Cooking up a Birthday Dinner

Annie had yet another birthday to celebrate and because we had just days before gone out to pretty much the only restaurant we like for our anniversary, we decided to stay in and celebrate with a nice meal here at home, just the two of us and Rob and Dyce.

I was motivated to cook. Coming off a busy summer and a three-week trip to Iceland, I really had not cooked a decent meal in months. I am not talking day-to-day cooking which is generally a one-pan meal that takes 15 to 30 minutes to prep. Post-restaurant, a one-pan meal is about all I am inclined to make without some special reason. Ann's birthday provided just such a special reason to put some effort into planning and cooking.

Another Birthday in the Books
Celebrating with Diebolt-Vallois Brut Rosé

The menu was inspired by Ann's recent dental work that left her unable to chew on one side, requiring food that is soft in texture. I do not find restrictions like this a problem. On the contrary, boundaries, such as a vegetarian meal or soft foods as in this case, help me narrow the focus.

Left to my own devices, I could come up with way too many ideas, which is why at the restaurant, trips to the farmers market or walking through our pantry were most helpful in designing a menu for the night. They helped narrow the scope to ingredients that were immediately available. Though many cooks find "Chopped" types of competitions where they must use a specific set of ingredients to be too restrictive, I thrive on it.

For this birthday dinner, I imposed another restriction: the menu should involve as little à la minute, last-minute, cooking as possible so that I could spend time with our guests rather than at the stove. And like an idiot, I got so wrapped up in entertaining that I forgot to take pictures during dinner.

In creating the menu, the restriction to soft-textured foods screamed braised meat to me and what better to accompany braised meat than risotto? A soft dessert would be something like a pudding and do you know a simpler or better-loved pudding-like dish than crème brûlée?

For the starter course, a recent inventory of the pantry left me thinking about a bag of white beans, so a white bean soup would start the meal off. My initial thought was a white bean and rosemary cream with some kind of seafood garnish, something that would pair well with a white wine. And as the recent days were warm, I was thinking a room temperature soup with a cool garnish, a crab salad or something else that Ann could chew easily.

Naturally, a menu is also a reflection of the ingredients that are available at any given time. In this small city in the middle of nowhere, hours from any big city, I must design meals around the products that are available, rather than the products I wish were available. For example, there is no good source of seafood here in the high desert, nor is there acceptable rice for risotto. I order my rice from the internet.

Moreover, in my shopping, I knew I would never find ossobuco or lamb shank to braise; however, Costco sometimes has beef ribs. I got lucky and I bought one of their two packages of beef plate ribs. Plan C would have been to score a chuck roast and shred it into the risotto after braising. In the freezer section at the grocery, I also found serendipitously a package of frozen marrow bones while looking for stock bones.

A bonus, the marrow would finish the risotto with butter and cheese in the mantecare stage, the final stage when fat is stirred into the cooked rice to enrich it. After removing the marrow from the bones, I would contribute the marrow bones to the stock pot. The resulting stock would be the liquid in which I would braise the ribs. And then all the braising liquid would ultimately become a sauce for the ribs and risotto.

This menu naturally divided itself into two day's of work. The first day, I would make the stock, cook the white beans for the soup, and bake the crème brûlée, leaving the oven free the next day to braise the ribs. In addition to braising the ribs, the second day would see me finish the bean soup, design a garnish for the soup, and make the sauce for the beef after the ribs were cooked.

Ann thinks that this is a lot of work, but more than anything, it is a lot of small steps, steps that I scheduled around working in the office and taking walks. I do not look at cooking meals such as this as work.

Cooking Marrow Bones, Chuck, and Veg for Stock

Deglazing the Roasting Pan

To start the stock, I browned the ribs in a roasting pan to start creating a fond, brown bits, on the bottom of the pan. After they cooled, I refrigerated them to braise the next day. To the roasting pan, I added stock vegetables (onion, carrot, and celery), beef chuck, and the marrow bones. It took about 45 minutes in a very hot oven to roast and brown everything on all sides, with one or two turns.

