Washington Trip Part 2--the Christmas Tree Farm

Marianne checks out some of the trees for sale.

Every year starting right after Thanksgiving, Pat and Darcy spend their weekends up north of Burlington about 45 minutes in Deming, WA at the River's Edge Christmas Tree Farm.  They help the customers choose their tree, help them cut it down if they need it, carry it to the wagon and haul it up to their cars and then assist them in tying it down to their car.  Darcy has a side business of selling holly that he cuts from the tree in their yard in Burlington.

  Cutting Holly For Christmas

Last year I wrote about the holly so this year I will be writing about the tree farm.

A lovely setting for the farm.  You can see the trees off in the distance.

The Farm is owned by Larry and Bea Walton who are good friends of the Ailles family.  The farm is located along the Nooksack River and is quite beautiful with views of  Baker mountain near by and tall trees and woods plus the actual different pine trees growing for purchase for Christmas trees.

River's Edge Christmas Tree Farm

  Marianne, Bob, and I drove up one Saturday to visit the farm.  It was a sunny cool afternoon and business was brisk.  Marianne and I walked around the some of the property.  They used to have blues concerts

A tree that was marked by a customer.  They come cut it whenever they can come.  Some are even chosen the summer before.

 on this property in summer.  It has a nice big clearing in the woods and lots of space for camping.  The river is a short walk from the clearing and there is good fishing as well as some pretty scenery along this stretch of the river.  It is very peaceful in the clearing.  Larry has been thinking about making the area into a place for outdoor weddings and that would be a perfect sight to do it.

We walked down to the river and watched some fisherman and boats go by and then walked along the different plots of trees from very young, little ones to some very tall ones that were not chosen and have grown too big for houses.  We  visited with some of the customers and looked at the mountains in the background.  It is a lovely spot in very northern Washington, almost to the Canadian border.

The house and store are in the background.  Woods and mountains surround the area.

Larry and Bea are gracious hosts and seem to know how to take care of their customers.  Many people make it an all day outing and bring picnics with them to eat out in the Christmas trees!  It was nice to get out into the brisk sunshine and take a walk.  What a great time we had.

On the way home we stopped at another special place.  It is not too far from the farm, maybe 2 or 3 miles away.  It's called Everybody's Store and is well known in Northwestern Washington.  It is a little country store that carries a large variety of cheeses domestic and imported and a delicious selection of sausages as well.  They have all sorts of kinds of exotic groceries to buy.  We have made special trips up to this store just to get their sausages and their extra sharp cheddar cheese!  We always come away with 3 or 4 other types of cheese when we stop there.

Close to the woods and river.

It was a fun trip.

Our Visit to Washington Part 1

Sunset Nevada style as we drove along I-80 near Elko.

Well, after a 2 month hiatus I am back in business!  We went to Burlington, Washington to spend time with Marianne and her family in mid-November.    Here's what happened to keep me from my posts here at Meemo In the Mountains!

We left here in beautiful weather hoping to make it to JJ's house in Elko before winter weather hit.  We made it and immediately drove to Reno the next day with Ozzie, JJ and Brent to visit Erin who is going to University of Nevada there.  Erin had purchased tickets to the UNR vs Hawaii football game for all of us except Bob (who chose to stay at Circus, Circus where he could watch the game in the comfort of our room.).  We bundled up and drove to the game thinking we could park in the huge parking lot adjacent to the stadium.  Forget that!  No parking anywhere!  Ozzie finally said he'd join Bob and we could call him when the game was over unless he found a spot miraculously.  He dropped us off at a filling station across the street from the campus and we were off to the game.  Much to our surprise, Ozzie showed up at our seats almost the same time we did!  He had decided to fill up while he was at the station and happened to ask the proprietor if he could park next to the owner's pickup.  The guy said sure, nobody ever asks to park there and for $10 Ozzie could.  The game was fun and the home team won.

