Smith Rock State Park

Last year, at just about this very same time of year give or take a day or two, we made our first foray to Smith Rock State Park in Terrebonne OR, just north of our home in Bend. This park, one of the most visited in the state of Oregon, is stunningly beautiful. Besides having miles of hiking trails, Smith Rock is probably best known as the home of American sport rock climbing, offering something on the order of 2000 documented routes.

Smith Rock State Park

After millennia of erosion of an old caldera by the Crooked River, the river now runs at the feet of some incredibly impressive spires of volcanic rock and tuff (compressed volcanic ash and debris). The tops of the spires are on the order of 600 feet above the present river level and many have nearly sheer faces, making them attractive to climbers. The Crooked River, a tributary of the Deschutes, flows north from here until it meets the Deschutes at Lake Billy Chinook about 15 miles north-northwest as the crow flies.

A year ago, we climbed Misery Ridge and then looped around the back side of the park to come back down to the Crooked River via the Burma Road. This afforded us a good look at the barrens and higher elevations in the back of the park and was a wholly different experience from our visit yesterday. Yesterday, we climbed Misery Ridge and then circled back to the car via the River Trail, giving us a much better look at the riparian habitat of the lowlands. 

My main goal of visit was to walk the River Trail with an eye to perhaps seeing one or more of the local otters, a mission that was successful. Ann got to see her very first River Otter in the wild. My other goal in making this brief hike of perhaps 4.5 miles was to assess my fitness level coming off an extended period on the couch with a broken foot this winter.

After having been released by my surgeon two weeks ago, this was my first foray on more technical ground. I have been walking a lot recently, but only on relatively flat trails along the Deschutes River, good for redeveloping muscle tone and flexibility, but crappy for cardio and redeveloping my lost balance. Climbing Misery Ridge would be a big test for me. I have no shame in admitting that it almost kicked my ass, leaving me wanting for both breath and balance. What a difference a year makes!

Great Breakfast Burritos to Start our Morning

A lesson learned from our last foray up the rock was to start the day with a substantial breakfast to have enough fuel to make the very steep, but non-technical assent of the cliff face. Even though we are not big breakfast eaters, just after 8am, we stopped in Bend at one of our favorite breakfast food trucks, the Sol Verde truck just off West Galveston, across the street from Boss Rambler Beer Club. We got one each of carne adovada and chile verde breakfast burritos, both New Mexican classics. After arriving at Smith Rock, we each ate only part of the large burritos, saving the other half for our lunch.

Given the popularity of Smith Rock State Park, parking can be quite the issue. Fortunately, we arrived before 9am on a weekday and were able to get one of the last spots near the trail down into the river canyon. Cars were circling like vultures hunting for people departing when we arrived back at the car in the early afternoon.

Start of the Misery Ridge Trail
Switchbacks Bottom Right of Photo

Switchbacks from the Bridge Leading up to Misery Ridge

In the photo above, taken a bit below the parking lot, you can see the Crooked River below and the footbridge leading across. Come July 3, the existing bridge will be demolished and a new one will be built, taking many weeks out of the summer schedule. It will not be possible to cross the river to the main spires and rock climbing areas unless you are willing to wade the river at the horse ford about a quarter mile downstream. In large part, this is what spurred the timing of our visit this year, along with the fact that the climb up Misery Ridge is totally exposed and brutally hot as the summer moves along.

Western Fence Lizard, Surprisingly, on a Fence

By contrast with our visit at the same time last year during which a lot of spring flowers were in bloom and despite our very delayed spring this year, most of the flowers on the south and east side of the park were bloomed out. None of the ubiquitous Balsamroots, for example, were still in bloom and surprisingly, our usual fall bloomer, Rabbitbrush, was blooming sporadically in the scrub on the southwest side of the river bottom.

Unusually Early Blooming Rabbitbrush, Ericameria nauseosa

Tall Tumblemustard, Sisymbrium altissimum

As we started to climb up the Misery Ridge trail and moved to the northwest towards the Red Wall, we left the relatively lush flora of the river bottom behind. The loose scree slopes at the bottom of the cliffs were covered in large stands of White Horehound, a mint that thrives in tough hardscrabble places. Although I have heard of horehound candy, I can't really imagine it. The leaves smell quite musty and unpalatable to me, unlike the vast majority of its mint cousins.

White Horehound, Marrubium vulgare

Ultra-tiny (4-5mm) Blooms of Perhaps
Common Fiddleneck, Amsinckia menziesii

I don't mind owning up to having some difficulty with this climb this year. In years past, I could have marched right to the top without stopping, but my stint on the sofa with a broken foot has really set my fitness back a long way this year. I'm really going to have to work hard this summer to regain my Mountain Goat status. Ann and I took advantage of nearly every stopping point along the trail to suck in oxygen, the rock outcropping below included.

Perhaps a Third of the Way to the Top

As we worked our way along the base of the sheer cliffs to the Red Wall (whose color you can see in the photo below), we were constantly strafed by chatty swallows of the Violet-Green persuasion especially down near the river whose water these most common western swallows patrol on the regular. Higher up, I happened to glance up to see tons of swallows going to and from nests under overhangs on the cliff wall. Knowing Violet-Green Swallows to be cavity nesters and there being no real cavities on the sheer cliffs, I snapped a photo of these swallows.. Although I could not tell from the naked eye, once I enlarged the photos, I could see that these are indeed Cliff Swallows with their impressive nests made of balls of mud, scavenged from the river banks below.

Cliff Swallows Nesting

Flora was scarce on the parched hillside, especially anything in bloom. But starting about 500 feet above the river and about 100 feet below the top, I started to see largish rafts of a new plant to me with faint blue five-petalled blossoms. I most often think of phacelias as plants of the cooler forests, so these Branching Phacelia plants struck me as out of place.

Branching Phacelia, Phacelia ramosissima

There is a decent overhang just feet below the top that provides welcome shade against the cool rocks. I would be lying if I said I did not lean against that cold rock and suck oxygen to counter the lightheadedness and visible black spots of hypoxemia. My chest and lungs were burning, Misery Ridge living up to its name on this day. Ultimately, we climbed the last few feet up to the top, where I sat in the shade of my favorite Western Juniper, whose lower limbs have been rubbed smooth and shiny by thousands of hikers.

Welcome Shade Atop Misery Ridge

One of the unfortunate but inevitable consequences of my broken foot is a loss of muscle strength in my ankles and calves and hence a loss of balance. That coupled with the lightheadedness from the climb (along with my awful fear of heights) kept me from the higher and more exposed points on the cliff where Ann ventured with nary a care.

