Blocking the......driveway!

Blocking the.....driveway!

So that reference really only makes sense to me and my family. But if there are any Frank De Lima fans out there I didn't know about - good on you!

Two days later, we have what could be called a driveway. My Dad estimates it at 600ft or so....I grew up with the metric system.

The clearing process started yesterday - lots of shopping and then continued with my getting stuck behind General Lee. It continued with my meeting the world's cutest little 6 year old boy - who came running up to me at the local store and asked me if he could take a picture with me because he'd never met anyone who'd been to California, and didn't know cars could go that far. I told him cars would go as far as you could drive them - and his eyes got so big, I now understand the phrase 'as big as saucers'. I seriously wanted to put him in my pocket and carry him around with me.

All hail the general!

But I digress. Holy buckets. we got a lot done in two afternoons - the highlight of yesterday was (unfortunately un-photographed) getting the well open. The well was capped many years ago, and getting the damn thing open was quite the ordeal. We had tried with penetrating oil and tappong the threads, but to no avail. Yesterday my dad bought the biggest pipe wrench I've ever seen (48 inches long - I think it opens up to a 10 or so inch pipe), and even that wouldn't open the thing. Two big strong guys, the giant pipe wrench with a 4ft pipe shoved on the end of it, me guiding the wrench on the pipe, and my mom tapping the threads to get the damn thing open. It was insane. Even then it was back breaking. But we got the thing open and found to our delight that, a) it has water in it, b) the water is clear and cold, and c) the water doesn't taste like anything (always a good thing. We will be testing it, though. No worries there).

Fortifying the bellies of both myself and the chainsaw.

The highlight of today was our neighbors bringing the bush hog over to mow down the driveway and the meadows, as well as work their butts off to get everything cleared, trimmed, limbed, and in some cases moderately excavated. It was awesome! The guys took turns on the chainsaw finishing up the not enviable task of cutting down the remaining trees, winching out the big/oddly placed ones, and so forth. The rest of us trimmed, hauled, dragged, got rid of the rest. I bought some new loppers today that made all of that so much easier, and our neighbors brought over a pole saw.

So pretty....


...from every angle.

The STAR of the day was the new chainsaw. Woot!

It's so wee. And so mighty.

Zora kept retrieving things we threw to the side...include huge wedges of wood. She carried this one around for about a half an hour. Hilarious.

Now we have meadows, a driveway, a newly unearthed ornamental pear tree, a clear path & site for the airstream - and a great sense of satisfaction and optimism. Granted sitting outside in the beautiful countryside with our neighbors drinking an after work beer could have contributed to that feeling. That or the BBQ we had when we got back. Tomorrow: (hopefully) trailer wrangling!

Driveway!


Before....


....After!

Day One(ish)

It's really not day one. It's like day gazillion, but you have to 'start' somewhere, right?!

So....today was the first day we really 'did' anything on the farm. And since we are who we are, the day started with shopping. But the shopping list for the day was awesome. Seriously awesome. The poor cashier that checked us out was trying to figure out what we were planning on doing today. Poor lady thought that due to our purchasing fishing line, fishing floats and a few different sizes of sinkers, that we were going to go - wait for it - fishing! But no! One of the things we wanted to get done today was to measure the depth of our well. Hence the line, sinker, and floats. Get it? The theory being that we attach a sinker to the line to get it to the bottom of the well, and attach a float to another line, and measure the difference.

This is how far we got today:

Yeah...it was on even tighter than expected.

As the well was dug over 40 years ago, we have no documentation on who dug it, when, or how deep. So. My Dad remembers that it's about 125 ft deep. Unfortunately his track record when it comes to these sorts of things is really pretty awesome, so I'm sure that this is going to be just another notch on his belt. Once we get the damn thing open. That will require a length of chain and a big pipe. For the next shopping list!

We also bought a new chainsaw today. I am so excited. There's just something so sexy about it. I'm in love with it. I reserve the right to change my tune after using it for many hours tomorrow.

What will we be doing tomorrow, you ask? Why clearing the 'driveway', of course!

'I will make this my garden!'
err - that's a chuckit. Gotta get me a sceptor.

The property has two driveways, and the trailer is going down at the end of the one that will one day be mine. It goes along the edge of the garden for a good way, curves downhill and to the right, and ends above the house site that I hope to be mine. One day. *sigh* It also happens to be near the aforementioned well, and looks out over the lake at the very south edge of the property.

In 2 days we will drive an Airstream down this driveway. Yup.

The driveways were graded and leveled 40 years ago, and our lovely neighbor has been kind enough to go through them every year with a mower and sometimes a bush hog. That said - there are a few....ummmm...trees? that have sprung up in the middle of them. A few volunteer cedars, hemlocks, and the ubiquitous pine. Nothing our new chainsaw can't handle, but enough to ensure a tough 2 days for the 3 of us. Oddly enough - I'm really looking forward to it. I have been waiting for more than a year to get this project started - and here it is!

Again. I reserve the right to change my tune in the future, if need be. But I doubt I will :)

The Great Migration

Whew. So. 6 or so days of driving - we think 6, but we're not so sure; it really depends on how you count.... - later and we're here. Well - in NC at least.

Getting out of Vancouver was a trickier business than even the realistic among us expected. The front end of The Beast had to be rebuilt, and then the trailer wiring..... There was the packing, the sorting, the cleaning of cars and houses, the hoisting/tying of the canoe..... with LOTS of standing around by my mom and I while my father did his thing. And then, out of the blue, everything that absolutely HAD to get done, got done.