After roasting the marrow bones, I scooped out the marrow and refrigerated it for finishing the risotto. Then all the bones, meat, and vegetables went into a stock pot with a couple of smashed cloves of garlic still skin-on, the peels and trimmings from the stock vegetables, a sprig of rosemary, a couple sprigs of thyme, a bunch of parsley stems, and the outer leaves from a leek.

And I threw in a wee bit of chef magic as well: a tablespoon of estratto di pomodoro (rich Sicilian tomato paste) and some dried porcini powder/bits from the bottom of the canister. Neither will be detectable in the final sauce but will add great umami. Deep flavor does not happen spontaneously; it is a thoughtful process of layering flavors.

When roasting vegetables and bones for stock, the idea is to cook them long enough not only to caramelize them, but to build up a good fond, the glaze of brown bits on the bottom of the roasting pan. After removing the roasted ingredients to the stock pot, I deglazed the roasting pan with water, scraping well to clean the bottom. All that caramelized goodness brings incredible flavor to the stock.

The dark and flavorful deglazing liquid went into the stock pot along with beef stock. Using a stock to make another stock is called a double stock; double stocks have additional depth of flavor over single stocks. In this case, for the first meal after the weather turned cold (snow on the mountains!), I wanted a dish that was deep and rich in flavor, ultra-comforting, and pairable with a Châteauneuf-du-Pape-style red wine. I chose an Italian blend that I find pairs comparably to CdP, a Valpolicella Classico Superiore. Valpolicella does not get a lot of love, but there are some great ones out there.

The stock simmered for most of the day before I strained it, reserved the chuck for another meal, and put the strained stock in the fridge to cool overnight to solidify the fat floating on top.

The next day, to start the braise, I cut some mirepoix (an onion, a large carrot, and stalk of celery) into medium dice. I sweated the vegetables with a stalk of rosemary and a couple of minced cloves of garlic in an enameled cast iron cocotte. Removing the rosemary, I added the gelled stock from which I had removed the congealed layer of fat. Arranging the ribs in the cocotte, I covered it and put it in a slow (275F) oven at noon, planning to serve the ribs around 1900.

Second Day: Adding Defatted Beef Stock to Sautéed Mirepoix

Beef Ribs Seared and Ready to Braise

Braised Ribs, Held Hot for Service

Not knowing how long the ribs would take to cook I checked them every half hour after three hours in the oven. They were perfect, soft and succulent, in four hours. I removed them to a half pan, covered the pan with film, and put it back in the oven to hot hold until dinner. The Keep Warm setting on my oven keeps them about 170F, above the temperature danger zone limit of 140F. The FDA Food Code changed this some years ago to 135, but I am an old school chef who learned 140.

I planned to keep the vegetables in the braising liquid as part of the final sauce, a rustic touch rather than a fine dining touch. Other options would be to strain them out or blend them in. After transferring the braising liquid to a sauce pan, I could see a half-inch or so of grease on top of the would-be sauce, so using a 2-ounce ladle, I carefully defatted the sauce.

Bringing the braising liquid to a simmer, I brought it down to the final volume of sauce that I wanted, carefully skimming any film and fat that rose to the surface. Once at the final volume, I decided that I wanted the sauce thicker. At this point, I could have thickened the sauce by blending in the vegetables, the cuisine minceur technique unabashedly stolen from Michel Guérard, (RIP chef) or using the traditional method, adding bits of beurre manié, equal parts of butter and flour kneaded together. I chose the latter.

On to the soup course which I planned to make with fagioli di Controne which Ann gave to me as a surprise. They are labeled no-soak and so I thought that would be a great time saver in making the soup base. These are a rare heirloom bean reportedly of thin skin and great flavor. I was excited to try them.

Fagioli di Controne, "No-Soak" My Ass

Beans, Sprig of Rosemary, Two Cloves Garlic, Ready to Cook

All I can say is that it is a good thing that I cooked the beans the day before, starting early in the morning. At seven hours in, they were still crunchy. Finally, they softened after eight hours and to get to the super soft stage that I wanted for a cream soup required nine hours and 15 minutes. Never again will I fall for the no soak baloney. That said, they do have thin skins and excellent flavor, but they are no easier to cook than any other dried bean.

