And A Merry Christmas Was Had By All

At least I hope so - in spite of the heat on your side of the world.

Thank you very much for my family gift, Aileen.  What a lovely surprise and a treasure. Lots of lovely family memories there, and now I have absolutely no excuse for forgetting people's birthdays!  Apart from my malfunctioning middle-aged brain, that is...

Daniel and I had a nice quiet day.  We enjoyed it so much last year, we thought we'd try it again.  Although we did have a dinner guest this year.  Tanya, our friend Mark's wife, is a doctor and she was on call Christmas day, so we invited Mark over to have a meal with us, and then we sent him home with leftovers for Tanya.

As is so often the case with us, the focus was on the food.  If you haven't already heard, we managed to get our hands on a locally produced smoked ham for dinner.  It was almost, but not quite, as good as Mum's, but easily the best ham I've had in the US; tender and juicy and flavourful.  The supermarket ham here is injected with a solution of water and some sort of chemicals to keep it tender, but it seems to me that if you cook it carefully you don't need all that junk, plus which you get ham that actually has texture instead of being kind of mushy. We had the ham for mains, with steamed vegies and a potato casserole that was made with garlic, cheese and cream. Mmmmmmm!  Oh, there was mustard and homemade cranberry relish on the side.

We had an entree, too, but I got all carried away by the ham so I mentioned it first.  For entree, I made a salad.  Pay attention to this one, because it's absolutely scrumptious:  2 baby fennel bulbs (or one large, which is all we could get), two firm-but-ripe pears, some toasted walnuts (or pecans) and some chunks of parmesan cheese.  Slice the fennel and pear very thinly (I used a mandolin for the fennel and a very sharp knife for the pears) and dress it with a dressing made from two tablespoons good quality olive oil and one tablespoon lemon juice seasoned to taste.  Sprinkle with the nuts and cheese and some of the fennel fronds. Enjoy!  It was enough for four entree servings.  I think it would make a lovely lunch with a few slices of ham on the side.

Mark didn't stay for dessert, and since we were both full, I made it later in the evening.  I made an apple galette on puff pastry that looked a lot fancier than the effort it took would seem to warrant.  Daniel gave me some good quality heavy-gauge baking trays for Christmas (the ones we had were cheapy old non-stick ones and pretty much worn out) and a couple of SilPat sheets to go on them.  Don't know if you've heard of them, but they're a non-stick silicone liner you can put on baking trays so you a) don't have to grease the trays, and b) don't have to keep buying baking paper. They're a lot easier to clean, too. I got to use a tray and a liner for the dessert, and they worked a treat.  Nothing stuck and, more importantly, the pastry didn't burn in spite of being in a 220-degree oven. 

Oh, I almost forgot to mention breakfast.  I made some corn and ricotta hotcakes with cilantro in them, and served them with an egg, a couple of bits of bacon and a few prawns, some fresh chilli sliced thinly, and oyster sauce.  There was an awful lot of the hotcake mix, but it actually kept very well so I cooked up the rest of it for lunch today (with ham on the side, of course).

We're not too sure how Maggie spent Christmas.  She disappeared when Mark came over and we didn't see her until much later in the evening.  We suspect she was holed up somewhere drinking mousenog and nibbling on crispy squirrel bits.  Dobie decided that since I wasn't using my pillow, he would...

What can I say?  He doesn't suffer from a lack of entitlement...

So all in all it was a good day, and I hope yours were, too.  I haven't been up to much today - just pottering around and working on a baby blanket for a baby that's due any day now.

I have a week's holiday ahead of me, so I've lined up some good books and plan to do not too much until I go back to work.

Cheers!

Snow Day

It may seem a little odd, but while you're snoozing your way through the end of the first day of the Australian summer, I have been outside taking pictures of the snow we had last night. It isn't officially winter yet (Decenber 21st is the day, I think), but you can't tell the weather that.

 If I were Canadian or Russian, I would probably dismiss the seven inches (around 15 centimetres, I think) as not much, but we don't actually get a lot of snow in our valley.  Needless to say, the roads this morning are a snowy, slippery mess, so the university isn't opening until 11am.... wish I'd known that BEFORE I got out of bed. They have an automated phone system that dials everyone to let them know when there's an emergency or weather event, but I had to get out of bed to answer the phone, didn't I?

Daniel's on his way to work as I write this.  Fortunately we got some studded tyres for the Mazda over the weekend, so he should make it okay.  As you can see, the car had to be cleaned before he got underway, and the footpaths had to be shovelled off.