So my mom and I bit the bullet and left the Great White North.

On our way towards the US border....

We got just outside of Seattle the first day. We found a great Inn in Cle Elum WA, and proceeded to pass out after a mere 200 miles of driving. I'd like to think that this day was responsible for us getting into our routine rather quickly and rather well - me in front with my poor underpowered car going up the mountain with my GPS, with my mom following me up in The Beast. One unexpected benefit of my leading: not having to inhale all the black smoke spewing out behind her.. hehe :)

I had a great view in my rear view mirror all the way across the country...

We camped in Butte MT on the second night, and I will forever remind my mom that I am to thank for figuring out how to bring my old IKEA foam futon thingy. Otherwise camping semi-unprepared in 36 degree weather would have yielded a far less sleepful night. I had this futon thingy from IKEA that for some reason I slept on for almost 3 years. It was two pieces of foam that were connected by a thin strip of fabric. Originally this strip of fabric was attached in such a way that when you laid the futon out like a bed it covered the gap and kept the two piece close enough together that it felt like just one piece. However, as expected, over time it had gotten worse at its job, and when you slept on it, you woke up in the middle of the gap. We had wanted to fold the futon in half along this seam and put it up into the inside of the upside canoe on top of The Beast. But when we tried to do that in the parking lot of the storage unit in Bellingham WA, we found that the wider of the two pieces was too big to fit up into the canoe. My mom was ready to say to hell with it, and was prepared to sleep on the ground. This did not work for me. So. I pulled my rotary cutter out of my craft box that was conveniently located in my packed car at this point, cut through the top little seam, and we had a tug of war and split that futon into two pieces. It was so much fun, I highly recommend it for anyone needing some stress release. The skinnier piece went up in the canoe, and the wider piece got folded in half and put in my 'trunk'. And away we went.

Cold? I'm not cold. I LIKE wearing two hoodies.

Highway 212 from just east of Billings MT to just west of Rapid City SD is one of my new favorite roads. We hemmed and hawed over which route was the most efficient to get to NC, and finally just left it in the hands of my now outdated GPS. And we are extremely happy we did that. This stretch of road is so incredibly beautiful. In an aching sort of empty landscape sort of way. I kept wondering how the hell Lewis and Clark managed to stay sane through the prairie long enough to actually get through to the other side. At 69mph (our top speed the whole way across due to heavy cars and heavy mountains) it was beautiful in a monotonous sort of way - I can't even begin to imagine what it would have been like on foot.

America the beautiful.

After we got back on the interstate in SD it of course started raining buckets - I didn't get to see the badlands! At all! And I love them! BUT. I did get to stop at the corn palace, and that is always a fun stop. They haven't finished this year's yet, and that made it even cooler, as I got to see the poor guys up in the Genie lift in their rain slickers starting to put up the last bits of the design.

Dude. All those different colors? Corn. Yup. Corn.

Minnesota was hell. Not because of anything having to do with the state - because that's when the weather started to really get going. I guess they have been having quite a bit of flooding this year in the Midwest, and it was heartbreaking to see the fields of wheat completely underwater except for the very tips of the plants peeping up out of the water. To think of all the farmers that lost their crop this year is just so sad. What DO you do with a field of drowned wheat?

10 minutes later? Downpour.

After slipping and sliding across Minnesota and through the northern part of Iowa, going south through Iowa the next day was beautiful. Absolutely stunning. And sunny finally.

Zora is happy to see the sun. And the outside of the car.

Now. If you are ever in Peoria, IL (and why you would be other than the fact that it is 3 in the afternoon and you haven't eaten anything yet after driving all day I don't know) you have to go eat at Sterling's Family Restaurant. This is old school American food. Greasy, tasty, wonderful, and everyone knows everyone's name. I randomly picked it out of desperation for a food destination on the list of things that popped up on my GPS for food options, and wow, was it good. Possibly one of the best Reuben's I've ever had (and I'm picky) and my mom had an amazing spinach feta omelet. So so so good. I'm just saying. And there's a waitress there (Amanda) who literally restored a good portion of my faith in humanity. So. Thanks to them.

My mom also picked me flowers. She's the greatest.

There's a great little campground we found out in the middle of Indiana - a family run place that was a joy to stay in - even if all the Harley Davidson people had come in a day early for their big ride and were up all night buzzing the campsites :)

Wine that should have been consumed 6 years ago, leftover biscuit with Jam and peppered salami, butane lamp, and plastic wine glasses. Camping at its finest. For realsies.

Now we must discuss Hwy 52, oh lone reader (how you doing, mom?!). Hwy 52 through the south end of Ohio. It practically goes the width of the state, and is possibly one of the prettiest drives, ever. It also happens to go right through an Amish community, and if my CA plates didn't shock them, The Beast with its roaring diesel engine, BC plates, and crazy right hand drive sure did :) But there is something so beautifully honest about a community of people that still farm the traditional way - something that the more industrialized communities are going back to. Yeah. Dude. People farmed that way back in the day because it worked - for us and the environment. Why is is such a surprise?!

The glare? This mysterious thing called 'sunshine' through my windshield.

