From Bread to Cherries

Ah, friends, so many things to tell you in order to relate a simple story. I should write at this blog more often. I’ll do my best to be succinct.

In March, I wrote a post at my fitness blog asking which whole wheat bread is best? I picked up one of every loaf from Safeway, compared ingredients and price, and then asked six people to taste test each loaf. I concluded that Milton’s Whole Grain Plus offered the best bang for the buck.

After some advice from readers, I tried a couple loaves from Trader Joe’s, and ultimately decided that I liked Rainier Organic Sasquatch Grain & Seed Bread. Eating a slice of that stuff is like eating a field of wheat.

But during that discussion, Brad suggested I should try making my own bread. “That’s crazy,” I thought. “Making your own bread is too much work.” But Brad pointed me to a Mark Bittman recipe for No-Knead Bread. Soon after, Kris and I discovered some refinements from Cook’s Illustrated. Over the past few months, she and I have been regularly baking an easy and cheap home-made bread that is far better than any store-bought stuff.

When I wrote about our breadmaking experience at Get Rich Slowly, several readers told us we could make the process even cheaper by purchasing our ingredients at Costco. On Friday, we headed over to pick up two pounds of yeast and fifty pounds of bread flour. (We also met Rhonda for lunch, where we talked about clothes and clubs, but that’s a story for later.)

While Kris was looking for breadmaking stuff, I nosed through the books. I found a title called Back to Basics: A Guide to Traditional Skills, which I fell in love with immediately. It’s an illustrated how-to manual for people interested in homesteading and self-sufficiency. It features lots of advice on growing your own food, both vegetable and animal.

This afternoon, Kris went across the street to chat with our neighbor, Patrice. I eventually went over to join the chat. Patrice was offering to let us pick more from her cherry tree, an enormous old thing that may never have been pruned. While we chatted, we started talking about the property she rents from John.

“This used to be a farm,” she told us. “In fact, John still calls it The Farm. The barn was actually a chicken coop. That’s where the vegetable garden used to be. And he had cows and horses. He was pretty self-sufficient.”

This is unsurprising. In addition to the old cherry tree, he has several large apples, rows of raspberries, and the best grapes in the neighborhood (which grow wild along the fence and up into the trees). When we moved in, John was the one who gave me wood and advice to set up our own grape and berry arbors. He’s happy to see us growing our own food.

This evening, Kris and I went back over to pick cherries. We’ve already picked all the low-hanging fruit (which led me to understand finally what that phrase actually means), so we carried a ladder over. Kris climbed into the tree first, but she chickened out. “You’re a girl,” I said. “I’m a boy. Let me at it. This is boy’s work.”

I loved climbing trees when I was a boy, monkeying around from branch to branch. I did something similar this afternoon — in a 39-year-old man sort of way — snagging all the gorgeous cherries. (While I was in the tree, I thought I was doing a very Joel-like thing. “My new motto should be WWJD — what would Joel do?” I thought.

As we were finishing, the new neighbors came down to pick cherries, too. While Kris went inside to make some cherry preserves, I stayed outside to meet them. I let them use my ladder to climb into the tree to pick fruit of their own. We chatted a little to get to know each other.

“This is a strange neighborhood,” said one of the new neighbors. “It feels so old-fashioned. We’re so close to Portland, but it feels like we’re in the country. I mean, here we are all getting together to pick cherries.”

Exactly. That’s why we love it here. In a way, it feels like getting back to basics.

The Thunder Rolls

Ah, the Fourth of July. Such a pleasant time in our neighborhood: lots of loud explosions. The early evening is filled with pops and cracks. It sounds like small arms fire, like we’re in some sort of war zone. Of course this is especially pronounced on the Independence Day itself (when the snap, crackle, pop lasts well into the early morning), but it’s also noisy in the days leading up to the event.

Last night was especially bad. It wasn’t just the sound of “gunfire” at 10pm. No, last night we had the boom of “cannons” at three in the morning.

Okay, to be fair, that cacophony wasn’t actually from neighbors with firecrackers. It was from thunder.