We spent the weekend visiting with Erin and the family she is living with and doing a little shopping, too.

Shopping in Reno.  This is a "Pine- Beetle Brown" Christmas Tree!  Yes they are actually selling these things!

I just HAD to take some pictures of these camouflage suits!  I think they are hilarious!

Child size one.  Halloween anyone?

Pretty pricey but I guess you would blend in....

  We got home Sunday night and planned to spend a little time in Elko visiting friends and family.  Marianne called as soon as we got back and let us know a big storm was coming and we better be on our way so we could get across the pass before it closed.

We left the next day and had lovely weather the whole way except for a little rain and snow on top of Snoqualmie Pass.  The next day it was closed due to heavy snow and low visibility as advertised!  Western Washington in November is not  what I consider a weather paradise.  It rains almost daily and although it is usually in the 40's and 50's, I freeze the whole time I am there due to the high humidity.  As it turned out, it did not rain every day and we even saw the sun in the afternoon several days, but I was still cold.  I wore 3 layers of clothes and even JJ's long johns that I forgot to return after the football game.  Even so, we had some fun adventures while we were there.


We had a lovely Thanksgiving Dinner with the whole family.  I got to hear Graham Kerr (The Galloping Gourmet , An early TV celebrity pre-Food Channel) speak at Marianne's church on his faith, visited a newly opened church in the Mall, and visited the Christmas tree farm that Darcy and Pat work at every year.  I took some pictures up there which I will share along with pictures of the  other major projects we worked on while I was there.  In between I worked on embroidery I was donating to the silent auction Marianne was in charge of.

This is the first year we did the early, early morning Black Friday.  It was kind of rainy and we decided to stand in line to try for a TV at Best Buy.  They opened at midnight so we decided to get in line about 10PM to get the certificates for what we wanted.  We knew some people had been in line since Wednesday night!  But we wanted some things that we figured weren't as popular.  Brendin and Darcy volunteered to stand while we went back to the house until they got the tickets, if they got any.  The line was very long.

Meanwhile we looked up other TV sales, knowing we weren't going to get one at Best Buy and found one at Walmart, too.  It went on sale at midnight.  We should have gone right then but waited for a call from the boys.  They got some certificates and we picked them up and headed for Walmart. (the Best Buy tickets were good until 4 AM).  It wasn't quite 11 PM when we got to the parking lot, and it was a zoo!  Toys had gone on sale at 10 and people were coming out with carts heaped up like the Grinch's sleigh!  We could not find the line for the TVs right away and as we elbowed our way through the crowds it was beginning to look like we might not get a TV there either.  We finally saw the TVs and they were piled high to the ceiling so there was hope.  Then we found the line and discovered it went up and down the grocery aisles forever! (the TVs were in the produce department!) We finally found the end of the line in the pasta aisle and settled in.

  The people around us were a fun crowd and we joked around and had a good time.  Eventually an employee came around and said we were about 8 people from where they could guarantee us a TV.  We asked if they gave only one TV per person and they said yes.  What we didn't think of was that whole families were in line and each one could take a TV if they wanted it. 

I should have taken pictures in Walmart because it was an amazing sight, but I didn't .  We did not see any fights or grumpiness but there were lots of children out and about at midnight for sure.  Anyway the bell rang at midnight and slowly the line started to move.  We were in aisles so could not even see the TVs or how they were distributing them for about 1/2 hour but we could see people going to the checkout lines in the aisle behind us, some with 4 TVs on their cart.  Someone said that people sometimes get up to the cash register and can't pay for all of them and just leave them in the aisles. So Darcy went on a recon mission to see if he could find some abandoned ones but the check out lines were so long no TVs had made it to the front yet!  Well, obviously we didn't make it for this particular TV (we missed by about 15 people) but then they said they had lots more just a couple inches smaller one and a lower definition and they were knocking 30% more off of them for anyone who was still in line!  We should have gotten at least one for Bob and I but we didn't because we would have been in line for another couple hours in order to get out of there!

