Renee Wilkinson's Blog, page 30

Cape Cod Retreat

After our blissful stay in Maine, we drove down the coast to relax in Cape Cod for the last half of our vacation back east. It's a part of the country we have heard great things about, but never had the opportunity to visit before. Our timing was impeccable – after Labor Day when the tourism drops off, but early enough that the weather is still great.

We explored the Cape on bicycles, which we rented in town. It was a great way to see the different ecosystems – the marshes, cranberry crops, forests, ponds and beaches. Exploring places on bikes has actually become my favored way to travel. You really get to see a lot of the area really close to the ground.

I didn't take as many pictures of the food because I was too busy enjoying it/stuffing myself. Almost everything I ate involved local seafood – lobster, clams, oysters. The best meal was probably at this little Italian place in Falmouth called La Cucina Sul Mare. We enjoyed every course, but my main course was handmade ravioli stuffed with lobster and asparagus. Oh momma… I want to relive that meal over and over again.

Another cool dining discovery – a bakery that sells pie. But not just boring pie. They have every dessert pie, sure. But they also sell savory meat pies like chicken, turkey, shepherd's pie, lobster pies, etc. You could eat there or take them home to bake. Why doesn't Portland, Oregon, have something like this?

Our last day was spent along the Cape Cod National Seashore. In their words: "forty miles of pristine sandy beach, marshes, ponds, and uplands support diverse species." We went on some trails and spent lots of time on the beach, swimming in the Atlantic.

We were surprised to see wild turkeys running along one of the trails and those Thanksgiving traditions started to make more sense. So maybe that's why we eat turkey on Thanksgiving – obviously they have them around the Plymouth Rock area. And that's why we always have cranberries – they grow in this part of the country. I didn't quite realize that all those basics of Thanksgiving are really inherited New England traditions.

I think I could easily live a happy life on the quiet Cape and this trip showed me yet again that we have some majestic landscapes in the US. Moving the chickens, ducks and my beloved homestead 3,000 miles is not so easy and I quite enjoy our little corner of the world. But our vacation certainly planted a seed of love for New England. Hope I get to visit again.

New England Farm Wedding

I just returned from a blissful week in New England where I attended one of the sweetest weddings ever. We flew from one Portland (Oregon) to another Portland (Maine) and somehow the world did not spontaneously combust. Our friends getting married, Dan and Emily, gave us a great reason to visit this part of the country.

Portland, Maine, can be summed up in one word: adorable. The little farms outside the small town have a rustic beauty that you may only be able to find on the east coast. We're just to young out west to be able to take a country drive past houses and barns built in the 1800′s. It was so cute, in fact, that we started describing Portland as "aggressively cute" because it was just too much!

The town itself sits next to the calm bay waters of the Atlantic where sailboats come out to play. The restaurants are really great for a town this size, in part because they are catering to weekend vacationers from Boston as well as locals. There are lots of neat shops, a local soda company, and great little snacks like smoked trout salad for easy picnic-making.

We stumbled upon an amazing kitchen shop called Le Roux. They sell a variety of infused oils and aged vinegars. We sampled the 18-year old aged balsamic – love at first sip. We brought back a big bottle, but were happy to see they sell online when we run out. Part of me wants to give this vinegar and one of their infused olive oils as a gift for any future occasion: weddings, hostess gifts, birthdays for my foodie friends, etc. I want to drink this vinegar – it's that good.

The events leading up to the wedding were carefully planned to show the guests the best of Maine, like enjoying my first ever lobster bake at the rehearsal dinner. To start we had a mixed green salad followed by New England clam chowder. The main plate had lobster, steamer clams (so good!), coleslaw, corn, cornbread and melted butter for dipping. Dessert was strawberry shortcake. I had to roll myself home…

The wedding itself was just beautiful: blissful couple, gorgeous rustic farm setting, delicious local food, an amazing band, homemade Maine blueberry preserves as favors and lots of laughter. It was a level of simple sophistication that is hard to master and not easy to forget.

My Biggest Project Yet

I have a huge project on the horizon that I have been carefully working on all summer. It explains a few odd things, like why the season has flown by for me and why I can easily eat a pint of cherry tomatoes several times a day. I'm growing a baby!