The Portland area doesn’t have frequent thunderstorms, but we do get them from time-to-time. All my life, I’ve liked the sound of thunder rolling in the distance. It never occurred to me to think about what it must sound like to have the thunder overhead. Last night, I got to experience it first-hand.

Between 2:30 and 3:30, the thunder and lighting raged all around Rosings Park. It was as if we were in the midst of the Battle of Trafalgar. The lighting sometimes seemed to be a strobe light. And the thunder rolled thick and heavy.

“Crap,” I said when the rain began to fall. “I left the windows down in my car.”

The lightning flashed.

“Well, you’re not going to roll them up now,” Kris said. “But why don’t you go see if you can let Nemo in.” Nemo had been the only cat who refused to come in before bed.

I went downstairs to call for him. All of the other cats were tense. Every time the thunder cracked, Toto froze in fear. Max, his ears back, followed me around, begging to be let outside. But Nemo was nowhere to be found. He wouldn’t come when I called.

If I had been thinking, I would have grabbed my digital camera to record the scene. I don’t know if I’ll ever experience another thunderstorm like that again. But it was 3am and I wasn’t thinking straight.

Now the firecrackers over the next couple nights won’t seem like that a very big deal…

The Case of the Too Tall Grass

You’d think that if I were home all the time, I’d be able to keep the grass mowed. Heck, I’d certainly think that. Well, it just hasn’t been the case.

It’s been a constant battle this spring to keep the lawn at its proper length. I don’t mind mowing — in fact, I find it therapeutic. (Some of my best blog posts have come to me while mowing the lawn.) But in order to get the job done:

The grass must be dry.
I must be home.

Again, I’m not away from home very often lately, but I have missed some key windows of opportunities due to other commitments (running, biking, hanging out with friends). Most of all, the weather hasn’t co-operated.

At the moment, the grass is taller than I’ve ever let it get before. Ever. Well, parts of it, anyhow.

I’ve been trying to mow when the weather looks right, but I never get a long enough spell to finish. The sun was out all Saturday (well, it was dry anyhow), but I spent six hours in the morning trimming the arborvitae hedge. I started mowing the lawn in the mid-afternoon, but then had to stop midway through in order to leave for dinner with Marcela and Pierre.

I was going to finish on Sunday, but the weather didn’t cooperate. On Tuesday, I thought I had another shot at the yard, but the grass was too wet. The mower couldn’t handle it. I only managed to trim a small patch. I considered mowing late yesterday evening, but the grass was still too wet (it had rained earlier in the day).

Finally this morning I deemed the grass dry enough to mow. I went outside and began to plow through the green waves. The mower jammed, but not too often. I was making good progress, except that I was frequently interrupted by the guys who were here to suck the insulation out of the attic. Then, after they left a few minutes ago, I went outside to finish the job only to find it had begun to rain again.

Argh!

I am so frustrated. My lawn is now four different heights: short, not-so-short, tall, and savannah. And the forecast doesn’t look good. It contains rain, rain, and more rain. There’s a chance we’ll get a dry spell on Sunday or Monday, I think, but by then I’ll need to re-mow the entire yard.

I’m too the point where I’ve actually contemplated calling a yard service to see how much they’d charge to mow our half acre. I can’t bring myself to do it, though. Maybe I should call my brother Jeff and see if he needs to make some extra cash — he loves to mow!

Oregon Mist

It’s one of those days I love. It’s about 15 degrees centigrade (which is 59 for those of you in Oregon City), the skies are grey, and there’s a light rain falling. A perfect Oregon day: warm and wet.

Over the past month or so, Kris has developed a system to ensure I don’t spend my entire day on the computer. She pulled a dry-erase board out of storage, and every day before she leaves, she writes down a chore (or two) that I need to complete.

To many of you (all female), this probably sounds like a terrible system. I should just do what needs to be done, right? In theory, yes. In reality, I’m easily distracted. I like having the dry erase board because it lets me know which of those tasks in my chore cloud Kris deems most important.

Today my primary task was to weed the grapes.

