The Pacific Northwest is not known for being the place to grow a vegetable garden. At first glance the area appears lush and green and one would think that anything would grow well here. But the cool, wet climate is not conducive to the growth of, say, tomatoes or eggplant because we simply don’t get enough sunlight. Combine the lack of sun and heat to the short growing season and the rain that leaches necessary nutrients out of the soil along with the unpredictable late frost dates and vegetable gardening is spotty at best. Nothing close to my Eastern Washington experience of being able to grow almost anything.

      Most people I know who grow gardens in this area put their plants in sometime around May or June. Most seed packets and garden books, however, suggest that seeds can be sown sometimes as early as February with good results. I wasn’t quite organized enough to direct sow that early, but I was able to put in my first planting in early April. I followed with a second round of planting yesterday and so far so good. The weather here has been cool and certainly the plants are not growing as quickly as when I planted similar plants mid May last year, but I have yet to lose a single little sprout to frost, pests or disease. I will keep the blog updated time to time with how this is going. The radishes, kohlrabi, and peas all have little sturdy sprouts peeking up through the soil.

     There is a young man employed by the hospital in which I work who appears have a condition that most refer to as “Down’s syndrome". This man is a delightful chap whose sole job is (as far as I am aware) to fill the Purell dispensers. In a hospital of approximately 250 beds this is no small chore. The way that this works for him is diagrams of where the dispensers are located. He can often be found in the hallways with his little cart looking at his diagrams and locating every dispenser in the area. All in all, he is quite good at what he does as long as the dispensers are on the diagrams.

     One of the delightful traits of most people with Down’s syndrome is that they tend to be jovial and get great amusement out of the smallest things. When I started working in the neonatal intensive care unit I noticed that the young man would sometimes peek into the glass doors to get a better look at our tiny patients. While I was at work the other day standing by my patient’s room and stringing IV tubing the young man walked by the room to check the dispenser. He carefully added Purell and then peeked his head into the slightly open door. His entire face lit up in awe and fascination at the four pound bundle in the crib. Unable to contain himself he clapped his hands together and exclaimed:

“Baby!”

   He flashed me a sheepish grin before continuing on his way. This little moment made my day.

Okay, so we didn’t blog every day, but we got off to a good start to begin with. There is still plenty of snow on the ground and this evening we made snow ice cream in celebration of David’s childhood memories. It was fun and easy and I am going to share it with you :)

In a blender place

1/2 orange (peel removed and diced), 2-3 tablespoons of sugar, 3/8 cup milk, a splash of vanilla and a dash of salt. Puree.

Go outside and get clean, unblemished, untouched snow (several cups worth). Add snow in large spoonfuls to mixture and blend in between scoops until recipe resembles ice cream. Makes 4-6 serving

Eat before it melts. Enjoy!

Last week I had some friends over to decorate Christmas cookies. In preparation for this event I decided to find the best sugar cookie recipe that I could. I pulled two classic books- Martha Stewart and Joy of Cooking and then went online to trusty ol’ Allrecipes to find the top-rated recipe. I baked a small batch of each of these recipes and then took them over to my husband’s work. David, several of his co-workers, and the lady at the front desk all ate the cookies and voted which cookie was most to their liking. The end result was a tie between Martha Stewart and Allrecipes. The consensus was that if they were only to eat one cookie that Martha Stewart was the way to go, but if they were going to eat more than one that the Allrecipe recipe would better. I think this was because the Martha Stewart recipe was a bit sweeter than the rest. For those of you also baking this holiday season here is the link to the Allrecipe sugar cookies (they were the one that got my vote. Mostly for the consistency and the not-too-sweet taste)

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/The-Best-Rolled-Sugar-Cookies/Detail.aspx?prop31=2

And for you Martha Stewart/sweet cookie lovers here is her sugar cookie recipe:

4 sticks (1 pound) unsalted butter, room temperature    3 cups sugar    2 large eggs      1 tsp pure vanilla extract     1 1/2 tstp salt    5 cups all-purpose flour

Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy (about 5 minutes). Add eggs, vanilla, and salt; mix until well combined. Add flour in two batches, mixing until just incorporated. Turn out dough onto a clean work surface, divide in half and pat into flattened rectangles. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours or up to 1 week.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut dough into shapes with cookie cutters and place on prepared sheets. Bake until cookies are golden around the edges and firm to the touch, about 15 minutes. (of note, I found this only took about 12 minutes).

