Beef and wine

We learned many things this week.

       1) Judd taught himself to make a pork Wellington (although he's never made a beef Wellington) This included looking up  duxelles which coats the seared meat.  It's a minced, sauted-in-butter mixture of mushrooms, onions, thyme and seasoning. While we cooked, we hors d'ouevred on the first Dungeness crab of the season. Meaty! The pastry puff surrounded pork was fabulous. Watch Out Thompson Christmas Dinner! 

  

        



2) After listening to Handel's Messiah on NPR (Judd is so sweet to let me sing along on all the choruses like I did during my college days) while we hot tubbed at our hotel vacation, we started hearing classical Christmas songs.  We researched voice actor Thurl Ravenscroft who sings the Grinch-You're a Mean One song in the original1966 movie. Thurl also is the voice actor in SO many Disney movies, (101 Dalmations, The Aristocats...)--he voices  the steam boat narrator at Disneyland and some bear in Country Bear Jamboree.  But come to find out, he is most famous for one word:  GRREAAAAT!  Yup-- he was also Tony the Tiger of my childhood.  I LOVED Frosted Flakes.  May Thurl RIP: 2.6.1914 to 5.22.2005. And there must be a special place in heaven for folks whose parents name them Thurl. I guess it means strong/fort in Irish but here is what the web says:
Thurl is the 21,956th most popular name of all time.
https://www.names.org/n/thurl/about#fun-facts

        

       3) We learned that a thing called Weeping Sequoia  trees exist (like weeping willows but weirder.)They look like DR. Seuss growths, out of place in a vineyard.  We had just left a frosty reception where a cleary open wine tasting room, all decorated up for the holidays, asked what we were doing here.  We said we stopped by to taste wine.  They said, "we're getting ready for an event; we don't really have anything open."  I'm thinking, "Yeah, the door is open....."  So we said never mind and went not a mile down the road. The Yakima Valley is teeming with fruit:  we passed apple orchards, cherry orchards, hops-already-harvested and vineyard after vineyard.  At the Hyatt tasting room we received a warm welcome.  We had been only #16 and 17 patrons for the day, so the hostess looked almost excited to talk with us. We're getting more discriminating tastes about this.  Just because a pricey wine is HALF OFF IF YOU BUY A CASE, it wasn't good enough to buy 12 bottles of the same thing.  We each picked one bottle (which never matches) to take home. 

4) Paradisos del Sol Vineyard-- "Swirl Swish Sip Sip Bite Sip."  Everything on Yelp is correct (which we read AFTER our visit.) We usually choose our stops by geography (where we are at the time) and time (are they open today? Is it after 11:00?)  Two thirds of customers on Yelp express their delight at the friendly staff, the quirky setting and the philosophy of pairing food with wine (always what Judd laments is lacking at most all places.)  One third of reviewers complain the food-tastes were smaller than the size of a dime and came out of a pretty grimy-looking tin, and that after the owner had come across the lawn from feeding the turkeys and sheep and hog.   I didn't see any handwashing going on. But Judd and I left agreeing with the majority of reviewers:  it was one of the most fun tastings we've done. We visited the animals outside. The view, if not cloudy, would have stretched to include Mt. Rainer and Mt. Adams. This time of year, the view reaches across all the gone-by fruit trees and vines. We were the only tasters so got the full attention of the vintner, explaining his 10 wines and why they pair with the tiny bites. 

dude on the left by the dog is the vintner Paul "7/8 Norwegian and 1/8 Italian"

5) Toppenish (a town 1.5 hours northwest of us) is famous for three things: murals, the Hops Museum and the Railroad Museum.  We found auténtico Mexican food at Lula's.  Her restaurante wall is bedecked with award after award for her tamales.  When we arrived 6pm on a Saturday, she explained they were all sold out--come back for breakfast..... unless you wanted a chicken one.  We shared the last tamale of the day, even though it was "only chicken."  It was still really good. And THEN we had dinner: chicken mole and chile relleno--always too much but always good leftovers. 