I won't go into details about the remaining few states of the trip - suffice it to say West Virginia and Virginia are prettier than anyone gives them credit for, and crossing over into North Carolina was a welcome, welcome thing. We came down out of Virginia on Interstate 77 at 9 or so in the morning, just as the rain and the fog were both starting to lift (after hydroplaning down the mountainside in Virginia in the pouring rain. Woot!). Stunning. A fitting end to a long journey. I'm looking forward to waking up in the morning to find that the time zone has remained the same, and that I don't have a day of driving ahead of me. Oh. Except for tomorrow. Tomorrow we drive 160 miles east to pick up the trailer. Fingers crossed!

Coming down into North Carolina. Woot!

The Beast.

The Beast. It's a wonderful truck - one that we took many family camping/surfing trips in Japan in, and that has found a home in BC.

The Beast.
This picture is from last year. But we're taking the canoe, too, so I thought it was appropriate. Especially since the poor guy's downstairs in the garage in pieces.

Until now. The Beast will be my mother's chariot to the east, starting tomorrow. My father is rebuilding the front end and the two of us have given it much TLC over the last few days.

It's a Nissan Safari - or a Nissan Patrol as they are sold as in other places. They are (to my knowledge - please don't quote me on this. And no, I don't have time to do research...) only marketed outside of North America (most notably in Asia and Australia), and are awesome. It's a diesel, manual transmission, right-hand drive, workhorse of a truck. I "learned" (those are sarcastic quotation marks there people) how to drive stick on it, and am more than overjoyed that my father is relinquishing it for this NC adventure.

We get stared at a lot on the street in Vancouver - could be that the diesel engine is super loud and is an affront to the delicate Canadian nature of those around us, but most likely the right-hand drive confuses the hell out of people. When I get a particularly hard stare while sitting in the passenger seat on the left side of the car, my favorite thing to do is to throw both hands up over my head and yell "look ma! No hands!". Priceless.

Cross your fingers that the parts don't break, the engine stays happy and all goes well. You, ummm, can't buy replacement parts for it here in the US, so....yeah....here goes.

Granted, I'll be in my Honda.

So here's the deal.... *or* FAQs

My friends, family, and acquaintances have had NO IDEA what I have been up to or where I have been for the past 2 years. No one seems to be able to keep my story straight, and this has most often included me. BUT. I am here to fill in the blanks and get this sorted out once and for all. This is not as eloquent as I feel it should be, but here goes. My lone reader (Hi mom!) can take this as yet another 'planning session':

WHAT are you doing?
In a nutshell, moving to the middle of North Carolina, to homestead and (for lack of a better phrase) go back to the land. *shudder*

WHERE are you going?
The central region of North Carolina, near the newly designated Haw River Valley viticultural area (woot!). I will be living on my parents' property that has been in the family since my great-grandfather. He happened to be the civil engineer on the project when they made the lake, which is how it ended up in the fambly (the lake was renamed after him). I believe he used it as his man cave, and gardened and hunted deer out there. People still ask if the asparagus beds he put in produce (we think so). My father bought it from him in 1982, and it has always kind of been in the background - a kind of 'someday' thing. It has been quite interesting so far, especially as upon visiting it recently I was shown proof that my father was once a small kid. Evidently he did not spontaneously spring into being as I had previously thought. My mother has always had a bit of an itch to go out there and do something, as has my father, and so we're doing it.

WHEN are you leaving?
Sunday. As in this Sunday. As in please-don't-tell-me-Sunday-is-only-technically-three-days-away-Sunday. *silent panic attack*

HOW are you getting there?
By car. I'm planning on being there for good, my mother is coming for at least a few months to help get it set up, and my father will be out for a few weeks. At least that's this hour's plan. But my mother and I will be driving 2 cars out there over the next week. From Vancouver to NC. If we were going from Alaska to Florida, the route could be longer, but that's about it. Actually I haven't done a road trip (my frequent NorCal to Vancouver drives do not count, thankyouverymuch) in a while, so I'm really looking forward to it. Oh. And Zora will be coming with me. (people keep asking me if I'm taking my dog. Umm. Stop asking that, people).

We're still working on things like electricity, water, an address, etc, so....for the meantime we'll be living in a 32ft 1974 AirStream trailer. I can not express how excited I am to be moving into an airstream. Holy buckets, they're cool.

(this is the tricky one) WHY are you doing this? or Are you nuts? (yes)
*I am NOT interested in commercial farming, but I do want to grow my own food, and am aiming for 90% self-sustainability over the next few years. I don't think that it's necessarily responsible for people to shoot for the moon in terms of 'self-sustainability' - we have the phrase "it takes a village" for a reason. 100% is improbable, impractical, and, for me, impossible. I'm not going to stop eating grains because I don't grow them. Yet a lot of us live in an area where not participating in growing our food - either by doing it ourselves or supporting local farms - is just dumb. When you don't live in an extreme place where growing food takes more energy than it produces, I feel there's no excuse not to. I feel that it's more important to shoot for an attainable goal and continue that trend as a lifestyle change rather than fail miserably and go on to shopping only at Safeway. I couldn't do this financially in California (love it as I do), and my parents already own 40 acres in North Carolina outright. They are also gracious enough to let me go muck around on it. You do the math.

*Sanctimonious asshats bug me. Yup. While I am forever entertained by people and what they do, I pass no judgement on your lifestyle (unless you're a sanctimonious asshat. In which case you can bite me). You want to eat TV dinners and drive a gas guzzler, fine. I don't. So. Instead of sitting around loudly badmouthing those around me that aren't living their lives the way I think they should, I'm going to go live mine the way I think I should. If someone takes that as an example, great. If no one gives a hoot, great. If someone disagrees with something I do, great. I don't really care. I'm more impressed by and learn from those that are actually doing something, and I want to be a member of that club.