Enjoy!

    On my way out of the locker room at work I noticed a small stack of photocopied papers sitting on a table. They were all copies of the following recipe. I do not know where this recipe came from or who left a stack of photocopies of it at work. I have been thinking about trying it out just for kicks. I mean, who doesn’t try out random recipes they find sitting around their place of employment. Okay, here is the recipe just as it appears in the recipe of mystery:

1. Four italian sausage links browned (out of casing) in soup ban. Remove and cut into chunks. Set aside (you can use more sausage if you like).

2. Sautee 1 red pepper (chopped), yellow pepper (chopped), orange pepper (chopped), yellow onion (cut into chunks), 3 celery sticks (chopped into 1/4 inch chunks), 2 (or as much as you like) garlic (diced). Sautee these in 2tbsp oil.

3. Pour in some red wine to deglaze the soup pan. Then add 3 cans stewed tomatoes, 1 can (6oz) tomato paste, 2 cans kidney beans (drained), one can butter beans (drained), 1/4 cup black olives (sliced). Add more wine until at least 1/2 the bottle is in the sauce- you can drink the rest! Add 1 1/2 tsp black pepper and 1 1/2 tsp cocoa powder.

4. Bring to a boil and simmer for 20 minutes. Taste…if not spicy enough add some red chili pepper flakes and simmer longer.

Hmmmm…should I try it? How many does this serve, anyways? An army? That is a whole lot of beans. And a whole lot of wine.

    Autumn used to be one of my favorite seasons. I love the feeling of the crisp cool air when you step outside in the morning and the kaleidoscope of coloring on the trees. Since my move to the “wet” side of Washington state I have found that I do not like the season at as much as I used to as it brings the cold, wet weather that just settles and then stays for months and months. But there are still many redeemable qualities of the season. One of my favorite things about fall is that it also brings back the desire for foods such as hot beverages, soup, and bread. I love hot food. There is something  more comforting and wonderful about food that is warm that just isn’t found in things like summer salads and grilled hamburgers. Making warm autumn fare makes the house smell homey and warms up the kitchen. So, in celebration of autumn’s appearance here in the Pacific Northwest I spent some time last week baking bread. The first bread that I tried was quite simple. It was a very basic French bread from my trusty Joy of Cooking book. It turned out a little bit chewy, but I was actually kind of impressed that this was the result of flour, yeast, water, and salt:

     My next attempt was much more fancy and probably a bit over my head, but I gave it a shot anyways giving the excuse that we hosted community group last week and we had to serve something. Living up my Martha Stewart baking book for one last time before it was due back at the library I put together a home made cinnamon raisin bread. I had actually intended to leave the recipe in this blog post, but I didn’t get to posting soon enough and had to turn the book back to the library. Here is a picture of the dough just before I rolled it up

And the finished product. It was a big hit at community group and with David’s coworkers so no one must have noticed that I forgot the butter until after I had kneaded the dough :)

     I learned a few months ago from my Aunt Ellen that spiders inside your house are much easier to tolerate if you give them names. I laughed at her idea and her quirky stories of the spiders that have lived inside her houses. A few weeks after that conversation David and I were greeted with our own house spider. We are the sort of people who normally kill spiders inside our house but this particular spider was small, lived on the ceiling of our bedroom, and seemed quite harmless. He moved to the corner of the wall during the night and would hang out above our bed during the day. We named him Clarence. He lived in our room for weeks harmlessly moving around in his back and forth pattern and mostly just ignoring us. We scolded him when he occasionally moved out of his pattern. There was a time two weeks ago or so when we thought that Clarence might be dead because  he didn’t move at all for days. But we breathed relief when he moved after David blew on him a few times. Last week, however, Clarence must have finally realized that there is no food to be found in our bedroom and moved to the door of the linen closet in our bathroom. He has been there for days. But that isn’t where he was today.