We didn't see many murals until the next morning but it was raining so we took a very short walk down the main street to soak in as many as we could. (Probably only 20% of what decorates the town.) The valley produces 75% of the hops for the nation! Although we missed the museum, we visited "Old Timers Plaza" and saw a mural the size of a very big building portraying hops harvested by hand.  (Of course, I don't know how they harvest them now.) Here's Irish Dick who, as the story goes, traded a bear cub to a saloon owner ...
Long Description from WayMarking.com:
"In about 1910, a strapping, hard-drinking shepherd called Irish Dick traded a bear cub to a Toppenish saloon-keeper for whiskey. 
Some months later, the rowdy shepherd was in town when his grown-up pet escaped, panicking townsfolk. He offered to return the bear to its tether. This led to a legendary man/bear fight on main street that sent Dick, a brave and bloodied Irishman, to the hospital and an unharmed bear was returned to saloon servitude."

Street corners are lit at night by cowboy boots and hats for Christmas
That guillotine-looking equipment on the left is some kind of ginormous juice press (see below)

harvesting hops by hand

in Old Timers Plaza-- Native American statue with juice press behind

Public "WestRoom" mural depicts Halloween shenanigans (someone tipped over the outhouse)

Judd's leased VW parked under a building where all the folks in the windows are painted

Upon departing Toppenish, we found a Mexican bakery and bought pastries. I haven't felt like the only white person for a hundred miles since we were in Peace Corps. It was truly where the locals get their traditional Mexican breads and pastries.  We smelled El Provenir before we found it, following Google-walk-there-in 2 minutes-directions. The flavor of the day must have been sugar and butter.  We took a scone-like coconut thing and a turnover apple thing and every one was very nice and helpful to us.  SO MANY cookies and pastries and mini-loafs!.  We then went down the street for drive-through travel tea and coffee. We saw one more mural and had to google Maud Bolin to discover why someone painted a whole wall about her. In 1927, she was one of the first female aviators (just 9 years after Amelia Earhart.) Maud was also one of the first women to parachute jump and was a rodeo competitor around the West. Born and died in Toppenish. You go Girl--make a wall for yourself!

get OUT of town!

We have been hearing from locals that "this is winter in Walla Walla-- grey skies, no sun and under 30 degrees everyday."  The right-out-of-town landscape is a barren yellow where the wheat or soybeans were harvested. Some faint hint of green sometimes lines the dirt, but we can't believe anything is going to grow before April when it's been 28 degrees every day as the  high. Some folks report the need for SAD lights*** or a trip to Arizona to get them through. 

We spontaneously decided to pop in the car for a road trip east (not ALL the way east.)  I did download a phone app of the Washington and Idaho DOT so you can tell which mountain passes are clear or which require chains to get over. In my steel-studded tires, we hit Idaho in two hours and Montana in five. Judd had researched hot springs along the way and Lolo Pass (5233 feet) also had a lodge, cabins and a saloon.  Yes! The terrain gets greener and forest-ier as we, once again, traversed along the Lewis and Clark trail.   This route was their eastward way home and although they went in June to Oct, it still must have been incredibly cold and rough going. The pass has already seen 17 inches of snow this season.

    We got to the lodge which was all decked out and then discovered that we had reserved a cabin, not a room in the lodge.  The cabins were across the street, run by a different team.       The Lewis Room was decorated cutely, but we could see our breath. Judd valiantly went to up the thermostat and turn on the heater but when I remarked that there were icicles dripping out of the sink faucet and he found the water in the toilet frozen, we decided it was a little TOO rustic. We went back to check in desk and they put us in the Clark Room, cursing the cleaning woman who must have turned the heat down too far.  The next cabin was warm enough. Same art work over the bed-- a big mural-like drawing of white men coming upon Native Americans at a river--Didn't look violent yet.  For purchase for $650.  Hmmm--where would it look good? We unpacked so we could head over to the saloon for dinner and then the hot springs.
     We were the only patrons in the saloon, but then we dine so elderly-early that perhaps the crowds were coming in later after skiing/snowmobiling.  We had a great steak and potatoes dinner and met the local Santa, getting ready for a kid event the next day.  The hot springs are in- and out-doors.  We opted for the indoor pool attached to the changing room as it was 17 degrees outside. The water, at 105 degrees, was awesome. And if you think about the tingling sensation as the minerals doing healthy things for your, it takes away 'ew' factor of a public hot tub.

