35th Wedding Anniversary

Today is our 35th wedding anniversary. We had originally planned to do something grander than stay at home, but the pandemic.... 

We went out for breakfast this morning at City State Diner & Bakery. It's been ages since we've gone out.

Then Jeff made a fire when we got home and we hung out and spent the day in the living room. He put a huge log on the fire (after this photo) and it pretty much lasted until dinner time.

We bought dinner as well. We decided to try a weird-looking pizzeria and pub about 5 blocks from our house, The Blind Onion. It was pretty good.

Tomorrow we are getting new bedroom furniture for the upstairs guest bedroom. To be honest, I'm a little embarrassed about buying it. I had a spendthrift summer and decided I needed cherry furniture instead of oak. When I found Mission Craft Furniture, a local furniture maker, I put down a deposit and ordered a bedroom set. It seems so long ago now. I was supposed to get it long before Thanksgiving, but they called and said it was delayed because they were sick. I'm supposed to be getting it tomorrow. Crossing my fingers.

Menu Planning

Happy 2018!! I hope you all enjoyed your holidays.

We are currently revamping our menu-planning and cooking habits. We actually started a couple weeks ago, but I'm just now getting around to blogging about it.

We had fallen into some pretty bad habits food-wise; we were eating way too much junk food. So, Jeff is back cooking regularly again. I've been spending a fair amount of time doing menu planning to utilize the food from Jeff's pantry system and incorporate the canned food we have in the pantry and the produce we're getting from the food deliveries. I turned weekly deliveries of Organics to You back on starting today. This is our first Organics to You delivery of 2018.

I've created the menu spreadsheet in Google Sheets because Jeff can reference it on his computer or his smart phone and he can click on the links for the suggested recipes. I also made a second sheet for tracking the shopping list. I'm enjoying the menu research again because it distracts me from doing stupid things like online shopping.

I have really enjoyed the Allrecipes website because it allows you to look up recipes by ingredients, which is really helpful when you're looking for something to use up specific pantry items.

Next weekend, we'll be picking up 25 pounds of meat from Deck Family Farms. They have a deal where you buy two 25-pound boxes and pick them up on different dates. We usually pick up one box, use it up, then get the second box. They usually have a booth at our local farmer's market, which is part of the reason we buy from them.

Activity at Jeff's food blog should pick up again as he gets back to cooking.

Summer Update

With our crazy weather this year, and lacking motivation, we have gotten very little finished on the house. We did manage to set up a pantry rack for Jeff down in the basement.

Before we did this, Jeff observed he had a lot of cans that he had no idea how old they were. When we first moved in after the remodel, we were pretty good about dating cans with a marker, but even that stopped happening a while ago.

Anyway, Jeff wanted twelve tubs labeled with the months. So now when he goes shopping, he can deliberately buy twelve cans of things and spread them out throughout the year. We're hoping this will help keep our food pantry rotated. We still need to finish sifting all the cans already in our pantry and either toss them or spread them out into these tubs so they finally get used.

As far as the shed project, it still stands un-sided. Eric got busy and asked us to have Aaron help us finish it. Aaron lost his rental and has been busy packing to move out of state, so he hasn't been available either. So, I am tentatively exploring the possibility of having Tim Austin help us finish the exterior. He is the good guy who built our garage for us. He's going to come out and look at the project and I'm hoping his quote is something we can afford.

Finally, the Laurelhurst neighborhood is trying to apply for Historic District status to slow down the pace of demolitions. I have (obviously) gotten back into poking around my old research. I have also done a bit more research with old Oregonian issues. Our county library has a research tool where we can search old issues and I've done a bunch of research to fill in history between the 1920s (where I left off last time) and current day. I'd still really like to find the article where the city decided to tear down our sandstone Arch on Multnomah and 32nd. I guess we can be happy to have one of them left.

Preserving Peaches

I was about to title this post canning peaches, but it has never made sense to me why it is called canning when we are using jars! Maybe we should call it jarring peaches?