Atop Misery Ridge Taking Photos

Gray Butte, Directly Behind Ann

Crooked River from atop Misery Ridge

One of the great reasons to climb up on the Misery Ridge Trail is for the great views. It's not every day that you can see all the way to Mt. Hood from Deschutes County, but the air is still relatively clear in what is now our late spring. Ann could just see that snow covered volcano, some 75 miles in the distance, from her perch atop Misery Ridge. We would see it much clearer later on the back side of Misery Ridge.

Mt. Hood Just Visible Center of Photo

Neat Rock Formations on Misery Ridge

On top of Misery Ridge, Western Juniper, Juniperus occidentalis
and Big Sagebrush, Artemisia tridentata, Dominate the Landscape

Up on top of the Misery Ridge prominence, the landscape changes and the ground is covered by a chapparal of big sagebrush, a bit of antelope bitterbrush, and some short and twisted western junipers. The relatively open top affords great views of the mountains to the west, including the Three Sisters that you see in the photo below.

Expand This Photo to See How Ann Feels About the Climb

The Pinnacles Behind a Hopsage

Up on top of Misery Ridge, some 600 feet above the river, it is a little cooler and so some of the flowers that had bloomed out below are still in bloom, including some Spiny Hopsage bushes with their thorns and beautiful pink blooms. Some appear to have cream colored blooms as well. This plant sits in front of the climbing area known as the Pinnacles. In the upper right of the photo, you can just make out Mt. Bachelor and Broken Top to the south and west of Bend.

Spiny Hopsage, Grayia spinosa

The back (north) side of Misery Ridge affords great views of Black Butte, Mt. Washington, Three-Fingered Jack, Mt. Jefferson, and in the distance, Mt. Hood. There is also a funny looking and appropriately named spire on this side called Monkey Face, a favorite with climbers. As we made our way past Monkey Face and then started our descent to its foot, we watched a pair of climbers leave the relative safety of the monkey's left eye and start the climb to the top.

Mt. Hood, 75 Miles Distant, from Backside of Misery Ridge

By Monkey Face, Crooked River Heading North of the Park

Monkey Face from the Side

Climber Leaving the Monkey's Left Eye

As we started our descent on the very steep trail beside Monkey Face toward the river, we were immediately serenaded by a bunch of Rock Wrens, a common sight in this area. We watched many of the tiny grayish birds flit about the rocks as we walked down the trail. One even serenaded us from the top of a juniper.

Pair of Rock Wrens

As we descended towards the river on the back (northern) side of Smith Rock, we saw a few clumps of the typical ray flowers that we would expect to see in bloom at this time of year, thanks to the more shaded aspect of that area.

Woolly Groundsel, Packera cana, with a Yellow Crab Spider

An Unidentified Purple Aster or Erigeron

Once we got down the trail to the base of Monkey Face, we continued north on the Mesa Verde trail to the intersection with the River Trail. Along the river, we made our way left slowly back to the car through the very different looking riparian zone, far, far different from the upland desert we had been walking through. On our visit a year ago, we spent the vast majority of our walk traversing the arid badlands around Smith Rock, so walking the river felt like a very different park. We saw the vast majority of wildflowers in this wetter and in places thanks to some riverside trees, more shaded, area.

Ocean-spray, Holodiscus discolor

Wild Licorice, Glycyrrhiza lepidota

Headed South in Direction of Our Car

Thistle, Cirsium sp.

Yellow Salsify, Tragopogon dubius

Whitetop, Lepidium sp.

In one remarkable area, we started wading through a large stand of plants with large conical spires of white pea-like blooms, a plant that I had never remarked on before. It turned out to be Wild Licorice, a plant that I had read about in the Lewis and Clark journals, in which Meriwether Lewis wrote that the tuberous root of the plant tasted similar to sweet potatoes.

In this same area, we saw small mock oranges, to about two meters high, in full, fragrant bloom. These plants owe their scientific name also to Meriwether Lewis who collected samples and returned them to the East Coast, though they had been used for ages by the native tribes for arrow stock and other uses. The local clematis vines were using these shrubs as natural trellises. I am used to the local clematis on the East Coast being fall blooming, so these struck me as blooming at the wrong time of the year. Nevertheless, the combination of two very fragrant blossoms perfumed the air around the trail in a delightful manner.

Western Clematis, Clematis ligusticifolia

Lewis's Mock Orange, Philadelphus lewisii

The creek bottom (I say creek, but this is technically the Crooked River) is full of Poison Hemlock, at places hemming the trail in on both sides. I do not know it to be a physical irritant à la poison oak, but it contains alkaloids that are toxic upon ingestion to most animals including humans. Best to give it a wide berth.

Poison Hemlock, Conium maculatum

A Massive Ponderosa Creekside, Pinus ponderosa

Big Stands of Leafy Spurge, Euphorbia esula

Beautiful, but Invasive, Yellow Iris, Iris pseudacorus

Cutleaf Beardtongue, Penstemon richardsonii

Blue Mountain Prairie-clover, Dalea ornata

On the way up to the top of Smith Rock, I noticed several small lilac five-petalled blooms on some very thin foliage, blooms that reminded me of Claytonia a bit. On the scorching hot cliff face, the plants had almost no foliage, consisting mainly of wire-like stems, and each plant might have a bloom or perhaps two. Contrast that with the patch just below from the shady side of the hill, growing at the foot of a Ponderosa Pine with lush green stems and dozens of blooms.

Narrow-leaved Wire-lettuce, Stephanomeria tenuifolia, from Shady Side

Stephanomeria Bloom From Sunny Side

I have a pretty good ear for bird calls, at least back East where I heard them all my life, out West now for six years, not as much, but I like to think that I can get at least pretty close. But I got fooled. While walking along the river, I heard what I really thought was an Osprey. The bird was too far away and too backlit for me to see, but when I took a picture of it and enlarged the photo, I knew I had been had. The Bald Eagle below was making sounds that were eerily similar to an Osprey.

Bald Eagle in a Ponderosa

It's Gosling Season

The whole point of walking back to the car along the river was to hopefully see one of the river otters that others told me I might see there. We had moved into an area of the river that was less whitewater and more sedate when Ann, ahead of me on the trail, yelled "Otter!" This was her first time ever seeing one in the wild and I'm happy she got the opportunity. I watched it dive lazily in the water and surface, time and again, to roll on its back and eat the fish that it had just caught.

Nearing the footbridge back to the car, we passed an area of striking vertical rock called the Dihedrals. I snapped a picture because I find this formation fascinating. It was not until I got home and unloaded the photo on the computer that I could see a climber on the vertical face in the shadows just to the left of the tree. People climb some crazy stuff!

Part of the Dihedrals

Calm Water Where the Otter Was Hunting

Just before we reached the footbridge to make the excruciatingly steep climb out of the canyon back to the car, I spied a milkweed just coming into bloom, a milkweed species that I do not know. I know a half dozen or more species back east, but have no experience with milkweeds out west. This was a patch of a western species called Showy Milkweed.