 

 The cabin included breakfast which we were told would start at 8:00.  We were up and about by 7:30 so read books until 8-- Judd reading The Stranger in the Woods (the Maine hermit) and me reading The Other Einstein (about Albert's first wife.) Then, come to find out, the posted winter hours are for breakfast to start at 9:00am.  We decided to just get a move on and have breakfast in Missoula.  The town has a cute downtown at the foot of some big Bitterroot Mountains. We had too much food for breakfast at The Shack and then did a little shopping downtown.  We were on the road by 11:00  and back in Walla Walla via Spokane by 4:30. We took ourselves to a new wine tasting room:  Eternal and learned that the Mexican restaurant next door, The Saint and the Sinner was having their last night.  We spoke with the chef who was running a special on his chicken enchilada (grandmother's recipe.) He is moving on up to Bon Appetite. We hear a Greek restaurant will be moving into WW.   We're okay with that too.   Now, about those SAD lights......

Back to Washington.  We get that we're driving through the remnants of a massive flood bed. Why do they call it the Evergreen State?

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Thanksgiving and pogonip

     When we rented this half-house, we were pleasantly surprised to find this kitchen feature:  a hemi-oven right above the regular oven.  Most all the time, we never need the big one and have been happily saving energy (and it heats to temperature much faster) all this time.  Then, lo and behold, the night before we want to cook our Thanksgiving day 12 pound turkey, we find that the big oven is broken. A call to the landlord Wednesday did not remedy this in time.  Judd taught himself (actually Youtube taught Judd) how to spatchcock a turkey. We don't have kitchen shears so Judd deftly wielded our sharpest knife so he could flay and splay our bird.  We just tucked the stuffing underneath and it all fit in the top oven. All the usual sides: pearled onions, mashed potatoes and gravy, squash, cranberry relish,pumpkin pie, pecan pie and apple crisp. On Thanksgiving morning a flock of ducks showed up on our creek.  We've never seen them before--maybe they were hiding out lest they become someone's dinner for the day.

   We've encountered a new weather phenomenon: frozen fog. The bastardized Shoshone word is pogonip. (see below)  For almost a whole week, it was 26-31 degrees, day and night. With some kind of inversion where the fog stays down close to the land, all the precipitation dripping on everything freezes.  It makes the trees look like they're flocked without it ever snowing. It makes the porches/roads look like an ice storm. (Not to be confused with ice fog which is an Alaska thing.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_fog
We may yet have to buy a shovel and some ice melt. For now, my studded tires are on for the season.

After dinner activities include Judd's Lego robot fun

From ON-line Merriam-Webster: pogonip

 noun

pog·​o·​nip | \ˈpä-gə-ˌnip  \

Definition of pogonip 

: a dense winter fog containing frozen particles that is formed in deep mountain valleys of the western U.S.

Did You Know?

Readers of The Old Farmer's Almanac might recognize the odd-sounding warning, "Beware the pogonip!" So what's a pogonip? In the mountains of the western United States, the fog condenses into tiny, biting ice particles in extremely cold weather. The English-speaking settlers who encountered this unpleasant and sometimes scary phenomenon when they went out West in the 1800s needed a word for it. They borrowed "payinappih" ("cloud") from Shoshone, altering it to "pogonip."

Our week as vegetarians

  The week before Thanksgiving (and after our Leavenworth trip with a surfeit of cheese and meat) we started planning for our "Maintain, Don't Gain" Campaign." The campaign is where we put our weight on the calendar before the holiday month+ of Thanksgiving to New Year and try not to gain weight over the holidays. I was sad that all the German food and road trip had already increased our numbers so thought it was a good idea to cut back for a week.  We (okay, me) thought we could sensibly lose 1-2 pounds in a week by being vegetarians. So at our Sunday grocery shop, we stocked up on nothing but vegetables--some our usual weekly fare like eggplant for grilling and carrots and celery for work snacks. But then some specialty items:  jack fruit, tofu, cauliflower to make into rice, hakurei turnips for snacking (like radishes only milder) .....etc

Pre-packed jackfruit tastes like chicken;
blender pulverized cauliflower looks like rice--season it and you won't know the difference 

poblanos; asparagus and onions

DAY 1 -- He looks almost excited:

DAY 3 -- Lookin a little despondent
portabellas, summer squash and shishito peppers

DAY 5-  one hubbard squash which was our doorstep fall decor for autumn--froze 2/3 of it

We lasted 6 days and then broke into the pepperoni that we'd purchased at the German meat market, "Cured",  in Leavenworth. The next day was Thanksgiving and were prepping and  brining the turkey and making pies. 

Weights: 1.5 pounds down! mark the calendars and commence the festivities.