The Oregon Gardens

Saturday/Sunday March 22/23, 2014

Weddings are a great occasion to hang with friends I don't get to see as often as I'd like. One of the great things about Carla being in a bunco group for over 20 years is we get to go to a lot of weddings of kids we've known for years. Cam and Lisa's daughter Kirsten married Colin at The Oregon Garden near Silverton which is about an hour south and east of our home in Beaverton. 

Knowing we'd be out late, drinking, dancing and having fun we figured it would be a good idea to stay at the adjacent resort. Given the in-and-out spring weather we experience in western Oregon, the wedding was held in the main hall; but we had our fingers crossed that we'd be able to explore the gardens a bit on Sunday before coming home. We totally lucked out: cloudless skies and temperatures in the high 60s greeted us. We made plans Saturday night to meet for breakfast with the Suzanne and Darrel. After checking out of the hotel we headed over to the gardens for a little walk.

First was a great bell. Darrel is a musician (The Bozo Brothers Band) and said it was an "A" tone.

Bell at The Oregon Garden

It isn't just Japan and Washington D.C. that have cherry blossoms; we've got them too,

Blossoming cherry tree at The Oregon Garden

Cherry blossoms at The Oregon Garden

After putting up a wood duck box a couple of weeks ago, we've been interested in birdhouses. I don't know what kind of birds live here or what they think of being in such close quarters but it is interesting.

Bird houses at The Oregon Garden

Back in the 50s  Frank Lloyd Wright's was commissioned to build a house by Evelyn and Conrad Gordon, a gentleman farmer and his wife, near Wilsonville, which is just a bit north of Silverton. This was one of a series of affordable homes built by Frank Lloyd Wright. The house is known as "The Gordon House". The house is one of a series of Usonion houses which are built to link nature and architecture. The term Usonian comes from Wright's nomenclature for United States of North America.

The Gordon House at The Oregon Garden

When it was built in the 50s it had a commanding view of the Willamette River out the front windows and Mt. Hood out the back. After the Gordons' deaths new owners were preparing to demolish the house to build a bigger one. A group came together to buy the house and transport it, in pieces, to its current home at The Oregon Garden. New concrete was poured and the house was put back together piece by piece.

Wright loved horizontal lines; notice the mortar work on the fireplace below. The horizontal lines were emphasized while the vertical lines were de-emphasized.

Main living space in the Gordon House at The Oregon Garden.
Notice that original stereo equipment

Suzanne, Darrel, Howard, and Carla.

 We caravanned on the way home and stopped by the Mt. Angel Sausage Company for a lovely extended lunch on the deck. The weather was the best we've had since last September. We spent almost two hours eating sausages, drinking beer, and talking. Darrel told a story about his dog, Belle, tangling with a skunk. The method of cleaning a skunked dog is peroxide and baking soda. Darrel had a chance to practice again; when they got home they discovered Belle hadn't fully learned her lesson.

What a great weekend. The rain came on Tuesday and we've been back to the gray and wet. We learn to take advantage of our opportunities here in western Oregon.

Wood ducks

Here are a couple of quick pictures of our wood duck box.
We have to run out to do some stuff but I wanted to get these pictures out.

Rotisserie Chicken

I love roasted chicken. It was warm and dry enough yesterday I could prepare it on the grill rotisserie - my favorite method. I salted a 4 pound bird with 2 teaspoons of kosher salt in the morning and let it dry brine in the refrigerator about six hours. Truss it and spit it and set it on the grill for just under an hour. I took this recipe from Mike Vrobel at Dad Cooks Dinner. My recipe with all the particulars can be found here.

Almost ready to come off the grill

I wanted to get a picture of the chicken after it came off the grill and before I quartered it; but it fell on the roasting pan and the skin came off one side of the breast. I quartered the chicken (eating the wings as I went).

Quartered chicken

 After quartering I slice the two breasts (and further mangle the skin in the process).

Add caption

 Carla cooked up some brown rice then turned it into fried rice, sautéing it in olive oil with red pepper flakes, green onions, and maybe some garlic. Frozen peas complete the meal.

Dinner is served; roast chicken, fried rice, and peas.

Duck Box Installation

Our neighbor Jonathan Schlueter's mission is to provide nesting space for our local wood ducks. He built 5 new duck boxes this week and offered to come over and install one on a tree in the wetlands. Of course I said "yes".  I've watched my neighbor's (Jay) box with nesting pairs for a couple of years.

Wood duck box as viewed from our deck

Close up of the wood duck box

Chickadee box which Jay built a few weeks ago. Jonathan moved it higher so it will be more habitable.

Jay's box already has a nesting pair so I'm hopeful we'll see some action in the next week.

Pernil-Style Pork Roast

Carla saw a recipe for a pernil al horno style pork roast in The Oregonian FoodDay. It was close to a favorite recipe of mine but substitutes orange for the rosemary and leaves out the vinegar. There were accompanying recipes for pickled red onions and ciltantro-rice so I thought I'd make up the complete dinner.

I started with a 4.2 pound boneless pork shoulder roast; the rub is made up of salt, brown sugar, cayenne, garlic, orange zest, ground black pepper, smoked paprika, and cumin seeds. I ground the seeds even though the recipe didn't call for it. You can find the details in my recipe.

Boneless pork roast with rub ingredients.

Rub ingredients combined.

After rubbing the roast I covered it with foil and stashed in the refrigerator for 24 hours more-or-less. The next day it roasted in a 300˚F oven until it reached an internal temperature of 180˚F.

I had plenty of time Friday afternoon that I decided to make the pickled red onions.

The recipe called for white vinegar but agree with Alton Brown: white vinegar should only be used for cleaning things. So I substituted white wine vinegar. You can find my recipe here

Prep for pickled red onions.