Jeff and I went off on an unscheduled adventure with friends yesterday to Sauvie Island. Sauvie Island is where Portlanders go when they want to buy locally-grown fresh produce in bulk quantities. We came home with 40 pounds of peaches, 20 pounds of heirloom tomatoes, 25 pounds of red beets and a few other vegetables in smaller quantities.

Today, Jeff decided he wanted to start off the day by defrosting the freezer before we made a bunch of new containers to go into it. In the process, he rediscovered a bunch of food he wants to use right away. Let's just say I'm going to be happy about having pie and baked ham for the next several weeks. :D

We processed two batches of jars of sliced peaches, which was more than one box of fruit. I don't normally talk about how to can. With so many excellent websites out there, I don't see the point of adding my meager skills to the pack. But I will point out a website I frequently visit when I do set about doing some preserving, called PickYourOwn.org. It's a great resource for general recipes and photos about how to preserve food. I've been visiting the website for years, as I mostly learned these skills after I was an adult and my family lived too far away to teach me.

The other box, we've sliced and Jeff is making Peach Salsa again. We're big fans of Trader Joe's Spicy, Smoky Peach Salsa and we're trying to come up with a recipe we can make ourselves. Jeff found a recipe a couple years ago that was pretty close, but it was just a little too hot, so we're going to give it a try this year with a little less HOT. This year he is trying this recipe, mostly. (He never follows recipes exactly.)

Update: We tried the salsa with our dinner tonight and it's really good. I think we found our recipe. :D Jeff posted his version of the recipe at his food blog here.

We're going to do another batch of the salsa. It's really good and it will be nice to have it through the winter.

Strawberry Season

Strawberry season has finally arrived in Oregon. Jeff and I got to go pick berries at the North Willamette Research & Extension Service test garden because Jeff is a Master Gardener. It was a really good deal; just $3 a bucket. We picked 3 buckets-full (about 18 pounds worth). Perhaps we should have gotten more, but it was hot and we got pretty tired after more than an hour. It still took us several hours to "process" the fruit for the freezer today.

It's well worth the effort to prepare the fruit for the freezer. Jeff first soaks the fruit in a solution of water  and a small amount of vinegar. Then we remove the stems and place the individual berries on cookie sheets.

We put the cookie sheets in the freezer for a few hours. Then, when the strawberries are partially frozen, we place them in freezer bags. Because of the extra effort, the strawberries don't freeze in one great big block and Jeff can pick out individual berries for use.

Now we'll get to enjoy strawberry smoothies throughout the winter.

Survived the Party

It seems odd to pass over the house's 100th Birthday party open house and not even mention how it went. I think it went pretty well. We were ready only with the amazing help of my father, Lloyd, and my stepmother, Maxine. We surely never would have been ready through our own efforts, without hiring outside help.

My father arrived and quickly hooked up our washer and dryer and installed a light fixture in the guest bedroom. I'm excited to have the laundry machines upstairs! (I guess I haven't taken a picture of them yet after they were hooked up. They're up in our back enclosed sun porch.)

Then, on Friday my Dad installed all the new door hardware throughout the house. At one point in his career he was a locksmith, so his skill at fine-tuning mortise locks is excellent. Even so, it still took several hours. (On Sunday, he also installed a deadbolt on our new garage and started installing our new solid brass hinges.)

Maxine worked pretty much since she walked through the door on Thursday until Saturday, cleaning the house. With her help, the house was quite respectable by the time noon rolled around on Saturday. Thank you Maxine!

Jeff, on the other hand, spent three days in the kitchen prepping the food for the party. All was quite delicious and there was plenty of food. I don't have a good picture of all the things he served, but here is a photo from early in the open house.

Unfortunately, Saturday was a very rainy day, so the house was not looking its best in the dreary overcast light. But we turned on all the lights and had quite a few visitors drop in. We got lots of nice compliments and it felt wonderful to show what we'd accomplished in 2½-years. Thanks, especially, to all my blogger buddies who dropped in for a visit; it was so wonderful to meet you all in person.

