Grace and Hammer

Even though as a retired chef I cook at home a lot, a lot more than most people, I do love to go out. I love to go out for the same reasons everyone else does. Sometimes I don't want to decide what to cook or don't want to wash dishes after dinner. Sometimes the refrigerator is bare and I don't want to create a miracle meal out of the seemingly bare pantry. Sometimes I just want somebody to wait on me for a change. And sometimes (and my wife is going to say that because I listed this last, that it is lowest priority) I just want to focus on Ann and not on dinner. (I just want to tell my wife that the last item in a list is the one that people remember most).

Going out, though, is often terribly disappointing. Bend is a veritable sea of restaurants and we have tried a lot of them, really trying to find ones that resonate with us. And it is tough going. The list of restaurants that have let us down is immense while the list of ones that are reliable is almost non-existent. For whatever reason, the myriad of restaurants that want to play in the fine dining space cannot get their act together and the food quality is average at best.

Accordingly, to fill the fine dining void, we have tried to support the few ethnic food carts and restaurants in lily white Central Oregon, but our palates are terribly jaded. We come from Washington DC, one of the country's most underrated great food cities, where you will find excellent ethnic food of every persuasion catering to all the world's embassies. At the end of the day, we have to eat the food on offer here in Central Oregon, and that is pretty much standard American fare, such as smashburgers or pizza..

Even with our aim set well below fine dining, it is notable when we find a place that delivers consistently good food. Let's take pizza for example. You can find great pizza in this area, but you have to look hard and you have to be open to driving. Bend proper is not necessarily the best place to find great pizza. While Chasin' Pizza in town has decent pies, our best success heretofore was at Boone Dog in Sisters. We've heard good things about Pisano's in Tumalo, but we don't trust the rumor mill; we have yet to try it. In a stroke of good fortune this weekend, we had cause to go to Redmond where we encountered excellent pizza at Grace and Hammer.

Setting the scene for those not familiar with Redmond, roughly 20 miles north of Bend and notable as the location of our airport, Grace and Hammer is in downtown just a handful blocks west of the main drag through town, US 97. There on 7th Street at Cascade Avenue sits a wood frame clapboard-sided church with a short tower on the southwest corner. Stairs lead up to the gothic-framed entry doors in this tower. If it were not for the constant stream of comers and goers up these stairs, you might not even notice that this is not a church, but a full-on temple of pizza.

The roughly-three story tower serves as an entry vestibule to the large open two-story nave to the right. Tables are situated at the near end of the nave, overlooked by a 4-part gothic window topped with round fan of stained glass, while the pizza oven sits at the opposite end of the nave behind a bar on the left side of the building. Like every other church-turned-restaurant I have ever visited, Grace and Hammer evokes the "this is such a cool space!" reaction in me.

Despite the cool factor, churches are designed so that everyone can hear the service and so they are very loud spaces in which to house restaurants. Moreover, the 800-degree wood-fired pizza oven in the corner cranks up the heat in the place. These are just facts of life; the pizza is worth all the noise and heat.

Joining the fairly lengthy line, we ordered our pies and beers at the cash register and then took seats at the adjacent bar where Adam Valentine, so-called Preacher of Pizza, presided. The place was hopping already at 5pm when we arrived and we asked Adam how many pies they would make that evening. He said, "Could be a 100, could be 350." They made at least 100 pies while we were sitting there and were well on their way to the 350 mark when we left.

The crowd was no doubt partially in response to a segment on "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives." While this show has featured some gems, it has also lauded some places of dubious quality. In fact, a slot on Triple-D very likely might cause us to skip a restaurant. But we had heard good things about Grace and Hammer from more reliable sources than Guy Fieri.

It was a good thing that we arrived as early as we did before our show in Redmond. After waiting on line to order, our pies took a good 35-40 minutes to come out of the oven. The crew was hustling incredibly quickly to produce a deluge of pies, including our two. Despite running around like a mad man, Adam was mixing cocktails and pulling beers between errands, all the while keeping up a running dialog with us. Among other things, we learned from him that he uses King Arthur's Sir Galahad flour, which is notable for being the flour that I use as well as being a little off-trend in an industry that tends to use Caputo 00 flour.

As for our order, Ann and I, we are pizza purists and so we are not going to be persuaded at all by all your fancy toppings. For us, it is all about the crust. We want a great crust with just enough really good toppings so that the pizza stays light and the flavor of the crust shines through. Accordingly, we ordered two basic pies from the laundry list of specialty pies, the Purist, which is a margherita by any other name, and the Alabaster, a simple white pie.

