Life in the west

Wenatchee, WA yesterday morning

Good morning from Butte, Montana. I've stayed in Montana before, but not in Butte. It's...interesting. We checked out the hotel-attached dive bar late last night (seems to be a trucker hotel here so I guess there's a clientele). We learned that the front desk manager doubles as the barkeep ("beer and wine only, folks"), that he has lots of opinions on the US Postal Service, and also on Anna Nicole Smith. We also learned that coming through his bar three, four times a year qualifies as a regular. 

It seems there is a pretty big Irish and Chinese population and culture out here. I guessed at railroad workers being the immigration trend, but a little research by EPH turned up the fact that it was actually mining work.

Today: Yellowstone, then the booming metropolis of Miles City, MT!

Living la vida local

So, it's another day in paradise. Sorry, people who aren't here. I just can't get over it.

I went out today, with intent to check out a new park and/or go for a hike in an old favorite. I found the new "park" - really a forest - but for the life of me couldn't find an entrance. I'm not quite local enough yet...it was actually over on Maury, which is called Maury Island but seems to be attached to Vashon. Per Wikipedia, it was originally freestanding but in 1913 was attached by a locally constructed isthmus. There's your trivia for the day, kids.

Anyhoo, I abandoned that plan, and figured I'd tool around a bit before heading over to Island Center Forest, where I've had many blissful deep woods hikes. I meandered along, ended up along a beach road, and pulled over to get some salt air and sunshine therapy. As I was gathering up camera and binoculars (I'm always hopefully watching for some interesting marine mammals), a battered old pickup pulled up next to me. The driver, a grizzled dude in a fisherman hat, mutt by his side, watched me get out and (out of habit) lock the door. I got about three steps before I heard "you don't gotta take your purse, you know. Vashon people won't mess with your stuff." I called back that I only had it to carry my assorted gadgets, to which he replied "oh good, I thought maybe you were just being a tighta$s." What can one do there but laugh? No, I told him, not a tight$s - just practical. This apparently was enough for him to feel like I deserved an inside tip, and he told me if I went down a ways, turned at the corner, parked by the metal bar after the dip -- I'd find the best beach on the island. "30 years here, I know a thing or two," he said. I thanked him, headed back to my car to check this out, and wished him a good day - to which I got a "you too, sweetheart." There are some from whom that offends a woman, and some from whom it's just endearing. This, obviously, was the latter.

Dunes leading up to the beach

The beach was wide, nearly empty, and gloriously salty and sunny. Moral of the story: always listen to the locals - particularly when they tell you the water is warm enough to wade in. Despite it being Sound water, so typically icy, it was in fact warm enough for wading, and clear as glass. I never did get to the Island Center Forest, but that's okay.

Just another day in paradise. Now off to collect some mainland friends from the ferry for a fun night out, island-style.

It's too clear to tell but my feet are both underwater...in the Puget Sound! Without numbness! Unheard of.

Real glad I met this big daddy on dry land.

Island Life

I want to live on Vashon.

Boarding the ferry eastbound, 5:45am

I mean, not really -- we're moving back east and looking forward to it -- but Vashon is absolutely my happy place. Tiny, woodsy, friendly, farm and beach and small town and engaged citizens all in one. I had great grand plans of roaming and hiking and kayaking -- haven't done so yet, but maybe tomorrow. In the meantime I've spent time on the water (even if it's a ferry), we've gotten the hang of where to get what in town (pro tip, the IGA is a sad sad supermarket. Thriftway is so much better I can't quite get how IGA is still in business...something I'd know if I lived here, I guess), where the best coffee is (Vashon Island Coffee Roasterie -- which most places serve anyway, but the place itself is charming. There are mugs hanging on hooks for the regulars). Farmstands are on the honor system (bring exact change, but if you don't you can can probably bring it by later). There is a wine tasting room, a delicious bakery, a forest in the center of the island for hiking and roaming and - apparently - trail riding (horses, people).

