Pie Party!

Several months ago, Corinne came up with a great idea for our next food-related event: a Pie Party. Sunday we turned that idea into reality and hosted our first pie party.

What exactly is a pie party? It's a potluck party where everyone brings a homemade pie. And what precisely is a pie? Wikipedia says:

A pie is a baked food, with a baked shell usually made of pastry dough that covers or completely contains a filling of fruit, meat, fish, vegetables, cheeses, creams, chocolate, custards, nuts, or other sweet or savory ingredients.

Homemade pies only!¹ People seemed generally excited about the party. We attribute that not only to the fact that everyone loves pie, but also that a certain anticipation could build knowing that a multitude of homemade pie awaited, but not knowing precisely how many or what kinds.

We had a total of 34 people at our party, including 7 kids, and 23 different types of pies (7 savory, 16 sweet). We thought we might be a little short on the savory pies, so I made sure to have prepped ingredients for 4 pizzas ready to go if needed (we ate 3). Each pie was labeled and laid out for all to see. The π (pi, get it?) sign was courtesy of Andrew.

Savory

• Caramelized Onion
  
• "Boy" Pie (egg, bacon, cheese)
  
• Tourtiere (French-Canadian Meat Pie)
  
• White Bean and Pesto Pizza
  
• Leek & Cheese Pie
  
• Chicken Pie
  
• Cottage Pie

Sweet

• Peanut Butter & Chocolate Pie
  
• Peanut Butter Pie
  
• Christine's Fruit Pie
  
• Bourbon Pecan Pie
  
• Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie
  
• Pravin's Apple Pie
  
• Chocolate Mousse
  
• Lemon Custard Tart with Fruit
  
• Grape Pie (yes, grape)
  
• Peach Street
  
• Banana Creme Pie
  
• Vermont Maple-Walnut Cream Pie
  
• Frozen Margarita Pie
  
• Coconut Cream Pie
  
• Cherry Cream Cheese Pie
  
• Pumpkin Pie

Of particular note were the pies from the first-time pie makers, Simon and Leif. Leif's "Peach Street" was his interpretation of a rustic tart, and Simon's chicken pie was a family recipe. Simon apparently called his mother 5 times during the process to make sure he was doing it right. The pies (and homemade crust) turned out great!

And that's what a food party is all about: getting people to experiment with food and expand their culinary horizons, as well as enjoy good food with good friends.

- Mike (& Corinne)

¹ We did have at least one "cheater" who bought their pie. But for their own safety, we won't say who.

Mormor's 85th Birthday

Corinne's step-grandmother turned 85 recently, and this past weekend we attended her birthday party at her condo in Tacoma. She is Scandinavian (Swedish or Finnish, depending on who you ask), so everyone calls her Mormor, meaning "mother's mother" or "maternal grandmother" in Swedish. (Her husband was similarly called Morfar, or "mother's father".)

Family came in from all over for the party, and most we hadn't met before. There was a large contingent from St. Louis, MO as well as Sweden. We were treated to a real Swedish smörgåsbord, complete with herring, salmon, and swedish meatballs (of course).

They even hired some professional entertainment for the evening. Stan Boreson, self-proclaimed "King of Scandinavian Humor", entertained us with his accordian and his staple of Ole and Lena jokes.

Here's one of the jokes. (Imagine a heavy Scandinavian accent):

A Swede was walking down the street and sees a Norwegian standing on the corner with a gunny sack over his shoulder.
"What's in the gunny sack?", asks the Swede.
"Chickens," replies the Norwegian.
"Chickens?"
"Yah. If you guess how many there are, I'll give you both of them."
"Okay. 5."
"Nope - you were off by 2."

You get the general idea. He was very entertaining; you could tell from his comfort in front of an audience that he had been doing this for a very long time; Stan used to host a children's show on KING-5 in Seattle.

Eivor, Kris and Kelly did a great job putting the party together. We had a great time!

- Mike (& Corinne)

A Perfect Fall Weekend

Here are the reasons why this was a perfect fall weekend:

1. 3 Days Long. We had some extra vacation days (due to a postponed Daly-family trip), so we took Friday off.
   