This is the yard next door to us.

And this is our street.

I wouldn't mind betting that more than a few people will be taking the day off work today so they can go skiing at Bogus Basin, which is the nearest ski slope to us.  This is perfect weather for snow bunnies.

It's supposed to rain later today as the weather warms up (to slightly above freezing), which will turn everything into a big slushy mess.  Can't say I mind that much - I LIKE snow.

Back in Boise

Well, I made it back to Boise more or less in one piece, although I think there are still pieces of me scattered over the Pacific somewhere.  Hopefully they'll find their way back to me soon.  I really would like the bit of my brain that helps me think clearly to return, but I suspect that may actually be lost to the wilderness of middle age...

I slept for THIRTEEN hours when I got back.  That must be a personal record!  Of course, I've had trouble sleeping since then, but I should be right by the end of the week.

Thank you all so much for such a lovely visit.  Not that I needed reminding, but it's nice to confirm that I have the best family ever.

The furry folk were surprisingly well-behaved.  There wasn't a single shredded plant to be found, in spite of the fact that Daniel was also out of town for three days.  Maggie didn't bite me once, and Dobie did not run away in fright when he saw me.  They just came and said hi, gave my luggage a thorough sniffing, and as soon as I sat down Maggie curled up on my lap. Now I feel bad for casting such horrible aspersions upon them.

Fall fell while I was away.  My garden is well and truly done for the year; all that remains is cleaning up and mulching my freeze-sensitive plants (like my rosemary that I'm not supposed to be able to overwinter). A couple of my carrots went to seed, which I'm quite happy about - they're an heirloom variety so I can grow more from the seeds I will hopefully get (they're not ripe yet).

Although we don't get much in the way of fall colours here, Daniel and I took a Sunday drive to see what was there to be seen.  Daniel took these two especially lovely photos at a little spot called Wild Rose Park:

So yes, life is pretty much back to normal already.... sigh.... At least I have my favourite American holiday to look forward to.  Thanksgiving is only a few weeks away, and Daniel's Mum is coming to visit, which should make it extra special.

Cheers!

Nooooooo!

Could this be all that remains of the Last PollyWaffle ever? 

Surely not? 

Something has gone horribly awry when the world is

PollyWaffle-less....

It Finally Happened...

Daniel turned 40....

We had a bit of a barbecue to celebrate, and also to give Daniel the chance to take The Great Barbecue Behemoth on its maiden voyage.  This is why I have dubbed it The Great Barbecue Behemoth:

You can use charcoal on the right-hand side and propane on the left-hand side.  Which makes it a lot easier to have a bit of a barbie on a weeknight when you don't have the time or inclination to build up a bed of charcoal.  We're thinking that if we put a motor on it, we could just drive it to assorted barbecue locations.

Daniel did the barbecuing, and The Behemoth had more than enough space to feed 29 people.  He grilled citrus marinated chicken breasts, chicken pieces, and what he called Big Ugly Pork Steaks... one of which was enough to feed two or three people.

Here's how we set up the back yard, on what turned out to be an absolutely perfect day for a birthday barbecue:

It was all done buffet-style, except for the nibblies.  I had dips, chips and salsa on the table, and our friend Starr ran the hot nibblies around to the guests.  I made pumpkin and feta tarts, sun dried tomato and basil tarts, and mini beef empanadas.

By the time the sun went down (which is getting earlier and earlier), it looked like this:

We also had green bean and feta salad (I've picked about 12 kilos of beans this year... it was a very, very good season, apparently), Daniel's totally wonderful potato salad, and a vinegar coleslaw that is more or less marinated in the dressing.

Of course there was cake:

And Daniel being Daniel, it had to be chocolate with chocolate and some extra chocolate cake.  I had planned, per the recipe, to make a ganache for the icing.  And per the recipe, I got some fancy chocolate chips to make it super scrumptious.  What a disaster that turned out to be!  And mere hours before the party, too! It was salty, and all around bloody awful.  Daniel said it tasted like Vegemite - which is fine if you're a jar of Vegemite, but totally unacceptable if you're supposed to be icing for a birthday cake.  Fortunately, I had enough ingredients on hand to make a (chocolate) butter cream icing and it turned out very well.  I went inside to get something, and when I got back the cake was gone!

I also made a pecan and honey slice, and some plain biscuits that I joined together with my (ahem) award-winning apricot conserve, and blueberry preserve.

