Sometimes you just need to get out of town

Warning: This post is old. Not spoiled or rancid or decrepit or anything, it's just that's it's been poking around in the Fairy Queen's brain for going on two months now. Oh well.

Every year we in the realm of public education look at the October calendar and say, Really? When does the teaching happen? No school for this, that and the other thing. Honestly, people, is it a crime for kids to go to school on Fridays in October?

And yet...one of those Fridays is called the "statewide inservice day." Back when the FQ was a sad newbie teacher, the one who cried every day but refused to quit because she won't quit something while she's still bad at it, her terrible mostly absentee principal said one useful thing. When the FQ asked what she was supposed to do on the statewide inservice day, mostly absent but destructive when she was present principal said, "Stay home and soak your feet."

One time in 10 years have I used that day to take a class. It was amazing (Jeff Anderson at Wordstock...if you care about writing with kids you'll find his books). But more recently that mid-October three day weekend has been about reconnecting with my beloved soul sister E (or is she W in these pages? I can never remember. Phrodaux calls her E, so I'm sticking with that). We've had rejuvenating girl time in her home town a couple of times (they have a combination spa/wine bar in that town! Why doesn't every town have that??? Champagne and pedicures, ahhhhh). But I digress.

This year we decided to change things up, meet somewhere in between our far-flung cities.  I was up for anything, because leading into this weekend the DRAMA! in my classroom had left me feeling like this:

What better tonic than to drive up the Columbia River Gorge? If you haven't been there, get yourself on a plane or train or bus or something. Right now. We'll wait.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/Columbia_River_Gorge_%283%29.jpg

See? Nothing like some wide open spaces, geological marvels, historic highways, groovy tunnels, and dramatic weather to clear the head.

E and I met in Hood River, took a long walk by the water (so-so day for windsurfing), then took a drive in the country out by Parkdale to pay homage to the recently departed, much-lamented Pumpkin Fun Land. Imagine a pumpkin patch with views of both Mt. Hood and Mt. Adams. Add a corn maze, u-pick flowers, and a fruit stand offering a zillion variety of applies at 20 cents/pound. Add to that the trippiest display of gourds you've ever seen! Pick a theme: 50 states, famous books or movies, whatever...they would create a series of vignettes out of gourds. Oh, Rasmussen family, how you will be missed.

Uh oh, I may have digressed again. Damn that Phrodaux. He seems to be wearing off on me.

Eventually E and I found our way back to Hood River in time to wander, shop, and have dinner. Partly because we are old ladies and partly because this is the best part, we were back in our fancy river-view hotel room to talk talk talk talk talk by 9:00pm.

The next day we caravaned to the next amazing part of the journey. Once you leave Hood River, the land changes, opens, widens. Suddenly the sky is VERY BIG and it's hard to take it all in. Back when I taught 4th grade, teaching about the Oregon Trail was the best part. And I never could convey how it must have felt to easterners or midwesterners to confront the landscape here. Because really, how could you?

 Our destination was the Maryhill Museum, this link is to Wikipedia which I feel sort of squishy about but it's a good way to convey the outright WEIRDNESS of the collection here. The people who work there...I think they don't really get how odd it is that one museum has Rodin, chess sets, Native American artifacts, and all sorts of overwrought eastern European stuff from Queen Marie of Romania (related to both Queen Victoria and Tsar Alexander, and a woman who knew how to cultivate a signature/brand).

 

(Phrodaux here, I'm not sure how evident it is, but this place is really out in the middle of no-where, really, no-where. I only went once as a kid, and you are driving, driving, driving, then you get past the green, out into the other Oregon, then up on the hill, just across the river in Washington, you see a patch of green and this big house, really, just past the stonehenge, really? yes, out in the nothing is this place, there is no starbucks, no mcburgervillekingland, nothin'. )

 

But the BEST PART, the best part when I visited as a kiddo (when my family of origin was escaping their family of origin one stormy Easter), as a mid-20 something taking herself on Artist's Dates, and now, this time, was the Theatre de la Mode, post-WWII Parisian fashion on 18" tall mannequins because there were no materials just after the war. Have I mentioned that E and I were roommates in Paris in 1988? That we were not fashionistas but we had a really good time? That we knew where to find all the best chausson aux pommes and while our French didn't get a lot better, our lives immeasurably did? While enjoying the 1946 fashions we kept getting too close to the displays and setting off the alarms. Man, we are bad ass girls, still.

The best part of the museum is the Frenchie fashions, but the best part of the weekend was still to come. Lunch on the terrace, in the sun, t-shirt weather with my best pal.