One of the lines at Best Buy at 2 AM Black Thursday.

  We went back to Best Buy and had to still stand in line outside to get in at 1 AM because they were monitoring the number of people who could be in the store at 1 time.  When we got in it was jam packed.  It was funny because it was like old home week with friends meeting up in the aisles and visiting at 2 AM.  The lines were long in this store too so we had Brendin and Shayla stand in line while we got our stuff and then joined them. We got home around 3 am!  It was a fun experience but I'm thinking once in a lifetime might just be enough!  We had to be up and over to Fred Meyers before 11 AM for the annual sock sale and then over to JoAnn's before noon for their annual sale.  No rest for the weary for sure!  At least we had leftovers from Thanksgiving so no cooking needed to be done!

I will continue my Washington adventures in my next post.

Cutting Butter

What the heck????

 

This morning I came into the kitchen and found Bob with an assortment of knives all spread out on the counter and they all looked used!  I wondered what the heck he was doing!

I have to go back a bit so you can get the big picture. Coming from Wisconsin and then living on a ranch where we milked cows and sold cream, I only had butter for eating and cooking.  Bob, of course, also was accustomed to eating butter. 

Back in the day, as I was growing up, the dairy farmers of Wisconsin had a powerful lobby in the state house that affected all of us.  A law was in effect that did not allow the sale of yellow margarine!  I am not kidding.  It also put a large tax on the sale of white margarine so it cost more than butter!   Therefore everyone ate butter.  It made for an interesting drive from Chicago to Milwaukee because as you approached the state line there were all these little stands selling yellow margarine for cheap.  If you did buy white "oleo" as we called it, it came in a plastic pouch with a little capsule filled with yellow food coloring.  You dumped the capsule into the pouch and then squished it around with the oleo until it was an even yellow.  You then had to shape it into a square and store it. 

When I was first married we had milk cows.  The milk was separated every morning and night and the cream was shipped on the train once a week to the creamery.  We kept some out to make butter every week too so I had to learn how to do that.  I had an electric churn that churned the cream and then you had to work all the buttermilk out, rinse it, work the water out, and add some salt. Then I formed it into squares, wrapped it and froze what we weren't going to use immediately.  So you see, I was used to blocks of butter and margarine instead of the nice 1/4 pound cubes we get at the store.

Back to Bob and his knives.  We now buy unsalted butter from Sam's in packages of 4 one pound blocks.  We keep the ones we are not using in the freezer until needed.  This morning I saw that he had just taken a new block of butter out of the freezer and was trying to cut it into 4 even cubes like you find in the store.  I normally do this job and know that I must put it in the microwave for about 30 seconds first,

Scoring the butter with the cleaver

then score the block with the cleaver before trying to cut it into 4 even cubes.

A block of frozen butter that I scored.  I normally score on 2 adjoining sides so I can cut it in half, turn it a quarter turn and cut again.

Obviously Bob didn't know any of this so he had all these different knives he had tried, plus the block of butter had lines all over it where he had tried to cut it!


Hmmmmm! Now I am wondering what ever happened to that electric churn,  the butter bowl and butter paddle, which were antiques even when I was using them, and the milk pasteurizer that Pug bought for me because she was worried my kids would get Bangs disease or something.

The butter before and after I cut it.

Thoughts on Family History and Pug's Potato Pancakes

Darcy checks out an old cabin over in Spring Creek.  I wonder who built it and when.

A few days ago we were at Shoe's Barbershop and Tonsorial Parlor for Bob's haircut.  We were talking to Matt about how his kids were 7th generation of the Manville family in North Park!  Matt mentioned that he was supposed to go up to the school and give a talk on the Manville family and needed to do some research.  Bob started to tell him about how his great grandfather, Grampa Norris ( Bob can't remember his name so we'll have to go up to the cemetary to find it), came to North Park as a trapper in the late 1800's and then homesteaded a ranch on the west side.  that was the beginning of our family history in North Park!