This may or may not be a surprise, depending on how much you read between the lines of my blog posts. And, frankly, you may or may not care because hey we're here to talk about homesteading! That will absolutely continue, but we may also talk about homesteading while wearing a baby sling. And some of my canning recipes might become more kid-friendly.

As a first time preggo lady, I am discovering some really mind blowing things. First and foremost, my body is no longer my own. I slept through almost the entire months of June and July. Are you kidding? When it's gorgeous out? When I have seeds to plant and weeding to do? I think it was nature's way of breaking the news to me: I can't get twenty things done in a day anymore. Slow down girl and take it easy.

I also learned what it's like to eat only "beige" food. My body didn't want the rich greens I normally eat during the first couple months. I wanted eggs, bread, peanut butter, hummus, grapefruit, orange juice and canned peaches. Thankfully those rough first trimester months are behind me and I can now inhale produce from every color of the rainbow outside.

My annual plans for pear cider changed this year to be plum wine instead. Turns out waiting 6-9 months for the wine to develop lines up just perfectly with the little one growing in my belly. By the time baby is out, I can have a glass of wine to celebrate.

The take away from all this? The blog continues and the modern homestead adventures continue. Expect an addition to the chaos sometime in early March and perhaps a couple week's hiatus from blogging as I find my bearings.

Racking Plum Wine

I am happy to report that the plum wine has been coming along very well. This is my first foray into wine-making and it is thus far proving to be pretty straight-forward. The plum wine fermented for a week in a primary container and was recently racked into the secondary.

The primary container was a sterilized plastic bucket with a tight-fitting lid. I needed to strain the wine to remove the plums and transfer the liquid into a new container to continue fermentation. I used the bathtub as the location to hold all these buckets, since it gave me some nice elbow room and was an easy place to clean up spills.

First, I sterilized all my supplies – another plastic bucket, ladle, funnel, strainer, cheesecloth, airlock and glass carboy. I lined the strainer with cheesecloth and placed it over the clean plastic bucket. Then I began ladling the wine into the strainer. The plums stayed in the cheesecloth, but the liquid trickled down into the bucket.

When the cheesecloth was full, I twisted it to squeeze out any excess juice and just tossed the dried out plums into the compost bin. As the new bucket became full, Jay helped me carefully pour the wine into the glass carboy through a funnel. It helped to have two people – one to carefully pour and the other to hold the funnel in place.

The whole process took about 30-45 minutes. We ended up almost filling the glass carboy to the top with a light red, delicious smelling, in-progress wine. We carefully fitted the airlock on top and moved it into a cool, dry place. We also wrapped a towel around it to keep any sunlight from reaching the wine.

Easy-peasey so far! In another month, we will rack the wine into another new, sterilized container and allow it to continue to ferment. When the wine becomes clear, we will bottle it and let it rest for a few months. By this time next year we should be enjoying a nice, somewhat dry, plum wine.

Late Summer Already

How did it get to be September already? Is someone playing a trick on my calendar? Here we are in the thick of tomato and squash season. I feel like it all happened overnight!

I have been volunteering intermittently at the Urban Farm between summer vacations and it is just bursting there right now. I probably consume more food while I'm working than I help grow… but hey, who's keeping track. I had to keep a food diary recently and it's funny how many entries were "1/2 cup assorted garden veggies…" or "one pint cherry tomatoes…"

My favorite garden snack has been the Sunburst cherry tomatoes, a delicious little orange variety. We are making simple salads with them sliced in half and throw together with some mozzarella and basil leaves, then tossed with oil, vinegar, sea salt and fresh cracked pepper. I have probably eaten a good gallon of that.

And then there are the winter squashes – what?!?! How is it possible that we are that far along? I took home some yummy Delicata squashes, one of my all-time favorites, and roasted it up with some butter and pepper. I don't believe in adding a lot to really good, fresh ingredients. Keep it simple and enjoy that taste difference between store bought and home grown.