*I had a lot of changes in my life almost 2 years ago now, and I decided then that this was something I was going to move towards. It has been a slow process, but I must say that far away from anything actually coming of it as we may be, I'm mildly surprised we've come this far. Everything I own is in a storage locker in Bellingham, WA. I left my beloved cabin of 8 years. I jettisoned 10 boxes of books (I still have 9. Only one is not filled with cookbooks). I left my beloved town of Point Arena. Every article of clothing I own fits in a Rubbermaid container. My KitchenAid mixer and my juicer are the only appliances I still own. I'm passing on my 2nd computer (it's coming, D. It is.). I've left my friends behind in CA, my man in the midwest, and my sisters in the Great White North. I'm hell-bent on giving this as good as a go as possible. I secretly want to get back into food. I secretly want to make cheese. I secretly want to make honey.

Other than the burning desire to be elbow deep in food again, if you know me well all of these things should be surprising to you. And I hope that fact successfully conveys the importance of this and how seriously I am taking this.

Stay tuned. Keep your fingers crossed. Send money.

Just kidding.

UPDATE: Current plan is to leave Monday. Due to the change in trucks, the front end needs to be rebuilt first. Woot. Family tradition, upheld.

Puppy Love

Not so patiently waiting

There aren't many dogs around that look anything like my dog. Yet we managed to find 4 in Vancouver during our stay. We have become swimming buddies with one of them. I love seeing double!

Best Buds.

Organizational Dreaming

I have dreams about organized kitchens. Kitchens in which everything is in a correctly sized container, containers that match, containers that are accessible.... Refrigerators that are clean, orderly, don't have anything lurking in the backs of them that might come out to bite you (and not the other way around....).... Pantries that practically want to give you an inventory of their contents when you look in their direction....

I obviously don't have one of these kitchens. Or really a kitchen that has many of these details. The fact of the matter is I don't have a kitchen at all at the moment, but let's leave that fact aside, shall we?

My kitchens usually contain a messy yet well-intentioned stockpile of just about everything. You rarely need to go to the store for a dry good, and if you do it's probably because you're waaaay to particular to use one of the 5 other varieties of the item in question in whatever you're making.

I also have a jar collection problem.

Late into my last kitchen I learned that buying bulk is great for someone living alone. I always kind of equated buying in bulk with, well, buying in bulk. But it's actually fantastic because you can buy just a small quantity - far less than you would be able to buy in a package. (yes, lone reader, a light bulb went off in my addled brain when I figured out that gem). Hence my added justification for my jar-hoarding tendencies. You never know when you will need *that* particular size jar. This gets reconfirmed when I either 1) use a jar I know has been in my cupboard for over a year, and 2) when I get annoyed, go through my jars, throw a whole bunch out, and then need one of the jars I got rid of literally the next day.

But I digress.

What I really wanted to talk about was those damn products that come in a bag that is faaaar from resealable. They annoy me. Besides the fact that I end up with way more than I need, they feed my eclectic jar hoarding tendencies and are exasperating in that in opening them there's always that soundtrack - whoosh! "*&@#$!!!!" - followed by a frantic run for a dishcloth and the funneling with your hands of the product that has exploded all over the counter. Again. Like you knew it would but hoped that this time - this time! - it wouldn't happen.

So I like to counteract that trustworthy occurance with an act of sheer organizational prowess. In a jar. Or on a jar. You get the drift.

It starts with the collection of the following items (in my house this takes a while. As I'm at my mom's it took literally a minute. Please note the sharpie survived the move from Japan to Canada 8 years ago. Go mom!):

You can pretend the jar is empty, can't you?

Then I center the jar ring on the product name, and trace around the outside of it:

Then I cut it out:

Why cut on the inside of the line? Thanks for asking! To keep the circle more or less the same size as the jar. Accuracy is everything, people. And if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you.

Then I debate about whether or not to glue it in, remember that this would mean I would have to find the glue, remember that once found I would have to choose the appropriate kind out of the 20 that I have, and finally just stick it up inside the ring sans glue, and press the lid down on top:

Then I fill the jar up (while taking breaks to shake the jar to make the contents settle as I inevitably always choose a jar that's just a shade too small), and cap.(Except usually I just wing it and cut the circle out due to my not being able to find a sharpie. But thanks for playing along with my dreams of being more organized than I am.):

Wow! That empty jar sure did fill up nicely!

And then I sit back, admire my handiwork, and place it in the over-crowded under-organized pantry where it gets swallowed up into the abyss.

I love food.

*Thanks to my mom, the lone reader, for letting me use her handwriting on my blog. Without her explicit permission. And for also unknowingly donating the jar.

I Love This: Aussie Apple

I LOVE this idea. While I have no problem eating an apple, nor do I have any lunch-packing responsibilities at the moment, I think this is brilliant.

Also kind of reminds me of my genius use of a rubber band the other day to glue a leg back on to a fat creamer from my parents' days in Kuwait.

All hail the rubber band!

#3, 2 & 1!

As I write this I am in beautiful Vancouver BC awaiting the next stop of my tour and enjoying the rain...

And for the first time since my arrival more than a week ago I have the chance to escape the chaos and ruminate on recent events...at least until my parents find me!

Things to do before I leave California #3: enjoy one more prolonged afternoon in the redwoods.
Umm. yeah. I'm hoping that this one is obvious.....