Honor system farmstand

There is the kind of small town friendliness and familiarity only seen now in Hallmark movies, only without the schmaltz. Everyone generally knows who is who and what is what, but the development is so NOT overdone that most people seem to have quite a lot of land, so they aren't all tripping over each other.

Main Street/Vashon Highway, early evening

So, anyway, great trip so far. We're in this guest cabin that has tons of land around it. There are owls hooting during the night, roosters throughout the day, and in the evenings the next property over plays reggae. Not meant for us but it adds a certain something. Other than that, it's so quiet we can hear leaves falling. It's spectacular.

The "backyard". That's a hammock in the lower left.

Catching my breath: a photo album

The movers came. The movers left. We ran all the heck over South Seattle saying goodbye to people and having adventures. Our extended stay in Tukwila was...functional, if not exactly luxurious. But it was definitely efficient and convenient, so it's hard to complain. Now, we're on Vashon Island in a guest cabin and it is basically paradise. 

We had a little more stuff than the mover expected....awkward. 

"Where IS ALL MY STUFF!" says Homer 

Visiting my friend V up on the coast near Bellingham

Hotel room birthdays!

Pink Martini on the lawn

5:45am, eastbound from Vashon to West Seattle aboard the WSDOT ferry Issaquah

Our current "backyard". Island living sure is rough. 

The eyes are burning...the eyes are burning

It's Saturday morning. We're at T-2 hours for the movers. We're in zombie state and I've accomplished a major fail already -- instead of cooking the remaining pieces of salmon last night, I gave up and we ordered...pizza. So we have even more leftovers now. But at least all the plants are adopted and the stuff is pretty much dealt with....

Here we go.

Lessons learned!

It's been a morning of small discoveries. Small in that they are inconsequential, but also in that they are probably obvious to others.

First, that herb harvest. I was puzzling over how I was going to dry them all quickly enough to get them moved somewhere -- there's just no way I can use all that up that quickly -- and it occurred to me I could probably do it in the oven. A little googling and 45 minutes later, and voila! Not only are they all perfectly dried, but they even kept more color then the traditional hang-dry - and my main floor is beyond fragrant with herbal aromas. Here's the deal: wash and fully dry the fresh herbs. Spread them out on a cookie sheet (or tin foil in my case, as the cookie sheets didn't fit and are now packed anyway). Heat the oven to as low as it will go, which was 170 degrees in my case, and slide those sheets in. KEEP THE OVEN DOOR OPEN A TINY BIT! I used the dough hook for my not-yet-packed KitchenAid so I wouldn't have to be paranoid about a wooden spoon or mitt (recommended on various sites) catching fire. The air movement seems to be key to the drying as opposed to scorching. If you have a convection oven, perhaps that will do the trick, but I don't know. Different herbs seem to take different times - seems to be based on the amount of oils in them - but start with 30 minutes. Mine were close at that point, so I turned them around and did another 15 minutes, and they are now cooling and ready to bag. Very exciting.

Second, which I haven't actually tried yet -- I packed up my toaster the other day (or it was packed, by my helpful friend). It didn't occur to me till hours later that this is something I use for breakfast every morning. (It's been a long week, okay?) I thought about oven toasting, but previous efforts have led to one large crouton. So back to the google and it dawned on me: I have a grill pan, one of two stovetop items that I set aside for leftover consumption use before packing. Tomorrow, I'm pan toasting bread. Cross your fingers!

Third: gratuitous product placement. Here's the backstory: I brew my own iced coffee. I love iced coffee, and during the summer absolutely cannot drink hot coffee. Paying $2.50 a cup is insanity to me when I can buy a bag of coffee for $8 and brew many pots' worth. So, I brew and cool it. However, again with the kitchen -- packing up both the coffee maker and the cold pitcher. I was bracing myself for a long expensive three weeks of iced coffee when I saw in the grocery: Starbucks iced coffee, now in a half gallon jug and completely unsweetened. Now, I'm not a fan of Sbux coffee -- iced tea and espresso, yes, but their drip is like burnt battery acid and I just can't handle it. But every other supermarket option is half sugar and gross, and this was only $5 for the jug (still high but lower than the retail option), so I figured I'd try it and see. Well. I don't know what goes so wrong in those Sbux stores but this iced coffee is DELICIOUS. It's completely different - no burnt flavor at all, just a smooth nuttiness. It's SO good. It's way better than what I brew at home, too. Which will be a quandary for another day, but for now...yum. Try it. You'll thank me. (although, as my head buzzes...word to the wise: it ain't weak.)

