With family stopping by Saturday afternoon for what could be one of our last backyard meals of the year (at least the last one that won’t require lots of blankets) I finally had the excuse I'd been waiting for to bake our homegrown apples into a pie. They did not disappoint! After realizing I don’t have a standby apple pie recipe, I went with this one, and while I didn't have tapioca flour or starch, I really didn't think the pie needed it. While I don’t see myself baking another of these pies to eat all on my own, I’m definitely looking forward to adding this recipe to my seasonal pie repertoire! In addition to the pie, we made pizza, including one topped with butternut squash, caramelized onions, goat cheese, and prosciutto - definitely a new favorite! The flurry of social activity on Saturday aside, it was a quiet autumn week, spent mostly indoors keeping cozy as the days shorten and temperatures start to drop. For the moment, I’m really enjoying the feeling of slowing down and bundling up, but I worry that I'll struggle through what is likely to be a long, lonely winter. It may be time to revisit some of my favorite Alpine Trails Book Club reads like The Nature Fix, The Little Book of Hygge, and Forest Bathing to prepare myself!
Read moreLife: Week 40
After stockpiling delicious seasonal homegrown and foraged foods over the past weeks, this weekend was spent cooking and baking. For dinner one weeknight, I made the incredibly comforting cheddar rice from this cookbook using the last of the paste tomatoes from my garden. Another night, we had a meaty skillet pizza, using up the last of a large batch of pizza dough I’d stashed in the freezer. After watching the latest episode of The Great British Bake Off Friday, Saturday was all about baking. There's nothing quite as good as fresh baked bread, still warm from the oven, and the white bread with poolish from Flour Water Salt Yeast has become my new favorite. It’s basically baguette in a loaf form, and I've finally baked it enough that it’s begun to feel easy and familiar, something I can throw together on a lazy weekend with what feels like little effort. Between steps in the bread making process, I also made a tart, using upsome of the pounds of alpine blueberries we’ve harvested over the past weeks. It’s mostly improvised, so sadly I have no recipe to share, but then I think these berries are delicious in any form, so really no recipe is needed!
Read moreLife: Week 4
It’s always tough to leave behind the hush and relaxation of the snow-covered cabin to return to the real world, and after taking Monday off, I returned to a hectic four day work week. Typically, January is a fairly slow time for me at work, allowing me some much needed time to catch up on all the lower priority but still necessary tasks that pile up during the busy season leading up to the holidays. Not so this year! After a brief window of downtime between Christmas and New Year’s, work has been one scramble after another. Andy has continued to be even busier than me, working both late nights and weekends. This weekend, feeling a little under the weather (or possibly just completely worn down from all the overtime he’s been working) Andy actually took both Saturday and Sunday off and we enjoyed a much needed lazy weekend at home. We didn’t spend the entire weekend on the couch though - Saturday night, we had a luxuriously decadent dinner at Cafe Juanita for no special reason. We took our time over our several courses, and were amazed to find they even had a lactose-free dessert item in addition to their seasonal sorbet options. It was even lemon - Andy’s favorite! If you too are intolerant of lactose, I’m sure you’ll understand our amazement. In case you’re not, trust me when I say it was borderline miraculous!
Read moreLife: Week 39
For weeks, I’d hoped to spend the last weekend of September off on one last backpacking trip before a blanket of snow descended on the trails. Sadly, after an exhausting week for both Andy and me, those plans were canceled for a more restful weekend. Even if we weren’t going to spend the weekend camping in the mountains, I dreamed of a long hike near Mt Baker or Mt Rainier to soak in the autumnal wonderland that had been crowding my instagram feed all week. When Andy suggested a specific hike much closer to home on Sunday, I begrudgingly agreed. The trail we wound up on is close enough to home that we were able to sleep in and still make it to the trailhead at a decent hour, and I spent the short drive grumpy and feeling like I was missing out on a real adventure. After only a few minutes on the trail - which we had to ourselves! - I couldn’t help feeling a peaceful joy. Thoughts of grander trails disappeared as we climbed through the quiet maple forest. Social media makes it temptingly easy to chase the adventures of others, but this hike was a great reminder of the peace that can be found in the mountains when you venture off to a trail less traveled.
Read moreLife: Week 36
This was a short but stressful week at work, with Monday off for the Labor Day holiday and Friday off for a short anniversary vacation. Happily, the long weekend more than made up for the stress of the short work week! After much debate, Andy and I decided to spend the weekend at my parents cabin near Snoqualmie Pass. This was definitely a good choice, even if it was made mostly because we’d recently purchased a new mattress, and the old one had been siting in our living room until we could take it up to the cabin to swap it out for one of the horrendously uncomfortable ones there. Since it’s such a short drive, we decided to bring our cat with us, and it didn’t take long for him to get settled in. When I mentioned our plan to my dad, he was dubious, and bringing our cat did turn out to be a bit of a mistake, but only because now I’ll feel terrible any time we go to the cabin without bringing him along!
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