Bad Life Choices = Tasty Results

Yesterday I made a quick run to town to do some banking, grab some groceries and do a quick load of laundry. When the clothes were about halfway through their trip through the dryer, I decided I was tired of waiting around for them, so I tossed them into the laundry bag, figuring I hang them up to air-dry once I got home. After all, it had been a sunny, balmy early June morning. But no sooner had I gotten the clothesline strung between the backyard trees, then I heard a deep rumble of thunder and spied some ominous thunderheads moving in from the west. Bad life choice!

But while the clothes sat in a damp heap near the front door and the lightning flashed sideways across the bay and rain splattered the windows, I took a moment to putter around quietly in the kitchen by myself.

We've been really trying to up our veggie consumption lately and that means a lot of salad. Which consequently means we've been going through a lot more salad dressing. And I had a homemade epiphany the other day when I was standing in front of the salad dressing aisle. Suddenly it seemed so silly that I was paying for prepaid dressings full of who-knows-what, when I had the basic ingredients for salad dressing (namely: oil and vinegar) in my pantry at all times and could probably make my salad dressings for half the cost of the pre-made guys.

So I pulled out a cookbook for one of our well-known local restaurants (one which I haven't visited since my brother broke up with the proprietor's daughter . . . oh small towns!) and whipped up two batches of salad dressings. The vinaigrette took less than five minutes to make and the creamy dressing didn't take much longer. It's nice to know exactly what's going into my salad dressing and not have weird ingredients like food dyes, xantham gums, and preservatives in the mix. In fact, in place of the weird ingredients, I was able to use some locally sourced ingredients (yay maple syrup!) and put the dressings in some upcycled containers. Success!

Maple Mustard

Bleu Cheese

Also, how cool is that handy-dandy lid for the Mason jar? It's called a ReCap  and is brand spanking new product (USA made!) from a company that actually got its start from some Kickstarter funding. Despite being a pretty prolific canner, I always have quite a few empty Mason jars rattling around the kitchen, so I'm pretty excited to have an easy way to put those unsealed jars to good use.

By the way, the sun totally came out today and while the clothes were drying merrily on the clothesline, Andy and I were doing this:

We canoed down to a hidden waterfall that's gushing with all of our recent rainfall, then paddled around, trying to locate some of the old homestead spots on the lake.

Speaking of homesteads, the gardening is 98% planted now. Pictures coming soon!

 

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Sweet Dreams Are Made of THIS?!

As an adult you find yourself getting excited about the strangest things and your dreams take on a rather dull, realistic tone. Lately, as I lay my head on the pillow each night, visions of these guys dance through my head.

Yep, happy little heel-clicking washing machines haunt my dreams. (Or they would, if washing machines had heels.) 

We bring our laundry into town to wash, usually on a weekly basis. But last week, the stars aligned only for  brief dash through town to grab the gas and groceries we needed to make it through another work week. There was no time to sit around and wait for the laundry to finish a spin cycle. Now as I sort through my work clothes options, things are looking pretty grim. How I wish I could come home from work and pop a load of laundry in my very own machine. Just imagine listening to the washing machine whir quietly in the background while I fix supper and hanging the clothes out on the line to get that wonderful air-dried laundry smell. 

But since, given the size of the cabin, I have a choice between a washing machine and a pantry (and I love to eat), maybe something like this is more my speed:

Or how about this guy?

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to go put my pants on inside out. Maybe no one will notice. . .

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Two Pairs of Long Underwear is Not Enough!

Last week, the temperatures crept above freezing and the skies let loose with a slug of rain. As the sloppy mix of precipitation fell from the sky, apparently the weather checked out the calendar and determined it was, indeed, still winter. The rain turned to snowflakes and just like that we had a fresh eight inches of snow. Now this week, temperatures are hanging out around the 0F mark.

Apparently the weather has been consulting the calendar, but I can't be bothered. Yesterday  I headed out to the mailbox with jeans on. (Fear not, I had plenty of other warm clothing on: hats, mittens, down vest, down jacket, boots too.)  Remember all those cotton commercials with people hopping around in cotton clothing, looking as fresh and sunny as if they'd just danced off the clothesline? Those commercials were so summery because cotton is not designed for winter -- at least not if you live north of the Mason-Dixon line. That ol' north wind whistled right my cotton jeans for the duration of my short little walk yesterday.

