At One With Nature

Ever have that feeling that you just need to be outside in the sun and fresh air? I got that last weekend, so Scooter and I packed up a picnic lunch and went for a drive to a place in the bay area that I haven't been to in years.

It's near the bay waters, so the park has this great marshy area. A boardwalk leads you right over the water of the main marsh through a tunnel of green reeds so tall you would be lost without the trail to follow. You can't see much around you, but you can hear everything. The birds were singing a glorious symphony of chirps and warbles, tweets and quacks. Marsh wrens were building their nests and defending their territory from other birds and the multitude of park visitors. Scooter and I heard small critters scurrying through the leaf litter at the base of the reeds. The quiet footsteps of other people thudded quietly on the wooden boards. Ducks and geese called to each other across the water. Off in the not-so-far distance, bicycles rode down the gravel trails. The reeds whispered to passersby as the wind blew gently through the green strands.

And then, suddenly you come out of the reeds and you can see. You see the open water, the swallows and gulls wheeling overhead, the geese as they land in the water with a splash, the bright shirts of people, and the sun bouncing off the surface of the marsh. The wind created ripples in the water, breaking up the reflection of the hills until it was a vague blur. The hills were green but just starting to turn to brown, much too early for the season and a reminder of the drought felt all across the state. Under a clear blue sky in the warm sun and gentle breeze, there is nothing more calming, more relaxing, and more invigorating.

With summer quickly approaching, I hope that this is only the first of many day trips and camping trips this year. The two hours we spend walking and picnicking showed me that I absolutely need more time outside. We've already started planning our next day out.

July Travels

I spoke to my mom yesterday. She's dealing with some minor medical issues, and to speed her recovery and keep them from becoming major medical issues she has adopted a personal mantra of keeping things stress-free. Thanks, Mom for the inspiration because at least for this weekend I am doing the same.

Scooter and I have escaped to the coast, back to my aunt and uncle's summer home in the coastal village I love so much. The uncomfortable heat at home means that for the first time ever (at least since I started bringing Scooter up here), the weather is warm enough to spend time enjoying the deck. Last night, after getting into town late, we sat out on the deck for quite awhile, enjoying the quiet and looking at the stars in a clear night sky that should have been shrouded in fog. We relaxed and talked and just were. A drastic change in my chaotic routine, and one I have desperately needed. Stress-free, just like the mantra says.

This morning, we cooked a simple breakfast and ate while sitting in the deck chairs with a chorus of morning bird calls and the harbor's foghorn. I hear the gulls off in the distance at one of the wharfs calling out for food. The sky is a perfect color of blue, although there seems to be a fog bank out in the direction of the ocean that is fighting with the sun and losing. I can see boats coming into the harbor right up the Channel, turning the calm water into white froth. Turkey vultures are soaring through the sky, using the wind to lift them without a single flap of their wings. The warm wood of the deck is soothing on my bare feet and the slight breeze that's making the tree branches gently sway feels delightful. It's really the perfect, idyllic morning and I'm sorry it's taken a few years of coming up here to finally win the weather lottery.

The rest of the day will likely be more of the same. I brought up some of my old art supplies, something I've been wanting to take up again after having been away from sketching and drawing for years. This place inspires me, and I want and hope to somehow capture the kinship I feel with this place. I still think this town would be the perfect setting for a fantasy novel, for it possesses a quiet mystique if you only know how to see it.

Yep, definitely a stress-free day.

Catching Up: Part 2 of 3

Now I feel like I should talk about this weekend. Scooter and I have escaped to the coast, and it comes at a time when I’m in desperate need of a break. Work and school have been steadily wearing me down, like a rivulet of water slowly eroding exposed rock. We came up with the full intention of doing nothing but cooking good food, making an adult beverage, and soaking in the hot tub. Science has shown that such a prescription is exactly what you need to cure insomnia, lift depression, regain vitality, and even improve appetite. Well not really, but it does help me feel like I can finish this semester, and I do have a lot of fun being up here.

So, we drove to the coast. I’m lucky enough to have family with a vacation house in a coastal town that I’ve known since early childhood. I actually have baby pictures of my first steps here in the house where I’m writing this post, and my first impression of the sandy beaches of the harbor. The house is a little different from the memories that I have of summers spent here; but it still has a bed in the loft where I sleep just like I did years ago, and it still smells the same. The view from the front windows is beautiful. I have a straight view up the channel of the harbor that leads out to the larger bay and ocean waters. Right now, the tide is low—I can see the mud exposed from the areas of shallow waters. In really low tides, the whole harbor will lay bare and only the channel will have water.