The next day, I made the soup base by blending the beans to silky smooth in my big blender which does such an excellent job that I had no need to pass the beans through a chinois to make them silky. For service, I warmed the bean purée with a bit of heavy cream and adjusted the seasoning. Finding it a little flat, I added a couple of drops of Sherry vinegar to perk it up. The vinegar did its job admirably.

Lemon and Rosemary, Ready to Infuse into Cream

Back to the first day, after starting the stock and the beans cooking, I made the crème brûlée, choosing to flavor it with lemon and rosemary. To start, I brought two cups of 40% cream (the good stuff, compared to the garden variety 36%) to the scalding point with the zest of two lemons and a sprig of rosemary. After the cream cooled to the point where I could taste it, I added just enough sugar to barely sweeten it and make the flavorings sing. Adding a pinch of salt, I stirred to dissolve the sugar and the salt in the warm cream, then let the cream cool so that it would not curdle the egg yolks.

I strained the now lukewarm cream into a bowl containing 7 egg yolks (3 for each cup of cream, plus one for good luck, an admittedly rich custard base). After stirring well, I strained the custard yet again into a quart measure to remove any egg strands. In the absence of a sauce funnel which I would have used at the restaurant, a standard lipped measure let me pour the custard into the cups without dribbling all over the rims, a culinary faux pas.

I put the custard cups into a half pan before filling them, then to make a water bath, poured cold water in the half pan to come up to the level of the custard in the cups. Some people advocate using hot water but I think the product has better texture the slower it cooks, so I use cold water to retard the cooking.

Use the Torch to Pop Any Surface Bubbles

Before I bake any kind of custard, I run my torch lightly over the surface of the custard to pop any bubbles that may have formed during stirring or pouring. This is not necessary, but it will create a smooth finish rather than one pock-marked by bubbles that popped during baking. I put the custards into a moderate oven (350F) and checked them periodically. These took 35 minutes, all told.

To tell if the custards are done, grab one with tongs and give it a little shake. When the custards are set around the edges with only a quarter-sized spot in the center that is still loose, they are ready to come out of the oven. Remove from the water bath, dry them, wrap them individually with film, and refrigerate for service.

Moving on to the risotto: I discovered early in my planning that I did not have enough Arborio rice in the pantry for four servings, but too late to order some. Not to worry: Israeli couscous makes a fine fake risotto that people never fail to love. And unlike Arborio that I have to order in, I can buy Israeli couscous in bulk at my grocery. It is a pantry staple at our house.

Making the ersatz risotto milanese with Israeli couscous is identical to making the real thing, but just a little bit quicker, say 14-15 minutes versus 20. Start by sweating an onion and saffron in butter or olive oil, add the couscous and cook for a minute, then add chicken stock by dribbles, and cook until it is done, stirring and topping off the stock as necessary. When done, I stirred in a good bit of grated cheese, butter, and the bone marrow. Ann says she likes this better than with rice.

"Risotto Milanese"
Israeli Couscous with Bone Marrow

I needed to make a garnish for the soup. My original intent, when the weather was warm, was to serve a room temperature cream soup with a seafood salad for garnish. Then, the weather turned cold as it does this time of year, dictating a warm soup and warm garnish, turning my original idea on its head.

Fresh seafood of acceptable quality to a finicky chef is hard to find here and crab season closed in August, eliminating crab as a possibility. That left frozen seafood and I found some small white shrimp that would lend themselves to a salad. I had thought to chop them to help Ann chew them, but they were small enough to serve whole.

My working concept for the shrimp was inspired by the Italian white wine I had selected for the course, Roero Arneis. I would just barely cook them in olive oil, garlic, and a touch of tomato paste that would tint the oil red, to be drizzled on the soup for a contrasting garnish. However, during the course of the day, I kept coming back to the Sherry vinegar that I used to give the soup sufficient acid to perk it up, a Spanish touch and not an Italian one at all.

