Spicy Dill Pickles

 I wanted to make some pickles this year.  I have been looking for pickling cucumbers for a couple of weeks without success.  I even put my name on a waiting list at one of the fruit stands.  Seriously, everyone wants them and there are not enough cucumbers to go around.  A lady who works at the fruit stand told me that there are not that many cucumbers coming in because it is not a good money making crop.  I almost gave up on it but today I decided to check out one more place and behold there they were: pickling cucumbers! I got so excited I bought 20 lb of them.  I think I got a little carried away... I hope my family likes pickles.

 Pickling spice, dill, dried red peppers(not pictured), and garlic.  I am not going to share the recipe to avoid copyright issues and what not, and I'm too lazy to do it.  But I got my recipe from the Ball Canning book. 

Filling the jars, I just need to add the liquid and it will be ready to process.

I hope it tastes as good as it looks. 

Chicken and Rice Porridge My Way

After living in America for almost 25 years this is one of few Korean dishes I still make.  There is a fancy, traditional way to make this dish but most of the time it is hard to find ginseng and other ingredients.  I simplified this recipe to make shopping easier and it still tastes like the porridge I used to eat in Korea.

The beauty of this dish is in its simplicity.


1 skinless whole chicken
about 10 cloves of garlic
1 bunch of green onions
1 1/2 cups of uncooked rice(sweet rice is the best but you can use sticky rice most Asians use)
salt and pepper to taste

1. Skin the whole chicken and trim the fat as best you can
2. put chicken in a big stock pot and cover it with water, bring it to a boil.
3.Turn down the heat to medium, add garlic cloves.  cook until chicken easily pulls from the bone ( I cook it for about 90 min for a medium size chicken)
*while the chicken is cooking skim off the fat, foam, and other undesirables that float around.
4. Add uncooked rice and continue cooking until the rice is done (about 30-40 min)    
  

5. Remove chicken from the pot and pull it apart with a tool of your choice. I personalty use a pair of metal chopsticks but I know not every one has chopsticks lying around in their kitchen.  If you use your hand, be careful because the chicken might be too hot.   

6. Top the rice porridge with pulled chicken, green onions and salt and pepper mixture.  The bottom right corner is a dish called cucumber kimchi.  We usually have some sort of kimchi as a side dish for this meal.

This is a simple, inexpensive, comfort meal from Korea modified by me.  I hope you are brave enough to try it. 

Home canning: inventory before new canning season

While I am trying to take it easy nursing my sprained ankle I decided to check out my home can food storage.  It is that time of the year that home grown vegetables and fruits from local orchards are available.  My garden didn't do so well this year so I have to rely on the farmers market and local fruit stands to get my supplies. I wanted to see what I need to add to our food storage before I jump into canning this year.

 Here are few reasons why I practice home canning.
1. I am trying to be obedient.  Our church leaders counselled us to be self reliant, grow a garden, and have a food storage.  
2. I know what goes into my food.  I try to avoid highly processed food whenever possible and growing my own food and home canning help me to do that.
3. It just tastes better.  I will never go back to store bought canned pineapples.
4. It gives me an opportunity to teach my daughters homemaking skills but more importantly I love spending time with them in the kitchen. (Now they are all grown and busy with their own life I don't get to do that very often)
5. I get a sense of accomplishment, joy and satisfaction from knowing that we have food to eat.

    

Last year I bought some pineapples for $1.00 each.  It was a really good deal and this is our last jar.  I will definitely watch out for sales like that again.  It was absolutely delicious.

This is sweet pickle relish.  I have been canning this for about 10 years.  I still have four jars left so not making them this year.

Apple sauce.  I make this for my daughter who is an extremely picky eater.  I am surprised that we still have some left because she can eat the whole jar in a few days.  I use mixed apple for this with touch of cinnamon and no sugar. 

  

 BBQ beans. Oh my goodness this is one of our family's favorite.  Very easy recipe and if you are looking for good side dish to go with your meat this is it.

 Candy carrot.  This here is the proof that I love my husband.  No one in our family eats this other than my husband.

Peaches, we love them.  We make peach milk shakes, use them in crepes, and eat them with cottage cheese.

 Pears, I canned them for the first time last year and we only used few jars so I am crossing this out from our list of thing to restock.