As you can see, we really need to get this all written down (or recorded) as our memories are beginning to fail us!  Matt suggested I write a book but I can't even keep up with my blog!  Danny bought us a little digital recorder that can be connected to a computer and downloaded.  It is a bit complicated to get downloaded, so we have done a little recording but need to figure out again how to get it all sent to Danny.  JJ helped me last winter but now I guess we'll have to have her assistance again when we get to her house!  I really love researching the history of this area and wish I had more time, energy and gasoline to travel around and interview the old timers here in the Park.  I keep thinking about it but can't seem to get around to it!  I know several books have been written about North Park but I really like the idea of talking to and recording the stories face to face with people.

It was kind of interesting that we had this conversation because just that morning I had been thinking about my childhood and some of the crazy, fun things we did.  I even had a short story published about an incident from those days!  Hmmmmm, I wonder where that is.  Sue, you will remember it.  When that guy tried to give us a ride up on the main road.  I guess I'll see if  I can find it and put it up on the blog!  There are so many memories and I do think I need to get them written down somewhere, so I guess this blog will have to be it!

  Lynn wants me to write a book full of family recipes and memories, too.  She was always the writer of the family, so if I start writing some of these maybe she can be a "guest contributor".  Some of my cousins need to kick in with recipe suggestions from Pug and Uncle Ran, too! (Patti, Mike, Bob, Maryanne, hint, hint, hint).  I think we all can identify with Dad's daily "soft boiled eggs"!

Here is a very simple recipe that I have been craving for a long time but never could figure out how to make it the same way as Pug did.  She called it Potato Pancakes but I have finally decided the closest thing to it is Latkes!  Here is a quick and simple recipe that I got from allrecipes.com.  I'm going to call them Pug's Potato Pancakes even though they are called Latkes in the recipe I found.  They taste like Pug's anyway.....

Pug's Potato Pancakes

(Foolproof Potato Latkes )

    By: Basg

on allrecipes.com

  Ingredients:

• 4 potatoes, peeled and cubed (I used Yukon Golds)
• 1 small onion, chopped (I used maybe half a small onion)
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour, or as needed (for me this was enough--the flour is the part of Pug's recipe that is different than the ones I have tried before.  The less the better, but it does need some)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 cup canola oil, or as needed

Directions

1. Place 1/4 of the potatoes, onion, eggs, salt, flour, and baking powder in the work bowl of a food processor; pulse several times until the vegetables are finely chopped. Add the rest of the potatoes, and pulse again until all the potatoes are finely chopped and the mixture is thoroughly combined.
2. Heat canola oil in a skillet over medium heat. Scoop up about 1/3 cup of the potato mixture per latke, and place into the hot oil. Fry the patty until brown and crisp on the bottom, flip it, and cook the other side until brown, 2 to 3 minutes per side. Repeat with the rest of the potato mixture, replenishing the oil as needed. Serve hot.

Footnotes

• Pug used a grater and grated the potatoes on the large holes.  Using the food processor is quicker and saves your knuckles from getting barked and it tastes just as good but the texture is a little different.

• Cook's Note
• Apple sauce and sour cream are favorite accompaniments with these latkes. Make an interesting tuna salad, cut up some veggies, and you have a full meal.
   
  We always had them with homemade warm applesauce.  I would spread the applesauce on top of the "pancake" and it was soooo yummy!

 

Snow is a major feature in North Park history.  This is the "hummingbird tree" in front of our cabin.

Excuses, excuses, excuses!

Nick and Sarah get married in Clovis, NM

 This will be a quick post!  Here are some of my excuses for not posting as often as I want to:

1.  I have a ton of embroidering to do.  150 caps for Harry and I have 3 new designs I'm using that take about an hour each!  (stubborn me, I must use them because they are so cool!), several dozen caps for Matt (over the summer and fall) with 3 hoopings each (stubborn me again), 50 bags for Carla some with custom designs on the back for her staff, a wedding present for Nick,

I love the embossing on this.  I hope they do too!

a lot of Christmas decorations and hopefully a few Halloween ones too before it is too late!  I'm not complaining, just trying to justify.....