Daniel had the idea to hang Chinese paper lanterns over the table, and we also got some mini ones that he hung along the garage.  It was a really nice idea - simple, but very festive.

We rented all the plates, tables, chairs, etc. And it turned out to be a good idea, too.  I just couldn't come at celebrating something as important as a fortieth with paper plates and plastic cutlery.

Things kicked off pretty early, so we were all done and pretty much cleaned up by about 11pm, which was nice.

Word has it that everyone enjoyed themselves, which is, after all, the point of a party.  And it was really nice to have such an eclectic bunch of people share the celebration. It was a lot of work, but I think it was worth it (now that I've recovered).  The only thing I would do differently next time is rope in more helpers and buy about two-thirds less wine and beer.  I think we have enough leftovers to last us until Daniel turns 80!

I am totally enamoured of the whole eating outside at a long table with tablecloths and proper plates.  I'd like to do it again before the winter pounces on us.

And, finally, here he is at the end of the party:  Dan, Dan the Birthday Man:

Cheers!

Sweet!

This past week was the Western Idaho State Fair, which is like the Royal Show for our part of the state.   I thought it might be fun to enter a few of the things I've been making of late, just to see how I rated against all those little old ladies and men who have been making jams and jellies for as long as (if not longer than) I've been on the planet.

To my complete surprise, and total delight, I apparently rate quite well!  I entered three things, and I won a third place and two firsts!  You could have proverbially knocked me over with a proverbial feather. 

I won third place in the category of Plum Jam for my Santa Rosa plum jam that I make from the plums I steal from the vacant property next door.  I'm not all that fond of this jam - I think it's the wrong kind of plum - but Daniel and a former co-worker like it well enough.

I won a first in the category of Any Other Conserve for my Apricot-Orange Conserve, which I make from the abundance of fruit our apricot tree seems determined to deliver no matter what.  I happen to like this one a lot, and I was very pleased that the judges apparently liked it too.  The only downside is that the Australian Quarantine Service won't let me bring jars of it home for you all to taste.  I do have the recipe, though, so let me know if you're interested. I think it helps that our tree produces small but intensely flavourful fruit. 

One of our friends, Mark, is a particular fan of the apricot and I've been keeping him supplied for free for the past few years.  I may need to charge him from now on!

I also won a first in the category of Any Other Preserve for my Blueberry Preserve.  This was a total fluke.  It was the day before entries were due, and I had some blueberries on hand because they were so cheap and they were local ($2 per pound, if I remember right), so I thought I might give a recipe I'd found a try.  And then I thought, "What the hell, I'll take this one down as well."  Good thing I did! It's actually a little sweet for me, but I think it would be yummy on fresh scones with lashings of butter.

I'm most proud of the fact that all three are pectin-free.  It seemed to me that I ought to be able to make jams and such without paying for commercial pectin.  I've used it in the past, but I think it interferes with the taste.  The slow cooking down of the fruit and sugar really intensifies the flavours and makes the end result worth eating.

Here's me just after I got home today from picking up the leftovers and claiming my prizes.  Daniel, all around cool dude that he is, was waiting with camera in hand.

I received the ribbons for my efforts, and a grand total of eight dollars in prize money, which is almost enough to buy another box of jam jars....  Don't worry, I'll spend it wisely.

It was a lot of fun, and it really wouldn't have mattered if I placed or not, but it's nice to know that this is a skill I have that people beyond my Idaho friends think is worth working on. 

Yours Truly,

The Jam Queen

A Funny Tail

We have a window in our bathroom, over the bathtub and opposite the shower head.  It's quite possibly our bathroom's only redeeming feature (actually, it's more than quite possible - it is), and it makes for a pleasant shower on these summer mornings because there's usually some cool  left over nighttime air making its way in.

It's also a regular stop for a certain black and grey stripey feline when he does his rounds about the house.  He has a particular technique whereby he'll run through the bathroom door at full tilt then make a leap from the floor to the windowsill without landing a paw on the edge of the tub.  He seems to think he's pretty slick when he does this.

He applied his particular technique this morning, but what he didn't stop to work out was that yours truly was already in the shower.  No sooner did his feet hit the windowsill than he realised that a) he was getting wet - which he only likes to do under highly contolled circumstances that involve Daniel and a tub full of water, and b) he was not alone.

Panic ensued, and a flurry of fur and whiskers propelled itself, somewhat innaccurately as it happens, back from whence it came.  I looked around the shower curtain to see one rather upset cat do a header into the edge of the toilet.  A quick shake of the head and a scrabble of paws, and he was gone without a trace...