I would love to hear what you are munching on while you work in your garden! Peppers, tomatoes, green beans? Also, are you getting the late summer season panic? Hint: you should say yes to make me feel like I'm in good company…

First Duck Eggs

The two runner ducks we raised from ducklings this past spring have both started laying! Those first few eggs are always a little goofy looking. I went ahead and cracked them all in a cast iron pan to fry up for breakfast. You can see how the smallest egg doesn't even have a yolk! They get a little bigger with each laying.

Our adopted ducks have been laying since we brought them home, but unfortunately I don't think they had a nesting box at their previous home. They would just lay where ever outside – under shrubs, next to the kiddie pool, right in the middle of the backyard. It was like an Easter egg hunt every night…

After the first mini egg was laid, we kept the ducks in their run instead of letting them free range. We also moved one of Gladys' eggs into the nesting box in their duck house. The next time we checked for eggs, all of the eggs were in the nesting box! I think the girls we raised from ducklings must be easier to train since they are younger.

Everyone is now free-ranging most days, but all are laying only in the nesting box. So happy the nightly egg hunts are over! We're now getting anywhere from 3-6 eggs a day with our two flocks. I'll let you guess what's for dinner around here!

Making Plum Wine

Plum season is finally upon us! I found a wild plum tree around the corner on an abandoned lot. Turns out the university owns it and one of their maintenance guys told me to help myself. Awesome! I began plotting what I would make them into as I plucked them from the tree.

I have dabbled in brewing hard cider and thought plum wine sounded like a delicious idea. It takes months and months to mature, so we would be drinking it come Spring time. I searched and searched for recipes, watched videos, talked to brewing friends. I decided on a recipe, bought the supplies, and settled on a recipe for one gallon of wine.

We have a five gallon carboy and my plum wine plans naturally expanded. Why make one gallon when you can easily make five? The brew shop sells the powdery supplies in packets, so we would have enough to make even more. But where to get more plums…

My friend from the Urban Farm knew someone with a ripe tree and put me in touch with them. Turns out they were right around the corner as well! So another 15 pounds later, I had enough for a big, five gallon batch. I think I'll call the finished product "One Block Wine" since everything was sourced so close to home.

I modified the original recipe to fill five gallons and here's what I ended up doing:

20 lbs plums, yellow and red
6 lbs sugar
7 1/2 tsp acid blend
5 tsp pectic enzyme
4 1/2 tsp yeast nutrient
1 1/4 tsp yeast energizer
3/4 tsp grape tannin
Bordeaux wine yeast


Boil a stock pot of water. Meanwhile rinse fruit, chop in half and remove pits. Into a sterilized primary bucket with lid, dump fruit and cover with boiling water. Leave a couple inches of head space. water on to boil. Cover and cool to room temperature.
Once cooled, stir in acid blend, pectic enzyme, tannin, nutrient, and energizer. Cover and let sit for 12 hours.
Add yeast and recover. Let the mixture ferment for about a week, stirring twice a day.
Strain the wine and transfer to a glass carboy with an airlock.
Rack every 30 days, leaving the bottom couple inches of goop, and reseal with the airlock. Repeat this step every 30 days until the mixture clears (and it eventually will).
After the wine has cleared, wait two more weeks and rack again. Stabilize the wine and bottle. After about six months, it should be ready. If not quite there, wait a few more months. [Recipe adapted from Jack B. Keller, Jr. and from Dorothy Alatorre's Home Wines of North America]

The picture above is prior to dumping in the yeast. The yeast was added and it's been sitting for a week, so I'm ready for step 4 today. The process has been easy-peasy so far. The first couple days our house smelled like a (delicious) bar – sweet, plum yumminess – as the bucket burped out some yeasty head. I carefully cleaned up the mess, changed the towel the bucket sits on. Somehow we managed to avoid fruit flies.

One week later is smells even more delicious! I'm planning to just rack it monthly, bottle and forget about it. I'll keep updating the progress over the next several months. The final update on the finished product probably won't arrive until next summer!

Vacation Food

We planned our meals pretty carefully during our week vacation in the high desert country. We wanted things that used produce in season and were easy to prepare. No one likes to be standing over a stove during their vacation time.

