The year is nearly over now, so here’s another lengthy blog post to catch up.


Frost

There was still a weekend of classes left at the Lumpy Waters Symposium after the Friday surf class that my previous blog post covered. On Saturday, Karl and I taught a class for beginners to get used to rock gardening, and rescuing each other in that environment, and we got to play in a little surf at the end of the day, too. The mouth of the Salmon River in Oregon is a really, really beautiful place. I will definitely go back there again sometime.


getting out

On Sunday, Amanda I and I led a small group of beginners on a trip to the Three Arches Rocks at Oceanside. There was a strong northwest swell and a building north wind, so we stayed on the south side of the rocks, but we did get to check out the largest arch, and get a little taste of the swell and wind.


checking out the big arch

Once the last Road Scholar trip of the year was over, I moved into the early deer season and started hunting every afternoon. I actually took a shot at a deer this year, for the first time ever, but missed. Mostly, what I brought home every day was chanterelles, which were plenty tasty, but not venison!


chanterelles

I also hunted all eleven days of elk season this year, and got close to elk a few times, but not close enough to see my way to a good shot, and I ended the elk season empty handed, too, except for some great pictures and more chanterelles.


forest

Next year, for elk season, I’m putting together a small posse, instead of going it alone again. It’s nearly impossible to push an elk towards you, when you’re hunting alone.


Devil's Club


busy beavers were here

I hunted all four days of late deer season, too, but got faked out by an older, smarter buck, who waited for me to sneak past him, and then doubled back around behind me and vanished. I guess that’s why he’s a four point now.


frozen!


Looking down at Skamokawa valleys


smoked turkey

We went to Seattle again for Thanksgiving, and for fun, we took the ferry over to Bremerton on the way home.


downtown Seattle

The weekend after Thanksgiving is when the Solstice Forge Hammer-In is every year, with good food, beer and coal fired fun.


Solstice Forge Hammer-In, November 26, 2011

The timber company that owns the land behind me sent a crew in this fall to clean ditches and maintain roads. They took out a bunch of alder along the road where it passes through my land, so I borrowed the Farmi logging winch from my neighbor Krist and spent a few afternoons bucking and skidding firewood logs into a pile in the pasture. I think I may have about four or five cords of firewood there when I get it all split and stacked. I sure love the Farmi winch. Someday I need to own one of these.


Tractor Logging with the Farmi winch


Firewood


Tractor and Farmi logging winch

Way back last February, when Alice and I were on our way back from visiting colleges, my beloved, well-worn Subaru started making horrible engine noises, and when I got home, I parked it with the suspicion that it had a timing belt pulley going bad.

I ended up driving the Mercedes all summer, and putting the Subaru on the back burner, but then in early November, Shannon flipped and totaled her Toyota when she hit some black ice on KM Mountain. I ended up giving her the Mercedes to get back and forth to town, and finally was forced into dealing with the Subaru.


Bad bearing

It turned out I was right about the timing belt, and a couple of days and $300 later, I had my Subaru back on the road again. I am so happy to have this car back, with its ipod capable stereo, heavy duty roof rack, working cruise control and all wheel drive. Yay!


new timing belt

Everybody loves bacon. Even vegetarians love bacon. I love bacon, too. But knowing what I do about factory farming practices, I never buy bacon from the store anymore. I last made bacon when we lived in Northern California, in about 1997, when we raised our first pig and butchered it ourselves. It was amazingly delicious; it was as if I had never actually eaten real pork before in my whole life.

We raised pigs again after we moved back to Washington, in about 2003 or so. We had them butchered by pros, and sold some to friends. Recently I defrosted and cleaned out our older freezer, and discovered a wealth of frozen meat all encased in ice inside. Amongst these treasures were several pieces of pork belly from 2003 that we never got around to making into bacon. Amazingly, it had no freezer burn, or any other issues from being frozen for over 6 years.