Poor boy!  He didn't hurt himself, but he did look rather embarrassed when I checked on him.  Whoever said that cats are elegant creatures hasn't met our Dobie!

Compost Accessories

When one has acquired a fabulously fabulous compost bin (see previous post), it only seems proper that, as a now fashionable compostor, one ought to accessorise.  One has the requisite accessories, of course; a pitchfork, a hose for wetting down the compost, buckets for carrying the compost, and a strong back (mostly Daniel's) for turning the compost.  But there was something missing, something that would make me an uber fashionista in the oh-so-glamourous world of compost making.

Enter the trommel.  Yes, the trommel.  One really is not at one's composting best without one....

This, my friends, is a trommel:

I don't know about you, but my compost is generally full of twigs, shrubbery and plants that haven't quite rotted down, and those rotten stinking little labels they stick on all the fruit and veg because apparently identifying a snow pea can be a chore (it's true - I can't tell you how many times the checkout person has asked me what snow peas are.  Ginger's another favourite).

What the trommel allows me to do is sift my compost - out go the twigs and sticks - and what is left is luvverly, luvverly black gold.

My "groundskeeper" (that's him on the left making some adjustments, and that's his term, not mine) developed our trommel using scrap bits of wood, a few old bicycle wheels with the spokes removed, some little wheels, and some stuff they call hardware cloth here, but which I can't think of another name for at the moment.

Here are some details:

What you do is put the trommel over a wheelbarrow, chuck the compost in at one end, and start spinning.  It drops the luvverly compost into the wheelbarrow and kicks (most of) the twigs, shrubbery and plants (but not those stinking little labels, unfortunately) out the other end so you can pull out the twigs and return the not-quite-rotted stuff to the compost bin for another go round.  Brilliant!

That stuff on the bottom right?  That's the sifted stuff that will make my plants happy, and stop me from cursing the twigs, shrubbery and other misshapen lumps that I find in what I used to think was my finished compost. Quite a difference from the raw stuff on the left, wouldn't you say?

Wonderful.  Abso-bloody-lutely wonderful.

You know Dahlings, I think it's safe to say that thanks to my groundskeeper I am now an uber fashionista in the oh-so-glamourous world of compost making. Ta-ta for now!

Look What the Fence Pixies Brought!

At last we have a back fence.  Yaaaaaaaaay!  We've waited a long time for this one, that's for sure.  No more view of the alley way, no more dust kicking up all over my vegies, no more dogs deciding our backyard makes the perfect toilet. And no more people getting bogged in our backyard during the winter because they think it's the perfect spot to turn around in.

The pixies brought us two gates - one for our recently acquired trailer, and one for putting the rubbish out on Sundays... or wandering through if we ever feel the need to walk down the alley.  I have a sneaking suspicion there's a raccoon or two using the pedestrian gate as well.

Just to give you an idea of how much the backyard has changed, this is what we used to have.  What you can't see are the old star pickets, chicken wire and weeds that made up the rest of the fence to the right of the photo.  Not to mention the old concrete pad, car parts, and who knows what else that used to be there.

Now we have this:

It's completely changed the feel of it.  We've also been working at leveling it out (there used to be a cubby house to the left of the apricot tree, an old brick barbecue, and enough blackberry brambles to make Brer Rabbit very, very happy).

Daniel did a lot of the levelling (I've done the seeding and maintenance - there's new lawn under the tree now), but he did take a break now and then...

Introducing Dan Jones, Rock God.

Boiling Springs

One thing we have not managed to do as much of as we'd like since we got to Idaho is go camping.  We finally managed to squeeze in an overnighter a few weekends ago, though, (actually, it was a while ago now - it's taken forever to get to this) and now we're just mad at all the time we haven't spent camping!

We went to a place called Boiling Springs Campground, about two and half hours' drive northeastish of Boise, much of it on gravel roads.

It was the first really nice weekend we'd had, and you couldn't stuff another person in the campgrounds.  In fact, I think we were quite lucky to find a spot.

Even though there were lots of people, it wasn't hard to get away from them.  They were all very well behaved, too - no late night partiers.  This is a good thing, because I'm pretty sure my times of late night partying have been consigned to the memoir I haven't written.

It was a very pretty campground, too, perched right along the banks of a river, which made it easy for the kids who were there to get themselves wet and for the bigger kids (ones about the shape and size of Daniel) to go fishing.  Apparently the water was still fabulously cold.