 Sigh. Too soon it was time for our last stop: Stonehenge. As if Sam Hill's museum wasn't weird enough, there's his WWI memorial, scale model of Stonehenge just up the road. Trippy indeed.

Too soon, time to drive home. East for a million hours for her, west for just a couple for me. Weather changed as I drove, morphing from sun and warmth to gray and wet and menacing.

 But it was all good. I was in my newish car with the seat heaters and the MP3 player, Vampire Weekend on "Play All." I had girl time and sunshine in my rearview mirror, snuggly nap bed with my sweetie and my pups waiting for me up ahead. Sometimes you just need to get out of town, but after that you just need to go home.

delicious beer on tap... another pizza post...

Hard to fathom, but yep, another post about soup...

HAH! I kid, because I'm a kidder...

PIZZA! MEXICO! GARDENING! CODPIECES! (ok, only three of those are relevant to this post, other than an outfit that may or may not have been worn during PIZZA! prep)

(I wonder what is written on that piece of paper... )

The first year the Fairy Queen and Phrodaux went to Troncones there was this PIZZA! "parlour", well not so much parlour, but a roof, a PIZZA! oven, a few TV's showing Mexican soap operas (so much emotion!) and the big sell of the place "delicious beer on tap". Yes, odd. PIZZA was ok, well the second one of the evening, as the first despite an order of "vegetarian" came out as "all the animal parts you can find, and some you really shouldn't" I swear there may have been an entire pig's head (that may be the delicious beer on tap {and emoting soap opera divas} remembering). We did get the veg pizza, sorry PIZZA! eventually...

Besides the delicious beer on tap, big emotions on TV, no walls, and the fact that there was eventually PIZZA! it was a nice evening in Mexico, and not because of the PIZZA!

So.

This summer we planted a garden, as we have been doing. The weather was much hotter/drier than it previously normally has been (I expect that this might be more normal than not normal going forward, but given that I have seen Kevin Costner in both "the Postman" and "Waterworld", I am optimistic, but really "Man of Steel" what an ass...). There were lots and lots of tomatoes, but in the end lots and lots didn't go from not ripe to ripe. When I say "lots and lots" what I really mean is "LOTS AND LOTS." We took 15lbs to one of our favourite restaurants in  PDX, Bar Avignon (they are lovely there, you should go right now, go, but leave us two spots at the bar, as those are ours. THOSE ARE OURS!) We take them figs from our tree in the summer, and they do wonderfulness thingies to them and make them much more than figlings, and I expect green tomatoes will get elevated to Kevin Costner in "the Big Chill" levels, his best work, in my humble opinion (if there was only some way to shorten that...)

(I don't know who these people are, but they came up when I was searching for Kevin Costner images (pretty sure neither is Mr. Costner, but one could be Joe Piscopo, hmm)... I'm not sure if I am more disturbed by the fact that one is wearing a bra-like top, or that the other isn't. But then again, we don't judge.)

...so given that we had many more poundage (don't look at the above picture and think "poundage", just don't) than 15lbs, we needed to do something. More reasonable people (HAH!) would say, "good effort, old bean, toot, toot, cheery-o, god save the queen" and toss out the many, many poundages above 15 (again, don't look) and move on with their sad and oh so not British lives.

We's on the other hand did not toss out pip pip. 

We are not rational, nor are we not British (not saying we are British, just not-not-British). So we made stuff, sorry, WE MADE STUFF!

FQ made green tomato pickles, oh so yummy. She may or may not add her recipe to this post, likely depending on how much she objects to the repeated use of the word "poundage".

Phrodaux on the other hand, who is confident enough in his orientation (northwest by nature) to post ill advised pictures and the repeated use of the word "poundage" will post a recipe.

and.

that..

recipe...

is....

(ok, this is getting old)

for.....

PIZZA!

yes, getting to the f-ing point.

a "Mexican" sorta kinda PIZZA! Well, before PIZZA! there was green tomato salsa.

Started with a Rick Bayless green tomatillo salsa recipe (not sure which one, but there are tubes where you can find information, somethink like gaggle, or boggle...)

The salsa.

green tomatoes, a bunch, chopped, but not too much. Pounds.
white onion, not a bunch but prolly more than you think. maybe 1/8th of the toms?
roasted green chili, less than I want to put in, but more than you do.
splash of tequila, a bit for the salsa, a bit for the cook, repeat as necessary.
salt, just a dash, adjust once all done and it sits for bit.
cilantro, handful, not a baby's hand, but not Andre the giant's either (we love him)
cumin, a dash, not a baby's dash, and definitely not Andre the giant's either....