#2: enjoy one more day at the beach
Again - hoping this is obvious. My top two favorite beaches near Point Arena both became inaccessible due to various storms and whatnot in the past few years, so Schooner Gulch has turned into numero uno. I love it as it's even more ever-changinger (you haven't heard of that word before? really? what?) than some other beaches - the river may or may not go all the way to the ocean, it may or may not be deep, there may or may not be sea anemones and crabs and whatnot. Also being the site of my being chased by a mama seal and losing my shoes, it holds a soft spot in my heart. And the urban legend involving the beached whale.

#1: get out while you still can!
I love California. I am famous for walking around spouting nonsense that boils down to how much I love California. California is entertaining, beautiful, and dagnammit is populated by some of the oddest peeps I've ever met (not necessarily a bad thing). But. California is akin to that utopian concept that seems so SO close. And yet so very, very far.

And so. While much of my heart resides in Point Arena, California (home of the Point Arena Mountain Beaver, an amazing lighthouse, a great theater, my favorite bakery, and kookiness galore) I am moving on.

*raises glass to the next adventure!*

Numbers 6, 5 and 4

SO. Things to do before I leave California #'s 6, 5 & 4 are all related to clothes. Yup. You heard me. Clothes. (I know, I'm normally not big on them)

#6: accept 'the Point Arena look' as a necessity, not a fashion statement. And then make it your own fashion statement.

This may sound weird to the non-initiated, but this is a true thing. By 'the Point Arena look' I mean: Sweater/sweatshirt over a tank top/T-shirt, skirt, leggings (in the winter), and Uggs (year round). Why? Because it is freezing here on the coast in a perma-50 degree sort of way. Up on the ridge (where many people live) it gets hot and you need to be able to go summery in a quick minute (see #5). But the Ugg thing is not because of how they look - it's because they're the best thing for quick summer footwear conversion as you don't need socks.

At first you resist this look and chalk it up to people living in a rural setting for too long, blah blah blah, but then you realize they have something and you're only truly comfortable when you embrace it.

#5: rig up your car to carry almost as many clothes as you have in your bedroom.
Oh yeah. I learned this one quick. There are SO MANY micro climates in California - especially coastal California, that every time you get out of your car it's practically a different season.

Example: it'll be 65 degrees and sunny at my house, 90 degrees and sweltering at my friend's house, and then 50 degrees and foggy in town. So you have to be able to get appropriately dressed before you get out of the car. Very important.

#4: realize that going to the beach means you dress up, not down.
Seriously one of my favorite things to do in SF is to look at all the tourists walking across the Golden Gate Bridge in July in tank tops. In 50 degree fog. I find it slightly hilarious (I know, I'm mean). The smart ones buy San Francisco sweatshirts at the conveniently located gift shop in the GGB parking lot...

No - in all seriousness, the beach is one of the coldest places you can go to in the summer. Gorgeous. But cold.

True story: I happened to go to the beach in July once and got sunburned. Upon returning to town, people kept coming up to me and asking me where I had gotten so much sun. When I replied "the beach", they asked which one. When I said the local beach, no one believed me. It's that strange for it to be hot at the beach here in the summer.

And as I write this, it's 51 degrees outside. and in my house. *sigh* I love coastal California!

#7

Things to do before I leave California #7: Figure out what the hell kind of flower this is:

Over the past 8 years I have asked everyone I know AND have even gone so far as to post a pic on a few forums....to no avail. It seems to be the general consensus that the flower is so common to these woods up here no one really talks about it, hence no labelling. If any part of the plant were edible, it might be a different story, but....

Here's another hint:

As I was sitting at my moving sale talking to my landlady (rather I was talking to the huckleberry bushes - she was completely enmeshed in them picking berries....), she off-handedly mentioned that they were Clintonia (a beaded lilly). In a millisecond, all was solved. Err. Rather after I wikipedia'd it on my iPhone with one bar of reception it was found to be a specific kind of Clintonia. Woot!

Turns out I had seen the east coast version (white to light yellow flowers) a bunch, but never saw them make beads and so didn't make the connection..... mystery solved!

#8

Things to do before I leave California #8: savor (once again, and for the last time for a long time, an It's-It)

What you can't see from the picture is that the plastic is also potentially vintage

I had a great dinner last night with a good friend of mine - and I belatedly remembered that he had bought me an It's-It.

Oatmeal cinnamony cookie, vanilla ice cream, the thinnest layer of chocolate....

Sooooo gooooood.....

OMG. One of my favorite things ever. Savored. Just the perfect thing.

#8 has been crossed off my list. (Sorry we forgot about them B!)

The Glorious Thistle

I am embarrassed to admit that I had never seen an artichoke in bloom. As much as I love eating artichokes, and as often as I ave seen thistles in bloom, I wasn't prepared for this:

Isn't that the most impressive flower you've ever seen?

Things to do before I leave California: #9 has been crossed off the list.

Mmmm. Cake?

OK. So the cake for the best cake decorator ever didn't come out the way I wanted it to. AT ALL. So much so that I didn't take any pictures of it...I was too busy waiting for one of the individual cakes to fall over..... the irritating things is I totally know how I could have made it work sturcturally as well, but I just didn't have the time. Especially since I was trying to pack and make the cake at the same time..... anyhoo. Some pictures. (I stole the last two from P. Thanks P!)