Salsa, we have plenty of them.  

 Spicy pickle beans,  we used to like them and I made them every year.. maybe need to take a break from it.  

These are unwanted... I think I made too much of them and flavor are bit too strong for my liking. It is about 3 years old and I don't see them getting used anytime soon.  Time to make room for other goodies.  So with a heavy heart, good bye pickled green tomatoes.


The things I learned from canning
1. Can what your family will eat.
2. Study and follow the instruction very carefully.
3. When in doubt discard the canned food, safety first.

This year I am going to make some pie fillings.  I am dreaming of warm apple pies in cold winter days.  I hope my husband agrees to this plan because he is the one who is going to make the pie crust.

  

Our perfectly terrible backpacking trip

The waterfall we saw while driving to the trail head

My husband and I love to go backpacking.  We usually take one overnight trip in a year. But this year we decided to go for a 5 day trip to the Frank Church wilderness. I am here to tell you that things don't always work our as planned. 

First problem: two days before our trip the road that we need to take to get to the trial head was closed due to a wildfire.  No problem, we decided to head over to McCall and hike to a few different lakes. 

Second problem: at the trail head when we were just about to go to sleep I found out that I brought the wrong bag and what I thought were my hiking boots were actually my dress boots.  We can fix that too. We drove about an hour to get phone service and called our daughters to meet us about an hour from our home with my boots.  Even with help from our girls it was two in the morning when we got back to the trail head.

 Third problem: the trail we were hiking was not maintained at all.  About 5 miles into our hike the trail disappeared altogether and we had to go cross country to find the trail.  While we were wandering around I sprained my ankle really bad and we decided the best thing to do was turn around and go back to the trail head. 

I had to walk about 6 miles with my sprained ankle.  It was slow going and I don't know how I did it.  Now my ankle looks like a stump attached to my foot. Even with the problems we had it was an enjoyable few days.  We were there with some wonderful people, the food was great and what little wilderness we experienced was awesome. 

  

The little creek by the trail head

All packed and ready to go.

I am a very slow  hiker

we sure enjoyed snacking on these huckleberries

We are at home watching the Olympics and instead of enjoying hiking and fishing my husband had to wait on me.  And I am sorry because this is the end of our summer fun.  Until next summer, no more hiking for me.

Trip to the Oregon coast

I love water; any bodies of water.   I love rain, streams, creeks, waterfalls, rivers, lakes and the ocean.  I feel at home when I am near by the water. If I lived in the Avatar world I am pretty sure I would belong to the water tribe.

Our family loves taking a trip to the Oregon coast for a few reasons.  It takes about 12 hours by car, including lunch breaks and a little sight seeing on our way.  We love long drives; we use it as time to reconnect as a family.  As our children get older and busy with jobs and schools we don't see them often as we would like to.  We love sea foods and it is hard to get good fresh sea food where we live. So, yes, we do travel for food.  We love not having a schedule so we can relax and enjoy each others company.     


This is the view from the Vista House.  We took the historic highway along the Columbia Gorge to enjoy the waterfalls.  At the end of the historic highway there is a cute little town called Troutdale and they have a really good Italian restaurant.  Did I say we travel for food?  

After our lunch stop we drove through Portland.  The traffic was so bad It was more like crawling than driving.  But I was able to take a picture of the Portland temple while we were stuck in the traffic so that made it all better.
  

We had a really good dinner by the ocean and while we were driving we saw this light house.  This was the first time I actually saw a light house at work so that was very cool.  

The next morning we went on a hike to the beach. It was about 5 miles round trip.  The trees were beautiful and green, plenty of wild flowers.  But when we got there all we could see was a sand hill in front of the ocean.  We were a little bit disappointed but it was still a lovey hike.

Time to play.  The water was cold and it was a little windy but that didn't stop us.

We saw about 5 whales hanging out by the tide pools.  It was a very successful, unexpected whale watching.  A few years ago we went on a whale watching boat with a local company and only thing we saw was a black shadow for a few seconds.  They said it was a whale but I wasn't sure if it actually was.

It is always fun to check out the tide pools.

Sunset.  It was so cold and windy we had to wait in the car while waiting for the sunset.  In the end we send Mike and Rhiannon (our photographer) out to take some picture for us.
She did an amazing job.