Showy Milkweed, Asclepias speciosa

After struggling up the steep climb out of the canyon, the sight of our car was so welcome as was the thought of a beer to celebrate. We stopped in Redmond for a beer, but it turns out that we were really too overheated from the hot walk to drink beer.

Hot or not, I'm glad that we were able to fit in a hike of Misery Ridge in the relative cool of June and before they rip out the bridge for the summer. It was fun to go back to a place we have been before and have a totally different experience. Also, otters!

Father's Day 2023

Ann set up a dinner with Rob and Dyce on Father's Day in which she planned to make risotto-stuffed poblano peppers. I love it when she cooks. Rob and Dyce volunteered to bring some cheese and wine to kick off the evening. I ended up making a Margarita sorbet for dessert. All in all, a great evening.

Ann's Risotto Stuffed Poblano with Lime Crema

Rob and Dyce went way overboard with the cheese, including artfully arranging the three cheeses on a board with grapes, figs, dried apricots, Marcona almonds, a jar of chutney, and three types of crackers. The three cheeses were a Comte, a locally smoked Cheddar, and the star of the show, a super runny Quinta from Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company. This is a bloomed rind cheese similar to Vacherin Mont d'Or and was so ripe that we sliced the top off and scooped out all the yumminess from inside.

Rob and Dyce's Cheese Board

Poblanos, Peeled, Seeded and Ready to Stuff

Early in the day while Ann was out, I torched the poblanos, then peeled and seeded them. The procedure for this is outlined in a post from a few years back. Also, I sliced some fresh corn from the cob for Ann's risotto. Later in the day, Ann took over in the kitchen and made the risotto base, then stuffed the poblanos, and readied them for the oven.

Kitchen Queen Making Risotto

Once the risotto base was done, she stirred in some fresh corn kernels, a bit of chipotle adobo, and a big handful of grated pepperjack cheese to make the filling for the poblanos. The peppers got a sprinkle of cotija cheese on top before going into a hot oven for 40 minutes, followed by five minutes under the broiler to brown a bit.

Poblanos Rellenos Just Out of the Oven

After dinner, I started up the venerable ice cream machine on a Margarita sorbet base that I made earlier in the day, recipe below. I have never made such a sorbet before and took a wild guess at how to make it. The end result was awesome, so I wouldn't change a thing. It is somewhat expensive to make, however, requiring a lot of fresh limes and most of a bottle of tequila. The results though!

It Takes a Lot of Limes to Make Sorbet

My Venerable Musso Ice Cream Machine

Part of the reason for the success of the sorbet was that I made a different one each night at the restaurant and so I have a lot of experience at it. But a bigger part of the success is down to the machine in which I made it, my 20-year old Musso machine from Italy. Weighing in at nearly 70 pounds, this beast is barely portable from the garage where I store it to the kitchen where I use it. It will knock out a half gallon of sorbet in about 20 minutes and will keep doing it all night long, witnessed by its use in the restaurant where it ran for the better part of each night, churning out intermezzo course after intermezzo course for over a decade.

The Margarita sorbet recipe follows. I have divided it into two parts for ease of explanation.

Tequila Simple Syrup

The following recipe yields about 2 liters of syrup, a bit more than you will need to make a 2-liter batch of Margarita sorbet. Save any leftover tequila syrup for your bar where you can use it in tequila and mezcal cocktails. I have specified a liquid volume of sugar because I am lazy: I use a single one-liter measure to measure the sugar, then the liquid ingredients, limiting the amount of dishes that I have to wash.

500 ml reposado tequila
1500 ml water
500 ml granulated sugar

Add the three ingredients to a 3-quart or larger saucepan, stir well, and bring to a slow boil. Once all the sugar is incorporated into the syrup, turn off the heat and let the syrup cool before using. Syrup can be stored at room temperature for a couple of days. For longer storage, I put it in a squeeze bottle in the refrigerator.

Margarita Sorbet

This is a base recipe for 2 liters (basically a half gallon) of sorbet. 

juice of a dozen limes (about 500 ml)
enough tequila simple syrup to make 2 liters (about 1500 ml)
one shot of Curaçao (about 50 ml)

Mix all the ingredients and taste for sugar-acid balance. I like mine on the tarter side. Add more lime juice or tequila syrup as you see fit. Refrigerate until cold before putting it in your ice cream machine. Adding the bit of alcohol in the Curaçao will help to lower the freezing point of the mix and will help ensure a smoother sorbet with smaller ice crystals. It will also extend the freezing time by a bit (in my case, 25 minutes versus 20 minutes). You can transfer the sorbet to a freezer for a half hour or so to fully firm up.

Hatozaki Small Batch Whiskey

We finished the evening with a nightcap of Hatozaki Small Batch whiskey. I'm a devoted Scotch drinker, but recently I have been branching out to taste malts from other part of the world. I find this whiskey, like almost all Japanese whiskey, smooth and mellow. I prefer rougher and tastier Scotch, but it is no real hardship educating myself on the worldwide differences in malts. Happy Father's Day to me!

Cannellini Salad with Shrimp, Olives, Sun-Dried Tomatoes, and Cavolo Nero

I'm blogging about this salad merely because I would like to remember it. In the course of my life, I have cooked and forgotten so many dishes, many of which I wish I could remember. Every now and then, Ann will show me a photo of a dish and I will look at it and say "That looks good!" to which she will reply, "You cooked this!" I'm afraid those are the hazards of cooking for years on end with a menu that changes nightly. 

Cannellini Salad with Shrimp, Olives, Sun-Dried Tomatoes, and Cavolo Nero

Now that we are in late spring here in Central Oregon, our eating habits are making their usual seasonal shift. During the winter, we frequently have a warm dish of shrimp and white beans. But when the weather turns warm, we crave cooler foods such as salads. This particular salad is along the lines of the warm dish, but everything is cool and it is dressed with a quasi-vinaigrette of lemon juice and olive oil.

This salad is really just a combination of things that I keep on hand all the time in the pantry with a bunch of cavolo nero from the refrigerator, a bunch that really needed to be eaten. You may know cavolo nero, literally "black cabbage" in Italian, by any one of a number of names: lacinato, lacinato kale, dinosaur kale, black kale, Tuscan kale, Tuscan black kale, and so forth. It is one of my favorite leaf vegetables for its great texture and flavor. Like all the sturdy leaf vegetables, it can be served raw, long-braised, or anywhere in between.

I'm giving a recipe below, but please believe me when I say that I didn't measure anything. Salads, like soups, are extremely free-form and almost anything goes.