When we planted the raspberries and grapes, their 20-foot beds were empty of weeds. In fact, we even planted some strawberries alongside the raspberry canes. Now, however, the grass has crowded its way in and is dominating the base of that row. It’s threatening to do the same by the grapes, too, but it’s being held at bay by a variety of noxious weeds. Including raspberries. (Those raspberries are invasive!)

This afternoon I went outside in shorts, a t-shirt, and a cap. No shoes. No socks. I spent half an hour enjoying the misty air, pulling grass, hoeing weeds. It was a soggy mess, of course, but I loved it. As I say, it’s one of those days I love.

Pok Pok

On Presidents Day, Kris and I met Lisa and Craig at Pok Pok, a popular Asian restaurant here in Portland. We showed up at 8pm, thinking it would be easy to get a table on a Monday night. We were wrong. The wait was 90 minutes. Disappointed, we dined at Nostrana instead.

But I couldn’t shake the idea of Pok Pok. I love Thai and Vietnamese food. Kris doesn’t care for Asian food, so I’m always happy when she’ll let me choose it for our dinners out. When Tiffany offered to take me out to dinner for my birthday, I chose Pok Pok.

This time we showed up at 5:30 on a Tuesday afternoon. There was still a 20-minute wait (Pok Pok doesn’t take reservations except for parties of five or more), but that was reasonable. We sat outside in a covered waiting area. Once we entered the restaurant, we understood why the wait was so long: the place is tiny, seating maybe 30 people (with a few more spots at the bar).

Right away, I knew I was going to love the place. The smells were amazing. I loved the cramped space and the low ceiling. It didn’t feel like any other restaurant in Portland.

The dinner menu is filled with J.D.-friendly foods: lots of meat and sauces and rice, and only a few vegetables. Because servings are relatively small, family-style dining is encouraged. We ordered:

The whole Kai Yaang (a charcoal-roasted game hen)
Ike’s vietnamese fish sauce wings (named one of the ten-best restaurant dishes in America by Food & Wine)
Duck leg in a savory broth
A flank steak (I think) salad

Wow.

The food was amazing. It was so good, I had to text Craig in the middle of the meal to let him know about it. (Craig and Lisa, let’s make it a priority to go there together, eh?) Plenty of lime and pepper and garlic and fish sauce, all lathered over a variety of poultry. What’s not to love?

The wings, especially, were delicious. As many of you know, I am a connoisseur of chicken wings. (Or maybe that’s a “sucker for”, I’m not sure.) I’m a fan of the smokey wings at the Oaks Bottom Pub. I appreciate most wings. But none compare to Ike’s Sticky Wings. Again, they’re simply amazing, coated with garlic and caramelized fish sauce. Delicious. “Hm,” said Kris. “Even I like these.”

In fact, after we left, Kris confessed, “I guess we can come back to Pok Pok. For Asian food, that’s not so bad.” Not so bad. It rocks!

How much did I like Pok Pok? I liked it so much that I went back again yesterday to have lunch with Andrew. If I could, I’d go there again today. J.D. has a new favorite restaurant.

You can read a rave review of Pok Pok at An Exploration of Portland Food and Drink.

City Market

Kris and I made an expedition to northwest Portland today, searching for menu items for an upcoming dinner party. Amy Jo had told us that City Market at 21st & Johnson was a great place to pick up top-quality meats and cheeses. She wasn’t kidding.

City Market is a playground for foodies. It’s a small place, but it holds an amazing variety of good food. Unlike New Seasons and other similar high-end grocery stores, City Market doesn’t do any catering to the lowest common denominator. There are no breakfast cereals here. The junk food is all quality junk food.

City Market features a fine seafood section, a butcher department, and a huge variety of cheeses and deli meats. There’s a long aisle of wines, a case of gourmet beers and soft drinks, and a corner filled with produce. As I said, it’s a small space, but it’s packed with good stuff.

Kris selected some cheeses while I sampled smoked salmon and asked about clams.

“Wow,” I said as we walked back to the car. “That place was great. That’s exactly my kind of grocery store. I could shop there all the time.”

