got gas?

Sorry, I couldn't resist. We're having the gas line pulled up through the kitchen floor tomorrow, and I'm busy prepping. The new range has arrived, and the old one is waiting for the magic appliance removers to spirit it away to the place where old stoves die. I primed and patched and painted behind the stove, and did part of the kitchen walls while I was at it. Everything's moving slowly because I'm still feeling crummy, and Mr. Reluctant spent the day in bed yesterday with a high fever (over 103), so I had to keep forcing fluids down him. I can't wait for winter to be over.

raccoon tree acres

I named our house Raccoon Tree Acres during one of several visits with the real estate agent before we made our offer. Pondering the shade/sun ratio in the yard, I looked up into the massive branches of our Siberian elm, and saw not elmberries or birds' nests or leprechuans but a raccoon.

I tried to get anyone to notice/care, but neither our real estate agent nor the sellers' wanted anything to do with raccoon eradication. Neither did I, frankly, but we have enough pets, and neither cat eats garbage.

So we figured we'd deal with it later. In the meantime, said I, what should we call it? How about Elmer, since he lives in the elm tree?

No, said Mr. Reluctant emphatically. His name is Trevor Chang.

So Trevor Chang it was. Given that the house was unoccupied for at least a couple of months, and that many of the vents to the crawl space were open until the contractors affixed grates, I should have known that Trevor Chang had been displaced from under our house. He was in the elm tree because he had been made homeless, and he was intent on finding any warm place he could -- preferably inside or under or near my house.

I may be a bleeding heart liberal when it comes to wars and education and social rights and alternative families, but I am not when it comes to wild animals living (read: defecating) in close proximity to my person. But directly after I found a place where one can rent live traps that would move Mr. Chang to greener pastures, he disappeared. I finished raccoon-proofing the roof and shed, blocked a few access points under our fence, and put a few rocks next to the crawl space vents, just in case.

Last night, though, in a series of events that culminated in me looking outside on our patio, I spied A Tail ascending the elm tree. And there he was, Trevor Chang.

Did you miss me, he said, 'cuz I missed you.

I took a few photos and tried to doctor the first one using my crummy iPhoto software (his left eye was glowing green). You can, perhaps, get a sense of the size of our elm tree by the second shot, the one where the glowing green eye can be seen in the branches.

Maybe I can build him a home out of appliance wreckage.

someone needs coffee

Am I the only person left in the Western hemisphere under the age of 60 who doesn't want geegaws and doodads on small consumer electric appliances? The recent and untimely demise of my coffee maker and toaster oven have thrust me back into the aisles of Sears, Home Depot, Best Buy, Bed Bath and Beyond, and way beyond. I look at all the buttons and panels and timers and filters and I just think "these are going to break." I really resent paying for overblown features just to get heavy-duty plastic and decent engineering.

You know what I want? I want a vacation at a resort hotel with cable and room service and nothing breaking down, and a two-hour massage at 3 p.m. OK, OK, if I can't have that, I just want a coffee maker that doesn't burn coffee or spill water all over. No timer. No auto set. No clock. No glass carafe that shatters or cracks if you wash it with tepid water. I do want one that has a sneak-a-cup mode and a decent handle that won't fall off for under $50. Is that so hard? Is it?

And I want a toaster oven with knobs that won't fall off or crack that will toast my morning bagel. No convection oven. No combo toaster/toaster oven with slots on top. No rack to roast a chicken and a size to match. Just a simple toaster oven.

Back in my day, we used to toast our bagels on a stick over the fire...

All right, I'll stop being a curmudgeon, but for pete's sake, aren't there people out there who don't want automatic everything?

fortification fridays - parsley mint salad and lemony chicken soup with rice

When life gives you a Friday morning wakeup call by mysteriously breaking both your toaster and your coffeemaker overnight, make things with lemons. That's what I always say. Actually, I curse, using the f-, s-, d- and G-d words in a syntax-defying way, moan "my appliances, why hast thou forsaken me?" and shake my fist at the injustice of it all.