3 - 15 ounce cans cannellini, drained

1/2 cup diced sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil

3/4 cup pitted Kalamata olives

1/4 cup fresh basil, thinly sliced en chiffonade

juice of one lemon

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon Kosher salt

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 bunch cavolo nero, destemmed and thinly sliced

4 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced

1 pound of medium raw shrimp, peeled and deveined

Place the beans, tomatoes, olives, basil, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and oregano in a salad bowl.

Wilt the cavolo nero in a saute pan with olive oil and the sliced garlic. When the cabbage is wilted, add 1/4 cup of water to the pan and quickly braise the cabbage until all the water is evaporated. Add the cabbage to the salad bowl.

Film the pan with more olive oil and cook the shrimp until they are just done. Season and add to the salad bowl.

Mix all the salad ingredients and adjust as you see fit, adding salt, oregano, lemon juice, or olive oil as needed.

You can serve it at this point, but the flavors will come together better if you let it stand for a half an hour on the counter. It is also delicious having spent a night in the refrigerator.

Visiting Dad

A Trip Long Overdue

It's been a long time since I have seen my father. We are separated by the breadth of a continent, an ideological divide, and the ghosts of a past estrangement. I last saw him at my mother's funeral in 2017 though we have spoken regularly on the telephone in recent years. COVID and the financial restrictions of my forced retirement as a result of COVID have not helped us save the cash required for such a cross-continent trip. But finally, we were able to get to see him.

My father has been in poor health for several years. He spent much of the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023 in the hospital and we were not sure that he would make it out, but he is a strong and cantankerous old bastard. He was released to home in early February, having exhausted everything that the hospital could do for him and is currently under hospice care.

The Two of Us

Following his release from the hospital, Ann and I made plans to visit him at his home in Auburn, AL in early March, but then on February 15, I broke my left foot and could not travel easily or well. After my foot surgery, we booked tickets to visit him on June 6, coincidentally enough, the day after my surgeon released me from her care.

This was no pleasure trip and I was in part looking forward to it and to reconnecting with my brother and sister and also dreading it in that I would have to confront my father's ill health head on, rather than from across the country. I was dreading seeing his debilitated state and worse still, having to come to grips with the idea that this will be the very last time that I see my father before he dies.

I have been speaking with my brother and sister fairly consistently in the last several months as Dad's health and physical ability have deteriorated to the point where I could no longer speak with him on the telephone. Getting updates from them via the phone was surely going to be very different than putting my eyes on him and seeing for myself. And it was.

I'm very glad that I got to see him and very sad at the same time that he has no quality of life left and will be moving on in the near future. Truth be told, I am also feeling a bit guilty (as well as grateful) that my brother and sister are devoting so much time to taking care of Dad at the end of his life.

Auburn, Alabama

In 1977 when my dad accepted a deanship with Auburn University, we relocated from my hometown of Charlottesville, VA in March of my freshman year of high school. I lived in Auburn just long enough to graduate from Auburn High and then return back home to Charlottesville to attend the University of Virginia with my childhood friends. For my younger siblings, Auburn is home and they live there still and are doing an amazing job of taking care of our father in his dotage. They raised their families there; I raised mine in Virginia. They connected more with friends there; I was always the outsider. Auburn means different things to us.

Even though Virginia is and will always be my home, I enjoyed my time in Auburn despite almost not graduating from Auburn High. When I arrived at the school at the tail end of my freshman year, I had nearly exhausted all the courses that the school had to offer. I took the SAT early and Auburn University offered me a slot, so I co-enrolled and spent most of my day there, rather than at the high school with my peers. Come high school graduation, I found myself a half a credit shy of the required number to matriculate.

The high school principal took my enrollment in the university as an indictment of his school (the truth hurts, doesn't it?) and refused to let me graduate until I went over his head by petitioning the School Board to accept my two full years of college credit for the missing high school half credit. Day to day, the principal made his disdain for me plain and never stopped trying to find an excuse to punish me for some infraction or other. For my part, I mainly ignored the small and small-minded shrew, biding my time to get back home to Virginia, where I would transfer to UVA after graduating.

There are things I love about the south and Auburn in particular: college football, magnolia blossoms, soul food, antebellum houses, the lilt of the southern drawl, politeness, and the seemingly slower pace of life. There are also things I do not love: blazing heat, sauna-like humidity, rampant conservatism, and inherent and systemic racism top the list. Despite this, I was looking forward to going back to see this town where I spent three formative years in the late 1970s.

Tuesday June 6

Reminiscences aside, getting to Alabama from Central Oregon is not a particularly easy feat in that there are no direct connections. The drill is to fly from Bend to Seattle and thence on to Atlanta, the busiest airport in the country and one which has been under construction all my life. Situated just across the Alabama-Georgia line, Auburn is about a two-hour drive from the airport, depending on traffic, construction, and the Georgia constabulary, in full force when we visited.

This cross-country trip is a long one, essentially a full day, and to arrive at a reasonable hour on the East Coast, already three hours ahead of us in Oregon, means a very early departure. Although first thing in the morning at our local airport (RDM - Redmond) is very busy, security takes a minute or two at most to get through. This is a good thing in that we never have to get to the airport too far ahead of boarding.

Our shuttle picked us up at the house at 0645 for our 0800 flight. Too bad for me that only slept from 0330 to 0520, a true crime and a bad start to a very long day. Our trip through security took twice as long as normal because someone (the female member of our party) forgot that she had a tiny nail file/corkscrew in her purse. She gladly donated it to TSA.

The early morning flight to Seattle afforded us the opportunity to see the amazing rock spires of Smith Rock State Park in the rich golden morning light, an inspiring sight for certain. All along the incredibly brief flight (perhaps 40-42 minutes in the air), we got to soak in the natural beauty of our home: Smith Rock, Gray Butte, Three Sisters, Black Butte, Three-Fingered Jack, Mt. Washington, Mt. Jefferson, Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams, Mt. St. Helens, and king of them all, Mt. Ranier. As we made our way north along Puget Sound to land from the north, the Olympics were in beautiful form, snow caps gleaming in the brilliant morning sun.

The flight into Atlanta was boringly normal, except for a good bit of bumps coming through the cloud layer northwest of town as we skirted a decent-sized thunderstorm. Because of the storm, we were held up on the taxiway as the controllers dropped a long line of planes onto the runway trying to get them on the ground as soon as possible. Half an hour would elapse before we got to our gate. The blast of hot, humid air as we exited the plane was a shock to our systems, well-inured to the low humidity and moderate temperatures of Central Oregon.

On the ground, we made the long schlep to the Rental Car Center via two trains. By the time we got our car and left the parking garage, it was about 1900 and rush hour traffic was mainly behind us. Fortunately, heading to Alabama southwest on I-85 is going away from the main snarls in downtown Atlanta, a town blessed with shitty traffic.