Dining Area in the Former Nave

Pizzas Waiting to be Fired;
Notice the Holy Pizza Shirt

Small but Nicely Curated List of Draft Beers;
There's Also a Cooler of Cans

Alabaster, Cheese and Basil

Purist, a Margherita with Cherry Tomatoes

Somebody Loves Her Pie

So how was the pie? Briefly, this is the best pizza we have had in Oregon, even surpassing our heretofore go-to favorite, Capo in McMinnville. This is surely the highest praise that we can give pizza for the pies at Capo are rock solid and made by pizzaiolos trained in Naples. The crust at Grace and Hammer is damn near perfect and the toppings are just right; the pies are light, non-greasy, and the toppings accentuate the crust rather than smother it. The scant San Marzano tomato sauce on the red pie was delightful, light and conveying the essence of tomato flavor for which San Marzanos are renowned.

We had a show at the Deschutes County Fairgrounds abutting the airport on the south side of town, about five minutes from downtown. Good thing we arrived around 5:00, because we were 6:15 getting in the truck to head to the fairgrounds for the 6:30 showing of the Paranormal Cirque. We are huge fans of Cirque du Soleil and so we thought this small traveling show from a small company that we've never heard of might be fun.

Paranormal Cirque at the Deschutes County Fairgrounds

I'm Amazed This Picture Even Turned Out in the Dark 

So, the show. Cirque du Soleil it was not, but I didn't really expect it to be, this far away from a major metropolitan area. A couple of the acts were decent; many were not. The humor was juvenile, but it appealed to the majority of the audience. About 15 minutes of the 90-minute show was good stuff; the rest was forgettable. I wouldn't spend the money to see anything by this company again, but it was a great excuse for us to drive to Redmond and discover Grace and Hammer, our current vote for best pizza in the area.

Morocco via Marseilles

It's not a big secret that I love the food of North Africa; at the restaurant, my tasting menus often included dishes from or in homage to Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. I find the use of spices fascinating and second only in the world to Indian cooking, another love of mine. North African cuisine also relies heavily on my favorite style of cooking, the braise, in the form of its ubiquitous tagines. Tagines are stews, essentially, cooked in the flat earthenware dish with the conical lid which gave its name to the dish.

Ann and Michelle

And I am a big student and lover of French provincial cooking, the more rustic dishes of the countryside versus the haute cuisine of Paris and the Michelin-starred restaurants. Provence, as a region, really excites my palate with its broadly Mediterranean cuisine, a far cry from the more pan-European cuisine of Paris and the north. I have fond memories of eating exciting and for me at the time, novel, dishes in Aix, Nice, Cassis, and Marseille.

What do these two regions on opposite sides of the bright sunny blue Mediterranean have to do with each other? A lot, as it turns out. People and their food have been coming and going across the water from continent to continent for millennia. And as people and cultures have mixed, each side of the sea has influenced the other in innumerable ways. The second language of the North African nations is French and the second cuisine of the south of France is North African, interpreted through the French lens. Highly spiced tajines, for example, are widespread along the Mediterranean coast of France.

I am always truly fascinated how distinct cuisines meet across political boundaries to inform each other. Think of Tex-Mex or the Polish influence in Pittsburgh and the Rust Belt. The mixing of African and French cooking to form une cuisine afro-française delights me.

We had new friends Andreas and Michelle over for dinner last evening and in the process of brainstorming the menu, Ann was pushing in the Moroccan direction. This naturally had me thinking of a tajine. And then I remembered a subtly spiced chicken tajine that I had once in Provence spiced merely with cumin, garlic, and olives. I would make a version of this tajine but naturally, I would make it my own, adding both saffron and preserved lemons to the dish in my food memory for a subtle, yet complex dish.

What to serve with a tajine? Well, naturally, one would make a very plain couscous to soak up all the delicious braising juices. But a dietary restriction precluded any gluten in the dinner. Ann suggested (she's very good at helping me to focus in my menu-making) panisse, the delightful chickpea French fry replacements from Marseille, the major French port on the Med. Why not panisse? It and other chickpea flour dishes (such as socca from Nice) are so common to Provence though they are likely to originate from another close neighbor, Italy.

That left one more dish for the menu, a side salad. Chopped tomato salads are common across the entire Mediterranean from North Africa to the Levant and back through Turkey, Greece, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, and France. Everyone has a simple salad of chopped tomatoes simply dressed. I thought to make a Moroccan version spiced with cumin until a sachet of fennel pollen arrived in the mail the afternoon of our dinner. Fennel pollen would make a tremendous substitute for cumin. And with that, the menu was largely set: panisses, tomato salad, and chicken and olive tajine.

Any time we have people over for dinner for the first time, I like to set a menu of dishes that I can execute in advance so that I can spend my time socializing rather than cooking. We save guest participation dinners for those who like to cook for future gatherings. However, Ann conveyed to me that Andreas was really into cooking or at least seeing some cooking, to pick the mind of a chef, and so Ann and I did minimal prep beforehand and left much of the actual cooking for after Andreas and Michelle arrived.