Bacon, step 1

So, figuring I had nothing to lose and everything to gain, I thawed some of it out and set to work. Like a lot of cured and smoked meat products, bacon is so easy to make that it’s embarrassing. I start with the pork belly, and trim it to fit into my largest glass pyrex casserole dish.


Bacon, step 2

Make up a mixture of half canning salt and half brown sugar, layer some in the bottom of the dish, put the pork in, layer more sugar/salt mixture on top and rub it into the edges well. Cover and refrigerate. After a day or so, pull it out and repack it with fresh mixture, and turn it over. After another day or so, do the same thing. Or, do what I did, and space out and leave it in the fridge for a while longer. Like, maybe a couple of months?

Whichever path you choose, when you are ready to smoke it, it will be a good idea to slice off a piece, cook it up and taste it to see how salty it is. After letting mine cure for two months, I ended up soaking it in water for about 24 hours, changing the water once, to get the saltiness under control.


Bacon, step 3

Once you’re comfortable with the salt level, set it up in the top rack of your electric smoker, and go get yourself some fruitwood chips. What I do is go out to one of the apple trees here, prune off a bunch of extra twigs and small shoots and chop them up into bits with the pruning shears.


Bacon, step 4

I smoked this particular bacon for about 10 hours, using up about 7 pans of chips in the process. Once it’s smoked to your liking, pull it out, cool it, wrap it in paper and put it in the fridge. Now you get to slice off pieces however thick you want, and it will taste way better than any bacon you’ll ever get from the store.

Told you it was easy!


Bacon


all done

So, this is one of my other favorite things to do with salmon. Gravlax is basically cold cured salmon, and the recipe originated in Scandinavia, where so many of the interesting ways of preparing fish come from.

Start with a couple of small fillets. I usually use coho, but this year I saved a couple of fillets off of my spring chinook instead, since I couldn’t wait for coho season to have some of this delicious treat. I freeze the fillets for a few days to kill any parasites, since gravlax does not involve any cooking of the fish.

Thaw out your fillets and then rub them down with a light coat of olive oil, probably not an original Scandinavian ingredient, but what the heck. Then I usually rub them down with a little scotch whisky, but this time I used a little sake, since I am all out of good scotch. I usually grind a little bit of pepper on the fillets too.

Then mix up a cup of non-iodized canning salt and a cup of sugar, and put a thin layer of this in the bottom of a glass dish or pie pan. Lay the first fillet on this salt sugar mix, skin side down, and coat it well with more of the sugar/salt mixture. Put on a layer of thin slices of red onion. Cover that with a handful or two of fresh dill, and then another layer of onion slices.


Making Gravlax

Coat the other fillet with the sugar/salt mixture and lay that on top, skin side up, and then use the rest of the sugar/salt mixture to cover everything well. Cover it up and put the whole thing in the fridge, after admiring your work of course, and maybe having a shot or two of the scotch.


Making Gravlax

Twelve hours later, pull the dish out of the fridge. There will be a lot of brine now in the dish, from all the moisture that the salt has pulled out of the fillets. Using a spatula, turn the whole thing over, so the top fillet is now on the bottom. Use a spoon and pour the brine all over the whole assembly, admire your work again, and maybe repeat that scotch thing, too. Then return it to the fridge for another 12 hours.

This is what it looks like after 12 hours.


after 12 hours

When the second twelve hours is over, pull it out again and separate the fillets. Scrape off all of the salt and dill and onion, and wipe the fillets down with paper towels. Now they are ready to eat. Take thin slices off, at a shallow angle, and put them on rye crackers, with cream cheese and slices of fresh red onion, or toast, or bagels, or whatever you like. In the Sunset Magazine fish cookbook, where I first learned how to do this, there is a recipe for a delicious mustard sauce that you can put with the fish as well.

Bon appetit! You have just taken a couple of small salmon fillets, and a few dollars of other ingredients and made it into a delicacy that sells in the fancy delis for $30/pound or more, and yours is going to taste a lot better!