Almost ready for Panama and Columbia

You can watch my thread for Panama and Columbia at http://paul2panama.blogspot.com/ as I travel about.

I will be gone from April 18th to May 8th.

Cooking Class at Celilo's, Hood River, OR

Wow was this amazing!  How could it be so good and also be vegetarian!  Well we certainly had fun putting it all the food together and making a wonderful meal.


We cooked up fresh Roasted Celeriac and Apple Gratin and also Sweet potato and Yam Gratin.  Ricotta Gnudi with Wild Mushrooms and Kale.  It was fun making the Gnudi 'Nudies" as Ben says and giggles each time.  And we made Olive Oil Biscotti that was just delicious for after dinner.  We also made herbed goat cheese and sweet paprika, Olive and sundried tomatoes, and mozzarella cheese balls cut in half and mixed with harissa spread. These were on toast for an appetizer.

Preparing the Olives and Sundried Tomatoes for the toast

Serving  Olives and Sundried Tomatoes		Goat cheese with herbs.

Mozzarella Cheese with Harissa Spread

Baked Celery Root		Baked Apples

Baked Sweet Potatoes and Yams 

Assembling the Celeric and Apple Gratin

Assembling the Sweet Potato and Yam Gratin

Layering the potatoes with Ricotta cheese
and bechamel sauce we made up.

Ricotta Gnudi's are almost ready.
See how they are now floating.

Making up the Olive Oil Biscotti with Hazelnuts.

Boy were they great!

(Sorry about the background fan noise)

The Ricotta Gnudi with Wild Mushrooms
and Kale are ready to be served.

The Gratins are now ready for serving.

Dinner is ready now and the wine is being served!  Yummy!  Thanks Ben.

Back on the Mini Farm

New pigs will be coming in on Sunday but the old pigs were depressed due to the snow and mud that built up in their pens.  Eric and Liesl went to work and created a new play pen for them and the are now very happy. Liesl was making one of them very happy!  They have rototilled the yard in less than a day and it was much easier than us doing it.  Also they are adding fertilizer to everything which will be good when we go to plant it in late spring.

Happy hungry pigs!

 The new pig shack is finished and erected and also has new fencing around it.  All looks good for the new arrivals on Sunday

Traveling back to Hood River from Bend OR

From Redmond I thought I saw Mt Hood but it was Mt Jefferson. Mt Hood had clouds covering it.  Roads were very good with lots  of nice snow on the trees.

Click on the pictures for a better view.

Skiing on Mt Batchelor Bend OR

Great day of skiing on Mt Batchelor with friends.  Joe, Marc and Cheryl at the top of the lift with horizontal snow and white out conditions.  Got Marc to take a picture of Cheryl and me at the bottom of the mountain after the snow had slowed down.  Too bad we didn't have any fun as you can tell for the pictures.

Just another day of Skiing at the Meadows.

 Great day to be out after 21" of new powder in the last 24 hours.  It was sunny some of the time but it was also windy at the top of Vista Express. Temperature was between 7-14 degrees.  14 at the base for sure and it says it was 7 at 6,600 feet on their website!  Great hitting the powder and also cruising on the semi groomed runs.  Got a lot of runs in and the legs are wobbly again!   Little more crowded today.  Must be getting old!

Here is a picture of where we parked the car!  Pretty cool amount of snow there.  

They say over 100 inches of base.

Snowing hard today

Looks like we might be able to go skiing tomorrow.  Big flakes coming down.  Slowed the camera down to watch them leave tracers!

 Angel of course enjoyed all the snow trying to bury herself it in but it wasn't deep enough.  I will have to bring her up higher and let her have some fun in the woods.

Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone

WOW, I was able to get into Ben's class for March 8th!  All of his classes were sold out but someone was no able to make it and I got lucky and took their place!

What Ben says the class is:
"You don't have to be vegetarian to enjoy this class.  Integrating non meat meals into your regular diet is highly recommended by health experts worldwide.  Learn how to turn grains, legumes and vegetables into healthy and well-balanced meals."