Cooking Chickpea Flour for Panisses

Bartender Annie Pre-Mixing a Batch of  Cocktails

About a week before the dinner, I started the process of preserving a lemon, cutting it into lengthwise quarters, coating it in salt mixed with a touch of cinnamon and thyme, and covering the whole with some kalamata olive brine (rather than lemon juice). I used to keep big batches of preserved lemons in the refrigerator, but they take up too much space, so now I just make them to order. They will cure fairly well in a week on the counter, but two weeks is better.

As an aside, we used to make preserved lemons (and dozens of other pickles) in huge containers at the restaurant and pray that the health inspector would not come in during the two-week period that we left them on the counter before refrigerating them. Health inspectors are notoriously bad at overlooking food items that are traditionally not refrigerated: butter, eggs, cured hams, cheeses, and all manner of pickles including sauerkraut and preserved lemons.

Also, I made a batch of harissa, the super spicy chile and spice paste that is ever so common in North Africa, especially Tunisia. I did not know when I made the batch what I would use it for other than as a condiment to accompany the tajine. I have made my own harissa for so long now that I can barely remember the process of reading through recipes for it and trying a bunch of commercial versions to come up with my own version.

One thing I don't like in a lot of commercial versions is a dependence on tomatoes or tomato paste in the sauce. If it's supposed to be a chile sauce, why use tomato as a filler? And so my version came over time to be a mixture of crushed red ripe jalapeños (easily available in the US), smoked paprika, spicy Hungarian paprika, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, a pinch of cinnamon, and spices. For my spices, I add texture to the sauce by leaving half of the spices whole. My spices include roughly equal parts of fennel, caraway, and cumin. The whole spices soften after about a week while all the flavors marry in the refrigerator. In my not so humble opinion, my harissa beats any that I have ever tasted.

Later in the week when talking with Ann about the menu, she clarified for me that her idea was to serve the panisse as a first course rather than as a couscous replacement with the main course. I loved that and immediately thought that we needed a dipping sauce for the crunchy sticks of cooked chickpea flour. Out of seemingly nowhere, the idea of harissa aïoli jumped into my mind and so the sauce issue and how I would use the harissa were settled.

Early yesterday morning, I ground a bunch of cumin and chopped a lot of garlic which I mixed with olive oil to make a paste. I then rubbed this paste into a batch of chicken thighs and put them in the refrigerator to marinate all day until needed at dinner time. Next, I pounded out a couple of cloves of garlic into a paste in my big green granite mortar and made a batch of plain aïoli that I flavored with a bunch of harissa to give a spicy sauce the color of Russian dressing.

After that, I made a batch of batter for the panisses by whisking water, salt, and olive oil into chickpea flour, bringing it a boil while stirring, then cooking over low heat while stirring constantly for ten minutes. Finally, I would spread the super thick batter into a greased dish to cool to room temperature on the counter. My basic recipe is roughly 250g of chickpea flour to a liter of water with a teaspoon of Kosher salt and a drizzle of olive oil. This is the perfect amount to put into a 9"x9" brownie pan.

In the afternoon, Ann mixed up a bunch of her Oaxacan Old Fashioneds (reposado tequila, mezcal, bitters, and agave nectar). She also rimmed four coupes with smoked salt, meaning that all she had to do when Andreas and Michelle arrived was to chill the drinks and strain into the cups. 

Panisse with Harissa Aïoli

When our guests arrived, I fired two frying pans on the cooktop, one for browning the chicken and one for frying the panisse. While the first batch of chicken was browning, I flipped the panisse cake onto my cutting board and cut it into fingers which Andreas and I fried in olive oil to crispy goodness.

While everyone was enjoying dipping these crunchy fingers into the spicy aïoli, I drained the excess oil from the chicken pan and added diced onion, preserved lemon, and saffron. The onions cooked until translucent at which point I added both green and black olives, both pitted, and moistened the mixture with a bit of chicken stock. Once the sauce was boiling rapidly, I poured it over the chicken which went into a 400F oven, covered, until the chicken was tender, about an hour.

Star of the Show: Tomato Salad

Between sips of wine and while the chicken was cooking, I made a quick tomato salad. It is so hard to get decent tomatoes in this part of Oregon, so I rely on grape tomatoes year round. They aren't awesome, but they aren't bad either. After splitting the tomatoes in half, I minced a quarter of a red onion and a big handful of Italian parsley from the farmers market. These I mixed into the salad with the juice of a lemon, some olive oil, salt, black pepper, and a big sprinkle of fennel pollen.

Fennel pollen is something that I used to use frequently at the restaurant, mainly by sprinkling it over a finished dish. There is something special about a big piece of roasted Striped Bass garnished with a slug of great olive oil, a grating of lemon zest, a sprinkle of coarse salt, and a sprinkle of fennel pollen.