I hit on a warm salad dressing with Spanish flavors. Moments before serving, I cooked the shrimp in olive oil with a touch of pimentón de la Vera (smoked paprika) to give the oil the red color, then removed it from the pan. In went some shallots to just brown around the edges, then I splashed the pan with more Sherry vinegar to create a warm shallot-pimentón vinaigrette. I dressed the shrimp, so small that I really did not need to chop them as planned, with a bit of vinaigrette and used the remainder to drizzle on the soup for garnish.

Rob and Dyce Brought
André Clouet Un Jour de 1911 Champagne

While I was finishing the soup, we opened the bottle of André Clouet Un Jour de 1911 Champagne that Rob and Dyce brought. Made in a turn of the 20th century style, this wine is interesting, baked apples and yeast on the palate with a hint of oxidation. This is a much different wine than we usually drink and I enjoyed it because it was so different.

Shrimp and White Beans, Warm Shallot-Pimentón Vinaigrette
Served with Paitin Roero Arneis

Short Rib on Israeli Couscous "Risotto Milanese" with
Serego Alighieri Monte Piazzo Valpolicella Classico Superiore

Lemon-Rosemary Crème Brûlée

Happy Birthday to This Girl!

Mother's Day 2025

"Ann is a nosy sort." he said lovingly. She really cannot help herself; her penchant for prying is deeply encoded in her DNA. She will not take polite hints to mind her own business, either. Thus, it is nearly impossible to surprise her.

Quixotic fool that I am, I set out to do just that for Mother's Day, a day which, for reasons that need not be discussed here, has been an emotional day in the past. I figured she could use some friends to help her celebrate and so I invited Rob and Dyce to come over on Sunday afternoon.

Mother's Day Brunch

Hoping for beautiful weather as we had been having for a week, I came up with a menu of light eats to be enjoyed on the patio with crisp white wine. Naturally, the weather did not cooperate and we ended up eating inside at the island. Quoting Stevie Winwood, "You just roll with it, baby!"

I am kicking myself now for not having taken any pictures of Rob and Dyce. I was too caught up in talking and pouring Champagne around. They brought the most beautiful flowers for Ann. And did a wonderful job of acting all week as if nothing were happening on the weekend.

Rob and Dyce Brought This Exquisite Arrangement

The Surprised Guest of Honor

Ann, true to form, did her best to ruin the surprise. The three of us guys put the plan together a week in advance. Shortly thereafter, Ann asked me to take her to the local wine bar and out for brunch somewhere. I confessed my plan for a special brunch at home. Her immediate response was, "Can we invite Rob and Dyce?" At this point, I had to lie, saying that I preferred to have a more intimate tête-à-tête chez nous.

Sunday afternoon, while Ann was watching TV upstairs, I excused myself to go downstairs to prep brunch. Just as I had plated everything, the doorbell rang and Ann was surprised. She was even a good sport about not being dressed or having her game face on!

Camarones in Escabeche with Cilantro Aïoli

Crab Guacamole
Dungeness Crab Mixed with Cilantro-Lime Vinaigrette

Jalapeño Quesadillas with Chipotle Crema

Valentine's Day 2022

As forecast last post, I took six weeks off from blogging to get us relocated from McMinnville, OR to Bend, OR, from the rainy and damp Willamette Valley, across the snowy Cascades, to the arid high desert of Central Oregon. We just got moved into our new house over the weekend. The fact that I am sitting here typing this post is a sure sign that we now have a functional office set up. In fact, getting our internet connection was a big fustercluck, Bend Broadband being a monopoly with terrible customer service.

Sitting at our New Bar for Valentine's Dinner

After spending about twelve hours unpacking and storing our kitchen goods, we were able to use our new kitchen for the first time on Valentine's Day. It's probably safe to say that needing to use the kitchen for Valentine's dinner speeded up the unpacking or at least informed the order in which we unpacked boxes. We could have gone out to celebrate, but we've been out a lot over the last week and don't feel all that well eating somewhat poorly. And then there's COVID, which thankfully is on the decline. We're still trying to avoid being indoors.

