-MN. January flew by. Now it's the weekend between two work trips for me - both to Oregon - and we're packing and cleaning. Steve came down to Portland for a day to see me last week since it's so close. That was only the second time he's joined me for a work trip and it was fun.

One of the women at the meeting with me brought her new service-dog-in-training. The dog is Edie, a small, 9 mo. old black lab who will be her gluten-sniffing dog. She (the owner) is severely sensitive to gluten, and due to work she travels a lot, including field work at sea. Edie will eventually be able to identify minute traces of gluten in food and since she's small she can fly on big planes and tiny puddle jumpers, and since she's a water dog, she'll still be able to swim for exercise when out in the field for days at a time on the water.  But the best part is that she'll be at our 5x per year meetings and when the service vest comes off, she's just a dog who I can play with! She was incredible at the meeting - I can't believe that at 9 months old she was so quiet and unobtrusive under the table. It was really interesting to learn about the amount of training scent dogs like these need; Edie is just barely started on her training, but training started at ~9 weeks old! She came from a breeder-trainer in West Virginia who specializes in drug, bomb, and mine-sniffing dogs.  Since Steve came down to the meeting in Portland, he got to meet Edie too, and we all went for a walk together. We're going to need another dog again, someday. The picture is of Edie sitting at a meeting chair (which is not how things were during the meeting - we were just having fun after the meeting wrapped up for the week).

While in Portland we stopped at Powell's Books, which is the bestest, most amazing book store in the whole world. Steve bought a mug. it's black with eyeballs all over it, then when you fill it with something hot the black disappears are reveals an underwater scene with angler fish and squid and other critters...he's pretty delighted with it.  : ) I tried to post a video of it, but it's not loading properly.

Finally, we took the TRAIN to/from Portland. It was great, I wish I could just take the train everywhere. It was quiet, on time, inexpensive, and so much space inside. When have you ever been on a plane and been able to stretch your legs fully out in front of you?  It was great!  Sorry for the poor quality of pictures - I have only had my phone with me lately.

Belated happy holidays!

We are back from a warm(-ish) trip to central California for the holidays where we met Dad and Barb in the Santa Cruz area, with a pit stop in Yosemite for Christmas day then Sequioa & Kings Canyon National Parks for New Years.

Scroll down to see the pictures from the start.

We timed our trip home just right - yesterday is was clear and sunny and perfect driving weather. Today much of the route is snow and rain!

XO

Sequoia and Kings Canyon NP

After several days on the coast, Dad and Barb headed home and we headed to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.

We'd booked a cabin at a KOA in Visalia, CA, about an hour from Sequoia. This one had nice warm heated showers (in a heated room), but the campground was in an industrial area of town and smelled like cow poo and other mysterious, not so nice smells. It wasn't my favorite place.

Sequoia NP was ok. We didn't get there until about noon, most of the park drives are closed (snow) and we had to wait quite a while to chain up. It was New Year's Eve, and the park was busy enough that it was hard to find parking to see some of the sites. We didn't get out much (our choice). I was crabby.

Kings Canyon was similar, except we stayed to road areas where we didn't need to chain up because it was a pain in the rear. I was really frustrated by the visitors to these two parks - nobody seemed to pay attention to the signs telling people to stay behind fences and not trample the ground around the big trees. Someone left litter on our car while we were out walking, and there was a garbage can less than 20 feet away! It was just a frustrating couple of days. We'd like to go back sometime when we can hike more and get away from people and see more of the park.  We left thinking it was underwhelming and frustrating, and that made me sad.

Coastal CA, part 2

Hello, San Francisco! We headed into the big city for a couple of hours for some of the usual tourist stuff...drive over the Golden Gate Bridge, and walk at Pier 39 (Fisherman's Wharf). We tried to get tickets to visit Alcatraz, but they were sold out until January 5! So instead we had lunch and walked around a bit.

Stinky sea lion on the pier.

The next day Steve and I went back to Pinnacles NP, the west entrance this time, and Dad and Barb went on a Winchester Mansion tour in San Jose. The tour sounded like it was sort of interesting and definitely unique. The other side of Pinnacles had more caves and a tougher hike, but was otherwise similar to the other side of the park.

This time I brought my tripod and got a couple of pictures in and around the caves. It was cold inside them (ice on the ground) and also cold wherever the sun didn't strike.

On our way back from Pinnacles we took a scenic detour though Carmel Valley, which was a fun, twisty road through the countryside. There were lots of small farms - cattle and vineyards (or, as we call them 'grape orchards'):

As I stepped out of the car to take this picture, Steve said "Make sure you get the drool in the shot". I *think* he was referring to the calf.  The cows were pretty wary of me.