“Yeah,” Kris muttered. “Except for the price.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“This is a half a bag of groceries,” she said, holding up the bag she was carrying. “It cost us $75.”

“Oh,” I said. “Good point.”

I guess City Market isn’t a good place for everyday shopping. But I sure intend to return there to pick up stuff for future dinner parties!

A Weekend of Food and Friends

After several weeks of being rather non-social, Kris and I spent a lot of time with friends this weekend.

Thursday

On Thursday, I drove to Salem to have lunch with Mackenzie. Though both of us are feeling heavy, and we believe we should start watching our weight, we opted to eat at The Great Wall, my favorite Chinese buffet. I love that place. While we ate, we brainstormed possible collaborations.

I’m interested in having Mac help me revive Money Hacks, a companion site to Get Rich Slowly. Mac surprised me, however, by suggesting a site that I’ve had on the back-burner for some time: Get Fit Slowly. I’d planned to launch a site with that name on January 1st, but was worried I wouldn’t have time with all my other projects. But with Mac as a partner, I think it has a far better chance at succeeding. I’m excited about working with him on this.

On Thursday evening — my belly still stuffed — we headed to Gino’s with Paul and Amy Jo. We seem to do this once a week lately. It’s fun. I ordered the clams, of course, and a cheese platter. But I was so full from The Great Wall, that I couldn’t even finish the clams! When the cheese platter came, I thought I’d explode.

Friday

On Friday afternoon, we stopped by Rejuvenation to look at furniture for the living room. I sat in a number of chairs, and fell in love with the much-too-expensive Stickley pieces. Now begins my quest to find similar furniture for less. (Look for more on the furniture quest in coming entries.)

In the evening, we visited Marcela, Pierre, and their children for a wonderful dinner. We have them over about once a year; they have us over about once a year. Though we don’t see them often, I always love these meals. Marcela and Pierre are intelligent, witty, and fine cooks. Their kids are very precocious. On Friday, Ella was telling me all about the money she’d saved. It was great stuff. But by the time I remembered to run to my car for the camera, she’d become a little shy. Still, here’s a couple of minutes of my conversation with her. Louis is providing background commentary.

For dinner, Marcela had prepared a pork roast, mashed potatoes, and more. It was delicious. Pierre, being French, always has a great selection of wine. In particular, I’m fascinated by his ability to pick sparkling wines that aren’t too flowery. I always think of champagne as a light drink, something sort of girlie. But Pierre has a talent for choosing sparkling wines that work well as aperitifs. This time he served a Domaine Ste. Michelle Blanc de Noirs. “This is like pop!” I exclaimed, and it was. It was great. He also recommended the Blanc de Blanc from the same winery. (Another winner from the past was a Roderer Estate Anderson Valley Brut.)

Saturday

Saturday found us double-booked. We spent the day doing chores. In the late afternoon, Mac and Pam and the kids came up for dinner. We prepared salmon with lemon/caper/mustard butter using fish from our neighbor, John, who is newly returned from his summer in Alaska. (John is also our primary source for grapes, especially the Concords, which I love.) It was great to chat with the Proffitt-Smiths, and to see the now-beefy Liam.

After they’d left, we darted up to Portland to join Courtney’s 40th birthday celebration at Bluehour, one of Portland’s hippest restaurants. We’d never been before, but knew it was swanky. Apparently it’s swankier than we had imagined. I felt severely under-dressed, but my discomfort faded after I began to chat with Andrew. I felt like we had a nice talk, something we don’t get very often anymore. Because Kris and I had already eaten, we didn’t have much. Perhaps it was because we didn’t order an entree, but I wasn’t impressed. Bluehour is expensive, but the food was decidedly mediocre. It was nothing special. I’d rather go to Gino’s almost every time. (In fact, we spent as much for just a little food at Bluehour as we might spend for an entire meal at Gino’s.)

Sunday

Now we’re enjoying a lazy Sunday. I have a lot of writing to do. Kris is reading the book group selection for the month: Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Grey.

It’s been a lovely weekend, actually. Very nice, indeed. But this weekend is just the beginning. We have a lot of social engagements in the coming weeks, too. In fact, I think every weekend in October is booked, as well as many in November and December.