Alabama and Georgia are separated by the Chattahoochee River; the river also marks the boundary between Eastern time and Central time, so we arrived in Auburn at 2000, 2100 at the airport and 1800 back home. Most places in Auburn, despite being a college town, were trying to close at 2100, leaving us just an hour to try to find somewhere to eat, before going to our AirBnB. We chose the likely sounding Auburn Draft House as a potentially decent place to get a cold beer and a quick meal.

To quote Ann upon reviewing the meager pickings among the 24 or so taps, "Boy, are we spoiled for beer!" We finally found a weak hazy from a local Alabama brewery. It would not pass muster in Oregon, but it was the best beer we had all week in Auburn.

At 2130, we headed for our room and on entry, discovered that the place had not been turned, bedding linens and towels heaped all around. We called the owner who was suitably mortified with her cleaning service and she sent us to another of her properties which we could not find in the dark, despite my having lived in Auburn during high school.

Not wanting to screw with it any longer, we headed for a cluster of hotels near the interstate and booked a room at the Hampton Inn. They had one room left with double queens for an exorbitant price which we reluctantly took, knowing that we would be reimbursed by our B&B host. When we opened the door, our long day got longer: this room had not been turned either. We left for the Marriott across the street and got a much nicer room for half the price. We were well and truly exhausted as we turned in for the night.

Wednesday June 7

Up at 1000 local time, we needed coffee and knowing that our best chance to find Dad alert was closer to lunch time, we drove downtown to a coffee house that Ann had found for us, one that is directly across the street from the police station, a building that I had visited many times as a teen. The police station that I knew was a decidedly ugly and utilitarian 1970s one-story blob with a flat roof. What I saw when I drove down the street toward the station was not at all what I was expecting. The city has built a beautiful Public Safety building, containing a fire station and a multi-story police station, a really good looking work of architecture.

A Great Cup of Coffee

The coffee shop, occupying a beautiful old house that I want to date to the 1910s, is really well appointed and to my (jaded by PNW coffee quality) great surprise, serves a great cup of coffee, so good that we would return the next day for our morning cup. The students that staff the shop are unfailingly polite and would "ma'am" Ann over and over. Welcome to the south where failure to ma'am or sir someone is to invite a backhand to the jaw from your mother. I have read that some women out our way object to being called ma'am, but I am happy to report that at least in Auburn AL, manners still apply.

Another aspect of being in the South is to be firmly enfolded into the bosom of the Bible Belt. Church is de rigueur on Sunday and religion pervades the culture. This particular coffee shop makes no bones of it, hosting Bible study, offering prayer cards, and featuring walls hung with crosses and religious quotations. We came to refer to our morning cup of coffee as "Joe with Jesus."

I would be remiss to mention Christianity in the South without mentioning the other pervasive religion: big-time college football. The town of Auburn is largely a shrine to the Auburn Tiger football team and much of the town is decked out in the university colors of orange and blue. It is impossible in this town, where even my high school football team got a police escort to the stadium on Friday nights, to miss the unending sea of AU memorabilia and regalia. Even the garbage trucks have blue cabs and orange bodies!

Just inside the back door to the coffee shop where most customers enter, the parking being in the rear, hangs a sign asking patrons to check under their cars for the shop mascot, Ross the cat, before leaving. Ross is a friendly sort who hangs around out back looking for any affection he can get.

Mascot Ross the Cat Featured on the Coasters

Ross, Playing Oh-So Hard-to-Get

Caffeinated at last, we made the short drive from downtown to my old house also in central Auburn where we would see my father for the first time since my mother's funeral in 2017. I really had no idea what to expect given his deteriorated state. I can say that the whole experience left me drained. Although I was mentally prepared to see my dad in decline, the reality of it hit me pretty hard. The man that I last saw ambulatory and in shock at his wife's passing is largely confined to home and sits most of the day, moving a few feet here and there courtesy of a walker.

Harder still for me to accept is the mental decline of a guy who was always the smartest in the room. Although he had stretches of lucidity when we could have a conversation after a fashion, he had other periods when he was out of it, or was cantankerous, or acting like a five-year old: giggling after his hired help had called him on his abusive language, knowing that he was in trouble but not likely to stop his bad behavior.

His mouth, blatant misogyny, and bucking all the help from his 24x7 caregivers has chased off homecare-giver after homecare-giver. Ann and I found ourselves frequently trying to smooth the ruffled feathers of his various caregivers during our visits with him over the week. If he keeps up with the abuse, he will have no alternative than to be institutionalized and that is a horrifying thought for me. The women that care for him now are angels. How much more of his crap they can tolerate, who can say?

We arrived around 1130, having been told that lunchtime is one of the periods in the day in which he is most often alert, planning to stay with him during his lunch until he knocked out for his afternoon nap. He insisted and insisted that he wanted Mexican food for lunch and I was gearing up to go hunt some down and bring it back to him. But no. He absolutely insisted that we take him out for lunch.

Knowing because he is not mobile that this would be an epic challenge, Ann and I tried to talk him out of it over and over. Finally, we relented, but when we asked his helper how to assemble his wheelchair that lives in the back of his car, he insisted that he would walk and would not be using a wheelchair. Ann got pretty firm with him (he knows she will not take shit off anyone so he keeps it in check with her) and told him, "No wheelchair, no lunch." He finally acceded and after a laborious struggle to get him into his chair lift and down the back stairs and outside to the car, a process of some ten minutes, we set forth in search of Mexican food.

His helper warned us that she thought that the restaurant for which he was aiming had been long closed. Dad could not articulate what part of town we were headed for, but he seemed to have some idea of where we were going, so with his input and a lot of Google support, we got headed in a vague northeast direction. At one point, he asked me to turn up a street that I knew to be totally residential. I told him that, but he insisted, so I made the turn. A few hundred yards up the street, he said, "I retract the turn." No kidding.

Still not having any idea where we were going, I headed for the nearest road containing a lot of restaurants, hoping that we would drive past something that he would recognize. Google showed several Mexican options to the right, so we went that way. As we were driving along, he said we should have gone left so I figured out how to do a U-turn on a busy four-lane highway while Ann searched the internet for restaurants back the other direction. Fortunately, she came up with the name of a place not far away and Dad responded positively to the name she gave him.

When we got there and pulled into an open handicapped space directly in front of the restaurant in a pretty full parking lot, Dad questioned whether the restaurant were open. I assured him that the blazing neon OPEN sign and the full parking lot were good signs.