2.  Winterizing and cleaning up for our being gone by helping Bob with the vents around the base of the house to keep out the cold air, washing and putting away the hummingbird feeders, winterizing the porch, and doing fall cleaning of the house along with some clutter management!
 

The last load of 2011 chickens heading to the processing facility! (in the crates--that's Country Chicken Girl and Dan the Man on the 4 wheeler). 

3.Helping with the final chicken processing,

The final 20 ready to be packaged!  Whew!  what a summer!

 helping with one of the last summer farmer's markets, preparing for our trip to Clovis for Nick's wedding and then actually going to the wedding which was a lot of fun and needs to be addressed in a future blog.

4.  Getting the car fixed for winter by taking it up to Casper to get the AC/ heater fixed to the tune of $2000, and putting on snow tires (just under the wire--6 inches of snow the next day).

Here it is--Winter!

5.  Going to Dr. appointments in Denver, and Steamboat ( a 2 1/2 hour drive on terrible roads).

6.  Taking advantage of the wonderful long warm fall this year.  It was great while it lasted but now it is cold and the snow is not going away as fast as I would like it to!

7.  Helping Bob with paperwork that has backed up for the whole summer.

8  Cooking some new and yummy things.  I need to put up some new recipes, I think too, but not today!

9.  Catching up on facebook and email......

10.  Getting in some reading on the Kindle and Ipad.....

11.  making use of the hot tub now that it is cold.

OK, I think that is enough.  I have lots of pictures to share, too, but not today.  It's back to the caps for me!

Poblano Pesto and Albondigas Sopa

A gray, snowy Saturday inspired me to make a nice hot spicy meal.

 Today is a perfect day for staying in, turning up the heat and making some really good soup and a spicy spread.  So that is what I did.

Kathi and I went to the Farmer's Market in Morrill, NE last Tuesday to celebrate the completion of another season of chicken processing.  We bought some Poblano Chilies and picked up a recipe for Pesto.  Kathi had made a huge batch the week before and we had eaten over a pint of it in the few days I was there!  So this morning I got up and whipped up a batch before Bob even got up for breakfast!  I even roasted the peppers on the grill outside as it was snowing!

I mentioned the Albondigas Soup in a previous post and had some requests for it so I am including it in this post to carry out the Mexican theme..  I have a lot of good memories of this soup from my teaching days in West Wendover.  My students liked to make this in class and Griselda, the lunch room cook, would make it sometimes and put it on the salad bar in fall..  It is very delicious.  I never did get a recipe for it because the students would use their mother's or grandmother's recipe and I just never asked Griselda for hers. So I went to allrecipes.com and discovered every family has a different version of this soup!   I kind of knew this because of the rice.  Some families use it in the meatballs and some serve it with the soup and others don't use it at all.  I even saw one recipe on food network for meatballs which used masa in them for filler!  Here's the recipe which I found that seems the closest to what I like.  By the way, Albondigas Sopa means meatball soup.

I just spread my poblano pesto on crackers for a little snack!  Mmmmmm!

POBLANO PESTO

Ingredients:

 2 poblano peppers

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1/4 cup fresh cilantro leaves, rough chop

2 cloves of garlic, coarsely chopped

1 Tbsp. chili powder*

1/2 Cup vegetable oil

Kosher Salt

* I used 1/2 Tbsp ground New Mexico red chili and 1/2 Tbsp cumin because I love these seasonings! 

