Further Documentation

I really love this photograph. Alice working on an art project.
Alice and I made pizza, with rice flour crust. We made the sauce out of crushed cashed tomatoes, tomato past, fresh tomatoes, diced onions, oregano, salt. Mushrooms and zucchini on top.
I went to Virgina for the weekend for the Wolf family reunion! My friend from Reed lives there, and I spent Friday afternoon making femo creations with Lauren and her little sister Claire. Here we are showing off our new necklaces.
One of the few times I've cooked by myself for myself! For the vegetables, I first steamed the asparagus and carrots for 7 minutes and then sauted them with ginger, salt, soy sauce, and sugar. On the right, arugala salad (too dry) with hand-picked thimbleberries from the Canyon
as garnish.
Claire made Alice a peach rhubarb pie for her birthday. Claire is really good at baking pies; she's careful not to make them too sweet or too tarte. On Monday, she baked a cherry pie with cherries Canyon Crew picked in the Canyon.
I realize I haven't written about Canyon Crew yet, which I soon will do. Well, these are two of my friends with whom I work - Claire and Rachel. This was on the first really hot day of summer last week.
Claire baked Amish Friendship Bread. She gave me a starter (because I'm her friend) on June 31. If you continue making it, you have bread every 10 days. We talked about what an interesting way of marking time it is. I couldn't believe this week that 10 days had already gone by since last time, when we ate the bread as breakfast at the beach after staying up all night to see the historic low tide (That night the sky was so clear that the Milky Way nearly spanned horizons).
For those interested, here are the instructions my starter came with. As you can see, it's particularly for those with a refined sweet tooth:
Amish Friendship Bread

Important Notes:
• DON’T use any type of metal spoon or bowl!
• DON’T refrigerate at any time during the process
• If air gets in the bag, let it out!
• It is normal for the batter to rise, bubble and ferment

Day 1: Do nothing
Day 2: mush the bag
Day 3: mush the bag
Day 4: mush the bag
Day 5: mush the bag
Day 6: Add to the bag: 1 C flour, 1 C sugar & 1 C milk – then mush the bag!
Day 7: mush the bag
Day 8: mush the bag
Day 9: mush the bag
Day 10: Follow the instructions below;

1. Pour the contents of the bag into a bowl
2. Add 1 ½ C flour, 1 ½ C sugar & 1 ½ C milk and mix until smooth
3. Measure out 4 separate “starter” batters of 1 C each into 4 different Ziploc bags. Keep a starter for yourself and give the other three to friends with a copy of the recipe. Be sure to write the date of day 1 (TODAY) on each starter so your friends know when to do what!
4. Preheat oven to 325 degrees
5. Add the following ingredients to the remaining batter in the bowl:
o 3 eggs
o 1 C canola oil (or ½ C oil and ½ C applesauce)
o ½ C milk
o 1 C sugar
o 2 tsp cinnamon
o ½ tsp vanilla
o 1 ½ tsp baking powder
o ½ tsp baking soda
o ½ tsp salt
o 2 C Flour
o 1 large box or 2 small boxes instant vanilla pudding mix
o mix until smooth!
6. Grease 2 large loaf pans and mix additional ½ C sugar and 1 ½ tsp cinnamon. Dust the greased pans with half of the sugar mixture.
7. Pour the batter evenly into the 2 pans and sprinkle with the remaining sugar.
8. Bake about 1 hour, then cool until bread loosens from the pan (about 10 minutes)
9. Turn out onto serving dish, and serve warm or cold.

Not something I plan on eating regularly myself, but a fun tradition and a good gift.

Thursday's dinner. Steamed carrots and yellow eggplant and yellow squash and chives and onions with ginger-miso-tahini sauce over rice and tempeh and salad with refreshing mango juice.
I sidewalk chalked! The picture I took from a book of Indian designs my mamasita bought be when I was last home (It's an owl).
We got Friday off work. I went to the Washougal River in Washington a half an hour away with my friends. I have never seen such a busy river! It was hot hot and the water temperature was just perfect. Claire and I read the same book (in between nap breaks). When we finish, we're going to have a bookgroup. It's called Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken, and it is about social movements, and why there had recently been such a search in them, though not collectively. I read in it last week that Sequoia trees are insect-resistant (because of fungi), and so attract no birds. Thus, the Sequoia forest is strikingly pitch silent to be in.