Using Ann's Reading Glasses to "Read"

The host was a good sport and put us off in a section where there were no customers and where we could easily maneuver the wheelchair. Dad, having left his reading glasses at home, made a big show of using Ann's readers to look at the menu. I don't think he can read any longer and with some input from him, I ordered some food for him. I cannot say that my miserable barbacoa tacos were like anything you might find on the West Coast. Despite the crappy food, the Modelo beer was cold and we still managed to have a decent time with Dad. And he clearly enjoyed being out of the house.

I asked him how often he got to get out for lunch and he responded "Never!" Given the huge production that it is to get him out of the house, I totally understand why. Fortunately, I am a very patient person and was not in a hurry to be anywhere, so for him, this once, it was feasible to take him out. But once was enough.

Once we got the show packed up and returned to his house, he was exhausted and ready to sleep, so we got him in his chair and left to go back to the B&B and get some space between us and what we had just witnessed.

Sunflowers Near our AirBnB

After resting for a few hours, we decided not to go back for Dad's dinner hour on the theory that he was exhausted from our late lunch expedition and probably would not be coherent. At early dinner time, we walked from our B&B into downtown to a beer taproom, hoping to get a decent beer (not yet having concluded that such does not exist in Alabama).

On the walk to the taproom, we noticed a lot of birds that we used to see on the East Coast which we sorely miss on the West Coast: Northern Cardinal, Northern Mockingbird, Red-Bellied Woodpecker, and Carolina Wren all come to mind. We also passed a lot of trees and shrubs that we do not see out west: Sassafras, Water Oak, Willow Oak, giant Pecans, and magnificent Magnolias, just coming into bloom. For me, these are very nostalgic things. One, however, that is not is kudzu, the vine introduced from Japan that is in the process of eating the South. Kudzu I miss not one iota.

The taproom turned out to be self-serve: an electronic card activates each of the taps and records how many ounces of beer you pour for yourself. We sampled small quantities of a lot of beers in the empty taproom, it being summer semester and college kids looking for cheap beer rather than craft beer, finding nothing of any merit. Although we are spoiled by living in one of the great beer meccas of the country, we've found great beer everywhere we have visited in this country. As an exception to this rule, we are sad to report that we found no great beer in Alabama.

While we were enjoying the air conditioning of the tap room, the sun was going lower and lower in the sky and we searched the internet for some place to go have a decent dinner. We settled on an American restaurant a few blocks away and arrived just as it was getting dark to find it packed and on a half-hour wait, despite students being out for the summer. It gets dark at least an hour earlier in Alabama than in Oregon.

After a cocktail at the bar, we finally got a table for two outside on the sidewalk just as the streetlight popped on. We ordered the safest wine on the tiny list (a name brand California sparkler) and got both seafood entrees on the menu, shrimp and grits for Ann and grilled catfish for me. The catfish was really decent, while the shrimp and grits were utterly forgettable.

The walk back to the B&B in the dark was far nicer than the walk out in the blazing heat. We turned in some time after midnight, still being on West Coast time.

Wednesday June 8

After our lunch excursion the day before, neither Ann nor I were eager to repeat the experience. My sister Kathy had texted the evening before that Dad was expressing a desire to go back out to lunch. To forestall this, we decided to pick up some lunch after our morning coffee and bring it with us. We chose a local bao shop, hoping to bring him something a bit unusual. I'm impressed to find bao in Alabama.

We arrived to find him in the middle of a battle with his homecare worker, whom we are certain that he had insulted just before we arrived. He really is not that nice in his old age. We spent a few minutes getting everyone off the ledge, Ann talking to Dad and me trying to appease Elaine. This woman has the patience of Job!

Pork Belly Buns

We brought enough bao and pork belly buns for the four of us, but Elaine wasn't going to touch Chinese food because of her silly notion that the Chinese use cats for meat. Dad doesn't eat much, but did manage to eat a bao. Ann and I were disappointed in the quality and flavor of both the buns and bao. We have been spoiled.

With Dad nearly out of it after lunch, I had a chance to take in the dismaying state of the house and yard. The house is in poor condition with the deck rotted to the point that it has been taped off with yellow caution tape. I am afraid that when Dad passes, the only sensible thing to do will be to sell the house as-is to someone who wants to bulldoze it and build a new home on the acre-and-a-quarter double lot.

This large wooded lot (sweetgum, tupelo, cottonwood, and water oak) is bordered on two sides by creeks and is quiet and private. With its location near to downtown, it will make someone a fabulous home site. But currently, it feels more like a jungle with Virginia creeper, poison ivy, and greenbrier vines attacking the house and the kudzu down by the main creek taking over as it will. Even though my brother generously mows the grass every couple of weeks, it is a far cry from the yard that I used to labor over so intensely to make it look sharp. And it is a perfect metaphor for my father, the consummate gardener who took intense pride in his gardens, but who now sits in ruins in a chair all day.

Already down from seeing the condition of Dad and the house, we left shortly after lunch to recuperate in the air conditioning of our B&B. We would go back at dinner time on the chance that Dad might be more alert. It would also be our first opportunity to see my sister Kathy as she made her post-work visit with Dad to supervise his supper and nightly routine. Because we had dinner plans with my brother Mac and his wife Laura, we did not stay all that long. We invited Kathy and her husband John to dinner the following evening while we were there.

We met Mac and Laura at a small storefront Italian café on the south side of town, a place that is special to them. They had both just come from work. Mac is the new head coach of the Southern Union women's soccer team. Because this is a brand-new Juco team, he has just come off a long recruiting drive and is now putting his team for the fall through spring training. Laura is the head pharmacist at the regional hospital. They are just back from a trip to Italy and nearby parts of Europe and so this dominated a lot of our dinner conversation. Better to talk of happy things.

We, Ann and I, generally do not eat Italian when we dine out merely because she is full-blooded Italian and I am a chef and we can cook better Italian food at home. Still, our pasta was probably the best food we had during our entire trip and our conversation with Mac and Laura was great. We closed the place down and left reluctantly to let the restaurant clean up for the night.

Mac and Laura

Friday June 9

Ann comes from an Italian family whose roots are in both Calabria and Bari in southern Italy. But she is adopted. She found out that she was adopted in her 40s when she had already had her son Carter. Crazy internet sleuth that she is, she managed to sew together various threads of information about her birth mother and actually found her, living in Newnan GA, a commuter town southwest of Atlanta. As we were heading towards Alabama on I-85, we passed the exits for Newnan and that made me think of Ann's birth mother Betsy, whose family comes from Naples as apparently does Ann's birth father who is unknown to us.

Coincidentally (or telepathically) enough, when we awoke late Wednesday morning, there was a missed call on Ann's phone from Betsy. This is especially coincidental in that they may speak once a year on average. Ann called back and Betsy said she called because she was thinking of Ann. At this point, Betsy had no inkling that we were in the Atlanta area until Ann told her and asked if we could visit with her just briefly. We scheduled that for Friday at noon with the caveat that Betsy had an appointment at 2; the visit would necessarily be brief.