I couldn’t describe the weather as anything less than perfect. It’s been a perfectly clear blue sky all day yesterday and today—a rarity even in the summer. Usually fog rolls in each morning and evening, but for whatever reason, the sun has shone uninterrupted since we arrived yesterday morning. The birds have been very active too. Since spring is in full force, birds are nesting everywhere. Yesterday, I saw a bird building its nest in the cavity of a wooden pillar along one of the piers around the harbor. I seem to also have a scrub jay visiting the deck every few minutes to pick at the seed I put in the feeder. He’s out there right now, bobbing his head as he grabs food to fill his crop, looking around him for predators every few seconds. Ah, there he goes, flying away to whatever nest he may be keeping nearby.

This weekend also hails an annual festival that Scooter and I went to earlier. So many booths full of homemade goods—flatware, clothing, woodwork, stonework, jewelry (lots of jewelry!), and even llama-fur woven items. Five llamas from local farms were there with their owners, some of whom were spinning the shaved fur for the public to see. There was also some excellent fish and chips, with fish that had to have been fresh-caught this morning, mere hours before it was cooked and served for us. Scooter and I definitely got our fill of trinkets; I came home with a canvas bag made with a heron on the front, a wooden clock carved into the shape of a dragon, an amethyst necklace, and balsamic vinegar (more about that in my next post).

Then we had a tough afternoon—we had to come home, fix a plate of snacks and soak in the hot tub. Then I sunbathed on the deck for a little while as I read. I had to come in sooner than I would have liked because we didn’t have sunscreen. Like I said, a tough afternoon.

Just what the doctor ordered.

Recharging my battery...with biscuits and gravy

The school I work at has graduations four times a year. This may seem strange, but we are a year-round school and we have students starting and finishing their programs throughout the year, so it's hard to pick just one time for graduation. Even so, we do have students that have to wait for 2-3 months after their program is over to be able to walk at graduation.

Graduation is always a big to-do (as it should be). But each ceremony does require a lot of planning, and it just so happens that I am in charge of a good deal of the planning (as well as coordinating at the ceremony itself). I usually have to start 5 weeks in advance to make sure everything gets done in time and nothing is left to the last minute. Needless to say, when graduation is over, there is a profound sense of relief followed quickly by exhaustion as I stumble back to my car to head home. I am lucky that my boss is willing to let me take the Friday off after every graduation so I can pack up my car and head out of town to relax at my aunt and uncle's summer home on the coast. It's always a time for me to relax, recharge, have some good food, and read a couple good books.

Last week was our most recent graduation, so Scooter and I went to the coast this last weekend. It was cold and cloudy all weekend, perfect weather in our opinion for settling in front of the fire (which we did) and soaking in the hot tub (which we also did). And of course, we always plan food to cook. We ended up making lamb again on this trip because we loved it so much last time. Saturday breakfast was biscuits and gravy, which is always a team effort. I make the biscuits and Scooter makes the sausage and gravy to with it. I don't mean to brag, but I haven't yet had biscuits and gravy elsewhere that tasted so good. We were going to have pancakes and sausage for Sunday's breakfast, but we had managed to forget the pancake mix so it was eggs, toast and sausage instead.

For this week's recipe, Scooter has agreed to let me post our biscuits and gravy recipe. I'll be using the variation of the recipe we used on the trip (there were one or two ingredients we didn't have--we wanted to cut out another trip to the store--which we include in our best, and secret, variation). I'll start with the biscuits.

Buttermilk Biscuits
What you'll need:
2 c. flour
4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. salt
2 Tbs. butter/margarine, chilled
2 Tbs. shortening
1 c. buttermilk, chilled

What you'll need to do:
1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. In a large mixing bowl, add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the butter and shortening and use your fingers to mix everything together until the flour looks like crumbs. Make a well in the center of the mix and add in the buttermilk. Stir everything just until the dough comes together. It will be sticky!
3. Flour a flat surface. Turn dough out of the mixing bowl onto the prepared surface and dust a little flour on the top of the dough. Fold the dough over on itself 5-6 times. Avoid overworking it; your biscuits will be lighter if the dough isn't overworked. Press the dough into a round approx 1 inch thick. Using a round cookie cutter (or a glass), cut out biscuits. Reform scrap dough and continue cutting.
4. Place biscuits on a baking sheet. Bake in oven for 15 to 20 minutes, or until biscuits are golden on top.