Then I put my bagel in the oven, mop up the coffee on the countertop, and make things with lemons. A green, vibrant herb salad and a suave, creamy lemony chicken rice soup are just what a cold day in February needs.

Lemony Chicken Soup with Rice

In February it will be
My snowman's anniversary
With cake for him and soup for me!
Happy once, happy twice
Happy chicken soup with rice!
--Carole King, "Chicken Soup with Rice"

This is my version of avgolemono, the Greek chicken soup with rice, egg, and lemon.

Kitchen needs: one stove burner.
Serves 4.

6 c. chicken stock, preferably homemade*
1/2 c. basmati rice
3 eggs, beaten
1 lemon
white pepper and salt to taste

Add raw rice, the juice of 1/2 lemon, salt and white pepper to the stock. Simmer the rice in the chicken stock until it is tender and swollen, breaking down just a bit to add thickness to the soup. When rice is cooked, stir the soup so it forms a whirpool in the center, then add eggs in stream. Keep stirring until the eggs form long strands that look pretty and swirly. Add the rest of the lemon juice just before serving. Adjust seasonings. Garnish with parsley or a tiny bit of parsley mint salad.

* This is easier than you might think. Seriously. All you need to do, at the bare minimum, is save the carcass from a roast chicken -- even one of those supermarket ones -- and throw it in your slow cooker with a quartered onion, a carrot and a celery stalk. Add water to about 2/3 full, and cook on low all day. Use right away or freeze in tupperware in 2-cup blocks. You should skim the fat off the top before using or freezing.

Parsley Mint Salad

This is my version of tabbouleh, the ubiquitous Middle Eastern salad that takes horrific forms when a box mix is involved. This is a salad that simply won't work with processed ingredients. Cookbook wisdom says that fresh American versions use too much bulgar wheat and not enough tomatoes. The biggest problem I find is that the bulgar tends to get soggy with liquids if it isn't drained properly. Whatever your preferred proportions are, you should focus on the making the bulgar as dry as possible.

Winter tomatoes, of course, are another problem. You need tomatoey juice to balance the lemon. I sometimes cheat and add a few spoonsful of my home-canned pure tomato sauce, which is composed solely of Purple Cherokee and Roma tomatoes from my garden. Another option is to slow roast yucky winter romas at a very low temperature with some olive oil and salt for, oh, three or four hours. And yet another is what I recommend here, salting and chopping little sweet cherry tomatoes.

Serves 6-8 as side dish.
Kitchen needs: something to boil water and a sharp knife.

2 medium bunches parsley, soaked in several changes of cold water in a bowl to clean of any sand
1 bunch spearmint (at least 1/4 cup of chopped leaves)
1 cup medium coarse (#3) bulgar wheat
1/4 small white onion, chopped finely and soaked in cold water to take away some sting, or 5-6 scallions, chopped
1 small green pepper, chopped
2 cups of the best cherry tomatoes you can find, chopped in quarters
1 juicy lemon
1/2 cup fruity extra virgin olive oil

Set aside several things: place bulgar in a bowl, and boil enough water to cover bulgar completely. Add boiling water and set aside for about 10 minutes, or until tooth-tender. Do not oversoak. Sprinkle 1/2 teaspoon of salt on the tomatoes and set them aside. Add chopped white onions to cold water and set them aside.

Proceed with the draining of the bulgar, by any means necessary. I use a small, fine colander and press against the bulgar with paper towels. The best way might be to drain and then wring dry in a clean towel or cheesecloth. You really want it dry.

Your perfectly dry bulgar should be mixed with the tomatoes and their juice and the juice from 1/2 a lemon. Set aside for 30 minutes or so to let juices soak into bulgar. Now do you see why the water should be removed? Tasty juicy goodness.