Fennel pollen is exactly what it sounds, the dried pollen from fennel plants created by harvesting fennel blooms, letting them dry, and then shaking them to release the pollen. Fennel pollen is wickedly expensive but its unique and inimitable flavor makes it so worth the price. And a very little goes a long way as it is extremely flavorful. At first taste, the flavor is clearly of fennel, like fennel seed. But unlike fennel seed, the flavor is stronger, deeper, richer and finishes with a delightful fruitiness. Get you some today and play with it. You are guaranteed to fall in love with it as much as Ann and I have.

I had not set out to create a salad that would upstage every other thing that we ate or drank, but that was the happy result of substituting fennel pollen for cumin. Everyone was blown away by this simple salad. I will never forget it. The combination of fennel pollen and tomatoes yields a result that is far, far greater than the sum of the two parts. Happy, happy belly!

Chicken and Olive Tagine

Once the chicken was tender, I pulled it out of the oven and placed it on the stovetop where I boiled it rapidly to evaporate and concentrate the braising liquid. The result as you see in the photo above was as delicious as it was simple. To recap, the chicken was marinated in cumin and garlic, browned, and mixed with onions cooked in olive oil with saffron and preserved lemon to which I added green and black olives and chicken stock.

Ann, Andreas, Michelle

A Summer Dinner with Friends

It's been a few weeks that we haven't seen Rob and Dyce as both our schedules have been a bit busy this summer. We (well, Ann and Dyce are the planners) decided to have dinner Saturday night and invited them over to our house. In part, we wanted to make a nice dinner to thank them for their hospitality during our recent trip to McMinnville and wine country. But we also wanted to drink a little wine and sit out in our courtyard and have a pleasant evening, the recent wildfire smoke having abated somewhat.

Dinner would be on me. Ann stated that she would make her summer pudding for dessert, which is a good thing, because I don't eat sweets, don't care about dessert, and wouldn't have even thought about making any.

I'm the breed of chef that needs to be hands-on with foodstuffs in order to pull together a menu. That is, seeing and touching food starts my mind cranking through the endless possibilities to arrive at a menu. Without that input, I really don't get anywhere. I find it hard to create a menu in a vacuum. My menus have always been a response to what is fresh, what is best, and what is seasonal: the menus at my restaurant changed every day of the 15-plus years that I owned it.

My menu was informed by two shopping trips : Wednesday to the local Bend Farmers Market and Friday to Costco, still, believe it or not, one of the best places to secure center-of-the-plate proteins in Bend. It's not like the restaurant where I had access to anything and everything you could imagine, but it is what we have to work with out here in the high desert.

Wednesday at the farmers market, I saw just one pint of Padrón peppers and into my bag they went. When Ann asked me why I bought them, I answered, "to have another weapon in my arsenal." I didn't buy them with a plan to use them in Saturday's dinner, rather to have them on hand for whatever use because I am not going to pass up an opportunity to buy and eat one of the world's most delicious peppers.

That happy accident behind us, we went to Costco on Friday, primarily to secure new eyeglasses for me, my first in 15 years and sorely needed at that, but also to look around for interesting proteins. For me, interesting does not mean expensive. It merely means something that looks really good and which piques my chef-interest. We added a tray of tremendous looking and highly marbled USDA Prime tri-tip slices and a container of tiny Oregon pink shrimp, for a quasi-surf-n-turf dinner menu.

We're not big beef eaters (I might eat steak once per year) but it seemed like the safest bet. Dyce isn't a big fan of oily or fishy fish (the kind that we really love) or lamb, both of which looked really good, so we opted for beef. My preference would have been a nice cut of pork, but there wasn't anything on offer other than some rather ordinary and very lean top loin.

By the way, I have never worked with tri-tip, which when I was growing up was called bottom sirloin. I believe the name tri-tip originated in California long after I grew up. In any case, at my restaurant, weekly, I shared a local 180-day corn-fed Angus steer with several other restaurants and my share consisted of short ribs and skirt steak. Somebody else got the sirloin. Moreover, in a very high-end restaurant, it is hard to get customers, who walk in the door salivating for tenderloin or strip steaks, both fairly uninteresting cuts from a chef's perspective, to order more prosaic cuts such as tri-tip. Fortunately, I could move my skirts and ribs on the nightly tasting menu.

Gorgeous Tri-Tip (Bottom Sirloin) Slices

Reflecting on the menu and remembering the padrones that I bought at the farmers market, my mind turned a bit towards Iberia when planning dinner. And in a back-and-forth with Ann about menu ideas, she mentioned that she might like some Israeli couscous. This reminded me that at the restaurant, we often made Israeli couscous in the style of paella and I was off to the races with a plan for dinner.

Tri-Tip Marinating in Pimentόn, Olive Oil, and Garlic

First thing on Saturday, I mixed up a marinade of smoked paprika (Pimentόn de la Vera), garlic, olive oil, salt, and pepper and slathered it on the tri-tip slices. Into the refrigerator they went to await their turn on the grill just before dinner.