Thinly slice the garlic and serrano pepper, mix with the vinegar, sugar, salt, cloves and bay leaves. When the mixture reaches a boil, add the thinly sliced onion and carrot and simmer for about a minute.

Pickling ingredients

 Finally put all the ingredients in a glass jar and stash in the refrigerator. Next time I'll use twice the pickling ingredients so the jar will be full of liquid.

Pickled red onion with carrot.

Saturday as the roast was close to finishing. I whipped up the rice dish. I made lots of changes to the rice recipe for use with my rice cooker; you can find my copy with edits here.  I chopped garlic, scallions, and jalapeño, then tossed in the food processor with some water. Once blended it would be part of the liquid for the rice.

Cilantro rice aromatics

In the meantime I sautéd the rice in a skillet with some olive onion; then transferred to the rice cooker, added the aromatics and filled to the proper line with water.

Cilantro rice ready for serving.

The roast came out of the oven looking beautiful.

Pernil-style pork roast.

After letting it cool for about 20 minutes I sliced and dinner was served.

Dinner is served: pernil-style pork roast, cilantro rice, peas, and pickled red onions.

Fernhill Wetlands - March 3, 2014

I caught myself stewing around on my days off in my semi-retirement. I spend too much time doing chores and not enough time getting out. Maybe it's partly the winter; regardless, I gave myself a good talking to over the past weekend and pushed myself out of doors Monday afternoon. I'd been to Fernhill Wetlands twice (March 2013 and June 2013). I thought it might be a nice time to revisit it. After leaving the California Mojave Desert where I grew up I regretted not taking enough time to drive out to the hinterlands to see what was there. I'm direction challenged and tend to stick to the main roads and rely on my GPS so I thought this was a good opportunity to kill two birds with one stone and explore the back roads of Washington County. So I took a couple of secondary roads to get there.

I didn't get great pictures; I was experimenting with my polarizing filter. But here are a few worth displaying.

 

Book Report: From Here to Eternity

From Here to Eternity by James Jones
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A very interesting, insiders, take on the pre-World War II in Hawaii. The book takes place in the nine or so months leading up to and the days immediately after Pearl Harbor. The main character is Robert E Lee "Prew" Prewett an enlisted man who left his Harlan, Kentucky home to bum around the country before joining the army. Prew reminds me of a Hemingway "code" hero. He works very hard to be true to his high ideals even though it gets him in big trouble. The second major character is Milton Warden, a top sergeant in the company Prew has recently transferred into. He is a very tough sergeant but who will support his men behind the scenes. Both men have love interests which complicate their lives.

This novel does a very good job of describing the army with all the various characters thrown together. I almost gave this two stars because it was taking so long to get to World War II; then I realized this was a pre-War novel so I reset my expectations. It is very long and could have done with some editing. There is a lot of repetition in some of the conversations or internal monologues where Jones works so hard at getting his idea across. It's better when an author gets these ideas across through describing the action as opposed to having what amounts to short essays on topics. It's what finally caused me to stop reading Ayn Rand's two novels back in the day because instead of a work of fiction we were forced fed expository essays. Nevertheless I found that I kept coming back to read this novel and put aside other chores or activities. I'm delighted I read this reissued edition which reinstated hundreds of edits which took out the salty language, sex, and homosexuality.

I preferred Jones' The Thin Red Line; but this is a good novel covering the army before the war.

View all my reviews

Chicken Mulligatawny Soup

It's been a cold drizzly February and we were thinking it would be great to have some soup. Perusing Cook's Country I ran across this recipe for Chicken Mulligatawny soup. Now, based on the name, I always thought Mulligatawny  (sounds like Mulligan?) was an Irish soup and I never went out of my way to find a recipe for it. But the picture in the magazine stopped me; it looked like a luscious rich Indian-based stew. Seeing the ingredient list included curry and Garam Masala reinforced that message so I went shopping. If this looks good to you, check out Cook's Country or my recipe here.

Ingredient set for Chicken Mulligatawny soup

Onions, carrots, celery, garlic, and ginger ready for chopping and mincing.

Picking through brown lentils

Instead of oil we sauté the mirepoix in butter; that gave it a different, beautiful smell to start with. Once the base vegetables are slightly browned, we bloom the spice mixture: garlic, ginger, curry, garam masala, and cayenne. We also toss in a tablespoon of tomato paste to get that rich, meaty umami flavor. (Well you are supposed to sauté the tomato paste; I forgot and had to add it when I started simmering.) Once the spices are aromatic, stir in some flour and cook for a few minutes. I always struggle when adding flour to a sauté; it gets heavy and somewhat difficult to stir and I worry it will burn. But it was fine today.  

Mirepoix (onion, celery, and carrot) simmering

Add 5 cups of chicken broth (home made is both easy and amazingly flavorful). Scrape up the brown bits, bring to a boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Then transfer to a slow cooker, add the coconut milk, chicken, and lentils. Cook on low for 4-5 hours until chicken and lentils are tender.

Slow cooker ingredients; add to the soup base

The smell of a wonderful curry dish filled the house making it easier to ignore the mid-30's rainy day; but harder to concentrate on the book I'm reading.

Simmering soup.

The longer I smelled it the more I thought of this as a curry dish rather than a soup dish. It reminded me of the yellow curry dish I have at a little Vietnamese restaurant my team goes to on drizzly days. So I decided to cook up a batch of rice and serve like that. 

Top with a little yogurt and lime juice. Cilantro is often used but Carla isn't a fan so we skipped that.

Dinner is served

It was good, not great. I think part of the problem is that once I started thinking curry stew, this dish couldn't meet my changed expectations. I think I'll work on a yellow curry dish soon.