Drip, Drip, Drip

We were enjoying one of the more pleasant Indian summers in recent memory here in Oregon when the rains of winter descended on us overnight.  After 34 years in Oregon, I've learned the difference between a temporary rainy day and the permanence of a rainy winter.  This one seemed to happen rather suddenly.  That isn't a complaint...not yet, however.  Give me a few months and I'll be whining up a storm (ha! Get it?) in true Oregonian style.

For now I'm happy to be back to baking and cooking up comfort food in my Dutch oven.  I always enjoy my winter menus over my summer ones.  Today I'm cooking up a new stew of short ribs called Porter Braised Short Ribs.

(Image credit:  Motoya Nakamura)

And since this recipe came right from our local newspaper, it seems especially appropriate for Oregon right now.  I'll let you know how it turns out, but here's a link to the recipe if you can't stand to wait.  I'll just say I've had very good luck with meats braised in beer, although I'm not a beer drinker myself.  

This morning I decided it was time to rid the refrigerator of the many thriving little mold cities that have been built since the last time around.  Garbage goes tomorrow, and so today's the day.  Also, the rain stopped long enough for me to venture outside for a few minutes.  We don't have public sewer, and therefore we don't have a garbage disposer.  Undigested food is hard on a septic system.  We learned this the hard way at our old place.

Instead, I keep a compost pail on my kitchen counter.  We don't collect compost year round, but for now we are.  We created a pile using the horse manure we scored straight from our neighbor's horse manure factory.  (It's one of the bonuses of living in the country...readily available horse manure factories.)  Add to that the fruit rinds, veggie trimmings, eggshells, and coffee grounds collected over an entire winter, and you have yourself another nice stew for your vegetable garden in the spring.  "Vegetable garden" is a term I use optimistically, but more often, disappointingly.

In any case, I figured I'd take the camera with me when I went.  At first glance, there isn't much to photograph.  But when one looks at the smaller parts of the landscape, a whole new world opens up.  Between the spiders, the rain, and the trees, there is a wonderland of water droplets, which is fitting.  It's also very quiet save for the drip, drip, drip that I can hear mixed with the sound of Smitty's scurrying feet.  He gets so excited when someone goes outside these days that his back legs run faster than his front legs.

So here's what I saw:

Pretty, huh?  

One of the blinds in my office broke the other day in a way that can't be repaired.  It will need to be replaced, and so a woman is coming over to measure the window today.  Since I live in blue jeans and sweat pants these days, I often feel somewhat put to shame by women who appear business-like and classy, as this woman did when I met her in the showroom.  Heck, as a social worker, I never looked business-like and classy even when I was working.  I was more often seen wearing long denim jumpers and Birkenstocks, which tend to be the stock in trade of the social work profession...especially those of us who work with the underprivileged, as I did.  In any case, it made me feel as if I needed to spruce the place up a little bit.  I know.  Why should I care what this woman thinks?  I'm never going to see her again.  Actually, I'm more attending to what I think.  And I think I will feel better if the house (and especially my office) looks a little less pit-like.

So I'm going to make a stab at cleaning things up a little, but for good measure, I'll be putting my stew on at around 3:00.  Maybe the good smells emanating from the kitchen will distract her from the dust, cat hair, and bits of embroidery floss that seem to litter the place no matter what I do.

So with that I guess I'll get to it.  But first, it's always good to stop and smell the blades of grass.