After this, I turned my mind to the tiny pink shrimp that I planned to use for an appetizer. Again, I took my cue from Ann. As we were kicking ideas around and after I had rejected a bunch of more usual ideas, she asked, "Why not shrimp cakes?" I loved that idea for ease of preparation and ease of eating. I can make cakes of pretty near anything and I have during my restaurant career. But never shrimp, however.

While I drained the shrimp (already pre-cooked and shelled, if you have never worked with these tiny so-called bay shrimp that actually come from the ocean off the Oregon coast), I got busy chopping fines herbes: tarragon, dill, Italian parsley, and chives. I mixed the tiny drained shrimp with these herbs, a tiny amount salt (they are naturally fairly salty), white pepper, one egg (for two pounds of shrimp), and just enough mayo and panko to hold them together. Ann and I tasted the mix and I adjusted it by adding more parsley and dill. Into the fridge the mix went for several hours. This achieves two goals: it stiffens the mix as the panko starts to do its binding trick and the herb flavors bloom into the mix. 

After this, I made a quick lemon and chive aïoli using a single clove of garlic that I pounded to a paste with a touch of salt in my big green granite mortar. You have to be really careful with garlic paste in an aïoli because the garlic flavor will bloom in the sauce over time and can get really out of hand. One garlic clove is sufficient to make a cup of sauce. After mixing in finely minced chives and the zest of a lemon, I put the resulting aïoli in the fridge. All the flavors bloom (get stronger) and come together over the course of a couple hours.

An hour or so before Rob and Dyce were to arrive, I pattied out two-ounce cakes and pan-fried them. A trick with a really loose cake-mix like this is to lower the heat a touch and let the cakes really brown well. The crust will help them hold together.

Pink Shrimp Cakes

Shrimp Cakes in the Courtyard with Lemon-Chive Aïoli

Premier Cru Champagne with our Shrimp Cakes

After yakking and eating our fill of shrimp cakes (plus boiled peanuts that Rob and Dyce cooked and brought over) on the patio in the courtyard, it was time to grill some steaks in the gathering dusk. Grilling steaks, I'm an old hand at, having run the broiler station at the restaurant for years. Ordinarily, I grill steaks with two turns on each side to get beautiful crisscross grill marks, but these large, chunky steaks being square in profile, I cooked with one turn on each of the four sides, to a rosy medium rare by feel. Years of experience on the broiler means that I can pretty much tell temperatures of steaks just by looking at them.

Pimentón-Marinated Tri-Tip Grilled to Medium Rare

The steaks having been grilled and it getting dark outside, we moved our show into the kitchen. The steaks rested on the counter while I made the Israeli couscous and seared the peppers. Earlier in the day, I had prepped my sofrito just like I would have for paella: finely diced poblanos, red peppers, red onion, and green onion, along with minced garlic. These veg went into a pan with some saffron and pimentón to cook and then I added Israeli couscous and water (for paella, I spend a lot of time making a great stock). When the couscous was just tender but still had a bit of remaining bite, in a twist, I stirred in four ounces of softened goat cheese. This has a similar enriching effect to stirring butter and cheese (mantecare) into risotto.

Israeli Couscous Cooked à la Paella, Finished with Goat Cheese

Padrones Seared with Olive Oil and Salt

Plate Up: Couscous, Sliced Tri-Tip, Padrones, Pimentón Sauce Drizzle

Along with dinner, we opened a couple of bottles of Barbaresco, one of our favorite beef wines. Dinner was admittedly rich yet quite flavorful and so we wanted a wine that would help cut the richness (tannic or acidic) but not hide the myriad of flavors in the couscous (lighter bodied), so we chose a youngish Barbaresco. We just love the tannins and flavors along with the light body of the Nebbiolo grape.

So many sommeliers would have paired this with a bigger bolder wine such as a Cab, Cab-forward Bordeaux, or big Syrah such as Côte-Rôtie. To my palate, those big fruity wines hide all the nuance of the dish. What do I pair with Cabernet? I don't. To my palate, pairing Cab with food is akin to using a sledgehammer to nail in a tack.

And now we come to the highlight of our meal, Ann's summer pudding. None of us are dessert eaters, but she insisted. Her summer pudding starts with briefly cooking strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries in a scant amount of sugar. Then she lines a trifle mold with challah or brioche and then fills the mold with alternating layers of fruit and bread until the mold is filled. It sets in the refrigerator (blueberries in particular have a lot of natural pectin) and then is unmolded. She served it with a touch of cream whipped with dark rum.

Ann's Outstanding Summer Pudding

Ann served Dyce and Rob first and I asked her for a third of what she served them, not really wanting dessert and already very full from dinner. Not one to listen to me, she passed me an entire serving telling me to eat what I wanted and she would finish the rest. I took one bite and told her that she better make her own plate. It was so delicious that I ate the entire thing! We all did. This is one of those dishes that is so much more than the sum of its parts. Brava Annie!