I didn't manage to take any photos as I was busy visiting and giving tours. But my friend, Storm, and my father took a few pictures of the rooms. Here are the best of them.

Master Bedroom

Guest Bedroom

Linen Cabinet

Living Room

Den looking toward Dining Room

Den Area (also called Parlor)

Dining Room Built-in China Cabinet

Mmmm...Peaches

We found a good deal on peaches so we stocked up—54 pounds!

They've taken a few days to get ripe, so we're spending part of today and tomorrow processing the fruit. Jeff is the foodie in this house, so he blogged about it over at his food blog.

I am NOT loving these reusable jar lids. The rubber seals seem to be just slightly larger than the plastic lid so when you screw on the metal twist ring, sometimes it catches on the rubber ring and pulls it off the jar rim and ruins the seal. You can already tell the jar on the left side of the picture didn't seal (fruit isn't at the top). Sigh. I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong. Losing a jar out of every batch is not going to be acceptable.

Anyway, our plan for this round is mostly to can peach slices, several pie fillings, a small amount of jam, and I think this year Jeff is going to try and make peach salsa. He's been buying peach salsa from Trader Joe's and we love it—we go through probably a jar a week—and we'd like to figure out how to make our own.

Fresh Apricots!

While in California I binged on fruit. We stopped by farm stands on the way from the SF Bay Area to Pioneer (where my Mom lives). My Mom made cherry jam. I made peach-strawberry jam. I'm looking forward to enjoying the three jars of jam I brought home.

Then, on our way home to Portland yesterday, we stopped and bought a flat of apricots from one of the farms along I-5. These apricots are delicious!

Today Jeff made apricot coffee cake and I started making apricot pie fillings (to freeze).

I was also planning to make a couple of batches of apricot jam, but I discovered our canning tools are still in storage. So, we need to make it to storage in the next day or two before this fruit goes bad.

Our Anniversary!!

Today is our 23rd Wedding Anniversary! We've now been married more years than we weren't.

We had a lovely visit with a friend for brunch and Jeff made a wonderful butternut squash risotto, chicken and vegetables. So good.

Then we took it pretty easy the rest of the day. Jeff took a nap while I worked my way through Bungalow Bathrooms by Jane Powell. Tonight we're watching a documentary about human emotions which is quite good: This Emotional Life.

Happy Birthday Jeff!

Today is Jeff's 44th Birthday!

We went out for dinner at a new place we've never been: Soluna Grill. The food was delicious.

For a starter we had Apple-butternut Bisque (bleu cheese, crisped bacon spaetzle, sage oil)

For dinner, Jeff had Gorganzola & Rosemary Ravioli (Braised autumn greens, roasted heirloom beets, toasted hazelnuts, beet-balsamic syrup) and I had Pan Roasted Salmon (Goat cheese mashed potatoes, broccolini, merlot butter, walnut bread stick).

Jeff also had Peach and Calimyrna Fig Crisp (Blackstrap rum sabayon) for dessert.

Our First Eggs!!

We finally got our first chicken eggs today! Two!

Not really sure which chicken(s) laid them, because we didn't see it happening, but I suspect it was Anya (the gold-headed chicken) because she has been acting very peculiar the last several days (i.e. walking up to us, hanging out alone, etc.). Though, the eggs look identical with a slight green cast, and were laid just a couple feet apart, so I wonder if Anya laid both of them or if maybe Willow and Anya both laid one. (Willow is the other mottled black chicken. Buffy is the gold chicken.)

Productive Weekend

We had one of our more productive weekends this weekend. Saturday, as usual, we both had school until 4PM then we usually both spend the evening doing school work. It's a long day.

Last week, Jeff worked out a nice food-for-tutoring barter arrangement with one of his classmates and he got some produce yesterday. He brought home about 20 pounds of roma tomatoes, chard, spinach, a zucchini and some other veges. (Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo.) So, today we had to figure out how to process them or they'd likely go bad in the next couple of days.

