Category Archives: food

Interview Dinners

Our geology department has faculty job candidates coming through and to hold down costs, candidates will not be put up in hotels but in faculty guest accommodations. The advantages? Casual discussions over coffee in the morning and with that a far better sense of what living and working here is like. As I used to … Continue reading →

Posted in: Blog, food

What the choices are…

Warning– this is a post that includes cleaning, garbage, purity, diapers and a rant. It’s not about our trip to Ramsey Canyon in Arizona and what we saw there… I will get to that after the clean up. We hosted our Earth Sciences Department party yesterday and about seventy people attended. We prepared and cooked … Continue reading →

Posted in: Blog, food

The Sequel to All for Pie

Time has passed and we are harvesting the concord grapes. My little rat proofs have worked. If you try it, I have a couple of observations. One, simply having these strange objects in the vines will decrease rat activity. It won’t stop the little brats, but there will be less damage. Two, a trick I learned … Continue reading →

Posted in: Blog, food, gardening, pests

Rats!

  I am done with these rats. Traps do not suffice, poison feels unethical and gives a horrible death, the tricks of radios and deterrents are fantasies. Plus, I refuse to have an outdoors cat because of traffic, coyotes, parasites, and the mass slaughter of birds and my delightful lizards. But these rats are eating … Continue reading →

Posted in: Blog, food, gardening, pests

We went hunting

Envy us my friends — look at this– Over a pound of morels, Morchella esculenta to be precise. We heard from the kid she’d seen some when out walking with a friend and after grilling her about why she hadn’t collected them, since they were on public property, we headed out. Note, it was after seven o’clock in … Continue reading →

Posted in: Blog, food

The Kid Complained– Salmon Again?

A different take on the standard fish a flank of salmon, without skin sauce: 3-4 tablespoons of capers 3 tablespoons of ranch dressing 1 teaspoon of herbes de Provence black pepper, fresh ground, plenty about fifteen pitted chopped Kalamata olives for pan: fifteen more, pitted, Kalamata olives 1/2 Eureka lemon, sliced paper thin and seeded … Continue reading →

Posted in: Blog, food

Fruitcake is No Joke

Enough with the jokes about fruitcake. When Elizabeth Moon uses the fruitcake trope in her delightful Trading In Danger she does it so well I have to admire, smile, then chuckle a bit. But I also have to set the record straight about how to make a fruitcake worth the savoring. First vital point. Do … Continue reading →

Posted in: Blog, food

   If even one of you, my readers, has read any of Gladys Taber’s Stillmeadow books, I’d like to know. I read them as wandering but organized conversations with a well-read woman of sensibility and reflection, deceptively simple, unfailingly kind. Yes, what old-fashioned language I use here, because Gladys Taber is of another time. I sometimes feel … Continue reading →

Posted in: Blog, food, gardening, social and anti

Ketchup Packets are Immortal

We walk in the evenings, carrying a bag or two, and pick up the trash on our way. Bottles, coffee cups, straws and all the debris left from fast food meals. Our neighborhood roads are relatively quiet wandering routes, with hilly profiles, so I find it interesting that we can normally fill at least one … Continue reading →

Posted in: Blog, education, food, science

Chili baked fish

I figure it’s time to share another recipe. The white-fleshed Pacific rockfish is my fish of choice for this recipe, because we can get it locally fished and it’s a sustainable harvest fish with a fine clean taste and firm texture.  Salmon gives a different taste, but is great in this combination too. Disclaimer– the … Continue reading →

Posted in: Blog, food