So long, February

 

And take this miserable weather with you! That's the white knuckle view of Blewett Pass from the passenger's seat yesterday. But we got an early start, traffic was light and we home in Seattle by 1 pm. Snow on the ground here too, but just the slushy stuff. It looks like a week of monotonous bad weather, with high's in the 40's and lows in the 30's.

The only big disappointment on the drive was the Cle Elum McDonald's was closed. That's a pathetic thing to even admit. It's not that we're crazy about fast food, but there's a clean(ish) restroom for the price of an Egg McMuffin or burger. 

Instead, we had to go inside the big, chaotic grocery store. The parking lot as usual was covered in ice and snow. Shame on Safeway. I once slipped out there and will forever hold a grudge. Yes, there are sit down restaurants along the way, but it's better keeping to the same routine, our other stop being Lone Pine Fruit and Espresso, a world away from McDonald's. 

Just a nice ordinary week coming up here. Despite the cold weather, the forsythia is blooming and bulbs poking up in the garden.

Methow Valley surprises

 

Amanda, Tom and the girls checking out a Little Lending Library kiosk on a winter walk far from town. Sharp eyes also spotted a few blades of green grass on the edge of the melting snow along the road.

Speaking of long roads, we're headed back to Seattle this morning. It's another grey and cold morning, but looks like decent driving conditions over the mountain passes.

What are the odds?

 

When two parties set out on a long road trip at different times, with no awareness of each other, then randomly meet up? 

That's what happened to John yesterday going into Lone Pine at the exact minute Amanda, her best friend Gina and the four kids were coming out. They were on their way to Wenatchee for a girl's shopping trip, and John headed in the other direction to Twisp. 

The sunrise this morning was pretty, although now it's clouding up again and expecting some light snow. Yesterday was a good day for driving though, and it was beautiful in Twisp. 

I walked down to the river, expecting to post hole through the snow, extremely annoying, but the surface was frozen solid. That was the first time I've been down there since last October, and sat for a while on a warmish rock enjoying the view. 

The patterns of ice along the bank looking exactly like winter landscapes from far above. Water physics is water physics-- just a matter of scale.

But had to watch my step in different way. You've heard of the "Trail of Tears?" Well, this is the "Trail of Poop" through the front yard.

A plug

 

That's a screen shot I took last night while using an app called "Sky Guide." You simply point your phone overhead in any direction or angle, and it automatically adjusts the viewing to identify stars, planets, constellations, etc. 

No fumbling with star charts or flashlights. It is very beautiful and best of all, the basic version is free.

And here's an actual photo of the moon, Jupiter and Venus lined up in the western sky.

Not a cloud in the sky on this extremely cold morning. Although honestly, when the sun comes out and it isn't windy, 20 degrees feels warmer here than that damp, bone-chilling 40 degrees in Seattle. This should be a good day for John driving over the mountains. 

Amanda made an excellent meal last night along with Tom's excellent fire. And the smart money knows just where to go!

Yes, that furry lump is"Millie" basking in the wood basket. 

Have a good weekend.

Winter's tight grip

 

I put my Valentine's Day lilies outside on the deck the morning I left. They were still beautiful, but almost at that falling apart stage so I didn't want to leave John a mess on the table. And doesn't it look warm and springlike in Seattle?

Ha. Not so fast. The latest wind storm blew them off the railing, followed by light snow yesterday. That didn't last, but the cold temperatures have, and it seems like the entire west is frozen. They're even talking about snow in San Francisco, an unheard of thing. 

In Twisp, a high of 19 degrees today. There are some disadvantages to manufactured homes, but the newer ones are incredibly energy efficient. 

The snow has melted (or slid) off the other roofs on our street, mainly from wasted heat escaping through the ceilings. Our roof still has a foot of snow. If you open the door for even a few seconds, the furnace immediately comes on. Like when I peeked out at the Twisp Cross this morning.

We have a forced air electric, a bit noisy, but it keeps every corner of the house warm. I have it set at an extravagant 68 degrees during the day.

Without any alternative type of heat, like a wood stove, things would go south fast if the power ever went off for an extended period. This is a bit unnerving, but fortunately seldom happens in the winter, at least in the city limits. 

And thanks to our PUD of Okanagan County heroes. Here in the electricity-generating, dam-filled Columbia basin, rates are relatively low and many people completely dependent on electric heat. Not just the young, hale and hearty live way out here, there are many old folks who do just fine. But you have to tough as nails. This ain't Florida.