While the biscuits are baking, time to put together the gravy!
What you'll need:
1 lb. loose sausage meat (we prefer maple-flavored, but it's not necessary)*
1/2 c. chopped onions (optional)
2 c. milk
2 Tbs. flour
1 Tbs. Worcester sauce
1 Tbs. garlic powder
salt and pepper

What you'll need to do:
1. In a large skillet over medium-high heat, saute the sausage meat until cooked through. If you are including the onions, quickly saute them in another small skillet until soft and add them to the sausage meat.
2. Add the milk, flour, Worcester sauce, and garlic powder to the sausage. Turn heat down to medium-low and saute until the sauce cooks down and thickens, stirring occasionally. Add salt and pepper to taste.
3. Pull open a fresh biscuit and use a ladel to pour sausage and gravy on top. Enjoy!

*A side note about the gravy: you will NOT want lean sausage meat for this. The fat that cooks off will help to flavor the gravy and make it really good. If you have it, adding 1 to 2 Tbs. of bacon fat would be even better; the flavor would be a little better and you would be able to cook the onion in the same skillet at the sausage meat because there would be enough fat that the onion wouldn't soak it all up as it cooks.

I will try to get back on schedule with my posts starting next week.

A day at the lake

I start my second class in two days. I'm looking forward to it; I'll finally get to see what kind of work load to expect from the rest of my classes. I'm already planning to make Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights my school study nights. Of course I'll be working on school during the weekends too, but spreading out the work over several days a week will be infinitely better than two harried six or eight hour days during which I try to do everything that has to be done. Spreading it out will make me feel less overwhelmed and give me less of a reason to procrastinate, as I was wont to do sometimes during my undergraduate college days.

And so, with the rest of my semester close at hand, I took Sunday as my day off, my day to relax and enjoy. It didn't start out very well. My new laptop wouldn't turn on, so I spent an hour on the phone with Dell Technical Support only to find out that my hard drive is fried. The machine is brand new and I haven't done much except school work on it, so there's no real explanation as to why it died so quickly. Luckily most of my files are still on my old laptop that Scooter (my boyfriend by his pseudonym) now uses. The only exception to this is a school assignment that I had turned in. I learned an important lesson yesterday--always back up school files in another place. After the diagnosis was made for my poor laptop, they informed me that they would send another hard drive to me and I would have it Tuesday. Well, that's a piece a good news!

The rest of the morning was passed playing video games and watching DVDs with Scooter. The weather started warming up outside, promising a beautiful day that shouldn't be spent indoors. Scooter and I decided to make an early dinner, pack it up, and take it to a park with a lake that's near where we live. And what was the menu? Chicken enchiladas (a recipe I love given to me by my best friend), strawberries, root beer, and apple crisp. The food was made, packed into plastic containers, and we headed out to the lake. By this time it was hot outside, and I was ruing the fact that swimming was not allowed in the lake (it's a reservoir).

The lake was still busy, even though it was after 5pm. Families were having barbecues, people were walking their dogs, and there were even some fishermen and women out on the lake in boats enjoying the good weather with their favorite past time. Scooter and I found a spot down on the shore of the lake that was cool and shaded and had a wonderful view of the lake and the surrounding hills. The breeze coming off the water was heavenly and cooled us down after being in the hot sun; I stopped thinking about needing a swim. Even the ducks were friendly, paddling back and forth in the water in front of us, and even coming up on the shore to say hello and see if we had any apple crisp to share with them. Sadly, I am very possessive of any dessert, so there was no apple crisp to share; I doubt it would be very good for them anyway. It was very calming and soothing there on the edge of the water. The sounds of the tiny waves lapping against the shore was a music that I have missed lately. I don't think we'll wait as long to go back to the lake again.

And now for this week's recipe: apple crisp. I melded a couple of recipes together; I took the filling from the spoon cake recipe I posted not long ago, and the topping from the fruit crisp recipe in my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook (and ad libbed as I sometimes do).

What you'll need:
4-5 medium apples
1 Tsp. cornstarch
1/4 c. + 2 Tsp. sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 c. oats
1/2 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. flour
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
3 Tbs. butter

What you'll need to do:
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Peel and slice the apples. Put them in a large mixing bowl. Add the cornstarch, sugar, and cinnamon. Mix everything together until the dry ingredients are moistened and let the bowl sit for 10 minutes.
2. In another bowl, mix together the oats, brown sugar, flour, nutmeg, and cinnamon. Add the butter and mix everything together until the topping resembles crumbs.
3. Put the apple mixture into a pie tin. Cover with the topping. Put in the oven and bake for 30-40 minutes until it's bubbling.

It's a (relatively) simple and easy dessert to make. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream (or even a little unwhipped cream drizzled over it). It's a positively sweet way to start the week.