Those two reasons aside, Valentine's Day is possibly the worst day of the year to go out. Restaurant staffs, both front and back of house, are stressed, and nobody is doing the best work. Having spent a career in the business, I would never recommend to anyone to go out to eat on Valentine's Day. Yet still, I love to celebrate the day with Annie, unlike all those Valentine's Days where she sat home alone while I catered to all the people celebrating with us at the restaurant, only to stagger home like some nearly dead thing. What a terrible Valentine's Day for her, the chef widow! And so we planned a special meal at home, just for the two of us.

In cleaning out our freezer in preparation for moving, I found a couple of filets mignons that inspired Ann to ask me to make steak tartare for Valentine's. And then remembering the fabulous Argentine red shrimp that we had in Alaska, she also asked for a simple dish of pasta, shrimp, garlic, and butter. How easy was that menu planning? So simple, unlike at the restaurant where we were expected to create seven-course, high-end menus of exotic sounding but approachable dishes for our guests, one regular and one vegetarian.

Our home-cooked celebratory meal gave us a brief chance to test drive both the shopping in Bend and our new kitchen. We came from farm country with minimal shopping opportunities and a house with a top-flight kitchen to a new town with ample shopping opportunities and a sub-optimal kitchen. Now having used the new kitchen, I think we're going to have to gut it and start over in the near term. The awkward layout, barely functional storage, and silly downdraft range on a way-too-small island do not augur positively for my affection.

Steak Tartare, Broadley 2010 "Claudia's Choice"

Steak tartare is one of my favorite ways to prepare beef filet, simply because filet has very little character on its own. Although I find the texture a bit too soft for my liking in tartare, adding capers, shallots, salt, pepper, Dijon mustard, olive oil, and egg yolk is a great way to give the very bland beef a bit of fat and flavor.

Ordinarily, I would have served a lemony Chardonnay blanc de blancs sparkling with this dinner, but I just wasn't foresighted enough to have purchased any. Our usual preference in Champagne tends to the more berry flavors of Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, and so that's what we have at the house. And with the moving, buying more wine just to schlep it across the Cascades was a non-starter. As it was, the back of Ann's car was wall-to-wall with cases of wine. Although sparkling would have been my go-to pairing for this dinner, the bottle of 2010 Broadley Pinot Willamette Valley "Claudia's Choice" was  delicious.

Pasta and Shrimp with Garlic Butter

Our main course could not have been any simpler or frankly, better. Our usual diet is low carb, so pasta is a special treat for a special occasion. We were both smitten with Argentine red shrimp up in Alaska this summer when we both tasted them for the first time. These wild-caught shrimp are superbly tender and have a taste much more akin to lobster than typical shrimp. Researching on the internet, Ann found that these shrimp which were unavailable to us in McMinnville are a stock item at the Bend Trader Joe's, a store only dreamed of in McMinnville.

While we were there, we decided to get pasta as well, our nuts-and-bolts grocery store (WinCo) not having a very good selection of brands or cuts. Although our normal instinct would be to make this dish with a long cut, Ann was intrigued by a bag of Trader Joe's brand pasta labeled fusili corti bucati, like little hollow springs. I have had very long versions of this pasta, but never the corti ("cut" or short) version.

I liked the shape well enough, but the pasta itself did not cook very evenly and it was missing that really good al dente bite that I expect of great pasta. Time will tell if this is a one-off or if Trader Joe's brand is only good if we are desperate for pasta.

After several weeks of minimal dining as we packed our kitchen in preparation for the move, and then the few days around the move when we had no kitchen at all, it's great to be back at the range, even if it isn't the most functional!

Annie Makes Tinga Casserole

Every now and again, Ann gets the inspiration to cook dinner. I won't lie: I love being a spectator and not having to worry about what's for dinner. We made a batch of chicken tinga a few weeks ago to put in the freezer for a rainy day. Ann had been thinking to make a casserole of the tinga with corn tortillas and cheddar cheese and she finally got around to doing it.

Baked Tinga de Pollo Casserole with Slaw

Crazy Chef Annie

Layering the Casserole

Just out of the Oven

With the tinga from the freezer, this dish went together in seconds: a layer of tortillas, a layer of tinga, a layer of tortillas, and a final layer of cheese. She put it in a moderate (350F) oven until it was good and browned, perhaps 25 to 30 minutes. After it cooled, she cut it in quarters and we chowed down. What is not to love about crunchy baked tortillas?