(just a pinch in the salsa...)

basically you put it all the the blender, maybe not all at once, but in bits and bobs. Start with some of the green tomatoes and the onions. Puree. Then maybe the cilantro, and blend a bit more, depending on how much you chopped it prior. I like it in "bits" that are distinct, but not so big. Then the remaining ingredients. Blend a bit, so it is still "rustic".

(behold, the jar of wonder... the mysteries it must contain...)

there you go, salsa. We freeze it in ziplocks for later, or eat fresh.

now, back to PIZZA!

first. Before anything, get the oven going. 500f or more. should be going about 1hr (yes, I know, really) before the PIZZA! goes in. and the stone, PIZZA! stone. It should just live in the oven, really, it doesn't hurt anything.

start (start after the first part) with the crust that FQ makes.
toss, spin, make pizza shape on the really cool PIZZA! peel that your fabulous friends from the wilds of north (well Seattle-ish) gave you. You do have fabulous friends in the wilds of the north (well Seattle-ish) to give you a PIZZA! peel, yes? If not, I would recommend going and getting some, they come in handy.

ok, actual ingredients list, as is the socially acceptable norm.

Corn, frozen is fine, 8oz-ish (from now on the "ish" should be assumed, as Phrodaux is an eyeball cook. Wait, no, I don't cook eyeballs, as such, well I have when they were in a fish, but I don't exclusively cook eyeballs, but other stuff as well. eyeballs.)

onion. white, yellow, blue, whateveres. 1/4, or something like a 1/4-1/2 cup. chopped into bits roughly 1/4 inch squares, or 6mm squares if you're in anyplace other than the US, Liberia or Burma (or Myanmar if you are fancy, but not that kinda of fancy, as homosexuality is still illegal there, really, REALLY? !?!? just get over it... argh, people... you don't have to have gay sex, it is an option, really, what the f. AND NO METRIC SYSTEM?!?!? ARGH!), onions.

queso, the kind that melts, or the other kind, I don't judge. 8oz, or 227gms if you're not homometricphobic. crumbled in your oh so dirty dirty hands... nothing "fancy"

Green chili. I hate it when they ("they" as in the evil "them" who keep free 'legtricity and the aliens that live in New Mexico from us) say "one chili" do you know how many kinds of chilis there are? it is like saying "please put one mammal in the pot"  really a blue whale or something smaller?

(the Etruscan shrew is the smallest, just beating out the pygmy blue whale, and neither is particularly good with PIZZA! their little hands can't manage the slice)

so chili. a nice green Hatch (my great grandfather's last name was Hatch, so you have that, he drowned trying to save a friend while they were fishing, not in WW1 but in Idaho... I digress) or Anaheim chili (you can remember the name as the chili is sorta shaped like California, we's be about the learnededing here) toasted, peeled and seeded. Which is fancy for "burn the damn thing a bit on the stove, or barbeque or whatnot to get the skin off".

PIZZA! crap, focus.

so, list of ingredients (in the more socially acceptable structure, I'm looking at you, Myanmar) makes a PIZZA! roughly 43.9822in in circumference, or 2.4541501e-5 acres if that helps (no? yes, I am a bit of an ass)

~1 cup of green tomato salsa, cooked down "a bit", maybe reduced by 1/4 (so ~3/4ish cup). just to thicken it up a bit.

1 pizza crust your lovely mate made.

8oz of crumbly queso

6oz of frozen corn (yes, frozen is ok)

1 Anaheim chili, roasted, skinned, and seeded.

1/4 of a larger than a baseball, smaller than a softball (look at me and the sports thingies) onion, chopped.

olive oil, as needed, by the gloop.

handfull of schmooshed up corn chips.

corn meal (PIZZA! lube, not to be used for other lube applications, trust me), use it like you would flour with other dough, and put on the peel, it will make the PIZZA! slide off easier (don't ask about the time I forgot and the entire topping mess just kinda skootched off the crust, off the back of the peel and down onto the bottom of the oven, I said, don't ask, or do, I'm not the boss of you).

what else? fancy cocktail ingredients, those you will use to make fancy, fancy cocktails that go with your PIZZA!

Put about 1-2 cups of the green salsa on the stovetop to cook down a bit, not too much, but just thicken a bit to be more PIZZA! sauce like than soupy mess like.
low heat, simmer.

in a dry, no oil, frying pan, a bigger one than you'd think. The onions go in. cook until they get a bit clear. then the corn. Corn can be thawed, or still a bit frozen, or whatever, we don't judge. And add the chili. Cook until it gets a bit dry, and toasty. Not dried out, but not wet. bits of brown is where you are headed.


so...

once the crust is "rolled out", don't actually roll it out, it makes it weird and tough, more pull out and stretch to get round about the size of the pizza (PIZZA!) stone you have in the oven (you have that, right?)