The best part of the process? Instead of using rolled fondant (sometimes I buy it, sometimes I make it...), this time I made marshmallow fondant. I got tired of eating cake that you had to peel massive layers of crap off of - like your cake is trapped in some sort of clay wrap. Marchmallow fondant is actually damn tasty. I wanted to use up a bag of marshmallows left over from camping with my friend and her family, but I don't know that I'll go back to rolled fondant.

Patiently waiting for the rest to get painted - the least time consuming part of the whole process! The front 3 did not make it on the final cake, and are still sitting downstairs. (I don't actually *like* cake much...)

Assembling the cake.


Back away slooooooooowly......

Waiting....

I'm not good at waiting. At all. But it turns out that I can't participate in the first part of today's birthday festivities in Guerneville, due to an unforeseen porcine related accident. Which is really just a romantic way of my saying that I stepped on a shard of pork bone my dog left in the middle of the floor at 1am, and long story short, ended up going to the Dr with a football-sized foot at 5am. It's a disappointingly small wound for the amount of trouble and pain it has caused. I can't wait to drive Jenner Grade left footed. Woot!

So now I have to wait for the boat-related activities finish and meet up for more funness later.

Sneak preview. Hehe.

But that's OK. I have company. My cute little cakes are quietly waiting with me from the protection of the magical fridge (which is magical, btw, no more graininess in my buttercream. Yaay!). I made all 12 from the original painting, but only 9 will fit on the cake. Umm. Poor planning on my part. Whoops. Then again there is SO MUCH CAKE. Holy shmoly. We'll see which ones make the cut!

Not. Stressing. Out.

Soo.... last night I made the components for the as-of-yet un-designed birthday cake for my fabulous baker friend. For some reason I used a new buttercream recipe, and it was slightly grainy when I last checked. I used the Swiss Meringue Buttercream recipe from Confetti Cakes (a fun book!), and I just don't think I got the eggwhites hot enough. I thought they were, but evidently not. As this recipe uses granulated sugar instead of confectioner's sugar, you can tell when it's not dissolved.

HOWEVER.

I firmly believe that I have a magical refrigerator.

I mean come on! Look at it! If you were grainy sugar and you were placed in that fridge, don't you think the laws of physics would cease to exist and you would come out all creamy and smooth?!?!

Fingers crossed. She's gonna get an awesome cake if I have to make 10 trying. As a cook in a restaurant NO ONE would cook for me, and that kind of thing sucks. As I'm one of the few people gutsy enough (or dumb enough. Haven't figured that one out yet) to try to make one for her, I'm gonna pull it off. I have 25 hours before I leave my house for her shindig.

**channeling inner magician/stubborn baker** Here we go!

Inspiration

Inspiration comes in many many forms, it seems. I LOVE making cakes, and every year I make a cake for my good friend. The thing is, she is an AMAZING cake decorator, and on top of running the local bakery, she does custom cakes as well. It seems that I am the only one with either 1) big enough balls, or 2) enough stupidity to attempt to do one for her. Yeah. Intimidating.

Anyway - every year she makes me one, too, as we both have our birthdays in August. Since I'm leaving town at the end of the month and have a lot on my plate on that score, we scrapped the 'surprise' element and actually talked about what kind of cakes we both wanted. She told me she wanted a cake inspired by Wayne Thiebaud. After looking through a bunch of images online of his, I am overly inspired. There are literally 10 cake ideas in my head. Unfortunately I'm short on time (due to being sick the past couple of days), and I'm not a good painter. Last year I had an amazing artist friend help with sculpting the cake topper, and she's an amazing painter as well, but as she lives in Watsonville now I'm on my own. Eep.

For those of you who don't know or don't remember last year's cake, here it is:

And a close up of the details:

Name of cake: The Dead Chick Cake (she got bitten by a vampire, you see.....)

I think for this year's cake I'm gonna narrow it down to my favorite 2 ideas and do them simultaneously. She'll get whichever one comes out better. Stay tuned!

Let them have MEAT!

This is awesome. As in 'whoopty frigging doo' awesome. I know a LOT of people on really odd food trips and whatnot. (I do live in northern California, after all....) While I know some Vegans and Vegetarians that do alright, for some reason the craziest and most unstable people I know have the most dietary restrictions. And sorry - I don't know a single raw foodie that doesn't just seem malnourished in a way.... so aha! I knew it! Suck it!

And I knew there was a reason why the smartest person I know and the person that consumes the most meat that I know are one and the same (Hi Dad!! JK. He doesn't read this blog).

Play Those Blues Away

I recently had the pleasure of hanging out with a few of My Best Friends (only one of whom lives here in town) and my friend's family. By 'family' I'm mostly talking about her nieces - ages 12, 9 & 4 (or close enough to those ages anyway, they all seem to have summer birthdays). I've been insanely distressed and just a bit blue these days with the impending (as of yet details unknown) move. Hanging out with My Best Friends would have surely been enough to create a great respite from those blues, but hanging out with the kids lifted them in a more permanent way.

I had forgotten.

Living up here in crazy alterna-world, there are literally children everywhere. But they have a tendency to run in packs, and are - for better or for worse - mostly treated the same way as adults (hence all the infantile drama among the adults, IMHO, but that's a whole nother issue...), and don't *play* like kids with those of us who are a bit older.

These girls are not like that.

We went to the park to feed the ducks (and very loud geese). Who among us remember the joy of chucking chunks of bread into a pond without a bit of prodding? Feeding of the fowl led to an impromptu outdoor concert on the stage in the amphitheater in the redwood grove of some Journey, Madonna, Michael Jackson, and a stunning rendition of 'Part of Your World' (of Little Mermaid fame). At the top of ALL of our lungs. And there was diva dancing. Whoa.