All our Dessert Plates Looked Just Like This!

First of August on the South Canyon of the Deschutes River

After being laid up for two weeks with a bum back born of lifting my kayak out of my truck and after another week of bad air from the nearby Bedrock forest fire (15,000 acres and counting), I finally got back out on my usual walk of 6-ish miles along the South Canyon of the Deschutes River here in Bend. 

These observations (I am admittedly an observer, not a talker) about the COID road and the Deschutes River Trail along the canyon on the south side of Bend, I make for nobody but myself, a kind of pinch-myself-look-at-the-stunning-beauty of the place where we live. I think so many people take our natural surroundings for granted and I never want to do that. I always want to be aware of what is going on around me.

This being my second summer in Bend, it's starting to feel like this is my personal section of the trail and I am learning the rhythms along the river. I'm not sure why this matters so much to me, but it does. Perhaps it is to do with being part and parcel of an environment, maybe some deep-seated remnant encoded in my DNA from when my ancestors depended on living off the land and knowing the seasonal ebbs and flows. Alternatively, perhaps I am just weird.

What prompts me more than anything to make these posts is a marked change of seasons and it seems that seasons changed markedly in the last few weeks. Sadly, I missed a key three weeks in July, three prime summer weeks that saw many of the local wildflowers peak in bloom. And now the first of August when I am back on the trail, it really does seem as if we're moving quickly and inexorably into fall.

This shift from summer into fall wasn't immediately apparent, however. I'm often so busy in reveling in all that I can see and hear along the trail, that sometimes I forget to notice what is not there. In my three walks along the river this first week of August, something has been off but I couldn't put my mental finger on it.

It finally dawned on me during my third walk this week that I was missing my constant companions along the river, the tiny but vocal aerobatic artists that we call Violet-Green Swallows. Since May when they first arrived from their winter grounds, they have delighted me each walk, their happy chattering rising clearly above the roar of the white water, the river level being up right now thanks to continual snow melt in the August heat. This past week, I have neither heard nor seen any swallows gracefully swooping along the canyon deftly snatching bugs from the air. They appear to have departed for warmer climes, their absence a sure indicator of the coming fall.

I like to walk this section of river at least once a week to keep in tune with what's going on flora- and fauna-wise. Being laid up for three weeks of July saw me miss some of my favorite wildflowers, the Scarlet Gilia (Ipomopsis aggregata) and the Large-flowered Collomia (Collomia grandiflora), both bearing tubular flowers of very different colors. Both were just starting to bloom on my last outing along the river; they are not to be seen now at the first of August. I'm sad to have missed them this year.

We're at that time of year where the trail is covered in an inch of volcanic dust and it hasn't rained in months. I had hoped, given our late spring which saw our last snowfall on June 19, that our bloom season might have extended into August, but no. Things are very much on schedule now. The usual late summer and fall bloomers are doing their thing, but most plants have already bloomed and are focused on setting and ripening fruit and seeds for next year.

So too is it a lull with the fauna. With the exception of the ubiquitous and eternally noisy Steller's Jays, the birds along the river are extremely quiet now, breeding season being over and most of this year's young having already fledged and flown the coop, as it were. In the spring and early summer, the noisy orange, black, and white male Black-Headed Grosbeaks are found each baseball throw down the river and sit prominently in the higher parts of shrubs and trees loudly claiming turf. Now, their calls are few and far between, much less voluble and much less strident.

By contrast, while other birds are quiet and the swallows are suddenly absent, the Ospreys are more evident than ever and clearly have not started their journey southward (or perhaps they have and I am seeing birds who have flown in on their way south). A tall Ponderosa snag on the west bank is topped with a huge Osprey nest and ospreys are still quite active in the vicinity of this snag.

This year seems different though. Although in the early spring, I saw a pair of ospreys at the nest, I did not see any evidence that they raised a family there this summer. While this is only my second summer along the river, it is the first summer that I have seen Bald Eagles (a common winter resident when the Ospreys have gone south) patrolling the river. There may be some competition between the two species.

Regardless of any potential turf wars, I got two great vocal fly-overs by ospreys in the last week as they worked the river and banks near to and downstream of the snag where they have nested. Ospreys are extremely vocal and I often hear them without seeing them. And sometimes, they and Bald Eagles make very similar sounds (I was fooled by an eagle at Smith Rock this summer). This week, I heard a repeated call from the riverside on which I waffled. I ended up deciding that it was an osprey and a minute later, it flew upstream not 15 feet above my head, white underwings and belly fully on display, a certain osprey.

Though most birds are quiet at this time, at all seasons can you hear the rattling calls of the Belted Kingfishers. This section of white water is so active that it really doesn't freeze and so the kingfishers have access to their fishing holes all year. It is rare that I see them as they perch in the trees along the river but I hear them on each walk. If I were to take the time to stop and look for them, no doubt I would see them, but I am also walking for exercise and stopping for long periods defeats that purpose.