Amanda is working from home today, so I'll walk up to their house (burrr!) and borrow the car to stock up on groceries before John arrives.

Curious

 

The deer hang out around the yard 24 hours a day, all healthy-looking does with their big fawns. Those are the lucky ones that survived the winter, although life in town doesn't seem that rough. Deer prefer twigs and leaves over grass, and there's plenty to eat along the river.

They're curious about what's going on in our usually dark house and stare right in the windows. They consider the yard and driveway their winter home and we're the trespassers.

If you go outside, they walk slowly away, but in Twisp they have nothing much to fear except cars.

As the snow melts, the yard has taken on that winter barnyard look. Free fertilizer. Lots of free fertilizer.

Despite the bleak landscape, nature is waking up to early spring. It's been pretty good wildlife viewing: eagles, ducks, hawks and flocks of turkeys. An occasional squirrel.

Yes, just as cold as it looks.

Good friends

 

We took the kids to the Winthrop Rink yesterday and I skated with my friend Karen for the first time in over 30 years. Very carefully indeed, as the nearest emergency room is 50 miles away. Being in Twisp with a sprained ankle and no car is unappealing to say the least. But when do I ever get the chance to skate? I couldn't pass it up.

It was pretty exciting and Apple Watch must have been extremely confused-- creeping along at a walking snail's pace with a heart rate like I was running a marathon! 

Once I was a fearless ice skater and skier, but as we get older we tend to become more cautious, or perhaps just gain common sense. Anyway, once I started to relax it went pretty well other than the rented skates pinched my toes. Karen and I had a good time as always--we are very compatible and have much in common.

 

She is also the grandma of Maya's best friend since preschool. What a nice connection for us.

 

The only other news is the incoming weather. Yesterday was downright spring-like with melting puddles of snow, but we're about to make an abrupt change to polar temperatures. 

 

Thursday will be the coldest day this week, down to about zero. Fortunately the house is well insulated. We keep the thermostat at 55 when we're away, and once the initial chill is off it stays cozy and warm although you hear the electric furnace cycling on and off around the clock. Wood heat would be much nicer, but not really feasible in this house. Carefree summer days and open windows still a long time away.

Winter sojourn

 

I drove to Twisp yesterday with my new local friends K and B who have a home on the river just down the street from us. They come to Seattle often to visit family, and were nice to take me back with them. I really enjoyed their company on the long drive. When I'm ready to go home, John will drive over and we'll go back together in one car.

Of course that means I don't have car now, but it isn't a big deal since I can walk everywhere in town (very carefully, in the snow and ice.) The girls are on winter break this week so we'll keep busy while Amanda and Tom are at work. Today we're going to the Winthrop ice rink.

You're probably thinking "winter wonderland" but the fact is by late February winter has pretty much worn out it's welcome in the Methow Valley. We're getting into shoulder season, not exactly Twisp's shining hour of beauty.

Town looks pretty bedraggled but Maya doesn't care. Think muddy streets and mountains of dirty snow melting then refreezing at night. On top of that, a major storm later this week followed by record cold temperatures in the Valley. Down to zero on Wednesday night. La Nina is not slinking away quietly this year!

So why am I here? Well, the house is clean, warm and peaceful and the yard full of sleeping deer. And the fact is, I miss this crazy place after being gone for a few weeks. Every season has its charms if you know where to look-- you just have to look a little harder in February.

Tacos al pastor

 

Al pastor tacos means "shepherd style" and it's a common menu item in Mexican taquerias. This method of vertically grilled meat was brought to Mexico in the late 19th century by a wave of Lebanese immigrants. In the 1920s in the state of Puebla, lamb meat was replaced by pork and the second generation Lebanese immigrants began opening restaurants. Now they are ubiquitous.

In the blink of an eye, an outer layer of cooked meat is thinly sliced off the spit with a large knife into small corn tortillas and topped with cilantro, onion and pineapple. Delicious to eat and fascinating to watch.

Being a paranoid person when it comes to street food preparation, I wonder how long it takes for the inside of that raw stack of meat to finally heat and cook? Well, leave it to the experts. Since they've been making shawarma since the beginning of the Ottoman Empire, they must have the method down. 