Because of the time change, we needed to leave Auburn at 9 to be in Atlanta at noon and given that we were on West Coast time, that meant we needed to be awake and on the road by 7am Pacific, an awfully early morning for us. Traffic was a non-issue until we reached the I-85/I-20 interchange where we exited in the direction of Augusta which afforded us great views of the Georgia State House whose dome is covered in gold leaf from the mines in Dahlonega in north Georgia.

Ann's Birth Mother Betsy

I had never met Betsy before and Ann had last seen her something on the order of 20 years prior. She's a pistol just like Ann and is blessed with Ann's short stature. And they are both are fantastic decorators; Ann could have decorated her house, which is just the cutest little cottage set way back off the street in a wooded neighborhood. Our two-hour visit went far too quickly before Betsy had to go to the doctor and we had to scramble back to Auburn for dinner with Kathy and John.

Kathy and John

After my sister Kathy and her husband John got off work, we met them downtown for the Friday night ArtWalk that consists of closed streets, live music, food trucks, and booth after booth of small art vendors. For us, the temperatures were extreme as we walked from our B&B; those who live in Auburn no doubt found it pleasant enough.

Given that it was hot, loud, and crowded, I urged that we seek shelter somewhere inside to cool off, have a drink, and eat some dinner. I also wanted talk and catch up, not having seen Kathy and John in several years. We ended up following John into a barbeque place in the thick of the goings-on downtown. It was no less quiet and no less crowded, but at least we could sit in the AC and yell at each other to be heard.

Last we saw them, John had just finished an advanced degree after his career in the Navy and had just accepted a job working with the legislature in the state capital of Montgomery, to which he commutes every day. He still has that job and plans to go for another three years. Kathy was working for the Athletic Department coaching athletes; she currently has a similar job helping engineering students stay up with their coursework. They are adjusting to being empty nesters

Kathy staked out a table in the wall-to-wall busy joint while John and I ordered food at the back counter and Ann pushed through the crowd to the bar to try to find something cold to drink. There was one so-called IPA that we ended up getting, but it was an IPA in name only. The kids at the bar were enthusiastically trying to sell Ann $5 pitchers of Budweiser, a beer that I would pay you $5 to drink for me.

I really didn't have any expectations of great food at what is essentially a college kid hangout, but I could at least hope. The barbeque met my expectations: really not very good. There was a place called Price's that had fantastic barbeque when I lived there, but that closed many years ago. And we would find that another old school smokehouse had stopped serving barbeque for want of help. The consensus favorite barbeque place in Auburn serves Texas barbeque and I did not travel to Alabama for Texas barbeque.

The heat and noise, on top of a day that saw us drive four hours to spend two hours in Atlanta, finally did us in and Ann and I begged off to head back to the B&B for an early night in the quiet and AC. We turned in late and I tossed and turned all night, being constantly serenaded by the loudest bunch of Mockingbirds.

Saturday June 10

By Saturday morning, we were pretty exhausted and looking to wrap up our last day in Auburn and get started on our journey home. I really wanted Ann to experience a southern breakfast so I planned to take her to local favorite Byron's Smokehouse. Even though Byron's started after I left Auburn, it has become an institution there and was the heir apparent to Price's when it closed.

Breakfast at Byron's
Eggs, Sausage, Grits, Biscuits and Gravy

The place was a mad-house when we arrived around 9:30 with but one or two spots in the parking lot and a line five deep at all the registers. After ordering, we were lucky to find a seat in which to wait for our breakfast. Although there were probably forty orders ahead of ours, our wait was only about ten minutes.

We had planned to come back later in the day to pick up some barbeque and sides to take back to the B&B for an early dinner in preparation for a very early morning departure for the airport. But while we were waiting for our breakfast, Ann went back to the counter to refill her coffee and encountered the owner. In the course of their chat, he said that they had stopped serving barbeque in favor of doing only breakfast and catering for want of employees, a very common refrain in all service businesses in this post-COVID era. We would have to opt for plan B for dinner.

Our breakfast, a typical southern carb fest, came out pretty quickly. Between us we had biscuits and gravy, smoked sausage, grits, and eggs. It was all good but we are spoiled by my biscuits and gravy and the grits that I had custom milled for the restaurant. Ann really did like the black pepper in the gravy. My most recent iterations of gravy tend more to red pepper flakes with a lot of sage and thyme.

Breakfast behind us, we went to see Dad who had gone out with Kathy and John to breakfast with one of Dad's old friends while Ann and I were asleep. Dad was totally out of it when we arrived and when he was not asleep was pretty incoherent, so to avoid listening to any more BS on Fox News which Dad has on constantly, Ann and I excused ourselves back to the B&B in hopes of visiting toward dinner time when he might be more with it. We returned around 4:30 to find him fairly alert. Despite that, he had no recollection of breakfast or seeing his friend.

We started trying to leave to find some dinner around 6 and it took us 45 minutes to get out. Dad was fully aware that we were leaving to go back to Oregon and it upset him greatly. We battled through a few bouts of tears and goodbyes. He was able to articulate that he was happy that we came to see him, but not much more. Each time he would be overcome by emotion, he would find a way to deflect that, such as "having to go to the bathroom." In the end, he could just never to bring himself to address the emotion that he very clearly feels. He has been this way his entire life.

In the course of the afternoon, we quizzed Kathy and dad's helper on the state of fried chicken in Auburn, Ann having decided that she would like fried chicken for dinner in lieu of barbeque. My feeling was that we could just stop at the local Kroger for decent chicken and the ladies seemed to confirm that this would be a decent choice.

Badly needing a beer and to get out of Dad's house after the emotional farewell and a non-stop diet of Fox News, we beat feet for the Kroger and arrived just as the hot bar was closing at 7. We each got meals with two pieces of dark meat (and a third thrown in because "it's just going in the dumpster" at closing time) with two sides for $7 apiece, a deal. I got collards and black-eyed peas; the Yankee with me got two helpings of macaroni and cheese as her sides.

After getting our dinner, we stopped in the beer section which consisted of long, long coolers of suitcases of every Anheuser Busch product and a tiny cooler labeled Craft Beer. We managed among all the non-craft beers to find a six of the hazy that we had on Tuesday night at the Draft House, Goatopia from Goat Island Brewing in Cullman AL. It probably would not make it out in the PNW, but it was the single best beer we had on our trip.

The Best Beer of Our Trip

Back at the B&B, we ate our dinner, drank a couple of beers, and left the rest in the fridge for the next guests. We hit the sack early in preparation for our 5:30am departure for the airport in Atlanta.