** 8/14/14: UPDATE: the pan grilling of the bread - or in this case a bagel - worked out remarkably well. Another small win! 

Pruning and defrosting and sweltering

So I massacred my herb garden today. I know I can't keep them and they're just plants - and I harvested as much as possible, so it wouldn't go entirely to waste - but I still feel irrationally sad about it. It's not just move projection, either - I'm always sad when I have to kill a plant. This makes no sense. I KNOW it makes no sense. And yet there it is. I didn't harvest my basil - it's practically a bush, so I'm hoping it will be adopted. We'll see.

I also packed up much of the kitchen this evening. (Or, more accurately, a good friend came over and packed it up -- which was AMAZING, since a) I HATE packing kitchens and am awful at it, and b) it was 96 degrees here today, and - like most of Seattle - there's no a/c in this house. Three cheers for amazing friends.) Given how much time I spend in there, that was almost more bizarre...knowing I've cooked my last meal in that kitchen. I did keep out a couple pans to help use stuff up during the rest of the week, but it's really just leftovers at this point and cobbled-together smorgasbords at this point, which may or may not resemble meals.

The thing I'm probably struggling with the most is the volume of food I always end up wasting when I move. I've got a bag where I'm setting aside things for the food bank, but there are so many things that are opened and half eaten. Some I hope to pass off on friends, but there's only so much of that I can do. I absolutely hate wasting food. I always have -- being part of the food bank family has just exacerbated this.

So... anybody out there want some buttermilk, frozen in 1/4 cup increments??

This is not so bad...and I'm sure I just jinxed it

So, we've all heard the tale/recording at this point of the guy who tried desperately to cancel his Big Evil Cable service, right? Well...I just had the exact opposite experience. When the very chipper young woman inquired as to why they were losing me as "such a valued customer", I informed her we were going nomadic and would be off the grid for the foreseeable future. Granted that's a tiny exaggeration - three weeks is not the foreseeable future - but that is neither here not there. She was utterly bewildered, and after a moment of dead silence exclaimed "that is SO.COOL. I would never think of that!" And just like that, everything was canceled. No hassle, no harm, no foul. Compared to the other guy's experience I feel like a big winner right now.

On a more blog-related note...I've cultivated a bit of a container garden here, and have been trying to figure out what to do with it all without a) throwing everything into the compost and/or passing them on to people who I KNOW will kill them, b) having to part with all the planters. Turns out that what they say is true: people will take literally anything from the free section on Craigslist, even if it involves them digging up a plant and carting it off in a plastic bag. Two huge bamboo plants: rehomed! A friend from the neighborhood has agreed to adopt my cherry tomato plant (which is LOADED with little green tomatoes, sniff sniff), which is great. Now I only have herbs and house plants to address.

Teasers and returns

So, it's been a minute. Sometimes the bloggage (it's a word) just isn't there. Plus, you know, I got MARRIED (read in Oprah voice, please) and that kind of took of every single waking moment of my life.

It's three months later, and EPB...EPF...I guess he's EPH now, huh? That sounds like an illegal substance...might need a new name for him. Anyway, he and I are picking up and hauling across the country. We've got a week and a half to pack everything from our home, make all the related plans, and get out. (How it came to this is another story and not for this blog) We then will have two weeks to kill before leaving Seattle, so will be somewhat nomadic but within the Puget Sound region. Then week three is the grand cross country road trip! With cat! Oh my.

The only tie-in to this blog is that I'm going to do my best to figure out how to eat on the move in a way that doesn't involve 3 restaurants a day. I think we'll at least have a fridge each place we stay for the first two weeks, so we'll see what happens. Let the adventures begin...