Family Home Evening

My siblings and I are stuck in a rut. We've been snapping beans and shelling peas since we were old enough to pull a carrot. Canning and freezing fruits and veggies from the garden, elk and deer brought in by the family hunting parties, tuna and clams and salmon ... we live in a bountiful corner of Eden. The coast temperate climate is a blessing - especially the rain.


When a call came that there were two dishpans of beans and a bucket of peas to do, Mom and I grabbed our favorite paring knives, a roll of masking tape (for taping the thumb the blade hits as we cut the beans), and hustled up the hill to my brother's.

Working together is always fun - lots of stories and catching up on family news makes the time fly.

Pepsi is a good supervisor. She seems to be doing einee - menee - minee-mo between the beans, the caramel corn, and the baby zuchinni bread muffins. Gotta keep our strength up, ya know...

Heading home, we caught a great shot of a typical Tillamook Bay sunset - awesome.

Summer evenings can be a walk on the beach, a book in the hammock, pie and icecream dessert ... or putting food into storage for winter. Whatever we do, having family to share it with, makes for great memories.

Black Gold of Summer

When August finally rolls around, when the sun finally heats up the coast, when we just CAN'T WAIT A MINUTE LONGER...the blackberries finally get ripe.

We're talkin' big, juicy, burst-in-your-mouth BLACKBERRIES. Mom and I had a hankerin' for a blackberry cobbler, which has been coming on for a couple of weeks as we kept checking the neigborhood berry bushes during walks around the block. We had picked a few here and there, just sampling, checking for the prime moment.

Today was IT. We visited an old favorite place (no, we do NOT tell where our best blackberry patches are - this is akin to fishing, folks, don't ask - don't tell), and enjoyed a fine hour or so of picking berries and being out in the warm weather, with the bay breeze to keep things comfy.

When we were kids, we picked blackberries along our street, by the dishpan full. We earned some summer shekels by taking the berries to the little local grocery store, where the berries were loaded into cannery flats and taken to the valley for processing. I think we got about $1.5o a flat. "Normo's" was the name of the store - which is now one of the ubiquitous chain of Indian-owned little stores around the country. Things change. But not the flavor of the blackberries!

Mom has been picking berries for more years than she has fingers and toes - times four! She recalls that their homestead was surrounded by fields of berry bushes. They picked them by the bucket, and got about 75 cents for a big pail. That was big money, for folks who saw little real money in those days of the depression and raising a large family by any means at hand.

She still loves picking berries. All of us kids grew up picking berries of one sort or another as they came ripe over the summer. The blackberries are still a favorite. Getting into a good patch laden with big 'ol berries is like finding gold.

That silvery circle is a quarter, to give a comparison for the size of these berries....

It just don't get much better, for a summer day in Bay City.

Mom fusses and fusses as she sees folks picking "HER" berries along the street, until she can get out and pick a couple pails. Then when there's a few quarts in the freezer, thoughts turn to bubbling pies and biscuit-topped cobblers.

Now can you see why we love blackberries? And it doesn't hurt to live just a few miles from the Tillamook Cheese Factory, where they make icecream from heaven. "Old Fashioned Vanilla" was made specifically to go with blackberry cobbler and pie, doncha know?!

It's too bad they haven't figured out a way to put aroma into blogs. You would be overwhelmed, I'm tellin' ya. This stuff is food of the gods. Here's my recipe, as much as I actually do a recipe.

BAY CITY BLACKBERRY COBBLER

Using a 1 quart casserole dish. (Adjust amounts for size of pan you use.)

Oven 350 degrees.

Put 3 cups of clean fresh blackberries into ungreased baking dish. Gently stir into the berries: 3/4 to 1 c. of sugar - (depends on how sweet and ripe the berries are), about 1/4 c. corn starch, 1/2 tsp. cinnamon, 1 tsp. allspice, dash salt, 1/4 c. water.

Bake 15 min. Stir gently to get berries in middle moved to outside. Bake additional 10 min. During this time, make the cobbler topping:

Mix together 1 1/2 c. Bisquick mix, 3 T. sugar, 3 T. melted butter, about 2/3 c. milk or enough to make very thick batter.

When the berries are just barely bubbling around the edges and the center is hot also, drop dollops of the dough onto the surface. Sprinkle generously with cinnamon sugar. The hot juices cook the biscuit dough evenly from underneath while the top browns nicely - no uncooked dough in the middle!

