Livin' the good life

 

No offense intended to the German people, but this dense Alki Bakery Black Forest cake is better than what we had in Bavaria. 

 At the cuckoo clock tourist trap store back in June. Which seems a lifetime ago now.  

Also on the Seattle menu yesterday, strawberry waffles for breakfast.

And rib eye steaks for dinner. Now that's a rare treat around here. 

Well, the occasion was John's birthday, and other than an early trip to Home Depot, we stayed home and let the holiday weekend swirl around without us. 

It was a spectacular football weather day, and most of the city was watching the Apple Cup. The Huskies won, but not very prettily. Disloyal to my UW Alma Mater, I've turned into an eastern Washington Cougar fan. There is talk lately of Nova applying to college there, which would be fantastic. 

After dinner we watched gorgeous Marilyn Monroe and stunning Jane Russell in "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend." By the end of the day, the birthday boy looked as satisfied as this fat spoiled cat, lounging in the farmhouse window.  

 

Applesauce

 

 

It's a lot of bother making applesauce from scratch, but it tastes so much better than anything out of a supermarket jar, which tends to be cloying sweet. And since John did the peeling and chopping this morning when I was at the gym, we cooked up six pints by lunchtime. 

 

These are an organic new crop from Lone Pine. It's a bit early for apples and they were on the hard and tart side, which was perfect for applesauce. Honeycrisp (primarily an eating apple) are juicy and sweeter later in the season. 

 

 

They cook down to soft mush quickly, and just need a light mashing for a slightly lumpy consistency.

We like a chunky texture over the baby food smooth applesauce our moms made with these "mid century vintage" food mills. 

Anyway. I used a touch of brown sugar to give it that light caramel color. No cinnamon and light on the white sugar. It's nice to have some good stuff on hand in the winter for pork roast and those fattening fried potato pancakes I make with leftover mashed potatoes.

So Labor Day weekend is here leaving no doubt that we're headed into that bittersweet season of fall transition. After some good rain, the early mornings in Seattle are suddenly so dark. The screen light of laptops and phones is hard on my old eyes, so I've changed my blogging routine with the season. Besides-- why start the day with NYT doom scrolling? 

Enjoy your holiday weekend and take care on the roads if you're heading out somewhere. We will be at home. 

Diamond in the dump

 

Occasionally you'll find a gem buried in the Internet garbage heap.  

The Last Museum is a new online website that brings together 5.8 million art works on one free platform. Not a functioning museum in itself, the website pulls collection records and images from thousands of institutions around the world. Why travel?

The Last Museum is the kind of sophisticated reference tool we didn't even dream of when I was a working librarian. Users can search by themes, moods, colors, subjects, or descriptive phrases without knowing an artwork’s title or artist. In other words, searching through ideas instead of just keywords.

However, this massive BOT scraping of digital content is somewhat controversial in the museum world. Although many artworks have entered the public domain, some institutions still claim rights over their own photographs, scans, or digital reproductions of those works. The debate on that goes on. 

Also interesting-- the creators/developers of The Last Museum remain completely anonymous! 

As far as I'm concerned, a good use for brilliant tech minds that might otherwise cause mischief on the Internet.

Anyway, fun to play around with on a rainy day.  

Smoked out

 

 

The air was OK while in Twisp, but we hit heavy smoke for most of the drive yesterday. It was especially bad along the Columbia River and through the Wenatchee area (above.) Those poor people, living under that fug all summer. My nose is still tickling and sneezing this morning from the irritation. 

Rain relief is on the way, and it can't come soon enough across the state.

This is the first week of school in Seattle, and for the next 9 months, we time our comings and goings with the middle school drop off and pick up hours. That is, unless you want to walk a block in the rain with your groceries. Welcome home. No parking spaces were open in front of our house to unload yesterday. 

But with roads dry and traffic fairly light, it was an easy drive overall. I bought peaches, pears, squash and a bag of organic Honeycrisp apples ($1.29 a pound) at Lone Pine to make applesauce and wrap up the canning for the year. The pears are few and far between in the Carlton orchard, which was somewhat of a relief to Amanda and Tom. 

And the seasons, they go round and round:

"Be aware of the season you are in and give yourself the grace to be there."

Kristen Dalton 

 

 

Times are a-changin'

 

 

Downtown Twisp is still a major work in progress. There's also new commercial and housing construction everywhere you look. Suddenly, it seems everyone wants to live in Twisp. 

 

 

Wide sidewalks going in on Glover Street, near Amanda and Tom's old place. We are all so thankful the family moved out to the bucolic farm in Carlton.

Speaking of construction, even our little backwater river street is not immune. Someone just bought the small lot next to our driveway. Will they build a ugly Seattle style narrow box? They are following me...

Anyway, at this stage of the game, only so many things one person can worry about. Like beavers. My excellent property management company said they will wire wrap our close in trees this fall to try and save them. Not to mention, save our house from a giant crashing cottonwood tree. The beavers sure don't give a you-know-what. They were here first. 

 

 

But some things are still the same like the friendly little taco stand in town where we had lunch today.

We are heading back to Seattle tomorrow before heavy rain on Wednesday, which makes for miserable mountain driving. But I'll be back again in a couple of weeks to take advantage of lovely September. There is already a nip in the air and that slight feeling of fall urgency people get, especially in rural areas. 

The girls went back to school today. Maya in 8th grade, Nova is a senior! 

 

 

While the cats away

 

 

 

While we were gone, the beavers kept busy chewing down a large tree. Good job, guys. A perfect hit and it smashed one of my river chairs. And I thought they only "worked" in the winter. 

 

The trunk is so heavy it won't budge without a chainsaw. Maybe I can hack out the pieces. It does look pretty trashy. Oh well, I wanted new ones next spring anyway.

 

Other than that, everything is fine here-- the house just as clean and neat as when I left in June. The lawn was generously irrigated all summer which was wasteful but looks great. 

Best of all, we bought some rain along yesterday, always a rare gift here in parched central Washington. When we stopped at Lone Pine for lunch, the air smelled like someone had just just dumped water on a campfire. A good thing. 

More later...