This is yet another great opportunity to learn some new things at Celilo.  www.celilorestaurant.com

Skiing Mt Hood Meadows

What a wonderful day to be skiing.  Fresh powder and it was light snow.  Not very many people and very clear day.  At least that was like it was when we started.  By 1PM it was snowing hard again and we left by 2PM.  Still had a lot of runs in and my legs are a little wobbly -- where are the Advil's?

Pregnant goats enjoying life

Beautiful day today and the goats were enjoying it immensely. They well be due around the end of April or the beginning of May.  Might just miss that since I will be going to Panama on April 20!

Cooking Class at Celilo's, Hood River, OR

Celilo's - really good food!  


What a great time was had for the 3 1/2 hour class that lasted 4 1/2 hours!  We started with a meet and greet with water, local cheese and crackers and fresh made bread.  There were 12 of us in the class.  Went over the basics and hand washing principals.  Then we got down to work in the kitchen.  


Who would ever like bitter Belgium endive salad?  Well this is what we were going to make first.  Ben Stenn is the chef and managing partner of Celilo Restaurant and Bar who was doing the cooking class.  He demonstrated how to clean and cut an endive and then handed the knife over to me and the person next to me and said now you prepare the rest of these while we go on to the next step.  Glad I had cooking classes back in Meeker since I know how to use a knife properly and we got to work.  He also had a' midevil' slicer (mandoline) that did both the horizontal and vertical cuts (Julienne cuts) for the heritage purple carrots, Taylor's Golden Pears, and Celery root.  Glad I didn't have to use that since I think it would have taken some skin off.  These all came out of the mandoline with very thin long slices.  We then toasted some local squash seeds.  Also fixed up some dressing made with honey, mustard, sherry vinegar, and olive oil.  Bringing all this together including hydrated currants that we had added some brandy. It looked like the picture to the right.  After preparing this salad we all dug in to eat it before going on to the next step.  Delicious to say the least!

Next came the Oregon Barry Farro with Winter Root Vegetables.  So what is Farro?  Click here to find out.  We looked at it and it looked like brown bb's or fat dark brown rice.  Ben put in stock as you can see in the picture to the right as well as a fresh bay leaf.  Stock consists of Onions (2 parts), carrots (1 part), and Celery (1 part).  Of course salt and pepper but that is added to almost everything for taste.  We put it on the stove to bring to a boil, then turned it down to a lower heat to let it expand and bloom!  Just like cooking with rice except it takes longer!  We prepared a bunch of vegies including Carrots, Celery root and Sunchokes.  Never ate a Celery root or a sunchokes (Jerusalem artichoke) before.  We prepared each one individually to be oven baked.  They all have different cooking times.  This will all be all be put together later but now we have to go to the main course.


Pacific King Salmon brought it today.  Ben proceeded to show us how to prepare a fillets from a whole fish.  Sure is nice to have really Sharp knives!  Showed us how he removed the fat and thinner parts of the fish so that we would have even cooking.  You can see in the second picture that he has removed these parts to the top left of the picture for use in other delicious preparations.  He is removing the bones with pliers.  To do this he gets a hold of the bone and starts pulling until it releases it hold and then it comes out nicely.

We prepared more of the Taylor's Golden Pears buy cutting them in half and spooning out the centers.  These pears are very sweet.  After we did this we cooked them to even make them sweeter and also slightly softer.  We will put them on top of our dinner plate as you will see later.

Ben prepared the first plate with all the ingredients plus others I didn't mention and topped it all off with a wonderful local blueberries (previously frozen) sauce we made up and then added extra blueberries and some brandy to the sauce.  Didn't even cook off the alcohol since he was looking for the aroma to come through.  Click on the picture for a better look.  Too bad the I-Phone doesn't take better pictures or its just me.

We then prepared the rest of the plates like Ben had done and brought them out to start eating.  Jacqueline, the house manager provided us with a wonderful glass of wine for the meal. 

