Goings on

Last week we were lucky enough to have some nice weather here in the Valley so we went out to the forest a few times.  Shep is in major shed mode and we usually brush him when we are out and about to spread some Shep-fur love.  Here's Jay modeling just two handfuls of what we brushed out of Shep's coat - I really think that may be what those brows look like in 40 years!   We sat on the bench at Chip Ross park for a few minutes and enjoyed the view of Corvallis.

We tried a new topping for our zucchini "pasta" last week - nut-fredo sauce (get it, like ALfredo!!).  Brazil nuts, lemon juice, basil and some spices.  Add water to get the consistency you desire.  It is actually really good!  We had it a couple of nights in a row, but I don't really recommend it as leftovers - feel free to just take my word for it.  The recipe is from the same blog I mentioned before - rawon10.   Great recipes!  

Jay is at the annual camp for his work this week and he was worried about missing out on his juice, so he decided to take the juicer with him, along with some other healthy snacks to help fill in the gaps at camp.  Friday night we were super busy with preparations.  Jay worked late to pack the van up and I ran to numerous stores to get the supplies we needed.  About 7:30 pm I started with making seed bread for Jay to take with him to camp.  I needed to get this done first so it could get in the dehydrator. I made one and a quarter batches to fill almost 3 trays.  Then I whipped up a batch of veggie patties and got those in the dehydrator, too.  Then I made 3 pecan pies - two for Jay to take with and one for me to share with my family, who I spent the weekend with.  Once that was done it was already about 9:30 pm.  Our plan was to make a bunch of juices for me and freeze them so I would still have access to the greens.  We juiced like crazy to fill 10 pint jars!  We were pretty wiped out once cleanup was over, but it was for a good cause.  

I can report that after two mornings at camp Jay has been diligent about making juice and is getting up about 30 minutes earlier than he needs to just to get his fix!  Good job, Jay!

Pie in the sky

My second Raw Foods class was last Wednesday.  The agenda: dessert.  We made banana-avocado-chocolate pudding (quite good!), a banana chocolate smoothie (would have been good if the bananas were frozen, but instead we had banana-chocolate mush), and the pièce de résistance: Chocolate Coconut Kreme Pie.  The pie was quite a bit of work, but my three group mates and I were pretty good at accomplishing our tasks.  The whole pie was raw - the crust was made from dates and nuts, the chocolate layer was made with cacao powder and dates, and the kreme layer was made from real coconut meat.  We each took turns cutting open Thai Baby Coconuts and scooping out the insides while enjoying a glass of the coconut milk/water.  The interesting thing about raw foods (at least this is what I believe from what little we've done) is how many dishes/appliances are used to make one dish!  Between soaking nuts and fruits, processing in a variety of appliances, assembly....it's a full time job just to clean up!  But the end results are pretty great and I was able to bring home leftover pie for Jay to enjoy. 

  Now that we had a taste for raw desserts (but I had a lack of motivation to tackle something as big as that pie), I took to the blog world. There's a great blog about eating raw on $10 or less a day and we've tried two dishes.  A new veggie patty (it turns crispy in the dehydrator!) and a raw pecan pie for 1 or 2 people.  My raw foods instructor said that any recipe calling for dates (the pie's filling) implied that Medjool dates should be used....well of course Medjool dates are more expensive, so we picked up bread dates and Medjool dates at the store.  I made my first pie on Tuesday night and tried it with the bread dates.  The crust is processed raisins and walnuts, processed soaked dates are the filling, and pecan halves are the topping. It turned out pretty good but there wasn't much filling in our pie, so I tried again last night.  I soaked 6 bread and 6 Medjool dates for 2 separate pies.  It was amazing how much more filling the Medjool dates created - so much so that I used some to top off the regular date pie.  We enjoyed one pie last night after dinner and I look forward to the other one tonight!

Most people who know me know that pie has always been my least favorite dessert - for the longest time I would forgo dessert if pie was my only option.  I have lightened up a little since our 93 year old neighbor had us over for pie last summer.  I must say that I like the raw pies better, though!

Freedom!!!

Remember our little sea lion friend with the plastic around his neck?  I blogged about him in February and it seems the little guy recieved a lot of media attention!  So much so that multiple organizations teamed up in an effort to remove the neck shackles!  Click here for the story with a video of the event. 
Hooray for resolution!

The stump is shrinking!

Let me set the scene: We stayed up late Friday night watching "The Informant!".  Pretty good movie and an intriguing, and true, story. Go to bed sometime around 12:30 a.m.  Sleep in and sleep in on Saturday morning, then roll out of bed about 11:15 a.m.  My body was ready to wake up earlier than that, but I just couldn't convince my eyes to stay open.  About noon we suit up in rain boots and rain coats and head to the park with Shep.  When we got back the house it just happened to not be raining, so Jay decided it was the perfect time to try to chop some more wood off the stump.  When the tree service originally took down the Sequoia they made an extra cut on the bottom portion, 18 inches down from the top, but they weren't able to heave the giant chunk of wood off the base.  Jay has been eying this project for a while but hadn't made any attempts...until now! Here's a video to show you- just press play:

Jay and Shep show off the stump!

It turns out that splitting, even though the wood is very wet from all of our rain this week, wasn't as hard as Jay anticipated and the wood actually slid off the remaining stump quite easily (says I, who stood by holding the camera, not lifting a finger). 

I think it's pretty impressive what productivity you can have after a super lazy morning!  Onward to vacuuming!

Beautiful tulips from our yard!