2. Lazy mornings. We slept in every day, then enjoyed homemade lattes and lounged until well into the afternoon.
   
3. Red Sox World Series baseball and TiVo. The games start at 5pm, but we can start watching whenever we want - as long as we are careful to avoid all outside communication so as not to spoil the fun.
   
4. Clear, crisp weather. Perfect for raking leaves, planting daffodil & iris bulbs (thanks Mom!), and putting in the first crop of the 2008 garden season, garlic.
   

We need to take a long weekend every fall! (And winter, and spring, and summer.)



- Mike (& Corinne)

Boston 15, Colorado 0

The Berger Family was in town today picking some Washington apples at one of the local orchards. We all got together for dinner and as always were greatly entertained by Jamie and Torsten's daughters Katja and Marta.

Having recently moved from Boston, they are just as excited as we are about this year's World Series. While at the restaurant, Katja drew this prediction for Game 3.

I think Katja knows quite a bit more about baseball than the average 3rd grader.

Boston 15, Colorado 0. It's the top of the 5th with no outs, bases loaded, David Ortiz is batting with a 1-0 count. The only help she had on this drawing was how to spell "Ortiz", what image (mountains) to put on the Colorado jersey, and the suggestion to add the Japanese photographer (upper left) following Matsuzaka. Nice!

- Corinne (& Mike)

The Cider Press Rules

"A man doesn't plant a tree for himself. He plants it for posterity."

Alexander Smith

Sometimes you luck out and end up in the posterity category.

Our small orchard of 17 fruit trees - thanks to Vic and Phyllis - produced well this year. It looks like the pruning we did in the spring really helped. The orchard consists primarily of apple trees: Jonagold, Winter Banana, Northern Spy, Grimes Golden, Granny Smith, McIntosh, Criterion, Seek-No-Further, and a few others. Now is the time to harvest! We've been sharing our bountiful harvest with our neighbors, both human and otherwise.

First, the deer and coyote. The deer do a good job of cleaning up the fruit from the ground. Keeping the orchard "clean" during the off season will help prevent pests from becoming too big of a problem. (We did put up some pheromone traps in the early summer to try to limit coddling moth damage, but it's hard to tell what difference it made. Thankfully the larvae crawl directly to the core, damaging very little of the flesh, so the apples are still perfectly edible.) We haven't seen the coyote in the orchard, but he leaves plenty of evidence behind.

Between our neighbor Jack and ourselves (and the help of Jack's orchard ladder), we managed to fully pick the orchard this year. Our spare fridge is now stuffed full of apples which we plan to freeze, dry, and sauce. But the most exciting for Corinne is the fresh apple cider. Jack borrowed a cider press from a friend and invited us over for our very first cider pressing!

For those who have never pressed cider before (which before this weekend included us)... it's a two stage process. First, you feed the whole apples¹ into a hopper and crank a grinding wheel; the wheel has little ridges on it which break the apples up into chunks and they fall into a mesh bag inserted into a bottomless bucket. Once the bucket is full, a lid is inserted into the bucket and pressed down by turning a giant screw. The cider is pressed out the bottom of the bucket and runs down an incline into a pan at the bottom. And of course every few minutes you stop to empty the pan (and fill your glass!)

Over the course of a few hours the four of us pressed about 15 gallons or so. We now have a fridge and freezer full! YUM!



- Mike & Corinne

¹ But doesn't this mean there are probably worms in the apples, and thus worm juice in the cider? Yes, yes it does.

More Wetlands Restoration Work

We spent part of another Saturday working with the Columbia Gorge Ecology Institute (CGEI) to restore a wetland sight in Snowden. This time the event was a joint effort between Insitu's Green Committee focused on environmental sustainability and Insitu's newly founded Volunteerism Committee focused on educational and community efforts.

This really is the perfect event for both. Restoring this wetland will improve the watershed that provides water for the communities of White Salmon and Bingen as well as improve wildlife habitat. The CGEI is hoping to establish a nesting site for one of Washington's endangered cranes. The CGEI also has great educational programs that they take into the schools teaching the kids about ecology as part of their science program. These kids will hopefully teach their families what they learn and grow up to be better stewards of the land. Since our last visit to this site, the landowner has begun setting up a conservation trust that will allow the CGEI to use this site for educational purposes (such as overnight field trips for their 6th grade program) while at the same time preserving it from development.