We decided to make tomato sauce for use during the next couple of weeks. On the first batch we went through the hassle of peeling the tomatoes and cooking them down, but the second batch we just processed the tomatoes through the food processor, skin and all, and that seemed to work fine. It sure saved time. =)

The rest of the tomatoes we just washed and put in the freezer so we can make another batch of sauce on another weekend.

We also managed to spend a few minutes out in the garage working to unbury the cherry entertainment center out there. It's taking up a ton of space and we need to get it gone. We cleaned it up and I listed it on craigslist. We're going to try and sell it until January, and then we'll go ahead and donate it and the rest of the furniture if we haven't found new homes for them by then.

2009 Taxes Done...

...with over two weeks to spare before the extension filing deadline! =)

Actually, I'm a little embarrassed I didn't finish them earlier in the summer. It really only took me about 20 minutes of inputting values for non-cash donations and clicking the option for the Homebuyers Tax Credit and then a few more minutes to run the review functions in Turbo Tax and I was done!

Printing, on the other hand, took much longer. I've spent about 2 hours feeding paper into the printer because I didn't buy a printer with duplex and I don't want to print single-sided. Yes, I still print my returns and mail them. When they make e-filing FREE, I will e-file. I absolutely refuse to PAY to make the government's job easier.

Frankly, I'm at a loss for how the printout of the returns for our records needs to be 66 pages! We have practically no deductions, no businesses, and we pretty much only enter W-2s and 1099s. Crazy. I don't print all the extra worksheets because I have never needed them. I just print copies of the returns we file which still exceeds 30 pages double-sided.

Thanks to the First-Time Homebuyers Tax Credit we are getting a nice refund. While technically it's a refund, I am simply applying the refund to 2010's taxes which are going to be REALLY BAD. Jeff had to sell all his outstanding options when he left his job. Yeah for Apple options, but our income taxes will be a bummer. Hopefully they pulled out enough taxes when he sold the stock—they kept half of all proceeds when the stock was sold—but I'm not going to count on it.

In other news, Jeff drove out to Cornelius to pick up our quarter of a grass-fed cow/?steer. Our freezer is nicely stocked now for the winter. There will be lots of stews in the crockpot, I suspect, with us so busy in school.

Making Pear Butter

We found this recipe for Caramel Spice Pear Butter over a decade ago, and Jeff just loves it!

We found a good deal on pears at Grocery Outlet last week so today we're making a batch of pear butter because I'm pretty sure we've gone through everything we had in our pantry.

Here is the recipe for anyone else who might be interested; from Sunset Home Canning, 1993 edition:

Caramel Spice Pear Butter

Caramelized sugar and a trio of sweet spices lend this fragrant pear butter its distinctive flavor. It's perfect for cool-weather breakfasts; try it on hot toast or English muffins.

7½ pounds (about 15 large) firm-ripe Bartlett pears
2 cups water
6 cups sugar
1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon ground ginger
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Core pears, but do not peel them. Slice pears and place in a heavy-bottomed 8- to 10-quart pan. Add water; bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Then reduce heat to low, cover and cook until pears are tender when pierced (about 30 minutes). Let cool slightly, then whirl in a food processor, a portion at a time, until finely chopped. Return to pan.

Place 1½ cups of the sugar in a wide frying pan. Cook over medium heat, stirring often, until sugar carmelizes to a medium-brown syrup. Immediately pour syrup into a pan with chopped pears (syrup will sizzle and harden, but dissolve again as the mixture cooks). Stir in remaining 4½ cups sugar, cinnamon, cloves and ginger until well blended.

Bring mixture to a boil over medium high heat, stirring. Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, stirring often, until thickened (about 45 minutes); as mixture thickens, reduce heat and stir more often to prevent sticking. Stir in lemon juice just before removing from heat.

Ladle hot pear butter into hot, sterilized half-pint jars, leaving ¼-inch headspace. Wipe rims and threads clean; top with hot lids, then firmly screw on bands. Process in boiling water canner for 5 minutes. Or omit processing and ladle into freezer jars or freezer containers, leaving ½-inch headspace; apply lids. Let stand for 12 to 24 hours at room temperature; freeze or refrigerate. Makes about 9 half-pints.