And that was just part of one day out of 5 I spent with those kiddlywinks (dude. There was kayaking). A huge thanks to M, V & N!!!! (who don't read this blog. Granted one can't read at all. Yet.)

Start 'em young

I LOVE seeing things like this. I love seeing younger kids carrying on in the name of agriculture and raw milk. Kind of makes me want to get involved in 4H. Kind of (that and that scene from Napolean Dynamite).

The blog the story is posted on is run by a great company that I buy cheese making supplies from - and they have a whole series of interviews with home cheesemakers.

Related link: here

"Back of the Box" is moving!!

My other blog (the fun food one!) is moving. I'm changing hosts also, so if you are subscribed via email or RSS you'll (unfortunately) need to do that again. The new address is (drumroll, please!):

backofthebox.net

It won't move again, and so sorry for the incovnveinence (my one reader - Hi Mom!!). Better now than later, IMHO.

Still cleaning up some of the wonky things that happened during the transfer - bear with me, I have dialup. It's up and running at the moment, but may take up to 3 days for all to be able to view it. But if you can't see it now, you will!

yay!

Top 10 Things To Do Before Leaving California - #10

OK. I don't *really* have a list written down and hidden off somewhere, BUT IF I DID - this would be on it, and lower down than you'd think.

Top 10 Things To Do Before Leaving California - #10: Tell off a mid-life crisis asshat in a high performance sports car.


I get it. Highway One is scary. It has curves. It has hills. It has curvy hills, and hilly curves. It takes a long time to get anywhere, but goddamnit it's gorgeous and it's even more gorgeous seen from the window of a car driving the appropriate speed. For me this is in the 57 - 63mph range.

For this guy I was stuck behind yesterday, it was 30. In a Lamborghini. I have often had this thought, but seriously - if you're going to buy a high-performance car, I think it's a shame to not drive it as such. And unfortunately I come across these types of mid-life crisis asshats all the time. They buy these amazing and amazingly expensive cars and then take them for day rides on Highway One, most probably full of some sort of romantic notion of roaring up and down the coast a la James Bond. Except they don't roar, they crawl, and locals like me get stuck behind them when all we want to do is go home. 60 miles later this guy wouldn't use any of the turnouts - my tailgating be damned, apparently - and there must have been 20 cars behind this guy. Had I been that car I would have developed seriously suicidal tendencies and taken over. Kind of like Herbie, but Italian. And not annoying. But I digress.

At Stewarts Point there was an accident blocking the road. We all came to a stop and asshat got out of his car and came up and tapped on my window and asked me to stop tailgating him. I suppressed my rage at his blatant asshattery as much as I could and responded with "you had the balls to write the check, but you don't have the balls to drive the car?"

#10 doth been checked off the list.

Sweet, sweet relief

Soo.... came across this today in my daily perusal of the interwebs. As I'm leaving California, I am excited about having found this.

OK. Nix that. The closest In-n-Out burger is almost 2 hours from here, so I'm happy to find this in general.

If you don't live in California, you will not understand the In-N-Out phenomenon. The best way I can think of to debunk it for you is just to tell you: In-N-Out is awesome*. And finding this website** means that if I am ever ever EVER seriously craving an In-N-Out burger, I can make it happen. In the comfort of my own kitchen. In my PJ's. With beer.

And the next time you see that iconic sign, go in and order a double double animal style for me. Thanks!

*also home of California's first drive-thru. 'Nuff said.
**dude. He used math to figure out the sauce on this burger. Another example of how I would have *liked* math if this sort of problem had been involved in my math classes in school. And the scientific way in which he deduced the amount of relish!

Holy Cow!

There was a knock at more door today. And there was my good friend standing at my door holding a gallon of milk fresh from the cow. In fact I think I freaked out and held the warm container to my face in sheer delight.

Yup.

She had actually called me earlier to go milk a cow at a friend of hers, but unfortunately I was already enmeshed in the making of rice pudding and bread and couldn't get away.... but her showing up with the warm milk was still a surprise, and I was blown away.

Recently I have been making Mozzarella cheese from scratch - if it weren't for the fact that I am leaving in the next month, I would be attempting some hard cultured cheeses, but alas I do not have the aging time.... Mozzarella is a great compromise - you can still get the funness that comes from making cheese, without having to wait, and without having to use molds, cultures, etc....

Raw milk from a cow is a whole different ballgame. This may seem like an obvious statement, but even though I was expecting it, it still blew my mind. At one point during the cheese making process, according to the book I use* "the curds will look like thick yogurt and have a bit of shine to them". So far my reaction to this step has been along the lines of "yeah. Right. Dude. It looks like watery cottage cheese. What kind of fucking yogurt do you eat?". But my Mozzarella has always come out just fine and still above and beyond the majority of the Mozzarella you can get in the store.

Now. I love the milk I get here, but sorry Clo - I don't know that I can make cheese again without getting raw milk. Holy shmoly. Not only did the curds actually look like think yogurt and her description was accurate, it produced cheese that is awesome. I did overwork it just a wee bit in the kneading process and so it came out a bit tougher than usual, but I just think that really showcased the higher protein content and the higher viability of the protein. The stuff came together and got all silky and smooth almost immediately, and that just wasn't something I was used to. Even though I buy Organic whole milk to make cheese with, the difference between the milks was just mind-blowing. I love it when the difference in what you make and what you buy is so readily apparent. If only I had some little kid standing in the kitchen with me for brain-washing purposes!