On this visit, we took out a fence, pulled more invasive thistle and blackberry, and planted native grass seed. It was cold and rainy but the work and chili lunch kept us warm.

- Corinne (& Mike)

Squash Harvest

We decided to plant a lot of squash this year because deer don't like messing with the prickly leaves.

I never used to be much of a squash fan but am seeing the light. A few years ago while still living in Boston, Mike discovered a great butternut squash soup recipe after someone at work who didn't cook, gave him this weird squash they didn't know what to do with. ("Here, you cook!") And then just last year, our organic gardening friend Judith convinced me to try one of her delicata squash. (Cut in half, salt & pepper, roast flesh side down over a pat of butter. Heavenly!)

So we decided we really wanted butternut and delicata and then threw in some snackjack pumpkins and acorn squash for fun.

Well, the butternut start we bought turned out to be something else and the delicata did horribly. Lessons learned:
a) Squash is easy so just start it from seed.
b) As with everything, plant as early as you can!
c) Brush up on sweet talking skills. Judith's delicata crop was great.

Here's the final report:

8 Snackjack pumpkin

3 "Butternut" squash
(really a good size
pumpkin of some sort)

17 Acorn squash

2 Delicata squash
(puny specimens which
probably aren't ripe)

I'm looking forward to testing out this pumpkin recipe from the October Sunset Magazine: Baby Pumpkins with Garlic Custard.

- Corinne (& Mike)

Birthdays and Visitors in Seattle

We recently took a short weekend trip to Seattle. Our friends Dennis and Sarah were visiting from Boston, and Corinne's cousin Andrea's boyfriend Shane was celebrating his 40th birthday. Loren was still in town, so Leif, Loren, Linda, and the two of us hopped in Leif's car Saturday morning and carpooled up to Seattle. Leif, Loren and Linda stayed with Donna while we stayed with our friends Malinda and Jean.

We hadn't seen Malinda and Jean in quite a while, and a lot has happened since then - they had a baby girl, bought a new house and started remodeling, pretty much all at the same time. They don't recommend this to others. This was also the first time we've seen Dennis and Sarah since the visiting them in the hospital right after the arrival of their newest family member, Caroline.

Saturday night we went to Shane's 40th birthday party, doing our best to "dress to impress." Andrea organized the event in an art gallery in downtown Seattle, complete with DJ, wine and hors d'oeuvres.

Come Sunday, the original plan was to try to leave earlier in the day in order to make it back in time to still accomplish something at home. That didn't quite work out; we got a late start, then had to backtrack a bit to retrieve Loren's laptop. We didn't make it home until about 11pm. A quick but fun weekend!

- Mike (& Corinne)

Lots of Visitors - Loren, Amy, Leif, Linda, Reidar, Eivor, Marc

When we get visitors, we really get visitors.

Loren planned a trip to visit us for a week or so, and his girlfriend Amy joined him for the first part of the trip. The weekend also happened to coincide with Reidar's birthday (or close enough), so he and Eivor also convened on our place. Leif (whom we haven't seen in quite a while) made himself visible again and invited his friend Linda to join in the fun. The twin's high school friend Marc rounded out the bunch.

After spending some time at Leif's place, the group arrived at our place on Saturday. Over the course of the next several days, we played games: horseshoes, DDR, picture-phone (i.e. the "drawing pictures and writing sentences game"); made and ate great food: applesauce donuts, pumpkin pie, chicken alfredo, ricotta gnocchi, and just generally had a good time. You know, the usual.

- Mike (& Corinne)

First Frost

We received our first frost; temperatures have gotten as low as 30 at night. We haven't received a hard frost yet, but it's only a matter of time now. The marigolds are in full bloom, creating the opportunity for this summer/winter dichotomy photo.

Most of the garden is done already, but we are still trying to eek out some more tomatoes. Hence we have devised a system of sheets over the beds to try to keep some of the daytime warmth contained, as well as prevent the dew from condensing on and damaging the plants and fruit. We'll see how successful we are.

