Oregon Blackberries

The last couple of times we passed through the Pacific Northwest, we noticed the abundance of blackberry bushes, but we were too early for the berries. This time we lucked out. Peak blackberry season and parked for a week in the midst of the brambles! 

There were bushes in Casey's Riverside RV Park and along almost any road we drove around Westfir and Oakridge, Oregon.  The weather was clear and warm so I took the opportunity to pick berries several times. It was fun to find the bushes with the sweetest tasting berries and be able to pick from so many bushes.

These berries taste like blackberries are supposed to taste, not like the ones in the grocery store that look beautiful but taste like some strange hybrid of berries and grapefruits.  Real food - love it. 

I followed the directions of our friends Nick and Cindy and flash froze quite a few, bagging them up for future use.  The ones I didn't freeze lasted a long time in the fridge too. 

I'll be very grateful if I can get this short post online. We are at Diamond Lake RV Park in Oregon, very close to Crater Lake National Park. It's a nice park and a beautiful area, but we have very limited connectivity or cell service. We get these brief windows of internet connection during which we can sometimes check email or browse the web, so this is really a miracle.  I'd love to post something about Diamond Lake, Crater Lake and all the waterfalls in the area, but we'll just have to see how our connection works this week.

We're heading into northern California along Rt. 395 soon, where I expect we'll have similar connectivity challenges. In three weeks we'll be in Reno so I hope I'll be able to catch up with communications then.  

Rainy Day to Catch Up

We've had about two weeks of great weather, and it looks like now we're about to have a week of rain. This is a perfect time to catch up on laundry, cleaning house, cooking and blogging about what we've been doing in the sunshine.  So today I baked the worlds best brownies. Here's the recipe. Try them. I promise they are the best. I got the recipe out of a Bon Appetit magazine that I picked up in a laundry room. I'll never make any other brownies again.

Brownies from scratch today!

Cocoa Brownies with Browned Butter and Walnuts

10 T (1 ¼ sticks) butter

1 ¼ C sugar

¾ C unsweetened cocoa powder

2 t water

1 t vanilla

¼ t salt (generous)

2 large eggs, chilled

1/3 C plus 1 T unbleached flour

1 C walnut pieces

Position  rack in bottom third of oven

Preheat oven to 325

Line 8x8 pan with aluminum foil and coat with nonstick spray

Melt butter in medium saucepan over medium heat.

Continue cooking until butter stops foaming and browned bits form at bottom of the pan, stirring often, about 5 minutes.

Remove from heat and immediately add sugar, cocoa, 2 t of water, vanilla, and ¼ t (generous) of salt.

Stir to blend.

Let cool 5 minutes (mixture will still be hot).

Add eggs to hot mixture 1 at a time, beating vigorously to blend after each.

When mixture looks thick and shiny, add flour and stir until blended.

Beat vigorously 60 strokes.

Add walnuts.

Transfer to prepared pan.

Bake until toothpick inserted in center comes out almost clean (with a few moist crumbs attached), about 25 minutes. Cool pan on rack. Using foil lift brownies from pan. Cut 4 by 4.

OK, here's what else we've been doing:

Mt. St. Helens

Olympia, WA - Wooden Boat Festival

Astoria, OR and Cape Disappointment, WA

Vancouver, WA farmers market

Mt. Hood and Timberline Lodge

Cascade Dining Room at Timberline Lodge

Timberline Lodge lobby

Timberline Lodge staircase

Hiking ...

with my good friend Carolyn.

Bird watching

Biking - We are living on Dike Access Rd. which runs along the top of a dike between the Columbia River and farming land (corn, raspberries, grass, cattle). It's a level ride for several miles. Along the way we've seen many bald eagles and an elk that has joined the local cattle herd.

Driving in and out of Portland three times to get our computer fixed. Now we have doubled the size of our hard drive to accommodate all these photographs.