(YNP = Yosemite National Park)
GTNP = Grand Teton National Park
YNP = Yellowstone National Park
Rockies: Rain, Moose, Elk, Mud (and Squirrel), October 11, 2011
(RNMP = Rocky Mountain National Park)
Adams Falls video:
My grandmother, Gladys Warner, was a formidable woman. She raised a family of six while working as a cook in a logging camp in the Adirondacks. When she made pies, she made them by the dozen. She nursed her sister's twins at the same time as one of her own. She hunted and fished. She grew most of her own food, canning lots of it even after getting huge freezer chests. She could knit a pair of mittens in an evening. And she made the best molasses cookies I have ever had.
This recipe makes 8-9 dozen, so make sure you have about 3 hours. Note that it doesn't use eggs, dairy products, or nuts, so it's a handy recipe if you have to worry about food allergies.
Preheat oven to 350F.
Cream together the brown sugar and shortening.
Add the molasses, honey, applesauce, salt, and spices and mix well.
Mix the baking soda into about 4 cups of flour, and add to the mixture. Stir until smooth.
Continue to add flour, mixing well, until the dough is very stiff. (The exact amount can vary based on humidity and who knows what else.)
Drop large spoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet. (Bigger than a walnut, but smaller than an apricot.)
Butter the bottom of a glass and dip it in sugar. Use it to flatten the drops to between 1/3" and 1/2".
Bake for 12-15 minutes, until they bounce back when tapped with a finger. If they brown, you've kept them in too long.
Dark, non-stick cookie sheets do not work well: the cookies tend to burn on the bottom. Ordinary greased metal sheets work fine; they won't stick at all if you let them cool on the cookie sheet for about 5 minutes before transferring them to cooling racks.
If stored in an air-tight container, these cookies are purported to last indefinitely without refrigeration. (But I've never been able to test this - they get eaten too fast!)
I was dutifully reading the legal agreements on a website, which were popped open in a new window. Can you tell me what's wrong with this picture?
They did provide a link to print the document, but what I wanted to do was save a copy. Fortunately, I knew the keyboard shortcut "ctrl-s" for "Save page as…".
You just never know when those keyboard shortcuts will come in handy!
A short video where Jon explains and demonstrates our hop harvesting method.
Fully instructed, the crew gets snipping.
The hops all snipped off, all that is left is a pile of hop bines, and paper grocery bags filled with hops
A short video trying to convey the size of our hops plants this year. Hops die down to the roots each year. They are a "bine" - using the winding of the stems to climb - as opposed to a "vine", which uses tendrils to grasp.
We rig a flag pole augmented by two-by-fours, from which a line is strung to a hub cap, and from there to a third floor window. From this horizontal line and the spokes of the hub cap, we dangle twine down from the bines to climb up. On the ground, we have three tripods made of coated steel rods. The bines climb up these (and each other) until they reach the dangling strings.
Hops are the flower of the plant. They look like pale green pine cones, but are soft. Under the scales are little sacs of yellow stuff. This is the source of the bitterness that adds flavor to beer, and it also acts as a natural preservative. When harvesting, you have to be careful not to break the sacs.
When Jon brews, he usually uses purchased hops for the wort, and uses our harvest for dry-hopping his Astral Ale, an India Pale Ale (IPA.) That could change if we get a bigger harvest!
Update August 18th: Here's a short piece from Jon this Spring about rigging the trellis, including a picture of the hop plants when they were only a foot or two tall.
I love being in Maine pretty much any time of the year, but right now (being July!) July is my favorite month. This video was taken on the Blue Hill Peninsula of Penobscot Bay, and features a ruffled orange day lily, lush bushes and Red Oak trees, and the beautiful call of a Hermit Thrush in the background.
A phoebe family calls our porch it's home in the early Summer. Mom and Dad catch bugs, then swoop about from perch to perch to confuse predators before finally arriving at the nest. Their arrival is greeted with loud peeping immediately followed by silence as the adult flies away. I took this picture of the two little ones in their mud and grass nest nestled into the eaves two days before they fledged. The porch was suddenly lonely without their comings and goings.