- Mike (& Corinne)

Friends of the White Salmon Hike

The Friends of the White Salmon are a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the White Salmon River and protecting the associated watershed. The Clausens were active members of the group; Phyllis in particular was the group's president and was instrumental in having part of the White Salmon River declared as a Wild and Scenic River, giving it Federal protection.

FotWS recently began conducting hikes related to the river, and we jumped at the chance to get a guided hike on Mt Adams. Robert Schmid, born and raised in the Trout Lake Valley and now one of several organic dairy farmers in the valley, conducted the hike. The first part of the hike put us next to a beautiful pond/marsh where elk frequent; Robert said we likely wouldn't see any on this particular day because the winds would give our scent away. He did bring an elk call with him and demonstrated for us.

The second part of the hike involved significantly more elevation, with the assistance of Robert's pickup. All dozen+ participants loaded into the bed for a short but rather bumpy and steep drive to an overlook point. From here, we could see Mt Adams from a different angle as well as get a view of the Trout Lake Valley from above. We took turns looking through Robert's monocular.

- Mike (& Corinne)

Fire, Fire Everywhere

Fire is a very scary thing, particularly when you live in a log house on a tree farm. There have been three major fire incidents in our area in the last week; some of these have even made the national news, so you may have heard of them.

First, a nearby neighbor lost her under construction house to a fire. Not only did she lose the house, but she also lost her car and the yurt that she was living in while the house was being constructed. She was building the house herself (no loans), and didn't have any insurance. There are several fundraisers underway for her to help get her back on her feet.

Second, the Broughton Mill fire. This is the one you most likely have heard about. The fire started near an abandoned lumber mill near Underwood, WA, and due to the high winds and steep slope, the fire quickly climbed the hill and destroyed 5 homes on the bluff on Underwood Mountain. One of these homes was that of our friends Tad and Ginger who only had enough time to grab a few key items before evacuating - some photos, a laptop containing his work, jewelry, etc. The time between the first fire department warning and the last chance in the house was only 30 minutes. This photo, dubbed "Last Look" by Tad, was taken by him as he fled the house with the 1 carload he was able to save.

The third fire was another 20 miles west of the Broughton fire and involved yet another mill. The Co-Ply plywood mill caught fire less than a day after the Broughton fire, but burned for much longer. The mill was no longer operational, but instead was being used to store 20,000 tons of wood pellets, the kind used in pellet stoves. The fire department could only contain the fire to the mill site; they had no hope of putting out the fire, which was fueled by the perfect human-designed fire fuel. (This fire seemed fishy starting the very day after the start of the Broughton fire. They have recently made three arson arrests related to this fire.)

The scariest fire for us is by far the the local fire; we can see where the home was from our driveway. We weren't home on the day of the fire; we were in Portland celebrating our friend Rat's birthday (the "Ides of September"). But even more than that, we had our own brush with potential fire the very night before.

We were in the kitchen on Friday night preparing to make cookies for Rat's birthday. Corinne was working on the dough, and I started pre-heating the oven. As we were standing in the kitchen, we both heard a rather loud "Bzzzz" sound.

"What was that?", asked Corinne.
"It came from the oven.", I replied.

We opened the oven door, and saw the problem: the bake coil (on the bottom of the oven) had fractured in one spot, and that spot was glowing frighteningly red. We turned the oven off and instead gave Rat a container of uncooked cookie dough.

The coil has now been replaced, but if we hadn't been in the kitchen and heard the sound we hesitate to think what might have occurred.

- Mike (& Corinne)

Do the Hornet Dance

After we finished chipping the two largest orchard slash piles, I hooked the chipper/shredder up to the back of the small tractor and pulled it to the third and final pile. I had moved this particular pile from its original, very prominent location next to the driveway to a less visible location on the edge of a stand of trees.

So I pulled the tractor up and backed the chipper into a spot next to the pile. We then decided that the best location for the chipper would be on the opposite side of the pile, to allow for easy transfer from pile to chipper, and a convenient deposit location for the chip. Since I had already disconnected the chipper from the tractor, and it would be awkward to maneuver it mechanically anyway, I grabbed hold of the chipper and proceeded to push it to its intended location.

Somewhere along the way, something strange started to happen.