 

Last night I made a gringo version of tacos al pastor with leftover roast pork crisped up in a frying pan with spices. It turned into more of fajita thing with all the grilled vegetables, but my goodness that was good with homemade re-fried beans. We both ate several.

Another winter weekend rolls around-- have a good one.

Fat Thursday

 

 

Paczki Day is celebrated in Poland today, a week before Ash Thursday. This is the time to indulge and also clear the pantry of tempting rich food before the 40-day period of Lent. Paczki (pronounced "punchkees" by Americans) are like jelly donuts but made with more eggs. 

Traditional Fat Tuesday is next week, so the Poles get a head start on the last of the guilt-free treats.

Speaking of fat, I found the secret to those rich, silky, thick Panang Curry sauces from restaurants: try using canned coconut cream instead of the watery milk. Two ingredients and you've practically got it made. Move over donuts.

City hens

 

I took a different walk route the other day and noticed this cute portable chicken house in a front yard. They all came running over to the fence when they saw me, looking for a treat. Pets-- just like Amanda's hens. 

Speaking of which, the girls lost one chicken this winter to a stray dog attack (it could have been much worse) but overall their flock has been amazingly resilient, even laying in the bitter cold. The only problem is the eggs can freeze solid before they have time to gather them. And the stinkers like to "hide" them under their house.

Yes, slow down people. We're coming up on 3 years since the first pandemic lock down. Is that possible? In states of another color, it probably wasn't as complete or long of a shut down as here in blue Seattle. Everything was closed, except for the most essential stores. 

People just stayed inside and avoided all human contact if they went out. What a sad time and an old story we all want to forget. For a year, we only used the car for early morning runs to the grocery store and when my gym closed I started walking for exercise. 

Now it's a habit (one of my few good ones) and I still do the same 2-mile loop almost daily. Back in 2020, there was so little traffic you hardly had to glance to cross the deserted street. Boy, those days are gone, and people go tearing through intersections, everyone in a huge rush again to get somewhere fast.

Well, I'm off to the Cafe to see what this new day brings. 

Happy Valentine's Day

 

 

Carrot Date Cake

Let's talk calories! Chopped dates, walnuts, crushed pineapple, carrots, 2 cups of sugar, full cup of oil, 4 eggs, topped with butter and cream cheese frosting. 

What's not to like? A moist and dense cake, like regular carrot cake on steroids. John is crazy about dates and eats them everyday. This recipe came from a cookbook we bought last visit to the Shield's Dates store in Indio.

Most of the cookie and cakes look good, although some of the "miscellaneous" recipes are pretty weird, like something called "Stuffed Desert Fish Date" which involves 2 pounds of white fish. I'll spare you the details at this early hour.

So we woke up to a dusting of snow on Valentine's Day. It won't last but enough to mess up traffic with temps below freezing. We're not going far. This being one of the worst days of the year for eating in restaurants, maybe I'll make panang curry with shrimp. Something spicy on a cold night. Have a sweet day.

 

What a puzzle

 

John gave me this beautiful 470 piece puzzle for Christmas. It's one of those made-in-England Wentwood wood jigsaws with the tiny, whimsical shaped pieces. It looked intimidating, but once he started the border I took it from there and thoroughly enjoyed finishing it over several days.  

Let me tell you about the art:

The work is called "The Coronation of the Virgin," and was completed in 1444 by Antonio Vivarini and his brother-in-law Giovanni d'Alemagna, who both lived on the island of Murano. It was installed at the unassuming looking San Pantalon Church in Venice (below) where you can see it to this day. The painting was restored in 1996 with funding from the Boston Chapter of Save Venice.

It was done on wood panel, approximately 70x90 inches, using egg tempura and gold leaf. Lots of gold leaf.

The Queen of Heaven is shown in the center, being crowned by her son, Jesus Christ, surrounded by members of a heavenly hierarchy with angels at the top. God the Father blesses Christ, who crowns his mother, while the dove of the Holy Spirit sits on his lap.  

The Gothic, Byzantine and renaissance elements blend together in a strange and wonderful way. A full audience of saints and prophets are seated in tiers like choir stalls, as if heaven were the apse of a gigantic church auditorium. 

The detail on the puzzle is amazing, with hundreds of faces, each one a miniature portrait.

So, did you enjoy the Super Bowl? We were home even before the first quarter was over, so got to watch the rest of the game and the half-time show, which was quite the whiplash after Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. 