Sunday June 11

We got up at 5:25 am and after brushing our teeth, were in the car and on the road at 5:35. After gassing up and then stopping yet again to top off the tank just before the airport, we arrived at the Rental Car Center at 8:10, an hour and fifty minutes before our flight was to depart. In spite of some light rain, we made great time to the airport and thought we'd have plenty of time to get both breakfast and something to bring on the plane for lunch.

Boy, were we wrong! From the Rental Car Center, we took the SkyTrain over to the North Terminal and entered the line for security with thousands of others. We wound and wound through the line at the terminal and ultimately got to the security scanners. By the time we got past security and took the train to the D gates, it was getting on towards 9:30. When we arrived at the gate, the plane was half boarded. So much for getting any food.

Once we were seated on the 737, we could see that it was raining more intensely. We went through several periods of serious squalls and I remarked to Ann that we were undoubtedly going to be on ground stop for some time before leaving. In fact, we pushed back from the gate and were held for 20 minutes before getting clearance to taxi. The remainder of the flight went uneventfully and we made up most if not all of the delay en route, arriving in Seattle a couple hours before our flight into Redmond.

Item one of business was to find a decent beer and some breakfast/lunch/dinner. We grabbed two counter seats at the first bar we came to and ordered a hazy. The first sip proved to be delicious and about a thousand times better than the canned ones we had the night before. It was so good to be back on the West Coast. From Seattle, our quick flight into Redmond would prove to be uneventful.

Mt. St. Helens with its Missing Top en Route to SeaTac

The trip proved to be as difficult if not more difficult than I imagined. Seeing Dad in his seriously weakened state was awful as was seeing the woeful condition of the house and yard that I lived in so early in my life. I'm glad to have had a chance to say goodbye to Dad, something I did not get with my mother who died suddenly in her sleep. Moreover, I am happy to have seen my siblings and expressed my gratitude to them for taking care of Dad. And finally as a bonus, I am really happy to have met Ann's birth mom Betsy. It is so good to be home.

Hummus

Why is hummus so expensive at the store? When you can make a quart of hummus for $2, even in these inflated times, in five minutes, flavored the way that you want it, why would you buy pre-prepared hummus from the store?

Hummus with Sweet Peppers, Sugar Snaps, and
Roasted Broccoli and Sprouting Cauliflower

At the farmers market in McMinnville last week during our two-day quick trip to the Willamette Valley to see old friends and to do some shopping for wine, fish, and veggies that are unavailable in Central Oregon, we went to the Even Pull Farm stand. This is a farm that I have been doing business with for a long time and I love their products. We really miss being able to shop with them on a weekly basis.

Long story short, I spied several bunches of sprouting cauliflower on the back shelf and asked for two of them to go home with us. The loose heads with tiny florets used to be the secondary shoots that would grow around where the main head was removed, but any longer, seed companies are producing plants whose main crop are these cauliflowers that look more like broccolini in form than cauliflower.

I decided to roast this cauliflower with some broccoli from the fridge, but what to serve them with? As we move fully into spring in early June, the days are getting warmer, some up into the 70s, and with that warmer weather, we are starting to crave more summer-like foods. Spurred by a conversation that we had at dinner the night before with Dyce and Rob, I decided to make a small batch of hummus and serve it with the roasted veggies and also raw veggies that we need to consume before departing this week for Alabama to see my father, who is quite unwell.

Quick Hummus

I really feel awkward writing down a recipe for hummus when it is really something like soup. Everyone makes it to his or her own taste and it is all good. Still, I do understand that people do like to have a recipe to work from and so I offer this one, using a slug of roasted sesame oil rather than tahini. I just don't have the room in my fridge to keep tahini on hand, so I substitute a bit of sesame oil and it works well for me. The following recipe yields about a quart and is flavored as I like it, with olives and lots of spicy sambal oelek.

3 15.5 ounce cans chickpeas, drained
1 tablespoon roasted sesame oil
1 cup pimiento-stuffed manzanilla olives, drained
1/4 cup sambal oelek (I like it spicy)
1 teaspoon kosher salt
juice of two lemons
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

Add all the ingredients to a food processor and blend until smooth. For a smoother product, you can rub the chickpeas between your hands to remove the outer husks, but this then starts to become work and is no longer a quick recipe. Sambal oelek is an Indonesian spicy chile sauce that is readily available at most grocery stores. Huy Fong, the maker of our most famous Sriracha sauce, is the brand you want.

Taste for seasoning and adjust as you see fit. You may require more sesame oil, olive oil, lemon juice, sambal, or salt to make it taste like you want.

Halibut Cheeks with Spring Vegetables

While we love living in the exquisite beauty of Bend, Oregon, it is not without its issues. Among the biggest issues for foodies like Ann and me is the lack of foodstuffs: we're not near the ocean and we live in a very arid area that is not conducive to a lot of agriculture.

Halibut Cheeks with Spring Vegetables

Last week, we returned to McMinnville over in the Willamette Valley, a lush agricultural region close to the ocean, and where we lived before moving to Bend to be closer to the mountains and areas to hike. We took advantage of our trip to visit the McMinnville Farmers Market, a wholesale produce outlet, and our favorite fish market. We also stocked up on Willamette Valley wines while we were there.

One happy result of the trip is that we returned to Bend with halibut cheeks, asparagus, and sugar snaps. I resolved to cook all three items and finish them in a white wine, caper, and butter sauce.

Wondra-Coated Halibut Cheeks Cooking

Vegetables Cooked Separately from Fish

Before starting to cook the fish, I bought a pot of water to a boil in which to briefly cook both the asparagus and sugar snaps to doneness. Cooking each vegetable separately is a bit of labor, but it ensures that each one is done correctly because each vegetable has a different optimal cooking time. Another reason for cooking them separately is that if I cooked them in the same pan with the fish at the same time that I made the pan sauce using white wine, the acid in the wine would turn the brilliant green vegetables a boring and drab olive color.

Once I started cooking the fish, I started poaching the vegetables, sugar snaps first, asparagus next. When the asparagus was done, the fish and sauce was done and I mixed the lot in bowl before serving.

The halibut cheeks got a thin coat of Wondra flour seasoned with salt before going into a skillet. I turned them when they were half done, about three minutes, and after just a minute on the second side, I added a half a cup of dry white wine and a big spoonful of capers in brine to the pan. While the fish finished up, the wine reduced and also thickened just a bit as a result of the flour on the fish.

Finally, I removed the fish from the pan and reduced the liquid over high flame for just a few more seconds. After turning off the flame, I stirred in about three tablespoons of cold butter in small cubes and gently whisked them into the sauce, making effectively a beurre blanc.

The result was a dish as good and as simple as you can find in any bistro anywhere.