At first, I didn't quite know what was going on, other than that it was bad. It took me a few seconds to realize that I was being stung - repeatedly. Instinctively, I started to run, probably flailing my arms and looking like an idiot. I think Corinne asked me if I was being stung, to which maybe I said yes. (It's kind of a blur at this point.)

As I'm running down the path, not knowing exactly what to do, Corinne yelled "Take your clothes off". Do what she says, I think, and I continue to run down the path flailing my arms, shaking my legs, and now depositing articles of clothing in a trail behind me. First my coat, then a shirt and belt, then the T-shirt, all while continuing to run.

Right about now I started to regain my senses, and my first thought was: should I really be taking my clothes off while being chased by a swarm of yellowjackets? I notice a particular pain on my left ankle, and when investigating discover that 2 of the little buggers have embedded themselves in my sock and the ankle beneath. After several seconds I manage to dislodge them.

Seeing no other immediate attackers, I begin to slowly backtrack along the trail. After checking each piece of clothing for infiltrators, I begin to re-clothe myself. Corinne is laughing heartily, and I can't help but agree, despite the pain. If only we had the video camera running.

We leave the coat on the ground where it fell, since it still contains 3 or 4 rather angry looking assailants. Heading back to the start of my little "dance", it becomes clear what happened. While pushing the chipper in front of me, one wheel rolled directly over an underground yellowjacket nest; seconds later, my foot planted directly on top of that same nest.

After a quick search through the various inherited chemicals in our shed, we manage to find a can of "Kill 'Em All" (or some such name) yellowjacket insecticide, and proceed to spray a good portion of it down into the nest. We're clearly not going to get any chipping done today, so we leave everything where it is and head in for the day.

Here comes the rather odd part. The very next day we come out to find that some animal has come along and completely dug the nest out. Thanks, friend, but you're a day late!

- Mike (& Corinne)

Deer Attack the Garden

As the summer progresses into fall, the deer must be getting more desperate for food (even though there is still plenty of green around). That bed of green beans that looked so promising has been reduced to stalks. Every leaf in the entire bed was eaten; you can see the remnants on the left side of the photo below, under the fence arch. They even ate the tops of onions. They aren't supposed to like onions!

Here they are, caught red-hooved.



- Mike (& Corinne)

Black Cherry Harvest

In addition to the 40+ acres of fir and pine on our property, we have 3 acres of black cherry trees. Even though the tree is not native to this area, Vic decided to experiment with growing a hardwood, and black cherry seemed to be all the rage at the time.

The trees didn't turn out so well, at least from a commercial forestry point of view. Oh, they're still alive and growing, but they are growing very slowly and not very straight. But they still count towards our Forest Stewardship Plan, so replacing them is not high on our priority list.

They do produce fruit - tiny clusters of bitter fruit suitable mostly for cough syrup, at least in my opinion. Vic and Phyllis used to make jellies and such, so we decided we'd pick some and try our hand at turning our poor hardwood stand into something edible.

It didn't take more than an hour or so to pick a gallon or so of fruit between the two of us. The comb-like device in the photos is used to literally comb the berries off of the branch; the berries are fairly sturdy, so they survive intact.

We did some quick searching online and found a recipe for a black cherry jam. This particular recipe called for more than a 2:1 ratio of sugar to berries! After cooking the berries down and adding the sugar and some pectin, the result was indeed a jam, but didn't taste enough like the original fruit to make it worthwhile.

The rest of the berries were cooked down, but we haven't yet been combined them with anything else; the syrup now sits in our refrigerator and freezer waiting for a suitable purpose. If only it tasted good...

- Mike (& Corinne)

Chipping the Orchard Piles

Remember all of those piles of stuff that we made back in the spring? Well, we're finally getting around to them. (Some of them, anyway.)

Our friend, co-worker, and fellow organic high-altitude gardener Judith recently mentioned to us that her and her husband Rodney's air compressor had gone the fritz. She was looking for a temporary replacement so that she could finish a project; she also happens to have a small chipping/mulching machine. So we agreed to swap machines for a while, and we are now most of the way through chipping the slash from the spring orchard pruning. Corinne plans to put the chipped material around some of the trees in the yard, to suppress weeds.

We still haven't managed to buy a chipper of our own. So thanks, Judith & Rodney!

- Mike (& Corinne)