In the Garden, and Trouble at Gino’s

We’re home!

I’ll probably have more to write about our trip in the future, but at the moment it’s all so overwhelming. There’s so much to tell — where do I begin?

Kris caught a cold in New York, and so has spent the last several days under the weather. I, on the other hand, am full of energy and ideas. After visiting so many beautiful places on our trip, I decided it was a shame that we don’t make Rosings Park everthing it could be.

For example, we visited Jane Austen’s house at Chawton, just south of London. While the house itself was rather unremarkable, I loved the yard. (Or “garden”, as the British call it.) It reminded me that outside spaces can, with creativity, be turned into “rooms” of sorts.

“I want to do that with our yard,” I told Kris.

“Fine,” she said. “As long as the house is still screened from the road.”

I rose early on Saturday, and one of the first things I did was begin ripping out the undergrowth and dead wood from the shrubbery in front of the house. It had occurred to me that there was enough space in this spot to create a sort of quiet reading place. It’s near the road, true, but it’s shielded enough by holly and laurel to be relatively private. (And our road has light traffic, anyhow.)

At first I had planned to rip out the huge laurel near the house, but after spending an hour inside the grove (as I’ve come to call it), it was clear that the laurel was actually responsible for both screening the house from the road and providing a good deal of shade. Besides, after clearing away all the other crap inside the grove, there’s a large open space perfect for my intentions.

So now I’ve cleared an open area in the shrubbery in front of the house. The next step is to determine exactly what to do with it. Do I lay down some gravel? Some paving stones? Leave the hard ground as it is? Do I build a bench? Buy some outdoor furniture from Craigslist? Do I need to plant another bush or hedge to screen the grove from the road?

It also occurred to me that it’s ridiculous that I haven’t finished my horseshoe pits. I started that project nearly eighteen months ago, did about two-thirds of the work required, and then stopped. The area had become overgrown with blackberries, cherries, and locusts. So, I took the time on Saturday to pull these invasive plants up by the roots. There’s still a lot of work left to finish the job, but at least the area’s presentable now.

On top of these two projects, there are two similar jobs I want to do. Underneath our redwood tree is a perfect space for a bench to overlook the side yard. Right now, though, the space is filled with three years of branches from trees and shrubs. We need to rent a chipper and clear this space. Finally, behind the smoking porch is another section of overgrown shrubbery, beneath which could be another nice sitting area. The trick here is that the compost pile is just outside the space, and will have to be moved (where?) in order for it to be usable.

So, I’ve been busy working outside. The camellias need pruning, as do several other hedges. The lawn needs to be mowed. (In August? Unheard of!) Often I view this sort of work as a burden, but now, because I have a goal, it’s fun. This is what I want to be doing. I’m even working on these projects at the expense of my web sites.

Paul and Amy Jo have moved into the neighborhood. They’ve purchased a house about a mile down the road, and are in the process of gutting it. They dropped by our place last night to pick up some stuff (Rosings Park is acting as one staging ground for them), and we convinced them to help make pickles and then to go for dinner at Gino’s.

Gino’s is our current favorite restaurant. It’s not cheap, but it’s not expensive either. The food is excellent, and generally the service is as well. Last night, though, was a different story. For whatever reason, the place was slammed at 7:30, despite the fact it was a Monday night. The restaurant was understaffed (and some of the staff that was there was new). This made for a very frustrating dining experience.

We arrived at 7:30. We were seated at 7:54. It took forever for anyone to take our drink order, let alone the order for our meal. We received our appetizers at 8:32. We didn’t receive our meal until 9:09, more than ninety minutes after we had arrived. As I say: a very frustrating experience.

This has not, however, soured us on the place. The food was excellent, as usual, and there was no question that the restaurant was far, far busier than anyone had expected. If we hadn’t been so damn hungry, the wait might not have even been an issue.

In the Garden, and Trouble at Gino’s

We’re home!

I’ll probably have more to write about our trip in the future, but at the moment it’s all so overwhelming. There’s so much to tell — where do I begin?