Though ducks and most waterfowl except Common Mergansers are scarce, Blue Herons are still reliable. They are hard to spot when stationary and hunting food, standing in the shallow water or perched on a low rock in the river, but sometimes they heave themselves laboriously into the air. It is certainly quite thrilling to see the massive birds gliding through the canyon as I saw them this week.

Nor are mammals very active now at this time of year. Mule deer, very common here in Bend, do forage along both banks of the river, but they are ever so quiet and blend in to the scrub so well, especially in this season when everything is going brown just like their coats. While earlier in the summer and later in the fall, I see plenty of rodents (chattery Douglas' squirrels, silent Western Grey Squirrels, and shy Yellow-pine Chipmunks) there is quite a void right now with these animals lying low to avoid the heat of mid-day and restricting their activities to the hours around dawn and dusk. 

Doe Mule Deer, Lying Low in this Season

While there are very few wildflowers is bloom now in comparison to June, there are a few to be seen if you will take the time to search for them. The primary bloom colors now are pink and yellow, with the most prominent being pink. Fireweed is in its rosy glory in August and the plants along the river are gorgeous. So too is it prime-time for Western Spirea with its fuzzy fuchsia blooms. And if you look carefully among the grasses on the west side of the river, nestled in among the fading Forget-Me-Nots, you will find very pretty light pink Checkermallows. There are six potential species of Checkermallows in this area; I do not know how to tell one from the other.

Fireweed, Chamaenerion angustifolium

Western Spirea, Spiraea douglasii

A Checkermallow, Sidalcea sp.

Although it is the season for purple ray flowers, there are not many along the river. Erigeron and Asters punctuate the sunnier openings along the river, but they are not common. I did spy one clump of pale (usually purple) Western Asters growing right on the riverside, accompanying Forget-Me-Nots and a Rough Hedge-Nettle, a rare tableau of muted color in a brown season. 

Tableau of Western Asters (Symphyotrichum ascendens),
Forget-Me-Nots (Myosotis sp.), and Rigid Hedge-Nettle (Stachys rigida)

Most of the yellow-blooming plants are either right along the banks of the river or blooming on tiny islets in the river. Along the banks in the sunnier areas, the Goldenrods are just starting their late summer-early fall display. Like the Checkermallows, there are far too many similar species of Goldenrods for me to be able to tell them apart. Further afield from the river, Rabbitbrush (Ericameria nauseosa) buds are swelling with a few blooms in the sunnier areas. Their blooms will dominate the landscape during September.

Growing on islets in the river as well as hard against the water along the banks is an assortment of yellow-blooming plants. It is very difficult for me to see exactly what they are from the trail, but I can clearly identify Arrowleaf Groundsel (Senecio triangularis), Tansy Leaf Ragwort (Jacobaea vulgaris), and Common Monkey-flower (Erythranthe guttata).

Goldenrod, Solidago sp.

Yellow Blooms in and Along the River
Arrowleaf Groundsel, Senecio triangularis, Tansy Leaf Ragwort, Jacobaea vulgaris,
and Common Monkey-flower, Erythranthe guttata

While yellow is one of two predominant wildflower colors right now, it is also a harbinger of fall and the subsequent winter. Yellow, copper, and brown are everywhere. No longer are the green leaves pretty and sharp. Rather they are ragged, tattered, and bug-eaten with many yellow leaves appearing on plants and then falling in heaps under the brush. Chief among these are Green Leaf Manzanita and Wax Currants that are both going yellow.

A Lone Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare)

Further up on the canyon walls among the volcanic rocks are the Ocean Spray plants covered in coppery brown, spent bloom panicles, reinforcing that we are quickly finishing our summer. So too under the glorious Ponderosa pines, the tufts of Idaho Fescue, so beautifully gray-green when last I walked the trail, are now limp and brown, their seed heads having appeared weeks ago. My favorite patches of brilliant yellow Oregon Sunshine are now nothing but withered clumps of brown. Gone too now are the ubiquitous Yellow Salsify with their gorgeous star-shaped blooms and massive globe-shaped seed heads. All that remain are a few tattered seed heads scattered among the scrub.

Spent Ocean Spray Panicles, Holodiscus discolor

Back in early July, blue was one of the primary wildflower colors, being sported atop the ubiquitous lupines and penstemons. Now, the lupine blooms are gone, replaced by pea-like seed pods atop the plants. The penstemons are mostly a desiccated brown. 

The blues are there if you are a patient observer, but are not eye-catching like the yellows and pinks nor nearly as numerous; each of the photos below is of the only specimens that I saw on the entire 6-mile loop. An escaped Alfalfa offers a pop of blue, likely from a seed dropped by a bird. Alfalfa is certainly not native to the US, though it is widely planted as a cover and forage crop, especially here in Central Oregon where it is a top crop. There is still one Lewis's Flax in bloom and this particular plant sports a deeper shade of blue than on any other flax I have ever seen. And, for the first time ever, I saw a Bittersweet Nightshade in bloom, also not a native and probably propagated from bird droppings. Robins in particular like the bright red nightshade berries.

