baking

I left my hat in Indiana

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Or perhaps it was Kansas. Somewhere along our drive west, I lost one of my favorite handknit hats, Katie’s Kep.

I’m over it but I needed another hat. Luckily I had some yarn leftover from the hap shawl I just finished knitting. It’s Shetland wool from Jamieson & Smith, and is very soft and warm.

We also need cloth napkins. I scored some crochet cotton at the local thrift store and warped my rigid heddle loom.

Not my first color choice but it was all they had and cost a mere $4.

Here’s my cabin workshop, complete with an antique quilt. Big plans!

We’ve designated one of the dining tables our game table. It holds my dad’s old travel cribbage board, cards, chess, and today’s addition: an empty egg crate and dried chick peas for mancala, a new favorite of mine. I may have bought the chick peas just for this purpose.

And in the evening, we’ll have oreos. I woke up with a craving and since we didn’t plan to go out today I made a batch. Yummy,

Scene in our backyard

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Another beautiful sunrise

For some reason, the sky only glows in the west for both sunrise and sunset. Perhaps it has something to do with the mountain valley?

I’m still getting used to 8000 ft altitude. Tim wanted to hike yesterday and I had all sorts of excuses not to. But I went with him for the part of the way.

I spotted this on my walk home.

Road kill?

This is our backyard.

In the morning, while we drank coffee in the dining room, a young bobcat stopped by and meowed on the rock garden.

Later we saw it walk away with its mother, or perhaps father. I found their prints on my return walk.

And in the evening, we had a mushroom leek quiche.

Best pie crust ever

Today, I am going to try to make scones.

Where the snow blows

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Looks like we will have to shovel even if it’s not snowing. We only got about 4-6″ snow but then the wind blew for a couple of days and created drifts where we didn’t want them.

I may have found a new favorite pastime. I have to knock icicles off the buildings. It is very gratifying – immediately rewarding, with an accompanying tinkling sound.

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Sunroom

The sunroom is cozy even when it is below 0 degrees f. Passive solar plays a big role in keeping the buildings warm.

View from down the valley to the barn

Such a beautiful, dramatic setting.

The barn

We took a short walk the other day, I’m still acclimating to 8000 ft altitude, and came across places where the elk laid down.

We joined the local pool and our first swim was punctuated by many rests to catch our breath. Otherwise, I feel fine. When we went backcountry skiing in the 10th Mountain Huts outside of Leadville, CO, which is at 10,000 ft, I never acclimated and had the worst headache, despite meds, for the entire time.

High altitude baking intimidates me. My first attempt can’t count because I forgot to add the egg until a crumbcake was already baking. It turned out surprisingly well.

Last night I made a cobbler and pizza. Both were delicious.

This time, I remembered everything.

‘Tis the season

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Every year as Christmas approaches I start making projects, lots of them. I think I knit 40 hats, scarves, cowls and sweaters. Most have been distributed.

This is my current tour de force. A drop shoulder fair isle sweater I designed and knit on a machine. It’s being stretched on my new woolly board from the Wool Brokers in Scotland.

I made this pullover from a simple pattern written up in the 1980’s. The body is cashmere, sleeves are alpaca silk and sock yarn. My granddaughter thought it was soft enough to keep.

Star Wars was my theme this year.

When I wasn’t knitting, I baked, lots of different cookies. These buche noel cookies were a hit with me!

These stained glass window cookies were fun to make. The centers were a surprise though. They looked like chewy candy but were actually melted lifesavers and hard. I won’t be making these again.

Decorations were kept to a minimum. I pulled out two candle chimes and a star.

We kept the lights on an evergreen from last year, plugged it in and voila!

Then we hit the road, to Christmas celebration in Kittery, Maine, and skiing at Killington, Vermont in spring conditions.

Complete with a rainbow.

The Champlain Bridge, on our way home, was picture perfect.

A few more days at home and then we are headed back out. We will be caretakers at Mcgraw Ranch in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Can you say ROAD TRIP?!

All in a day

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Never too old to learn new tricks. We have a problem with the tractor engine, please don’t ask, and it was decided we should remove it from the tractor snd take it off island. We, meaning the Royal We.

I was up to my elbows in grease – no wonder all those you tube mechanics wear black vinyl gloves – when Tim came down to the Whistle House, to check my progress.