I plated the casserole with a bit of extra tinga sauce on top and some cole slaw on the side.

Donald's 50th

A few weeks back, Donald said that he and Terry were coming down from Seattle to celebrate Donald's 50th birthday and asked if we wanted to do a shellfish boil. Of course! We thought we were doing the do at our house and I would be cooking. But somewhere along the line, the boys rented a really nice apartment above the Methven tasting room in downtown Dundee and brought everything they needed for Terry to cook from Seattle.

We went out to dinner with them Tuesday night at Pura Vida in McMinnville and then they spent all Wednesday morning running around and all the way into Portland to buy the ingredients for dinner. We showed up at 5:30 as Donald was finishing up making the appetizers and Terry was working away on the shellfish.

The Donald

Terry Prepping the Small Lemons

Appetizers

We brought a bottle of Champagne and a nice Chardonnay to go with the lobster while Donald and Terry kicked in two local sparklers and a bottle of Pinot. Of course, they brought Riedel Champagne glasses with them from home!

One of Many Dead Soldiers

Always a Party When These Two are Together

Getting Suited Up for Battle

The Boys Never Forget Anything

Lobster, Clams, Potatoes, Sausage, and Corn

After the delicious feast that Terry prepared, we cut the cakes. Ann started baking a cake for Donald before she realized that he was making his own. We had way too much cake!

Pastry Chef Donald Made His Own Cake

Annie Made Donald a Cake Too

Donald's cake had marionberry jam and lemon curd between the layers and was frosted with buttercream. Ann's cake was lemon with blueberries and was frosted with lemon marionberry cream cheese frosting and topped with lemon rind and mint and Johnny Jump Ups (violas) from our garden. Both cakes were delicious.

I Can't Believe I Ate All This

Cape Lookout

When the girls were visiting in June, we drove the three capes on the coast near us, starting with Cape Meares in the north, stopping at Cape Lookout in the middle, and then down to Cape Kiwanda to the south, just above Pacific City. On our mini-tour, we turned into the parking area for the Cape Lookout trailhead with an idea that we might go see the cape, but the hike was 2.4 miles each way and we were running out of time. So, Ann and I put that hike on our to-do list for the summer.

This summer has been dedicated to landscaping our yard. We bought a brand new house on a bare lot in November of last year. Once the rains let up in the spring, it was game on in turning the stark naked lot into gardens. With the planting of the bulbs last week, gardening season is pretty nearly at an end. Moreover, rainy season should kick off any time now.

Gardening at its fall hiatus, we decided to take advantage of a sunny, clear fall day to head to the coast and hike the 4.8-mile out-and-back trail to Cape Lookout. As you can see in the "sunny" photo below, the gorgeous sunny day lasted until about two miles from the coast when we drove straight into clouds and fog. Such is the nature of the coast.

It has been so long since we hiked that it was kind of weird scrambling around to find simple things such as water bottles and a day pack. After leisurely coffee, we loaded lunch and water into my pack and jumped in the truck for the coast. As the crow flies, we are just under 39 miles from the Cape Lookout Trailhead parking lot. Two and a half hours after leaving the house, we arrived at the coast.

We have had to resign ourselves to the fact that you cannot get anywhere fast in Oregon. This is partially an infrastructure issue (lack of good roads) but more a terrain issue. We have some pretty gnarly mountains, the Coastal Range, between us and the coast. We decided to take a route that we hadn't before, heading west up and over the mountains from Carlton, just north of us. We knew the route would be slower than taking highway 18 towards Lincoln City, but being new to the area, we are still looking around.

We didn't count on 2 and a half hours slow, though. The roads are good for no more than about 35 miles per hour sustained speed and the twists and turns stretch the route to about 70 miles, rather than the 39 that the crow flies. The scenery was gorgeous up past the two reservoirs that slake the city of McMinnville's thirst. Down the western slope of the mountains, naturally, the road was closed for construction. We ended up backtracking several miles to get around the road closure, losing at least a half an hour, probably more.

