Wet Weekend

Greetings from Portland, Oregon. It was a very wet weekend in the Chicago area. In Elgin, over 10" of rain fell on Friday and Saturday. I was trapped indoors, so I did lots of food prep. On Saturday, I made a Caraway Gouda. It should be ready by thanksgiving, though I may save it to be a Christmas cheese. I also made blueberry ice cream. On Sunday I made applesauce with Cox Orange Pippen apples from our trees.

Caraway Gouda

Because Sunday was Leon's birthday, I offered to bake him a cake. He wanted chocolate, a kiind of cake that I don't have much experience with. The recipe in my favorite cookbook looked really fussy and involved. What to do? Homer to the rescue! He recently posted about a chocolate mayonnaise cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting. He described it as both easy and tasty. He was right on both counts, though his turned out prettier than mine did.



Sunday, we woke up to a find that the roof was leaking into the dining room where a small section of ceiling was sitting in a puddle on the dining room table. A couple of books, my laptop, and my P&S camera were all wet. Fortunately, the laptop is fine. The books are probably ruined (but they're not expensive items). The P&S is damaged. It may be OK once it dries out, but I need something from my trip here to the Pacific Northwest. To resolve this problem, I got a new digital camera on Sunday. It's Nikon Coolpix P80. I'm looking forward to trying it.

Tomorrow, we're off to the Oregon Zoo to learn how they do conservation of an endangered Fritillary butterfly. I'll be learning how yurts are used in butterfly conservation. On Thursday, it's up to Seattle, to see thier operation working with the same butterfly. For the weekend, it's back to Portland where I'll (finally) be meeting Mark and Rodger in person.