   Today, as I was preparing to take a shower I opened the shower door and there was Clarence. He looked so innocent crawling around on the shower wall. There I was all naked and helpless and wanting to take a shower. So I did what any other person might do in my situation. I picked up a shoe and I killed him. He didn’t even move, poor little fella. I think that he had become quite indifferent towards our presence and perhaps too trusting.  Sorry little spider, but you had just gone too far.

    My early Wednesday afternoons are spent at the Kirkland Hopelink food bank. As of last week the Kirkland food bank merged with the Northshore Hopelink into a  much larger facility in North Kirkland. The food bank had an “orientation open house” last Friday but I spent last Friday at work so Wednesday was the first day at the new facility. My volunteer title is “food delivery driver” and I get the opportunity to deliver food every week to people that are unable to come pick up the food themselves. They give me little lists of their likes and dislikes and of their medical conditions.

    There were a lot of changes that took place with the move including a change to a whole different system to how we decide how much food to allow each family to have. One of the biggest changes, though, was that the bank was now open most days during business hours and people are not assigned a certain day or time to come in. They are allowed to come in twice a month. So instead of myself and the other volunteers being the only ones there as I am accustomed to the bank was teeming with people who qualify for food bank. The center was holding mini orientation sessions all week for the families.  I have to admit that I found the change a little bit difficult. First of all, because I was picking up food, people assumed that I was on of the people who used the food bank and not a volunteer. Very different experience. Second, I was able to get a small glimpse of the people who come through the bank. Hispanic couples with lots of kids in tow, older people all hunched over their carts, your average every day people who had hit hard times. Walking in and out of the bank were people clasping the little sheet with directions to the new location. The looked down when I walked by, seemingly embarrassed and yet proud at the same time. It was heart warming and yet tragic simultaneously to be a part of it all.

I recently arrived back from a delightful visit to my family that lives in Aiken, SC. I will post about this visit later. On the was back from the trip I was reading up on composting and plant fertilization in a book called Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades which I highly recommend to, well, anyone who is trying to grow vegetables west of the Cascades.

I have never tried to compost anything because I have heard bad stories about compost and bug problems and mold and other such problems. I do utilize the yard waste bin for some compostable materials like coffee grounds, but had only toyed with idea of actually having my own little heap decomposing in my back yard. The other day I had a friend over for lunch and she saved all the biodegradable waste from the fruit and asked if I composted. “Um….” I felt sheepish “I don’t know how.” She proceeded to tell me that all you need to do is to dig a hole throw the waste in it and cover it up with dirt. This felt easy. I started a little compost heap.

Unfortunately, like everything else that could possibly be edible in my yard the little heap of vegetable trimmings and fruit peals has been eaten (or so I assume as it is no longer there at all). But, while reading about composting I found some useful tips which I will now share with you:

1) The ideal carbon/nitrogen ratio in a heap should be 12:1 or less. I didn’t even know there needed to be a ratio.

2) compost heaps should be watered and turned. Um water my decomposing pile of waste? Yes.

3) It is beneficial to purchase certain ingredients to place in your pile for ideal compost for use in gardens. These are things like coffee grounds and used seed (like cottonseed after the oil has been removed)

As Megan mentioned in one of her previous posts, the blogging software that we’re using appears to have some “quirks”.  For the technically curious among you, the blog is running on an ASP.NET platform called BlogEngine.net, chosen primarily because our (free) web hosting supports ASP.NET applications (otherwise I probably would have used something more standard like WordPress, but that requires PHP support).  On the client side, we’re using the Windows Live Writer application to edit and publish blog posts, which has some nice features like formatting images to the right size with nice effects, etc.  The problem we’re having is that occassionally, for reasons I have not yet deduced, entries will get posted twice when we hit the “Publish” button.  What’s weirder still is that when you go to delete the extra post, it deletes both of them!  This sounds like a bug in BlogEngine.net to me, but I haven’t yet tracked it down.  So, if you see random posts popping up briefly with titles like “Testing, 1, 2, 3…” and “Double-posting bug”, that’s me trying to figure out what’s broken and how to fix it. :)  In the world of software development, we refer to this kind of issue as an “intermittent repro” since it can’t be reproduced on demand, and that is a frustratingly tricky category of bugs to track down and fix.  Hopefully we’ll get this one flushed out sooner rather than later.