Storage time. Processed: Up to 1 year. Unprocessed: Up to 1 month in refrigerator; up to 1 year in freezer.

Per tablespoon: 45 calories, 0 g protein, 12 g carbohydrates, 0 g total fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 0 mg sodium

It's a lot of work, but well worth it in Jeff's opinion. =)

We usually reduce the sugar; today we're trying 4 cups total. We've found jams and butters to be plenty sweet with sugar reduced by up to ½ the recipe calls for. I've also successfully tried substituting Splenda for sugar, but we're not doing that today. We have a lot of sugar on hand so I'm trying to reduce that oversupply.

Peaches Finished!

We finished canning the last of the peaches this morning. Final tally: 16 almost-quarts (ex-Classico pasta jars), 4 pints of jam and 4 pie fillings. We're pretty proud of ourselves because we had never before canned sliced peaches before this year. And we were getting pretty efficient by the end.

More Peaches!

We bought 34 pounds of peaches earlier in the week and today the fruit was finally ripe enough to can. We put up four pie fillings, one batch of jam, and a large batch of peach slices in jars. We should have finished them all, but we actually only managed to finish one full box and part of the other. Tomorrow morning we'll have to finish up canning the rest of the fruit before it spoils.

I have been poring over so many home repair and bungalow books lately that my brain has gotten quite tired of focusing on the house. I actually picked up a "brain candy" book today I brought from my grandmother's house and read it. It was sort of an odd love story, but it was fairly entertaining and a quick read and now it will move along on its way (out of our house).

Jeff got a new toy in the mail today! (I thought I had ordered green, but it came and it's sort of a turquoise color. Oh well.)

I'm still trying to plot my plan for curtains and shower curtain in our upstairs master bathroom. I think I figured out what I want to do and have started sketching it and drawing out pattern pieces. Pictures may follow tomorrow, if I have a chance to get started.

Though, we may have to spend the afternoon painting. We still have a bit of fence to paint and it's possible it won't be raining, so that probably needs to be a priority. Sigh. (I'd rather sew!)

Yes We Canned!

We have been canning and baking up a storm this weekend. We found a good deal on local apricots so we ended up buying 2 full boxes (about 30 pounds worth). We actually would have bought more, but the store realized they were undercharging for the fruit and raised the price right after us.
We finished up the last of the peaches in a batch of apricot-peach-blueberry jam. That batch was a really pretty color.

Jeff also baked up one the six apricot pie fillings with the addition of a handful of blueberries and this morning he made jam cookies. We are eating good food this weekend! Yum.

We're thinking about going Monday morning and doing some U-Pick to get some more peaches. We'd really like to try doing more canning of fruit slices.

Canning Today

Jeff brought back a big tub of peaches with him from Redwood City. They are off the tree in the backyard at Upton. Even though I didn't particularly feel like canning today, with fruit you use it or you lose it. So, canning we are. =)

This is the first time we've tried canning peach slices. We only had 4 pint jars of peaches that were "perfect" enough. The rest of the peaches are being made into jam and coffee cake. Jeff is still working on the coffee cake, so there's no pictures yet.

I ended up doing three batches of jam, and unfortunately, I lost a jar in the hot water bath, probably because there wasn't a metal tray in the bottom of the pot and the jar was right above the flame. Oh well. My tray went AWOL a couple moves ago.

3 Risotti Dinner

Dinner was wonderful and we really enjoyed our visit with friends. We went off to Scott and Pattie's house in Mountain View. And we were joined by Chris and Jenny for dinner. Somehow, we didn't quite manage to catch pictures of Scott and Pattie together, but we got Chris & Jenny.

Dinner was three types of risotto. Two from the Cucina & Famiglia cookbook: Risotto alla Milanese (Traditional Risotto from Milan) and Risotto con Gamberetti (Risotto with Shrimp). They also made a pesto risotto.