While the bulgar is soaking in the juices, finely chop the parsley and the mint with a very sharp knife and a light hand to avoid bruising the herbs. Place in large bowl with the onion (drained) and green pepper.

Combine the bulgar with the parsley. The obsessive should squeeze the bulgar/tomato mix lightly and remove excess liquid with paper towels before combining with the rest of the salad. Add the rest of the lemon juice, olive oil and salt to taste. You may find you need more lemon or oil.

This salad tastes better if allowed to rest in the refrigerator for a few hours. Serve with romaine lettuce leaves for scooping and/or pieces of pita bread.

history of house

A recent conversation with our neighbor yielded these tidbits:

Our houses were once one lot. This is evident from the plat map, but it was nice to get confirmation. Unfortunately, we were once a dump. The ground underneath the incense cedar was the "house dump" for the farmhouse next door, and still contains the detritus of the early twentieth century. Some people get art prints and antique furniture, I get old bottles and trash. Oh well. The vinca covers it. Thank god for groundcover.

Worse yet (I think), the yard served as a septic field for the farmhouse.

The neighbor built a short cement retaining wall between our properties, literally to retain the soil from shifting under his house. The soil here is heavy clay, but the bedrock and underlayers are softer, so the ground is actually more plastic than one might expect. He said his house is over an inch lower on the west side. In light of that news, I'm impressed that our crawl space construction is so solid. Maybe it's all the dumpage under the house.

There was once a heavy rail line going down our street. We were surprised to hear this, since our land was an unclaimed, swampy meadow for the first half of the twentieth century, but it does make sense when one considers the town was on one end and the old airport was on the other end of the street, I suppose. Light rail would be for carrying people, heavy for goods?

hellebore rising

Hellebore rising, summoning its demons and expelling the evil eye. It's that rebirth time of year, and the budding camellias and rhodedendrons mean good things are to come. The crocus greens and native chives are bursting from the lawn, and I'm praying the ongoing night frosts will trick my very late-planted scented daffodils into blooming properly and in a timely fashion.

I snapped a few shots of the diseased stump of the red cedar that recently met its demise on my strip. There was no saving it. The other photo shows the healthier red cedar stump for comparison. I am told that it would have become as weak as the other one in just a short time. Can you tell I still feel bad about this? We talked to our neighbor, who fully supported the chop-down, and said he'd been trying to get the larger (and healthy) spruce under his power lines removed by the city. Apparently, they told him that there are no inappropriate trees. I guess they haven't read their own website.


This weekend, I journeyed down to our wonderful regional garden store in Cottage Grove, Territorial Seed, which is not only a store but a research and development farm for northwest plants. Our climate and soils are so unusual here that varietals are really important for a successful vegetable garden. I bought Aquadulce fava beans as a mulch crop to fix nitrogen (and some snacking) and two peas (Sandy and Oregon Giant) for more of the same. The Sandy variety grows buckets of pea tendrils, one of my favorite Chinese stirfries. I also picked up some tiny cucumbers (Cool Breeze) for cornichons and Japanese long skinny cucumbers (Orient Wonder), and some French-style bush beans (Maxibel).

Time to kill the moss and plant grass seed, oh yes it is.

a present, for me?

You shouldn't have. No, really.

I finished the kitchen nook painting yesterday, and we cleaned the kitchen last night in preparation for OUR NEW STOVE. Sears had a one-day sale on Saturday, so I bought it. Now we just need to run a line up from the gas hookup, re-vent the kitchen, and we're good to go. I cannot tell you how excited I am to have a fully operational range again. We decided to go with white. Yes, there is a danger of our kitchen looking like this recent real estate listing photo (NOT our house), but I'm looking to the future, a future when our countertops are not white laminate and our cabinets are wood.

In other good news, the dryer that broke last week has been fixed, and Mr. Reluctant repaired the valve on the shower, so we now no longer take tepid showers.

I'm running out of steam. I think I'm finally tagged by the virus that's been running around the playground of Eugene. I'm going to take a few days off.