The place we rented had a grill, which was kind of amazing. We never really understood why people love grilling so much. Now we do. No dishes, super quick, and you can grill pretty much anything. There may be a grill in our future.

One of our favorite meals was shish kabobs made with fresh bell peppers, chunks of steak and mushrooms. We totally cheated on the marinade and used one of those mesquite packet things from the spice aisle. I have to admit that took it to an amazing level.

Our local butcher makes a lovely marinated skirt steak, or carne asada, that we grilled with walla walla sweet onions. We enjoyed that as fajitas another night. A big salad from accompanied every meal.

Not surprisingly, we made a huge batch of delicious egg salad from my early post for cool sandwiches on those hot days. Everything was super low maintenance and delicious with minimal time over a hot stove.

High Desert Plants

We just got back from spending a week roasting ourselves in the high desert country in Central Oregon. The area around Bend, Oregon, is a popular vacation destination in the northwest in summer and winter, in part due to it's high elevation and dry conditions. Fly fishing, hiking and cycling are all popular summer activities. Wintertime brings excellent powdery snow on Mount Bachelor and plenty of other snow adventures.

Every year we flock there for the sunshine to tan our skins and spend lots of time on our bikes weaving our way through the forest. I took lots of pictures of the plants that make this landscape so special to me. Whenever I smell that Ponderosa Pine forest, it makes my mind immediately feel relaxed and at ease.

I was surprised to see some familiar valley plants thriving in this much more extreme climate, like Oregon Grape. The berries were a staple food source for the Native Americans and are almost ripe! This is such a versatile native plant to work with. It has yellow flowers in the spring, edible berries this time of year, and the evergreen foliage can turn purple in the winter.

It was really fun to see stands of aspen trees. Their roots become attached to each other underground, making an aspen forest one of the largest living organisms on earth! Such beauties! They don't always like living here in the valley, but are excellent in central Oregon.

And finally I saw lots of nice landscape plant collections that were working with the climate, rather than against it. This rock garden was pretty large and had lovely little nooks and crannies for succulents. They are such hardy little gems that can stand drought and cold winters. I have a few in containers here at home because I can neglect them completely and still get some pretty plants to enjoy.

I'll write a separate post about the delicious vacation food we cooked while we were away. I know every family has their favorite go-to recipes and I would love to exchange mine with yours.

 

Less-Than-24-Hour-Tour of Portland

Some old friends came out to visit the northwest recently and we enjoyed giving them a quick tour of the city we love so dearly. We were not sure if the agenda would include hiking through the majestic Columbia Gorge or heading into the city, so we recommended they stay at the McMenamin's Edgefield to keep both options open.

McMenamin's is a local chain of brew pubs that often reclaims old, historic and forgotten buildings. I know many a historic preservationist that would scoff at their definition of "preservation", but for most of us it seems pretty cool. They paint murals everywhere, have interesting junk-turned-art, tuck small pubs into every nook and cranny and turn the larger buildings into European-style hotels where there is a shared bath on each floor. They are usually pretty cheap to stay at and easy, since there are places to eat and drink on site.

We spent the evening with them eating at Edgefield at their nicer restaurant, the Black Rabbit, and then took a sunset stroll through the grapevines. Our friends have a two year old, which was good practice for us to get used to dining out with kids.

The next day we did a short tour of fun touristy and not so touristy things to do in Portland. We rode the MAX light rail train to Saturday Market, spending more time near the waterfront where there tend to be more craft vendors like potters, etc. We ran up to the no-longer-independently-owned-Stumptown so they could see Portland hipsters in action (which we may or may not be a part of) and refueled with a good cup of coffee.

They were heading back on the road that afternoon so we stopped for a quick lunch in the Pearl District at the Deschutes Brewery. What an excellent place for kids (at least during the day). There were a few tables around us with little ones and everyone seemed to take their turn being fussy for a short bit. It's only the second time I've eaten there and I thought it was really great, especially since I've been finicky about food lately.

Oh Portland! For less than twenty-four hours in the city, I think we showed our friends a good, short tour of what the city has to offer. Our secret plan is to make everyone we love fall in love with Portland and move there It seems to be working…