Because we hadn't been to this area before, we went on an exploratory drive to see what we could see...

We saw mountain meadows:

A detour sign (seriously - they were rebuilding a bridge in the middle of the bush):

And on our way back to camp, we saw this amazing waterfall:

We had some company at our camp in the form of about ten very curious and not at all concerned about our prescence ground squirrels.  I'm not sure what species they were, but I can tell you they are related to chipmunks - which we also saw a few of. Cute little buggers, aren't they?  They're also pretty noisy.

This next photo is out of focus, but I have to post it anyway.  These two juvenile ground squirrels were just so entertaining, and more than happy to pose for a photo.  I was cursing the fact that I'm still learning about the camera when I downloaded this at home.

Daniel took his mountain bike and fishing gear and made good use of both of them, while yours truly read and went for gentle walks.

I also took some photos, such as this one.  I'm intrigued by birds in flight, and I'm discovering that it's possible to catch a pretty decent photo if I'm paying attention, and if the camera's digital, because then it doesn't matter how many tries it takes me to get a photo!  This is, I think, some form of wren and I like the way there's a whole lot of blue sky around the tiny little bird.

After dinner on Satuday night, we went for stroll in the long, long twilight they have in the summer here in search of the boiling spring after which the camp ground is named.  Unfortunately we couldn't get right up to it; there's a cabin there which people can rent, and the signs ask you to respect their privacy.  We did, however, get to see where the (literally) boiling spring met the river.

Pretty nifty, huh?  It was also about 9:30pm when Daniel took this.

On Sunday, Daniel proved his camp cooking mettle by making us a delicious breakfast (scrambled eggs and ham for me). 

We took a very leisurely drive home along all sorts of narrow, twisty back roads - none of which were sealed - and I have to report that the Toyota got its first scrapes....  Had to happen eventually, I guess.  We also met this doe on the way home.  She's a mule deer, which is the most common species around here, and wasn't at all surprised by us.  We got to watch her for quite a few minutes before she finally decided she'd had enough (I imagine we were pretty smelly) and took off.

All in all, it was a good weekend.  And I'm delighted to report that I can apparently still sleep on the ground (on a mat) without having to pay too dearly for it - a little (okay, a bit more than a little) first-thing-in-the-morning achiness notwithstanding.

(Black) Gold Repository

I must confess to being a little lax with this post... but nobody warned me that May and June would disappear in a flurry of gardening and cursing the cold weather.

 May was when Daniel plotted and schemed (with a little help from the Australian organic gardening magazine Lynette got me a subscription to) and built me a fabulously fabulous compost bin for my black gold.

He started with some posts:

They're untreated cedar, rather than jarrah, but have the same kind of last forever properties. And they're untreated so we don't have arsenic and god knows what else in the way of toxic junk leaching into the compost.

Then there was some post hole digging, some corrugated tin, some nails, some hammering and sawing, a fair bit of swearing, and a rest or two:

 Here are some details:

And now for the unveiling...  I should probably confess that I also have a Tumbleweed (made in Australia!) compost tumbler that I will continue to use, but I need to leave it out of this story for dramatic reasons that I hope will soon be clear.

My composting abilities went from this:

To THIS:

Daniel even numbered each set of slats for the front (one hole, two holes, three holes) so they will fit properly when they get removed and replaced.  How cool is that?!

Not only do I think it's the most handsome compost bin in the entire Treasure Valley, but I think I can safely say that it's the only one made with corrugated tin.  It's not a popular building material here, which for some reason made it cheaper than some of the other options we had.

Needless to say, Daniel is very proud of himself and I am thrilled silly to have such a capable man in my life.

A Camas Dawn

I still can't believe I did it, but last Saturday I hauled my (immediately regretful) self out of bed at 3:45am (yeah, you read that right) so I could make the two-hour drive to Camas Prairie Centennial Marsh and be there by dawn to take some photos.

It's a beautiful, peaceful place, in spite of the raucous chorus of a million and one birds. Even better, I was the only human hopping around in the pre-dawn almost freezing temperatures, clicking the shutter and keeping my fingers crossed that I had at least something in focus and that my fingers weren't going to drop off from frostbite.

Here's a selection of the results, pretty much in the order I took them, which I hope speak for themselves.













This is the Camas Lily - traditional food source for Native Americans, and once owner of the whole valley. It's pretty much limited to several hundred acres now - at least in any great numbers.

I call this one The Cow of Camas Prairie. I do believe she was shaking her head at me.