Escaped Alfalfa (Medicago sativa)

Vibrant Blue Lewis' Flax, Linum lewisii

Bittersweet Nightshade, Solanum dulcamara 

Other than these few flowers, August offers pretty slim wildflower pickings, with the remaining blooms being whitish and hiding in plain sight. There is one large stand of White Sweet Clover along the COID road that attracts a lot of bees. It's an invasive plant in some areas of the country, but it is also a favorite of pollinators. And although most of the Stinging Nettle patches, that were so vibrantly green in spring, are now ragged and nearly spent, if you look carefully, you can still see some blooming in the shade. Of course, by the time they bloom, they really are no good to eat.

And finally, this is the time of year to see the parasitic Woodland Pinedrops in full bloom. Their large bloom spikes emerge from the barren ground under the Ponderosa Pines whose roots provide nutrients to the Pinedrops. Coming from back east, I never had a chance to observe these plants before moving to Central Oregon. Based on my limited observations, these plants would seem not to bloom in the same locations each year. I found no blooms in 2022 in areas where I saw dead stalks from 2021. And where I saw blooms last year, 2022, I find no blooms this year. And this year, I see blooms in locations where I did not find them last year.

Non-Native White Sweet Clover, Melilotus albus

A Shaded Stinging Nettle, Urtica dioica, Still in Bloom

Parasitic Woodland Pinedrops, Pterospora andromedea

The true bounty of this late summer season is not the flowers, but the resulting berries and other fruits, some of which I snack on opportunistically. If I were a jelly maker (I don't care for sweets), I would be going nuts this time of year.

Among the most visible fruit are the chokecherries by virtue of them being one of the most common shrubs along the river banks. This year's crop is abundant, though not quite ripe enough for harvest just yet. By contrast, I see no fruit on the Oregon Cherries, Prunus emarginata. The Western Serviceberry, which provides a lot of early gorgeous white blooms along the river, is starting ripen and the fruit is delicious. Meanwhile, the Wax Currant bushes are dripping in ripe fruits that some people say are tasteless and seedy. Seedy yes, but tasteless? I think they're pretty tasty and would make an amazing jelly to serve with venison or wild boar. And then there are the local Woods' Rose hips that make a sweet, perfumed jelly. They too are going red in this season.

Bumper Crop of Choke Cherries, Prunus virginiana

Delicious Western Serviceberry, Amelanchier alnifolia

Massive Amounts of Ripe Wax Currants, Ribes cereum

Woods' Rose, Rosa woodsii, Hips Make Great Jelly

Other edibles along the route are the Oregon Grapes, our state flower, that are now going purple and into ripeness. The fruits of both species, Mahonia aquifolium and M. repens and the hybrid crosses between the two, are a big favorite of the Cedar Waxwings, though the American Robins attack the berries in our yard with a certain ferocity. The scarce Pacific Blackberry (Rubus ursinus) vines–I know of two small patches–are still green.

There are also any number of fruits that we would consider inedible that are now coming into ripeness. While Snowberries, Symphoricarpos sp., are starting to become white and more visible, we will really be able to see large clusters of them once the leaves drop. Also sporting white berries currently are the ubiquitous Red Osier Dogwoods, a common feature of the wet areas along the river. Side by side with the dogwoods are scads of Tatarian Honeysuckles, an invasive from Asia, bearing glowing orange to translucent crimson berries. Regardless of how invasive they are, these honeysuckles offer both an exquisite display of spring blossoms and fall berries.

Growing right beside the dogwoods and honeysuckles are a lot of young Cascade Mountain Ashes, Sorbus scopulina, but only a few of the larger ones have any fruit and that is just going yellow to pale orange. This fruit will be bright orange when ripe. It may be my imagination, but I have seen hundreds more of these small trees this year when compared to last year.

Red Osier Dogwood Berries, Cornus sericea

Invasive Tatarian Honeysuckle, Lonicera tatarica

Finally, one of our most common shrubs, the Greenleaf Manzanita is starting to ripen a fairly heavy set of fruit. Although not known as an edible for humans (though it is and can be made into jelly tasting of apple), it is a lifeblood for the California Quail that scuttle about the ground under them. These berries will constitute a decent early winter food source for those ground-hugging chubby birds. I have never seen the Greenleaf's cousin, the Pinemat Manzanita, A. uva-ursi, on this stretch of trail.

Ripening Fruit on Greenleaf Manzanita, Arctostaphylos patula

And that's what's happening along the trail in the opening days of August. I'm looking forward to the cooler weather and spectacular display of Rabbitbrush that will happen in September.