Roasted Cranberry Sauce

One of Oregon’s food exports is the cranberry, accounting for about 5% of the nationwide harvest. This year, we bought some local cranberries to make into cranberry sauce. My first time ever. Historically, it was Dad’s job (which he relished a lot) to make the cranberry sauce. His was usually ground up with oranges, sugar […]

Spicy Mediterranean Chili

Recently I participated in a chili contest and this is the recipe that I came up with. I was feeling like making something different than your standard run-of-the-mill chili, so I went with a Mediterranean theme. I was hoping to win the hottest chili award, but I did not. But talking with the two others […]

Nouveau Baked Beans

When you think of baked beans, you usually mentally insert Boston at the front. These are not Boston Baked Beans. More like Chickpea Popcorn or something. They make a great, tasty, healthful snack.

Nouveau Baked Beans 2 C. cooked garbanzo beans (~ 3/4 C. dry beans, prepared) olive oil seasonings

Coat the beans in olive […]

Artisan Breads Every Day and Sourdough Pizza

Over this past year, I have been testing recipes for Peter Reinhart’s new book, artisan breads every day. The goal of this book was to find a way to get the full flavor that delayed fermentation offers, but to make the preparation time shorter. Or something. I don’t know, because with the delayed fermentation plan, […]

Praise for Heirloom Crops

In 2008 and 2009, we purchased seeds from Seed Savers and have been saving them. Last year, we saved some pea seeds (Green Arrow), some tomato seeds (Bloody Butcher) and some sweet pepper seeds (Tequila Sunrise). This year, we expanded the varieties and also saved some green bean seeds (Empress), and more tomato seeds […]

Flu Season

Flu season is upon us. IBM sponsors a flu-shot drive every year, offering flu shots to all employees for free. They have some company come on site and you flash your badge, sign on the line and they shoot you. I got mine about four hours ago. My arm aches. I have a headache too. […]

Mmmm. Buh-licious bread!!

Finally a crust and crumb that I can brag about. This is a loaf that I started as part of a Toastmasters speech. The speech was about how to make the best pizza dough ever. Since for demonstration purposes, the pizza dough and the pain a l’ancienne dough are identical to start with, I […]

First 5k in ten years

While our family was in Pacific City, OR, for three days last week, I decided not to take a vacation from my running. I figured that if I took Saturday off because I was at the beach, then I would probably take another day off for this or that reason and it would snowball and […]

Week three of nine

I am currently at week three of nine in the Podrunner Intervals Couch to 5k program. This week has me running for up to three minute intervals. Last week I was starting to get worried about shin splints until I started to wear shoes during the day. Normally, I am a bare-footed kind of guy; […]

Couch to 5k

Running has got to be my favorite form of exercise. But I was not born to run. All through high school, I had nasty posterior shin splints all through cross country season and right on into track season. I think I understand now more the causes of shin splints and how to deal with them. […]