Directions:  

     Char the peppers on top of a gas burner, on a grill, or under the broiler until all sides are blackened.  Place in a plastic bag for about 15 minutes allowing the steam to help loosen the skins. With your fingers (use plastic gloves) or a spoon scrape and discard the blackened skin  then remove the seeds and core.  Retain some seeds if you desire a spicier pesto.  Coarsely chop the poblanos and place in a mini food processor.  Add Parmesan, cilantro, garlic, chili powder, cumin if used and oil.  Process until well combined, but not totally smooth.  

Makes about 2 cups

The Food Network        Melissa D'Arabian

Notes:

Kathi used 8 poblanos and a couple Anaheims and maybe even a jalapeno and 4 times the recipe.  She also used cumin in her pesto.  She had 1 qt. plus a pint jar of delicious pesto!  Neither one of us used a mini food processor since I doubled my recipe and it fit into my regular size food processor.  This could be used in a lot of different ways including spreading on sandwiches, spreading  on tortillas, rolling them up and slicing the rolls into pinwheels.  I'm sure you can think of a lot of other ways to use this tasty treat!

 

The soup simmers on the stove.  It is so colorful and tasty!

ALBONDIGAS SOPA

Ingredients:

Meatballs

Open A Bar 2 ground beef is the star in this soup.  Notice the Ritz crackers instead of bread crumbs.  I love them in my meatballs.

 2 lbs. ground beef

1 egg

1/4 Cup bread crumbs.  I used cracker crumbs.

1/2 Cup uncooked white rice

2 tsp. ground cumin

1/2 tsp. garlic powder

1/4 tsp salt**

**I didn't use since I used the salty bullion in the soup

Soup

Farmer's market produce and homemade tomato sauce make the soup taste so fresh.

 10 Cups chicken broth.  I used beef bullion cubes(10) and 10 C.  water.

4 carrots sliced

1/2 onion chopped

*4 stalks celery sliced  I didn't have any but used about 2 cups of zucchini cut in big chunks instead

1 ( 10 oz.) can diced tomatoes with green chili peppers ( such as Rotel)

1 (8 oz.) can tomato sauce

1 (7 oz.) can green chilies, drained (oops, I didn't drain but it didn't hurt the soup)

1 bunch cilantro leaves, chopped
1/2 tsp. garlic pwder
1 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp ground cumin
*3 potatoes peeled and cut in large chunks

*  These were not in this particular recipe but potatoes were in almost all the recipes I saw and at least in Wendover I always had zucchini in big chunks in the ones there.

 Directions: 
1. combine ground beef, egg, bread crumbs, rice, cumin, garlic powder, and salt ( which I didn't use due to the saltiness of the beef boullion) in a large bowl.  Mix well.
2.  Bring broth to a boil over medium heat.
3.  Form beef mixture into 1 inch meatballs, using about 1 1/2 Tbsp. meat for each.

I only used 1 lb. of ground beef and adjusted the rest of the ingredients for the meatballs.  I got 15 meatballs.  I did make a full recipe of the rest of the soup.

  I think you can get about 30 meatballs.  This should equal 3 for each of the 10 people eating the soup.  Turn the heat down under the broth to a simmer and drop the meatballs into the broth.  Simmer the meatballs in the broth for about 20 minutes, until meatballs are cooked through.

At this altitude I think It could have been 30 minutes but then it cooks for another hour so maybe not!

While the meatballs are cooking you can chop up the vegetables.

And the cilantro.

 4.  Stir in the carrots, onion, celery (zucchini, potatoes),  Rotel, tomato sauce, canned chilies, cilantro, and seasonings. Simmer the soup for 1 hour to cook the vegetables and blend the flavors.

Notes:  If you don't like  cilantro leave it out but I love it with the cilantro in  it!  The reason I used beef broth instead of chicken is because it just makes sense to me that you would use beef broth with beef meat.  Today I had some left over polenta in the refrigerator so I heated  up a few slices, cut them in big chunks and put them in my soup for dinner.  It was yummy!
Makes 10 servings so use a big pot! 

Here's my nice hot, spicy lunch of Albondigas Sopa with crackers and Poblano Pesto.