At Cape Lookout, Pacific Ocean Way Below

The Cape Lookout trailhead is just north of Sandlake, named for the active dune system that stretches inland from the shore. Seeing that much sand in the middle of the Oregon shore is a bit disconcerting, sand not really being a big feature of our rocky shores. Cape Lookout is a long, narrow, rocky promontory that descends from about 900' at the trailhead parking lot down to about 450' two and a half miles out in the Pacific Ocean.

It's a pretty easy stroll for the first half a mile or so of trail, staying high up on the southern side of the cape, going past a plaque commemorating the loss of a WWII B-17 that was flying too low in the fog and smashed into the side of the hill. There's a decent section of old grown forest here, primarily Sitka spruce and hemlock. By east coast standards, it's really surreal being hundreds of feet above the ocean.

Plaque Commemorating Crash of a WWII B-17

Annie vs Hemlock

We were both taken by a very handsome fern all over the ground under the trees, the Deer Fern. It's not a fern we have noticed before, it's range in the US being limited to the Pacific Northwest.

Deer Ferns (Blechnum spicant)

Back on the east coast, we have about three species of Oxalis that we would see more or less commonly, but nothing as big and as green as these Oxalis oregana, the so-called Redwood Sorrel, that were growing in patches everywhere.

Our Own Native "Shamrock," Oxalis oregana

Hemlock Roots Were Tricky

Once through the old growth forest and having meandered to the north side of the cape and back again, the trail climbs a bit and emerges on the tops of the southern cliffs. I had seen warnings about how exposed the trail is, but I have been on a lot worse.

Cliff-top Trail is Exposed in Places

Those Cliffs are Tall and Steep

Small Cove from Way on High

Looking Back at the Beach

Hard to Tell This is About 400 Feet Above the Ocean

Annie Taking in Wells Cove

Neat Rock Formation

Wildflowers were scarce as is normal for this time of year, but we did notice the open cliff faces and tops covered in a small shrub festooned with white tufts, which after much digging through the internet and my books, appears to be Coyote Brush, Baccharis pilularis. Not sure why it was so hard to find, but it is conspicuously absent from my main reference.

Coyote Brush, Baccharis pilularis, Hanging on a Cliff

Detail of Baccharis pilularis

I was really happy to see a late fall friend that I recognize from our jaunts on the East Coast, a denizen of neglected places everywhere, Pearly Everlasting. It's a handsome and underappreciated plant.

Pearly Everlasting (Anaphalis margaritacea)

Salal Still in Bloom! Gaultheria shallon

I was quite surprised to see Salal still in bloom in mid-October. I always think of them as blooming in spring, but here was a big patch standing in full sun with southern exposure just blooming away at the end of the season. Right next to and intermingled with the Salal was a plant that I recognize from my yard, the Evergreen Huckleberry. This is one of the tiny bare-root natives that I planted in the early spring for the tiny evergreen foliage and its exuberant copper-colored spring foliage.

Evergreen Huckleberry, Vaccinium ovatum

We finally arrived at the very western point, a couple of miles out in the ocean, about 450 feet above the water and a great spot we hear to watch Grey Whales on migration in the spring. We're going to have to do that as Annie has never seen a whale before. I have been lucky enough to see a Grey Whale with baby in tow heading north just under the Point Reyes lighthouse down in California.

While there were no whales to been seen or anything else moving except for some minuscule shore birds below us, at least there were a pair of ravens playing about and croaking at us and each other.

We had Aerobatic Company/Beggars at the Point

Just before we headed back, I spied this hardy rose facing due west at the top of the cliff where it must surely take the full brunt of all the winter storms that the Pacific has to dish out. We tend to think of roses as these genteel flowers of home gardens, but they are truly tough as nails residents of some pretty hardscrabble places.

Roses Are Hardy Plants, 400 Feet Atop a Sheer Cliff Face

From the point, we reversed course and headed back up the hill to the car. Given that we haven't done any hiking in a long time, our old legs held out pretty well, but we were reminded that if we are going to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail here in a few years, we've got a good bit of conditioning to do.