Meanwhile we were enjoying our little feast he prepared the Salmon for us.  I think normally he would have severed it on this plate as well but we are in a class.   He prepared the Salmon into 6-7 ounce fillets with the skin on!  He then put them into a very hot pan, skin side down for about 3 minutes and then put them in the oven to finish them off for another 3 minutes.  He brought them out to us and servers us.  Then sat down and talked to us about the meal and answered all our questions we had.  It was a great experience and I would recommend it to anyone to take cooking classes in an upscale restaurant anytime you can find one that is offering a class.  Don't miss out on the fun and the new knowledge you will come away with. 

 Bon Appetite!

Barn roof Installed!

Well the snow lead to sun and we were able to get the rafters up and the roofing on after a couple days.  Eric hung out on a ladder which I couldn't take a picture of since I was holding the ladder just in case.  Had a rope harness on since these metal roofs are very slippery.  He might have to go up again to add some additional screws in the top.

As you can see Tucker is helping us with all of the construction.  He is always at the ready except it's about a ball rather than doing anything useful for us.  

Angel has her independence streak so she doesn't come out with us for very long since she seems to wounder without supervision.  She always check out the pigs, goats and the chickens when she is out and when you aren't looking she disappears!  We keep working at her tactics and have most of them figured out.  She just doesn't go out at night since for some reason we can't see her.  I don't know how you don't see a white dog at night but she disappears but does show up after just a little while.

Of course the pigs watch us very closely as we are working on the barn but they do lose interest as you can tell from the next picture.

RX 400h Trailer Wiring

Well it has been a funny week.  Some snow and mud.  Doing lots of misc things.  Got the RX400h wired no thanks to etrailer.com since they send me a complicated harness to wire the trailer lights and all it needed was a pig tail for a four way light system.  (The car was pre-wired for a trailer light system including the 30 amp fuse already in the car.  Had to cut the plug off and solder the 4 wires to it and it worked perfect the first time.  Yaw!  Off to Home Depot for some roofing and some more wood to test out the new trailer hitch and the cars wiring.

Woke up to a little snow just to slow down the project for a little while.  Sorry about you guys in the East Coast!

The New Barn Roof Framing

Eric and I had fun this weekend getting the framing done.  Once again the precision was awesome for a pole barn.  Check out the addition you can see on the left side of the barn (picture to the right).   As you can tell Tucker (the Golden Retriever) was helping by giving us a ball anytime he could.

I guess I was a little off kilter when I made this shot!  Taylor is helping putting boards together that were scraps.  He also helped pulling out nails from old boards.  It will be a little slower this week since Eric is working quite a bit.  Then the next time I post anything about the barn project we should have a roof on it.  Yay!!

Can you see the model to the right of the new barn we are using!  Ha ha!

Trailor Hitch for my '06 RX400h

Trailer hitch arrived yesterday and Eric and I decided to install it.  We watched the video on www.etrailer.com and it looked simple enough.  Took off the panel they showed and took of the one on the passenger side of the car too.  Everything was going just fine and we got the hitch up there hanging with all six bolts.  Lets put those panels back up.  So we started to do it on the passenger side of the car.  No they don't fit. Take the bolts off the that side and loosen the bolts on the drivers side so the hitch would lower down a bit.  got it back in there.  The video doesn't show it and I don't think they mentioned it but you don't have to really remove the panel on the passenger side of the car.  Finally got it back in place and got the bolts all put back and tighten down.  Upon reviewing the video again it sort of sounds like they just throw away the driver side panel but we aren't sure.  Looking for answers to this now.  As you can tell it looks great from the outside.

Hopefully the underside will look great again too.  Maybe tomorrow or Sunday we will get to the wiring harness.  An RX400h uses LED lights so we have a special harness that has to be installed which is fed from the battery!  Lots of wires to work with but I am confident we will succeed!

Added a little more to the barn with new posts and wall plate on the outside part of the barn.  Also put in the ridge board on the main part of the barn.  Should be able to make some progress in the next couple days.  Lots of nice weather is in store here.