Our 25th Anniversary Trip to WA

We took a four day trip to Washington for our 25th anniversary.  Even though we do not have small children at home to look after, because of Mike's teaching schedule four days is all we can manage to get away.  

The weather was perfect and the drive was beautiful.  We visited the Bellevue botanical garden.  It is part of the city park system and was free to the public.  The garden was divided into different themes: rock garden, Japaneses garden, perennial garden, waterwise garden, just to name a few.  I loved the dahlia display.  My mother had dahlias in her flower bed when I was a little kid.  

We visited the Olympic game farm in Sequim.  It is 84 acres of drive through zoo where you can feed and have a very close look at these friendly animals. Mike had great fun feeding them and because I didn't want to risk my fingers getting licked by them I took the pictures.

This Yak was so eager to take the bread out of Mike's hand he practically slobbered all over the side of our car.

We had to guard our bread from this greedy llama.

There were a lot of peacocks and peahens with their babies at the farm.

This is a waving bear.  He waved at us as we drove next to him and at first I didn't realize what he was doing, but he was kind enough to wave two more times so there was no mistake what he was doing.  Only after the visit to the farm I found out he is quite famous.  you can find a video of him waving on YOUTUBE.

This elk was on guard duty.  He was waiting for us right by the gate.

The white deer at the bottom of this picture chased us while we were driving and as soon as he figured out that Mike was not handing out bread anymore he switched over to my side begging for bread.


We went to the Dungeness national wildlife refuge.  It was a short walk from the parking lot along a beautiful forest trail.  The spit itself is about 5 miles long and there is a light house at the end.  We didn't make it all the way to the light house because walking on the sand and pebbles was putting too much strain on my sore ankle. 

Someone had a fun making this.

There was driftwood of all sizes everywhere. 

The view of the spit from the top of the trail.


We loved Olympic National Park.  We decided that we have to come back and spend more time enjoying this beautiful park.  It has all the things that I love: the ocean, waterfalls, forests, hiking trails...

For this trip we hiked in the Hoh rain forest.  It was beautiful with maple trees changing colors mixed with evergreens, ferns and mosses on the ground. We hiked a couple of short trails.  The one thing I noticed was that there was no dry place to sit and eat our lunch.
  

This curtain of mosses was soft to touch.

Look at this cute mushroom! I would love to have some of these in my fairy garden.

I learned that this is called a nursery log.  You can see the seedlings growing on the log.

It was a such a great trip.  I love spending time with Mike. 

Living on $20 per week part I

We had a few big expenses this year.  
First of all our daughter was married in May. Even though it wasn't a big fancy wedding all of the costs still add up to a big sum of money. (a little confession: I never added it up). It was lovely and we are very happy for her.
Second, our other daughter, who studies music, needs to upgrade her instrument to a professional quality one. She worked over the summer, and with her scholarship money she has most of the money, but we still need to help her out with some.  Professional instruments are really expensive.
Third, our 25th anniversary is coming up in October and we are planning to take a little trip.

    
During the month of September I decided to live on $20.00 per week to save some money and use our food storage items.  I came up with a few rules and exceptions.

1. All the bills will be paid, of course.
2. Gas money for the cars is not included in the $20 budget. 
3. Medical expenses are also not included in the budget.
4. We can use all the spare change we find around the house and in the car.
5. If someone takes us out to dinner we will take it.

It has been two weeks since we started this crazy money diet, and I am happy to report that we are doing great.  I mean, I miss having chocolate here and there, and I really feel like it is time for me to get some new shoes, but we are not starving or on a ramen diet yet. 

What I noticed is that I need to plan out carefully and ahead of time. We have eaten pretty well so far.  Homemade pasta and shrimp with butternut squash sauce. Tacos with homemade tortillas. BBQ chicken, green beans and baked sweet potatoes. Chicken stir fry. Homemade macaroni and cheese. These are just a few of our meals.

Here are some things I noticed over the last two weeks.

1. We bake more - bread, cookies, and brownies.
2. Homemade always tastes better - pasta, tortillas, pickles...
3. Ice cream is definitely a need - we paid $6 for it, but sometimes you just got to have it.
4. Busy schedules can totally ruin your plan - last Saturday we had a church meeting, and right after the meeting we went to watch a football game and didn't have time to eat dinner.  We spent $10 on chocolate milk, doughnuts, yogurt and M&Ms.  Half of our weekly allowance in one night.
5. Some busy days you can still make it work - just a few days ago I had a church activity, Mike was teaching a class, and our daughter was at work.  We all got home about 9:30 and still managed to put dinner together. All of us worked together and it was a great time. 

The next two weeks are going to be harder. We might have to try out that ramen diet... I hope not.  We have chickens to give us fresh eggs daily, and have all our other basic needs other than the meat.  We might try a vegetarian diet for a while.  Beans and rice sounds good.

Side note: We ran out of olive oil, Mike misses his soda, and our daughter has to buy her own snacks.

Looking for Sockeye Salmon at Redfish Lake

This is Redfish lake in Idaho.  It got its name from the Sockeye salmon returning from the Pacific ocean to spawn and turn bright red afterwards.  There were so many of them that the lake would turn red.  What a sight that would have been.  I know that hasn't happened for a while because of the population decline of this amazing creature, but they are still returning to this lake and I wanted to witness this incredible event.  Can you imagine seeing these fishes jumping over waterfalls to get to their spawning ground?  I did my research and I had five different areas that I could possibly see them. 

little Redfish lake

The first place to check was where the Salmon River connects to Redfish creek.  Didn't see any of them there. The second place they suggested was Fishhook creek.  According to my reading this was an excellent spot and they suggested that I have my camera ready to capture them.  So there I was standing by the creek and waiting for them.  I waited and waited some more, but no fish were in sight. 

A creek by Redfish lake

Fishhook creek

Fishhook creek

We waited by the creek for a while then decided to hike up along the creek a little bit to see if we could find a better viewing area.  The weather was great and we saw some aspen trees turning colors.

Here is my husband who goes along with my crazy ideas.

We didn't see any fish, so instead of wandering around to other suggested areas we decided to check with the visitors center and ask them where all the Sockeye salmon are.  

A very friendly visitor center employee told us that basically there are no fish to see.  She said because they are an endangered species Fish and Game captures them when they reach Redfish creek.  Then they transfer the fish to a hatchery where they will spawn.  The fish hatchery people will look after them for about two years and when the fish are ready to travel to the ocean they will transfer them to Redfish creek and release them so they can come back to Redfish creek.

As you can see in the picture below only 427 of them returned to Redfish lake this year.  The article I based my hope of seeing these amazing creatures on was written in 2014 which was a really good year.   

       

The friendly visitors center employee told us that we can see some Kokanee salmon in the area.  They are like a cousin of the Sockeye salmon.  They are smaller in size and do not travel to the ocean.  The good place to see the Kokanee salmon was right behind the visitors center.  They are not bright red yet, but their color will change as it gets closer to spawning time.

The sockeye Salmon swim 900 miles to return to the lake.  I guess it is unpredictable how many sockeye salmon would return to the lake each year.  According to Idaho Fish and Game they had a great year in 2014, but in 2015 99% of them got killed in the Columbia River due to the high water temperatures. I hope one day I will be able to see these amazing creatures returning to the lake without human's assistance and make Redfish lake red again. 

  

(photo by JB Mellquist)

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.