“I want to do that with our yard,” I told Kris.

“Fine,” she said. “As long as the house is still screened from the road.”

More on the Milwaukie-Gladstone Trolley Trail

I’ve written before about the planned trolley trail in our neighborhood. Kris and I attended a community meeting last week to learn more about the project.

A standing-room only crowd gathered in the Oak Grove Elementary gymnasium to hear discussion. The organizers erected a number of exhibits detailing the history of the trolley (which began operation in 1893 and ran until 1958), the status of the project, and the proposed route of the trail from Milwaukie to Gladstone. The highlight was an enormous 30-foot long aerial view of the trail. It was simply amazing to see the six-mile route in so much detail.

Project Status
The plans are done. The design and engineering phase has begun. The design process will go through the winter. Thirty percent of the design should be completed by spring, at which time there will be another community meeting.

“We do have funding for about half of the project,” said one of the organizers. “There’s a grant process going on now with Metro. We’ve applied for a grant to fund the balance of the project.”

The Friends of the Trolley Trail sent seven people to METRO meetings once a week for six months in 2000, asking them to use the money they’d already collected from a 1995 bond measure in order to use it for its intended purpose: to purchase the right-of-way. The trail is now a public right-of-way, whether it’s actually open and passable or not. But it should all now be passable. Said one spokesman, “Six miles between the Gladstone city limits and Park Avenue were opened up four weeks ago…You can now walk six miles.”

The selling point to Metro was that the trail would create a twenty mile loop. The I-205 Trail connects to the Springwater Trail connects to the Trolley Trail, which winds back to Oregon City where you can return to the I-205 trail.

Neighborhood Reaction
I was surprised to learn that not everyone is in favor of the trail. An informal poll of those in the gym showed about 75-80% support. Those who are opposed don’t seem strongly opposed — they simply have some concerns that they want addressed.

Some questions and answers from the meeting:

What about trespassing? Loose dogs? Motorcycles? The designers will do their best to create buffers, including fencing and vegetation. This is something that will be worked on as the project develops.

What about bathrooms? There’s a restroom at the Jefferson street boatramp. There’s a portable restroom at Risley Park. There’s a planned restroom at Naef road, at the family park. It will be easily accessible.

What about garbage? There will be some trash cans. The planners are hoping for people to adopt portions of the trail. There are already volunteers willing to do this.

People are already dumping couches, washing machines, etc. on the trail. Metro is picking the stuff up. What happens later? This problem will go away as the trail takes shape. People dump now because it’s not developed and used. Self-policing will go a long way to solve this, too.

How soon will there be signage? There is no signage planned until the design process is finished.

Who picks up the garbage in the wetlands down by Boardman? What’s being done to protect the wetlands? It’s part of the process. The garbage will go away, like the dumping will go away. “When you get more bikers, runners, etc. on the trail all the time, there’s actually less garbage because the users force out the indigents. The users also have greater ownership.” The wetlands are being considered. There will be a bridge over them, which should help some.

What about the motorcycles that are going up and down the trail between Naef and Vineyard? There will need to be barriers erected to keep motorized vehicles out. In the beginning, there was a real problem with motorcycles on the Springwater Trail. But the volunteers formed a network who would call each other, and any rider would find himself faced with five angry residents.

Will there be any sort of security? “Patrol is definitely an issue we have to address.”

What about lighting? There are pros and cons to lighting. Lighting can provide some degree of safety, but it also is a nuisance to neighbors, and can be an advertisement that “hey, there’s a trail here!” when you really don’t want people on it.

Where’s the money for annual upkeep going to come from? A combination of volunteers and North Clackamas Park District.

Will the trail ever connect to Springwater? There are discussions to extend the Springwater Trail down 17th, which would bring it to the north end of Milwaukie. (The Trolley Trail starts at the south end of Milwaukie.)

Conclusion
I was amazed to see so many people at the meeting. It’s clear that the trail has wide support, but there are still some concerns that need to be addressed. Personally, I can’t wait to be able to zip up and down the thing on my bike!