Bake until cobbler is browned on top and firm to touch; 15-20 min. Check at 15 min.

Did you know cobblers are named for the cobble-stone shaped dollops of dough?

Did you know you can founder on Blackberry Cobbler?

But what a way to go!

"Fair Time is Fun Time!"

I haven't done fair entries for a lot of years - I think since my kids were young teens. This year, working at the Master Gardener's Learning Garden (which is on the fair grounds) for several months previous to the fair, I got bitten by the bug again. There's something about the fair that just makes you want to have fun! Which was the fair theme this year...hmmmm.
Anyway, we raided the garden (OUR garden, not the LG) for some veggies that might cut the mustard (oh, those Pronto Pups...) and came up with some peas, broccoli, and baby zuchinni that looked like they wanted to take their chances.
The peas, Little Marvels, are the variety mom and dad have always planted. This year the crop struggled, along with most of the garden, with soggy weather. But we rounded up 10 look-alike pods, and they swept the pea entries! The broccoli also brought home the blue, while the baby zuchinni tagged along with a third prize.
Not too bad for a less-than-optimum growing season! And, the really fun part - the ribbons are worth MONEY! I picked up $7 in premiums - which will buy a few packets of seeds from my favorite catalog, for next year's garden.

Yes, I know there are only five pea pods in the photo. By the end of the fair, the entries were pretty limp. So we scrounged a few stand-ins for the photo op.

"They're so corney..."

"They wouldn't get a thing done around here if I didn't oversee every detail. It's hard work, let me tell you. Me and the King here, we have it allllll under control. When Gram mentioned she wanted to put a few dozen ears of corn into the freezer, we knew things were going to get sticky..."

We've learned over the years, that it's usually easier to buy a crate or so of good corn for the freezer, rather than depend on the garden. A nice chat with Freddie's produce manager resulted in a good deal on a case of 48 fat ears of yellow corn - he had overpurchased, and was happy to have someone take it off his hands so he didn't have to trim it up for display.

Mom did the shucking, she really knows how to clean off an ear. Then the corn is scalded for 3 minutes...

and immediately chilled in ice water.

The best job is cutting off the kernels. Our special cob holder should have a patent, we just never get around to it...

Doesn't that look like sunshine? (And it was a sunny day, for a change!)

For just two of us, we bagged it in snack size bags.

Ten little bags fit into a gallon freezer bag. Doesn't get any easier to have corn in the winter - just snag a little bag out of the big bag, heat it with a dollop of butter, salt and pepper, and we have sunshine on a winter day!

"Man, are we glad THAT job is done. 'Bout wore us out..."


NO. She was spayed months ago.

And we put 47 bags of corn into the freezer. Not bad, for a few hour's work. One thing we both love to do is canning and freezing produce for our food storage. Mom trained all us kids, from the time we were about 4, to help with the preserving, and it surely stuck with all of us.

And we did it all IN SPITE of the "help"...

East to West Family

It's hard to be a mother hen when the chicks are 2000 miles away, the wings just don't reach that far! But once in awhile, east comes west, and the nest is filled once again with laughter, stories, sandy beach trips, s'mores, sand, roasted hotdogs, sand, beachcombing, treasures, sand...and aren't we blessed with the advent of digital cameras with multi-gig cards for all those photos!






Pat and Tonya were unable to come, but sent Stephen and Elyse on the train for us to fetch from Portland. We had a houseful! The big tent in the back yard took the overflow of boys...


Carrie and Brent and the punks drove non-stop from Wisconsin to Utah to visit Brent's family, then straight through to Oregon. Oh to be young again...



Cape Meares, across the bay, was the choice for an impromptu beach picnic gathering with the Wrights, Stauffers, Farrs, Kizerians, Summers and friends, and an opportunity for Becky to use her terrific camera and talent for family photos. The smokey fire, roasted hotdogs, and kayaking were a bonus!

All my grandpunks: Lee (10), Collin (13), only grandaugher Elyse (13), tallest Stephen (16), Than (almost 15 - next tallest!), Jayden (8), and my Max (6). Grandpa Dennis left a bit of himself in each of them - they are truly my treasures.

When did they grow up on us??? I miss those little ones, but the big ones are pretty amazing and great fun!

Of course we have to leave some true-to-life recording for posterity..Family reunions are so precious, filling our hearts with renewed bonds of love and appreciation.

Thanks for the memories...