Stormy weather for the next few days, and even a chance of snow flurries for Valentine's Day tomorrow.

The week wraps up

Nova is in Seattle, although we won't get to see her. She's here on a field trip to the International District with her Methow Valley Middle School Chinese class. 

The kids came over yesterday on the bus then stayed overnight at a private school downtown. Two days of big city Asian food and culture activities. How exciting for those lucky 13-year olds.

I remember school field trips to a potato chip factory and more memorably, the Colorado State Insane Asylum in Pueblo. Yes, they really called it that. We were paraded through the wards to freely stare at the inmates. Just think how the patients felt being on display. I suppose this was considered "educational" in the 1960's, but it sounds like Victorian times. Thank goodness things have changed.

Anyway, happier topics. Yet another Symphony Sunday which is the Superbowl. Darn-- the one afternoon you want to be tucked up with a good dinner in the oven. But we should be home in time to catch the second half. 

Have a good weekend.

Strong stuff

Asian condiments and sauces last a long time, so I stock up once a year or so at one of the Asian supermarkets in Seattle. And it's fun browsing the shelves looking at (sorry, this is culturally insensitive) strange products you have no idea what they are, much less, how to use in a recipe. Most don't have any instructions in English. 

John loves chicken with black bean sauce, a Chinese restaurant staple that's hard to reproduce at home. The prepared sauce (above) is incredibly concentrated and salty, so it only takes a small amount to flavor an entire stir-fry. 

The question is, how much? I found a fairly easy version of black bean chicken on the website "Allrecipes," my go-to place for Internet recipes.
 

Notice the fancy cut carrots? The sou chef continues to expand on his knife skills. The recipe called for extra salt, good grief, on top of the soy and oyster sauce? I left that out, and next time might increase the black bean sauce and add some ginger. But it was a very flavorful dish with brown rice. 

It should get into the low 50's today. Nice. Compared to what we're used to, that will feel like summer out on the ukulele patio.

Winter Wednesday

 

"Go to the winter woods: listen there, look, watch, and the "dead months" will give you a subtler secret than any you have yet found in the forest.

Fiona Macleod, Where the Forest Murmurs 

Have you heard of "forest bathing?" A friend from The Ukes told me about her daily forest bath routine in a green belt near her home. Yes, the clothing stays on. The idea originated in 1982, when the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture created the term shinrin-yoku, which translates to “absorbing the forest atmosphere.”

The practice encourages people to simply spend time in nature and focus on what the senses are taking in. Outdoor mindfulness lowers blood pressure, heart rate, and levels of harmful stress hormones. Even 10 to 20 minutes a day in nature can lead to more feelings of well-being and happiness. 

I go slightly nuts when I can't get outside for a bit every day. My heart goes out to all the people confined indoors for various reasons. One of the saddest things about many nursing homes is the lack of peaceful outdoor space and fresh air.

Well, I'll be confined in the cafe this morning. Last week was crazy busy, because both Chef Francisco and the cafe manager were out, leaving the volunteer (me) to basically run the place. 

We did just fine with a slightly reduced menu. No fancy sandwich or composed salad selection, which aren't that popular with the senior set anyway. And much more expensive than the soup and half sandwich combo, a screaming deal.

The regular cafe manager creates good fresh soups daily. The substitute cook did her best and made an interesting "spaghetti soup" cobbled together with leftover mystery meat (hum) and various other things pulled from the fridge and pantry. The cafe smelled like our grade school cafeteria in 1958, where the kitchen ladies made everything from scratch (meaning mostly from cans.) I didn't have time to sample the soup, but people ate it up, no problem.

Spring bulbs

 

Nothing says spring like the flowering bulbs suddenly showing up outside grocery stores. I splurged yesterday on a pot of three hyacinth bulbs, just for the incredible fragrance they'll bring in the house. Ours won't bloom outside for another month or so.

Hyacinths are associated with spring and rebirth. In religious tradition, the flowers represent "prudence, constancy, desire of heaven and peace of mind." 

The hyacinth appears in the first section of "The Waste Land" in a conversation between the poet and the mystery "hyacinth girl." An evocative snip of poetry, if there ever was one. 

Imagine this entire garden of just hyacinths, where a beautiful woman gathers them by the armload at dusk. No wonder the poet is struck speechless and blind:

“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
“They called me the hyacinth girl.”
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence. 

T.S. Eliot