Then olive oyl the crust (yes, oyl, like Popeye, but really, it should be oil, but I like oyl, seems more cosmopolitan) drizzle, then use a brush to get it just covered. not the whole thing, just the outer-crusty bits.

green salsa off the stovetop, should really let it cool a bit. I often don't time this correctly and have to cool it in an ice water bath, kinda like after a long hike with the wrong underpants kinda ice bath, well not the same ice bath, but similar.

spread out (green salsa, not underpants). then cheese, then the corn/green chili/onion on top.

once all of that the best. THE BEST PART! and this is all the Fairy Queen's credit. On the oyled up crust, crushed up corn chips. Weird, but trust. we are all about the trust here. it adds a nice sweet/salty crunch.

(the before picture...)

 once all assembled, into the pre-over-heated oven it goes!

7 mins (for us that is just about right, but you should watch yours and adjust) done!

 (...and after. FQ may have been huffing PIZZA! fumes at this point, I was trying to take a picture, and she was more interested in eating said PIZZA! than documentation, the savage)

Now is the time that you would eat said PIZZA! (and maybe that nice salad that your lovely version of the Fairy Queen whipped up from home grown greens and cheese that she made with her own liddle hands) and drink the above mentioned cocktails!


After which you run off into the night and sing our praises until dawn, or until the nice men in white coats come and ask why you are running around in the middle of the nite singing about weird PIZZA!



 

Random, oh so random

Dear six people on the planet who read this blog (or is it seven? TC, are you out there?), 

We sincerely apologize for the scarcity of recent posts. Stuff happened. FQ's mom had now-I-will-be-bionic surgery, our regular jobs poked us in the eyeballs with sharp sticks, the computer decided it didn't like phone photo uploads...you get the idea.  But all is well and though it's been a month since we posted, we are still here, still doing random stuff. Thanks for checking in.

__________________________________________________________

This post was supposed to be called Harvest, and be all about our amazing haul of tomatoes. But to tell the truth, the tomatoes have been sort of puny and slow. Despite record heat all summer, lots of water, and plenty of plant-ish love.

They're lurking there, ripening EVER so slowly.

Which means that every Sunday at the farm, we pick every tomato with a hint of color on it, bring them home, and ripen them on the window sill. Sort of a tropical vibe, yes?

So. Then it was going to be about the real harvest: POTATOES. Your humble Fairy Queen dug up the two potato beds last weekend (well, given how late this post is, who knows how long ago that was?), and could not resist weighing what she found. 25 pounds! And that's not counting the ones we've been digging up and cooking a few at a time for at least 2 months now. Gorgeous Yukon Golds, little fingerlings, and this amazing variety called German Butterball, gifted from our lovely neighbors up the hill.

But really, potatoes are fantastic and all, but a whole post about potatoes? Hmm.

(Phrodaux: did you know the Yiddish word for vegetable is "grins", possibly I am making that up, but there you go. There is a point to this interruption. KALE!! don't forget the KALE BOUNTY!!! We've eaten so much KALE!! I do like kale, don't get me wrong, kale cooked in whey? you should ask.) 

So then it was going to be about all of the random cooking projects of the weekend just past (again, take the timing as a little squidgy):

* Chipotles in adobo sauce: jalapenos were on special at our fancy grocery store, so we bought a bunch, smoked them all day, and then bathed them in homemade adobo sauce. You could open a can (then use one, put the rest away, and eventually find them covered in pretty blue mold)

 or you could put a little container in the freezer so they are ready when you are (Thus spake FQ!).

 
* Smoked paprika! I think. We also bought some long, skinny, not hot peppers, smoked them forever, then dried them for a day or so. These have not been ground yet, but we are hoping that they approximate the little red can in the spice cabinet that we use all the time.

* Soup and casseroles: The FQ's mom, Empress of Everything, is having her second knee replacement surgery soon. At some point she will be bionic. But in the interim, she needs a freezer full of nice things to eat, because the FQ's dad is lovely but maybe not a chef type person. His idea of home cooking is to find a bunch of canned goods, empty them into a pan, and cook them up all together. At some point he has probably eaten creamed corn/refried beans/fruit cocktail surprise. But he's good at other stuff, honest.

But then it occurred to me that there are a million and one cooking blogs and we don't need to be a million and two. We do other stuff. Really. Or Phrodaux does at least.

The farm has not nearly enough counter space for all our projects. What little it does have is often covered in cookbooks.