P.S. Happy Easter! 

Whirlwind

After taking a break for a few weeks after my father's sudden passing, I am back to blog about what we have been up to.  Corvallis has been living up to its reputation of dreary, wet days, but there have been some nice ones mixed in as well.  Jay and I managed to get out into the woods two weekends ago and do some off-trail exploring.  Turns out there's Poison Oak in them-there woods!  Luckily I wore long pants, but Jay's uber-manly capri pants couldn't spare him from the impending itch.  Picture to the left is a beautiful Trillium Jay spotted near a little stream in MacDonald Forest that day!
  I am happy to announce that Jay has successfully sold two of his beloved customized bicycles.  I know how much time and care he puts in to every bike he owns, and I know how hard it is for him to say goodbye to the memories, but I am very proud of him for making some room in the garage... to hang other bikes who have longed to dangle proudly from the rafters.
We spent last weekend with my family in Newberg and my Mom and I gave Karsyn some Easter presents - a fuzzy bunny from Grandma T and a crocheted bunny basket from Auntie C!!  Here's little KG (future rap name Lil' K?) and her cute bunnies to wish you a Happy Easter!
  When we returned on Sunday Jay discovered some moisture coming from under our pellet stove - was the wind driving rain down our chimney??!!  Jay couldn't stand the idea of water pooling up behind the stove, so Monday night he got to work dismantling the pellet stove and pulling it out to investigate.  Turns out it is just a significant amount of condensation - there was no trace of moisture anywhere but underneath - but what a scare!  At least we now know what effort it takes to get the stove out of the fireplace, should that be necessary in the future.
We were lucky enough to have a visit from Jay's dad, Larry, earlier this week, and the two of them spent a good portion of a day investigating our property lines.  Our number one priority project when the weather decides to be sunnier for more than a minute is to to reinforce the fence.  Half of the backyard and all of the west side of the yard are poorly fenced with some chintzy wire and a poorly unrolled chain-link number.  Our Little-Buddy-Shepdog has super haunches that catapult him over impressive heights (my sister's baby gate could tell you some stories!) and the not-so-secure "fence" is no match for his abilities.  In order for him to enjoy the outdoors this summer and the couch to get a rest from his day-long naps, we will be replacing the fence to match the rest of the yard. Stay tuned for all of that fun!  But before that can happen, we will be talking with our neighbors about the project and asking for any willingness to pitch in (are we dreaming?) - now THAT will be a good story!!
  In other news I attended Part 1 of 2 Raw Cuisine classes last night - recipes to follow - and tonight I shook my booty at Hip-Hop dance class!  I know I looked a little sketchy but it was very fun and I'm looking forward to next week!

New gadgets!

A few new kitchen gadgets arrived at our door recently and we are excited to put them to use.  We purchased a mandoline/food slicer for uniformly cutting fruits and veggies to dehydrate.  We also picked up a few more Paraflex non-stick sheets for the dehydrator  - the two that came with the dehydrator are always in use now that we know how easy it is to make fruit leather!  How exciting that we will soon be using all 5 dehydrator trays at once!! 

The third gizmo is a spiral slicer and we put that to work last night to make dinner.  The spiralizer (a dark green contraption that looks like the microscopes I used in High School Biology class) has 4 blades to create a variety of spiral thicknesses.  Last night we whittled two zucchini squashes down to a bowl of zucchini "pasta"! (top right in the photo)  To top our "pasta" was tomato basil sauce (Vitamix blended shallot, balsamic vinegar, sundried tomato, olive oil, and garlic) .  The sauce comes out quite thick, more of a paste, and is very tasty!  Our makeshift spaghetti with sauce was really good and packed with vitamins!  To the left of the sauce we have guacamole which we put on romaine lettuce leaves for a refreshing wrap.  Also on the plate of lettuce are tomato crackers we made on Sunday night with a few fresh tomatoes, sesame seeds, flax seeds, and seasonings.  The meal was eclectic and tasty and we followed it up with a fruit and spinach smoothie for dessert!  Yum!

Throughout all of our preparations Shep kept his distance from the ruckus of blending and slicing!

Weekly Update

While Jay looked forward to a weekend of resting after a hectic work-week, I headed up to Newberg Saturday morning to babysit Karsyn.  It is amazing how much she changes in between my visits!  I've made Karsyn a few hats along the way and have grand plans to make a Newsboy-style crocheted hat for her.  I brought my yarn along and got to work.  Turns out my yarn was too big and needle too small, so it made for an awkwardly huge hat for her little head!  I will be attempting this again with some different supplies and hopefully the outcome is much more appropriate! 

    On Sunday we checked out a new brew pub in town and watched the US vs Canada hockey game.  I'm not a huge hockey fan, and frankly I can hardly tell where the puck is most of the time, but the food was good and so was the company, so it was an enjoyable afternoon!  And if you're ever not sure, I can tell you that buffalo wing sauce on french fries is a wonderful combination! 

That night we "un-cooked" up some raw veggie patties and seed "bread".  Here is the before picture - red pepper, onion, flax, sunflower seeds, celery.  After hanging out in the dehydrator a few hours they were ready to eat, though there is no need to dry them if you like things really raw.  The end product looked pretty much the exact same, so you can pretend that it's the after photo, too!  Monday's lunch was a veggie patty, a little stoneground mustard, two pieces of seed "bread" and a leaf of romaine.  Not too shabby! 

Last night we made fruit leather out of frozen blueberries, pear, and apple.  Yum-o!