So I stopped for the day, cleaned up a little and made salmon cakes.

Yesterday, I went back at it and set it free. The task itself was straightforward, but access to nuts and bolts was ridiculously hard. Now we just have to figure out how to get it down the quarter mile hill, onto the beach, into the dinghy for its ride home.

After I finished, I made a batch of scones and a loaf of bread with somewhat clean hands.

Tomorrow is closing day, our last day on island, which will be a flurry of activity, after no visitors for a week due to windy, wonderful lighthouse weather.

And while here, I finished knitting a baby bonnet in silk/wool, which I spun while at Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse, a pair of mittens and started a hat. All in a day’s work.

It’s a new year

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The holidays were mixed. We spent a very quiet Christmas weekend. We never got around to getting a tree, I couldn’t see the point because no one would be sharing it with us and, in the end, it is always a mess of needles and water.

Instead I hung a red bow.

And lit my candle chimes.

Well, it turns out this wasn’t enough for Tim. So next year, we will have a tree.

New Year’s Eve was celebrated with family and a Buche de Noël, complete with merengue mushrooms. I finally joined the Great British Breaking Show craze and have upped my baking.

I also tried my hand at their staple dessert, macarons. I used the wrong sort of almonds, ground instead of flour, and cheated by filling them with Nutella, but they were a hit.

I received candle molds as a gift and had just enough saved beeswax to make two adorable candles. This reminded me to order bees for next spring since my hive flew the coop, so to speak.

Days are getting longer but I got to watch the sun set behind the hills at 4 pm yesterday.

We have already had a chance to play with the snow thrower a few times, have had countless fires, moved wood around to keep up, and slept in the cabin.

So it is winter.

Eating on the edge

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My pantry is generally well stocked and we are eating our way through it. This week was a little iffy. I opened a can of sweetened condensed milk that expired in 2017. It was tanner than usual but seemed fine in my coffee. I froze some with a batch of yogurt that had failed and called it ice cream.

Today I opened a jar of peach jam from 2018. Lid was sealed, delicious.

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I have been making all sorts of bread; I may have recreated the soy linseed bread that is sold as a mix in Australia but is impossible to buy here. White bread, english muffins and yesterday, no knead bread.
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Soil sprouts are doing well indoors and I added some to lunch.
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Polenta in the instant pot, is easy, creamy, cheesy, and delicious! This recipe alone makes the instant pot worth its weight.

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Yesterday was a trifecta. The aforementioned bread, apricot almond scones and apple pie.

Since I have a lot of root vegetables, potatoes and carrots are often on the menu. The other night was gnocchi in a butter herb sauce. Made half a batch and froze half of that batch. Well worth it and only used 2 potatoes. Plus they are fun to shape over your thumb with a fork.

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I have an old mixmaster from the 1970’s ( I found the same one we used on Deal Island on eBay) and have souped it up with many accessories. I use it to bake cakes and cookies, juice oranges and for the first time I made a batch of chicken sausages with the grinder. I was intimidated before I started but it was easy and fast. What I did not have was a sausage stuffer, although I had the the casing from a local grocery that sells it during hunting season. A stuffer is on the shopping list. I spiced it up for breakfast patties and they were great.

Tim has a mouth full of sweet teeth, which takes a lot of baking to satisfy. I made cinnamon buns for easter, 8BA1C499-C93F-41A3-ABF1-C7245F4579CBchocolate chip cookies, coffee cake (again from a less than satisfactory batch of yogurt), stovetop vanilla custard ( a recipe from my daughter who is the newest cook in the family since she has been home – in DC).

Dinner sometimes suffers when I have exhausted my cooking mojo with desserts and the like. This weekend it was hotdogs (uncured, thank you very much) and last night French toast. Latvian piragis have been requested, maybe tonight.

On a more serious note, I am grateful for what we have and worry about the long term economic effect for others. So far I have contributed to two local food banks, and if you are able, I encourage you to do the same in your community.

Finding things to do

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There’s never a dull moment here on Protection Island. We combine our island chores with our own hobbies and interests every day.