I apologize to my new bovine friend for overworking the milk, and I won't ever do that again. Promise. Keep the yummy raw milk coming.

UPDATE: I made Ricotta from the whey, as I am wont to do. It is literally so so sweet (no sugar or anything is added, minded you. Just vinegar and salt) - I have never eaten anything like it. So I may have *slightly* bungled the texture of the actual Mozzarella on my first time out with raw milk, but the Ricotta was heavenly.

*This is, by the way, the BEST home cheese making book out there. Just FYI. She also runs the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company - and they have EVERYTHING you need to make just about every kind of cheese you can think of.

Self-sustainability and us

I had a couple of interesting revelations the day before yesterday....

A Japanese family that I was very close to in High School happened to have a day in Berkeley and I went to see them. I hadn't seen them in 9 years, or since the last time I was in Japan, and that's even more unfortunate as they used to be such a huge part of my life. Anyway - we were talking about my moving to North Carolina and homesteading on my parents' property, and the whole sustainability issue, etc. I went on my normal rant about eco-friendly practices, etc (why I think growing your own veggies at the very least is greener than not driving your car....a whole big long discussion). She asked me what other things I do to be 'green' other than growing as much as my own food as possible, especially as where I am now gets close to no sun and I have to supplement the light in my outdoor garden with lights. I answered with the fact that I have a paperless kitchen, and an almost paperless household. She kind of stared at me blankly - and then quite matter of factly asked me how else my kitchen would be? I then remembered that a paperless kitchen in Japan is the norm. Even with the Japanese tendency to deep fry things, paper towels in the kitchen are pretty much unheard of (some housewives buy special non-waxed absorbent paper for deep frying, but most people just use news print...). Using and reusing cloth is the norm. This also extends to household cleaning - windows are cleaned with cloth or old newspaper, and floors etc, are cleaned with cloths that are washed and reused..... And it's amazing how these practices got leeched right out of me when I came back to the US and proceeded to assimilate back into western society.....

I had a second realization at the same time - I was searching for the Japanese version of the term 'self-sustained'. I couldn't for the life of me think of it, and was obviously stumbling. That in of itself was an oddity as I'm not a huge fan of the term in English.... I finally just had to admit I didn't know the word and went about just explaining my meaning. At which point the person I was talking to just supplied to phrase for me. The thing is - in Japanese it's such an old word that people of my age don't often know it, but it is ingrained in the culture and the language of Japan. It just illuminated the fact that we in the west have so completely grown away from self-sustainability (even though in the not-so-distant past homesteading and growing all your own consumables was the norm....) and have had to come up with a term fairly recently to describe such a seemingly foreign concept. In Japan, however, the concept is still on the forefront of people's minds enough that the term was never completely lost - perhaps from being closed off to the world for several hundred years? I don't know, but it was another one of the sociolinguistic things that just kind of smacked me in the face.

I wonder how many more of these concepts are lurking back in the habits I grew up with in Japan?

Share!

I think that this is a truly fabulous idea - and if I weren't moving next month I would participate. Ugh - and just think. If all of those ridiculous chain mails/emails you got as a kid were this eco-friendly (not to mention fun), the world might be a slightly greener place.

http://www.earthmama101.com/2010/07/lets-share-seeds-2010-seed-share.html

history of THAT cookie!

OK. I love food. I love food history. I love vintage cookbooks.

But how do I feel about this? I'm not so sure. While I would love to know where the hell we got some of the food we eat, and I would be happy to tell you how Campbell's cream of mushroom soup became a staple in 'American' cooking (but only if you have an hour), this is a scooch over the top, me thinks.

http://justinsomnia.org/2009/01/melt-in-the-mouth-cookies-a-brief-history/

OED Word of the day

Today's word of the day from The Oxford English Dictionary: "purvey"

I worked in the food industry for 5 years before I learned it was spelled 'purveyor'. I thought it was 'proveyer'. As in provide. But I never had enough confidence so I just used used 'vendor'.

If only my writing were legible...

This would be so cool - but only if I could read my own writing :)

http://www.fontifier.com/

I'm Back!!

In an effort to do a few things (conveniently listed below), I have decided to put more of an effort back into this blog.

I intend to:

• stop spamming my mom (as well as others) and filling up their inboxes with weird random stuff
  
• write more (I love it!)
• do something more productive with the endless hours I spend sitting in front of a computer (... after a long day at work also sitting in front of a computer. something is not right here)

This means more fun! Excitement! Recipes! Pictures! Not too many of my dog, though I promise! And a potential site overhaul to...well....update the thing a bit.

new faves, new phone

As it has been quite an odd time for me in my personal life, I am noticing some changes...

For one thing - I am addicted to the dehydrated strawberries from Trader Joe's. For a long time it was the mangoes, but now it is most definitely the strawberries. It's as if you purchased a box of overpriced healthy fruity cereal of some kind, and picked out all the strawberries and put them in a bag. It's wonderful. It may be the fact that I dump them in a bowl of Tapioca pudding (also courtesy of TJ's). I think for my next trick I'm going to mix them in the pudding and then freeze the whole thing....

And! I'm getting the new iPhone!! Yay!! July 11th can't come soon enough... GPS, iPod, phone, email, internet bliss here I come!