The Freezer is your Friend

It’s HOT. Too hot to go look for mushrooms. Too hot to do much but close all the windows in the morning, draw the blinds, and hunker down until the evening thunderstorms roll through. The good news is that my tomatoes and peppers and zucchini and eggplants should like it …

As to the freezer part … it was hot tonight. I wasn’t terribly hungry, but I did want some dinner. And despite the many greens I grow, I don’t really love salad. I love cooked greens, but salad, not so much. Don’t know why, it’s just the way it is. But this evening I remembered that I have a whole bunch of raviolis in the freezer — I made them a while ago. One batch is lamb/antelope with Greek sort of spices, the other batch are chard/vegetarian with walnuts. So, into the boiling water they go, while I make a little sauce from some yogurt, garlic, mint (I have LOTS of mint this year), tarragon, and parsley– with a squirt of lime juice to loosen it up. The only problem with the raviolis is that I used wonton skins for them, and I don’t like how soggy they are when they come out of the boiling water. So, I treated them like potstickers — into a skillet with a little bit of olive oil to crisp up, then onto the plate, with a pile of the yogurty sauce on top. Lovely hot weather food while I wait for my zucchini and beans and English peas to come in …

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Bear Update

All last week I kept hearing people say they’d seen grizzly tracks up in Suce Creek, and for a while there it sounded like perhaps I’d had an encounter with the Big Bear himself. Luckily, my friend Bill, who did a beautiful documentary for the Discovery Channel on grizzlies went up there on Sunday and checked out the tracks. It wasn’t a grizzly, he said. It was a very large black bear, but not a grizzly. Which caused me enormous relief — I”m really not ready for a close encounter with a grizzly bear.

From what we hear, the morels are up in the high country these days, so Maryanne and I are off this afternoon to Suce Creek to see if we can find some. We figure with the two of us talking to one another, and with four dogs, we’ll be just fine. And morels — more morels! It’s been such a wet spring that there’s a bumper crop, from what we can tell. The Big Guys still won’t tell us where they are, but some friends found morels in Suce Creek, so that’s our plan.

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Not the Top of the Food Chain

Well, on our afternoon walk today, we had a little bear encounter. So much for those fancy-dan bird dogs of mine who ran right underneath the bear who was standing uphill from the trail “chuffing” at us. Standing! On it’s hind legs! A bear! A very dark, very big, bear-person who was not happy to see us at all.

Luckily, the dogs came right back when I yelled at them to come NOW, and I made them heel as I backed away slowly, holding out my bear spray, wondering if I should pull the safety latch off or not. The bear was not happy to see us, and it was watching us, and I was really trying to remember what you’re supposed to do so it wouldn’t charge. I figured backing off didnt’ make me look too much like prey, and I just hoped I was right. Frankly, I am glad the bears are here, in my neighborhood, but I still wasn’t sure if it was a grizzly or not, or if it was going to come barrelling down off that hill and well, tear my scalp off and shake me like a rag doll. It was one of those moments when things get very very real.

And then I’d backed far enough back down the trail that I felt I could turn around, and we walked quickly, yet not running, and the dogs still didnt’ have a clue why I was yelling at them in to stay RIGHT HERE. I was very nervous until we got up out of the creekbed and into the little meadow, where we all took a breather and the dogs took off down a different drainage, barking at grouse.

Now, I worry about encounters like this, because I am not a big person (not that that would matter in a bear encounter — bears are bigger and stronger than even the big guys). And I’ve always felt a little histrionic putting bells on my dogs, and carrying my bear spray on the local trails where people like me walk their dogs in the evenings. I mean, they’re pretty busy trails. But boy, was I glad to have my bear spray today … at least it gave me something to focus on … the idea that if the bear charged me I had to pull off that safety tab and, get this, wait until the bear was close (how close? I was trying to remember … I think it’s something like 10 feet) to spray the pepper spray that would, with any luck, stop it and make it go away.

Luckily, we all managed to communicate across species with one another. The bear told us to go away. The dogs listened when I told them we were going back NOW. We backed off, and nothing any scarier happened than suddenly realizing as you’re strolling along a trail you’ve walked hundreds of times that something sounds different, and not in a good way.

So I got home and called Doug Peacock Not the Top of the Food Chain to ask him if black bears make those noises or was it a grizzly, and he said it was probably a black bear, and then congratulated me for having a “real experience” out there today, said that’s how it’s supposed to be. Which is true. And I agree. But I could wait a while for the next real experience.

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It’s Good to be a Favorite

 Its Good to be a Favorite
I usually hate photos of myself, but this is me and my 94-year-old grandmother at my cousin Jason’s wedding this past weekend. It’s a family joke that my older cousin Brad and myself are The Favorites (so are Adam and Jennifer, but even among The Favorites, some are more favored than others), and well, it’s true. It’s good to be a favorite, and look at the picture, there I am basking in it. My grandmother and I adore one another — and although it was difficult to visit much since it was a big party, and she can neither see nor hear very well anymore — we had a wonderful time hanging out together and she regaled my dear old friend John with stories about the history of the farm.

The wedding was wonderful. Jason and Jackie met in 4-H when they were both about fourteen, and have been living together for the past ten years or so. They really love one another and it was one of those sweet weddings where everyone is just thrilled about two people who really seem to belong together. The wedding party included Jason’s older brother Adam, who is also a favorite. I almost never get to see Adam, because he moved to Missouri where his wife’s family is from. Here’s a pic of me and Adam, and as you can see, even my slightly grumpy cousin Adam was having a good time at the wedding:  Its Good to be a Favorite

Our cousin Matt took the picture — Matt, who I haven’t seen since he was about seven. I’m the oldest girl of all nine cousins, and Matt was one of the little ones I spent a lot of time carrying around on one hip, and I was afraid I wouldn’t recognize him. But there he was — this big grown up man with Matt’s funny little face still (you probably wouldn’t see this unless, like me, you hadn’t seen him since he was a kid). I had a nice visit with both of them, and in that funny way that family sometimes works, you would have thought we’d all just seen one another last week, it was that comfortable. On the way out from the city, we drove through several rain squalls, but it cleared up in time for the ceremony, and then afterward the sky turned that gorgeous pale blue, the clouds were fluffy and white, the fields were all green, and my aunt Molly’s new foal was frolicking in the paddock with his mother. It was about as lovely a wedding as I’ve ever been to …

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Travelling

Off next week to San Jose for work, then to Chicago — or rather Leland, for a family wedding. My cousin Jason, who lives on our family farm, is finally making an honest woman out of Jackie — it looks to be quite a hoe-down, with all sorts of people from Jase’s Leland buddies (Leland is a tiny farm town about 90 minutes southwest of the city) to horse show people, to Chicago friends from his prep school days. I’m quite looking forward to it — it will be wonderful to see my 94-year-old grandmother again, and my Aunt Molly who I adore — we talk politics and she helped me figure out what kind o fhouse to buy — and my old friend John is going with me, and Jason is The Cousin I’d Take to a Desert Island — he’s kind, and funny, and he’s an industrial pipefitter, so he can build things. Despite too much flying next week, I’m quite looking forward to it all …

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