You may remember from my earlier post, the Northwoods Puritan  that I typically leave the house wearing this:

Yep, that's a lot of down and a lot of wool.




One of the hardest things about returning to your hometown (homeland?) is having to come to terms with some of your assumptions about the place. It's really easy to head down the rabbit hole of "hey, I grew up here. I know how to handle this winter stuff." Although I did not go far away for college, during those four years away, I developed some funny winter dressing habits. Namely: "I'll just throw on this winter jacket and just run from heated building to heated building rather than dress weather appropriately." Last winter was an exercise in relearning how to dress for winter and saw me acquire a pair of L.L. Bean wool pants and a second pair of long underwear. Last winter I learned wool pants are an article of miracle clothing that will keep you the perfect temperature be it 30F or -20F.  Worth the fashion faux-pas? Oh heck yes.

And this winter? This first honest to goodness "real" winter in who knows how long?

This winter I have learned that two pairs of long underwear is simply not enough.

Wool pants are itchy and I cannot wear them without a pair of long underwear on first. I treat my wool pants like snow pants: they don't get washed a whole lot. However, the underwear I treat like any other article of clothing: it requires regular washing.  

Except we don't have laundry capabilities at the cabin.  I don't want to wear my long underwear for a week straight. That's kind of gross. And to be honest, sometimes I just get tired of wearing loden green wool pants day in and day out.


Still, not a big fan of freezing my tushy off.

Today, as the sun rises, it's 0F outside. Looks like wool pants and long underwear weather to me. Not even going to think about putting on jeans.

How do you keep warm in the winter months? 

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A Stirring in My Soul

I wonder sometimes about the outcome of a still verdictless life: Am I living it right?
-- John Mayer

 

Fifteen years ago, my family took our first major family trip. We hopped on the train in Chicago, riding overnight and most of the next day out to Newark to spend a week with a great uncle. We explored the Delaware Gap and one day, we spent in New York City. That day, I viewed the city with wide ten-year-old eyes and promptly decided the city life was the life for me. As an English major, I assumed I’d eventually make my way to the East Coast. But when it came time to chose a college, I went with the only in-state option I’d considered (a wise decision when it came to student debt) and a trip to London shifted my focus to the far side of the Atlantic.

Any good trip forces you to ask questions of yourself and the life you lead and so it has been with this month of travel that came to a close yesterday. Although the “day after Christmas” feelings of yesterday have passed, there remains the quiet suspicion that my ten-year-old soul was of a braver, truer sort than this current soul of mine.

New York was just as fabulous as I remembered it. While I’m old enough to realize that everything that appears “fabulous” comes with its own unique upside and downside, we had such a wonderful week in the Big Apple that it’s hard not to wish for just “one more day.” My credit card bill, stuffed up sinuses and a heap of correspondence and deadlines dictate that it’s time to come home. But before I make a full return to this life of woods and words, here’s a recap in snapshots of the past week.

After being an MTV devotee in my teenage years, I finally made it to Times Square.

 We went to the beautiful New York Public Library with Carrie Bradshaw on our minds and found the original Winnie the Pooh and Friends.

In the end, we didn't cross paths with Carrie, but Burger and his wife (Ron Livingston and Rosemarie DeWitt) did stroll past us on Bleecker Street in the West Village while we were waiting for the Sex and the City tour to resume on Wednesday.

What could be better than a hot dog from Nathan's in Coney Island?

Maybe having a Brooklyn native tell you to "fuggedaboutit" or a cupcake from the Magnolia Bakery. . .

Swung by Tiffany's to take a peep at my favorite engagement ring.

It's soooo pretty. . . . So out of an appropriate price range. . . .



















One of my most vivid memories from my last visit to New York City is seeing the WTC towers from the Empire State Building observation deck. We stopped to see the progress being made on the new tower and the memorial at the World Trade Center. Almost nine years later and no one's still sure what to say.

I've always had a soft spot for Lady Liberty. It was good to see her again.