Today for instance, I wanted oreo cookies. We won’t be ashore for a few days and didn’t buy them on our last shopping trip but luckily I found a great recipe on the internet. You can see it here. I just happened to have all the ingredients, mostly, on hand. A well stocked larder is the key to life’s pleasures. We don’t have a mixer or beater and we don’t even have a wooden spoon in our kitchen. But my hands and a strong, long handled, metal serving spoon did the trick. Although I overcooked them a little and shaped the cookies too big, they are delicious and satisfied my craving. I may let Tim eat one or two as well.

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Yesterday I reached a milestone. I finished knitting a lace shawl I started for my daughter in 2015 while we were caretakers on Deal Island, Tasmania. I wrote about it here. I knit the body of the shawl, which measured 60 x 30″, during our 3 month fall season there and brought it home to  “just” finish the edging. I could knit about 3 inches of edging a night, there were 17 feet of edging to knit, or 204 inches, which basically would have taken 3 solid months, every night. But other projects intervened. So with some devoted knitting time here and the courage finally to rip out my provisional cast on, the shawl is complete. The pattern was recreated from a lace stole made in the Shetland Islands by Mrs. Jane Thomasina Williamson and was a joy to knit.

Here’s my version.

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I’ll wait until I get home to wash and block it in our pristine well water.

The other activity I obviously enjoy is taking photographs. The scenery and wildlife are inspiring. Sometimes unexpected, to me at least, results occur. I took a few photographs of sunset when we went out for a walk after dinner. I must confess, I almost always only use my iphone these days for photos. I am sooo lazy. I even gave away my SLR camera.

Anyhow, when I looked at the photos, they were marred by a green dot. Not the rumored green flash seen at sunset. A distinct dot off to the side. A quick google search revealed it happens commonly with the iphone camera because…well the reason eluded me. Something about not having filters and a reflection off the lens. It may be prevented by aiming the camera so the green dot ends up in the middle of the bright light. Or it can be edited from the photo. Since I already had the shots I chose to edit them.

Here is the original photo, I was trying to catch a silhouette of a cruise ship leaving the Strait of Juan de Fuca near the New Dungeness Lighthouse.

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Notice the green dot. Next I tried to edit it with Snapseed. This was my first attempt with interesting results. The area I “healed” ended up in a different place and two ships appeared.

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Interesting but not what I was aiming for. Here’s the final version.

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See how the day flies by?

Kitchen produce

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This photo shows why I must exercise.

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On the left, is my latest loaf of sourdough bread. The recipe is loosely based on a PBS episode with Julia Child and the owner of La Brea Bakery, Nancy Silverton. .

From the episode, I learned three important facts about bread baking. I made my own sourdough starter with red grapes, flour and water, which sits on my counter and ferments away; keep one hand clean while kneading dough; and taste the raw dough and adjust.

I’ve made several delicious loaves and hope to keep the starter happy. This was my best one yet.

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Next to the bread is a fruit pie, not really one of my vices but dear Tim loves them and I go along for the ride. Any fruit will do. I only like pie the day it is baked. After that, I’m only interested in the filling.

Next up is white bread, albeit a bit overdone. I make two loaves a week (whether we need them or not). This is definitely not a gluten-free household.

Finally, pasta. I received an Atlas pasta maker for Christmas and love it. I roll out a batch of fresh pasta a week. Semolina flour, salt and water. Run it through the machine several times to get the right thickness, then put it through the cutting blades. Because it cooks so quickly, the whole process doesn’t take longer than boiling boxed pasta. And clean up is a snap.

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Other kitchen additions include an old fashioned, metal bread box with holes and a magnetic knife rack. Aah, domestic bliss.

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I’m waiting for my new hula hoop and jump rope to arrive so I’ll be able to exercise on that tiny rock of an island in Alaska.

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Back to the recipe

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Sometimes you have to follow the rules.

The first batch of pignolli cookies I made, from this recipe turned out perfectly. I followed the instructions to the tee.

As I cook more and more, almost 3/7 (that’s three meals, seven days a week) I take liberties, improvise, create. Not with these babies. When I didn’t make the correct size they sunk in the middle. I tried beating the egg whites first – no good; tried lowering the oven temperature, nope. They have sunk in the middle for 5 years.

Not today though. I followed the recipe closely and it worked.

This

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Became these.

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The trick is to make them the right size! With pignolli cookies, and so many things in life, big isn’t better.

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