 
FQ said: Could I have a shelf? Ph said, How about this little number? I'll whip it out in a couple of hours.

* Welded rebar bracket in a branchy sort of shape.

* Repurposed boards, one found in one of outbuildings, the other found IN THE CREEK.

* Perfect cookbook storage, plus a colorful reflection on the ceiling (Thanks, M, for point that out).

What is this post about, anyway? Maybe it's: What did you do this weekend? Well, we harvested and we cooked and we built things. We lived the life we like. It was nice.

(Phrodaux kibitz:  FQ's pop said "what if there is an earthquake? the shelf might edge off the moulding and fall?" to which I pointed out if there is an earthquake, the foundation is a few rocks with a couple of boards holding the whole she-bang up, come earthquake time. The shelf might be the only thing that holds the house up.)

RELEASE THE KRAKEN!!

 (I choose to believe she is putting a broken boat back together, you know, like a kit)

There is this place, the whole area was the sea, with big fishies, and little fishies, and all manner of wiggly squiggly things in between.

Then the sea decided that it needed a nice place near the coast, you know, where it could just chill, maybe have a nice cold drink and put its feet up, so... picked up and moved west, or really far east, it is all a matter of perspective.

(this is not the beastie, but a different beastie, a beastie that found a home)

In doing so, a beastie of legend, and with maybe a bit of agoraphobia, was left behind. Its new home was filled with things familiar, a few less familiar, but still, you take what you can.

It stayed and made a new home. There was this nice family that kept it company, some other nice people were added as they are when mommys and daddys do mommy and daddy things, and when their time passed, another nice family, then another with feets in twos and feets in 4s (that brings us more or less to the now time).

(feets of four, or you would see them if they were not below)

(containers of feets that come in twos)

(familiar things were added, but sometimes that's not enough...)

But not all was forever well, over time things started not going very well, the beastie, it sorta had a job to do, but being a former beastie of legend, this particular kraken under the home, grew sad....

(not the sea, but the under)

Surrounded by the remains of both the vanquished and the friend, the kraken was no longer happy under the home.

(I found this in my shoe)

The kraken cried, she cried and the tears burned and popped, and bubbled, and fizzled, and made the hot air foul, the smell of brimstone...

Those that tried to make the kraken more at ease with her previous task (more those with two feeties than those with four)  noticed the sadness and the tears, and had to do something to help.

So for 24hrs the ones that lived in the above house crawled and worked, exclaimed in ways creative and profane, sawed and glued, wrenched and writhed... to set the kraken free from its dark and sad temporary home.

(the kraken was freed)

so...

here is the less "flowery" version.

f.

and the longer version...

The drains no longer did things like "drain", tried to explain that naming something drain implied certain expectations, but as with many inanimate things, rational discourse and/or yelling is often ignored. There was a dose of H2SO4 drain cleaner, rinse and repeat, and nothin'. (yes, most drain cleaners are more of the greater than 7 than the less than 7, but a chemist...)

(some places just look welcoming don't you think?
yes that is the crunchy, crunchy skull, not pinecone)

Then there was the crawling under the house, and when I say house, I mean the place that looks like a house, but is in fact, the place where all vermin go to die. So the nice gravel under the house is actually all the bones. All... the... bones...

See picture above. I really thought I had a stone in my shoe, it was a vertebra.  The pine cone that went crunch under my hand as I crawled out you might ask? skull...

At which point, the concept of "drain" was more than embraced, and when I say "more than embraced" I mean more holes than are normal draining type holes started draining with gusto. (picture cramped under the house, can't sit up or even do much more than lay there, can't really even turn around without toe and finger crawl and trying to escape the stream of sulphuric acid...)

(a much cuter sea monster)

Then there was the endless soldier crawling under the pipes and heating ducts through acid soaked mud (plastic was put down to maybe avoid excessive chemical burns). over and over and over and over and over. Did I mention I did this a few times?

(my well organized "workspace" plastic is to keep the acid from eating away the concrete... whee)

...cut pipes with sawzall (remember the space?), drain more acid, parts runs back and forth to town, buying all the couplers in all the hardware stores (this part is not an exaggeration, we did buy all of several parts from all the hardware stores in town), build the new kraken, make the 197th crawl back to scene of the crime to clamp said new kraken in place (with all the couplers)....lay there there for a while wondering at one point if those that live in the above world of light and snax will miss me at some point, or at least be curious what that new smell coming from the underworld is and investigate...


and...

no leaks...

really? no leaks on the first try?

crap.

(the sea gods now are laughing, laughing and taunting me...)