After going strong as tourists for a week, on Saturday we took a moment to take in some of the quieter wonders of Manhattan before our flights back to Minneapolis.  

 We saw the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and spent a bit of time in the Met's Cloisters.

Lovely, lovely, lovely.

While memories of NYC swirl about in my heart, now it's time to turn my mind to laundry, to-do lists, and packing up the Shack. I'm overwhelmed by all I'm meant to be getting done at this very moment. The only way to overcome that feeling is to actually start getting some things done.

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Trapped in a Moving Vehicle

Turns out Andy really is allergic to beer. Having spent a week surrounded by the temptation of the Pacific Northwest’s finest microbrews, his sinuses have gotten the best of him and he’s spending the day lying low. This is travel day nine and beer allergies or not, it makes sense to have a quiet day. We’ve been at the guesthouse in Portland since mid-afternoon yesterday. We stayed here last year when we road-tripped out and it truly is a lovely house tucked away along a fairly busy business road in a residential neighborhood. While a continental breakfast is provided, the house has much more open, livable feeling about it than your typical B&B. The kitchen is available for use and there’s a washer and dryer tucked away in the basement where I happily did a load of laundry this morning. We’d been getting to the bottom of the suitcase, so to speak.

Had another travel day yesterday, setting off from Aberdeen to follow winding roads along the coast and down the Columbia River to Portland. Last year when we made the drive out west, we kept crossing paths with Lewis and Clark. Everywhere we turned, there seemed to be another Lewis and Clark historical marker. It only made sense to stop at the Lewis and Clark Interpretative Center at the mouth of the Columbia River, right outside of Ilwaco, WA yesterday. Oddly enough, the place where Lewis and Clark finally spied the Pacific Ocean had been named Cape Disappointment by a British officer who had been searching the coastline for a river and who deduced that the mouth of Columbia was in fact only an ocean bay. No one’s quite sure why he didn’t figure out that it was a river (especially since the current rips through even the widest parts of the Columbia) but nevertheless, the name stuck.

The center is wonderful: just the right mixture of “just the facts, ma’am” placards and hands-on displays. All of this interpretative stuff makes me excited about the summer! The center itself was quickly outshone by a baby seal we spied sunning itself on a rock in the ocean far below us. Just as the park ranger and I zoomed in on him to take a picture, a big wave came over the rock and washed the little seal into the ocean. Oh no! But the little guy proved himself a pretty good swimmer in the rough waters. Still, here’s a picture of the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse instead. Although the mouth of the Columbia River provides some of the most challenging sailing there is – due to moving sand bars -- where the visitor center now stands was long manned by the military, especially during World War II.

The traffic in Portland gave us fits yesterday. For one thing, I’d made no clear plan for how we were going to get to the guesthouse. Since we’d stayed here last year, I figured we’d “wing” it. However, it’s a lot easier to get into Portland from the east on a sleepy Thursday afternoon then it is to come in from the west at 3:00 on Friday when everyone’s “getting off early for the weekend.” We ended up where we needed to be, but promptly hit construction and by the time we got to the guesthouse, I was stressed out, but we needed to turn right around to go pick up a friend. That also proved a directional nightmare. “This isn’t the way we came last time, is it?” I asked Andy as we shot by our turn and ended up heading across the bridge in Portland with the lowest safety rating ever, twice. When we dropped the friend off, we came back to the guesthouse to find nary a parking place in sight. After twenty minutes of backing up and turning around and dead end street after dead end street, I was fit to be tied. In the end, Andy took over driving duties and we parked a couple streets down from the guesthouse. There’s nothing worse than being trapped in a moving vehicle when you just want to go to bed.

In between the driving nightmares (we are such smalltown kids) we had a lovely dinner and picked up beautiful desserts from Pix Patisserie.

Today, besides the laundry, I walked up to a yarn shop and found some beautiful Shetland fingering that will be perfect for some colorwork knitting I’m hoping to get to after I finish up the sweater I’m currently knitting away at. Andy rallied for a to-go lunch at Burgerville. There’s something satisfying about the name Burgerville. I may go scope out some coffee now while Andy snoozes. Outside it’s sunny and a bit breezy. It’s a very contented sort of day for punting around.

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