Category: Oregon homes

  • ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL DAY ON FERN RIDGE LAKE

     

    Sunrise 23

    Good Morning Sunshine!  I didn't even have to get up too early to see this beautiful sunrise from just behind our house here at Fern Ridge Shores.  You just know the day is going to be perfect when it starts out like this. 

    Our friends Anne and Maury had invited us for lunch.  They live down the Lake, so we can get there by boat.  Here we are coming in to their dock (Anne's pictures).

    Coming in

    Tie up

    And here they are waiting for us as we pull in (my picture).  Yes, we were taking pictures of each other.

       Anne and maury's 29

    Our boat just waited patiently while we enjoyed a delicious lunch, good company, and the beautiful scenery from their deck.

    Boat at anne's dock 30 

    And in the evening a few hours after we got home again, we had this to look at from our window.  Could a September day be any more beautiful?  

    Sunset 20

    Click here for more beautiful water-related posts:  watery wednesday

  • DREAMSCAPES

     

    We went for a little boat ride on the Lake the other evening and tied up for a while on Coyote Creek Channel by this tree, dripping with what is called, here in the Northwest, deer moss.     Channel moss 007

     In the Southeast, a similar plant is called Spanish Moss.  I think it's probably kind of the same thing.  Whatever it's called, the moss-covered trees make the world seem more peaceful and quiet and a little dream-like.  The picture below is  near the Caloosahatchie River, where we stay and where we boat when we're in Florida.

     

    Live oaks 06 So these magical trees seem to always be in in places that feel like you're miles and miles away from civilization, even though you really aren't.   And we like being able to get to those places easily. 

    That might just be one of the reasons why Ft. Myers felt like home when we got there last year and why we're going back again!  

  • A WALK ALONG JEANS ROAD

    Wetlands 27 Fern Ridge Shores RV Resort, where we're staying, is on Jeans Road, Veneta.  It's a quiet country road along the edge of Fern Ridge Lake wetlands.  The road was named after an area pioneer, William Jean. 

    The road is just perfect for an evening stroll, the kind where you pull on your favorite old jeans and just take off to explore and see what you can see.  So when we walk it, I think about it being named for those kind of jeans instead of the pioneer.  

    Zumwalt pk 40The three-mile long road starts in the middle of the town of Veneta (that would mean there are about four city blocks on either side of it) and it dead-ends just past Fern Ridge Shores.  Our walk is exactly one mile (one way) –   from the docks at the edge of FRS to Zumwalt Park.  Several other areas with public access to the Lake are located within the mile. 

    Here are some of the things we see on the way:

    Berry bushes 012

     

    Succulent blackberries ripe for eating as you walk.

    Glimpse of the lake 33 A glimpse of the Lake through the trees at the edge of the road.  You can walk down to the Lake at this point, to extend the walk.Ferns 18

    This is why it's called Fern Ridge Lake.  Lush greenery is just part of the scenery around here. 

     


    Cattails 49 I should cut a few of these cattails and put them in a vase.  They are the perfect RV arrangement, because you aren't supposed to put them in water once they're cut. 

    But I haven't had time yet, because I'm too busy bird watching, and (apparently) taking self-portraits of my shadow.Channel w shadow 37

    We usually see grebes and ducks and sometimes herons and egrets in these wetlands.  Earlier this month there were hundreds of red-wing blackbirds migrating. 

    Out on the Lake there are ospreys, purple martens, and swallows.  We see them when we take the boat out and occasionally from the road.

    This little channel is almost at the end of our walk, just before Zumwalt Park.

    Here's the other side of the street, as we're coming back:

    Jeans rd yd 47

    Wheels jeans road yd 15

    There are some charming homes, with beautiful gardens and friendly people who wave when they're outside.  One home has an old tractor wheel collection.  It makes an interesting fence row.

     

    Mcmansion29

    There is also one "McMansion".  I can never decide if the fence is meant to keep the riff-raff out or the people who live there in.  This house has been for sale for quite a while.  I should point out that this side of Jeans has no Lake View.  You have to come over to the RV Park side to get that!  I know where I'd rather live.

     

    Deer are here sign 48 Yesterday, a deer jumped across the road not two feet ahead of us.  She had been nibbling apples from this abandoned tree and we scared her.  But I couldn't fumble the camera out in time.   This sign speaks the truth though!Wild apple tree 34  

    Boat dock frs 11 And then we're back home — this is the boat dock right at the edge of Fern Ridge Shores RV Park (and our boat tied up there). 

    It really is a lovely walk.  We are happy out here in the country.

  • SWEET SOLUTION TO THE ATTACK OF THE GIANT ZUCCHINI

    RECIPE FOR AN OREGON SUMMER TRADITION:*

      Giant zuchinni 50   

    1.  Take a giant Zucchini.  Please!

    (Jeff and Cyndi and everyone they know have been eating as much of their garden crop as possible.  But sometimes they just get away from you.)

     

     

     

                                                                2.  Grate it up with our salad shooter.

    Salad shooter (We got it as a Christmas present a long time ago. And thought was pretty silly at the time.  But it's wonderful for something like this.) 

     

    3.  Stir in a few other healthy fun and delicious ingredients that you already have in the cupboard.

    4.  Pop the pans into your now-working and much-loved convection-microwave oven.

    AND TA-DA:

    Zuch bread 4 loaves 07 Zuch bread 10

     

     

     

     

    _________________________

    I really don't bake very often any more.  So when I do, it seems like a small miracle that you can stir a few things together and get this result.

     

     LIVING THE FULL(SUMMER)TIME-LIFE IN OREGON

     

    *(And you can get the full Zucchini bread recipe pretty much anywhere on the Internet if you don't already have it in your cookbook collection.)

  • JUST HANGING OUT IN OREGON

    Plums alvadore25-1We're just hanging out here in beautiful Lane County, enjoying the summer.   When we first got here, I wrote about how incredibly hot it was — and almost as soon as I posted that, the weather moderated.  So now we're enjoying very lovely temperatures — maybe low 80s daytimes, cooler at night.  Lovely.

    Now if it could just stay like this for a few more months. 

     

     

     

    Blueberries 30-1 The fruit trees and berries are growing on our daughter and son-in-law's place. 

    When we first got here, you could pick a gallon of berries without moving — they were that thick.  Now they're starting to fade a bit (because of that one hot week).  But still so good!

    Appletree 28-1All of this fruit is so easy to pick.  Blueberries must be the best berry ever — no thorns.

    And whoever developed dwarf fruit trees was a genius.  They are loaded with fruit, most of it pickable from the ground.

    So we're just hanging out in Oregon, doing our things and enjoying the fruits (literally) of others' green thumbs. 

     

  • SUMMER and FAMILY

    We're having some great family time here in Oregon. 

    These are the snapshots that I'd have on our refrigerator right now if it weren't wood instead of metal.  The ones right below are from somebody's big 7-0 birthday celebration.  (Let's see, who's the oldest person we know here?)  The family gathering was at Cyndi and Jeff's house  (they're the parents of our three grownup — and farflung — grand-children).  With the birthday "boy" (yeah, right!) is our grandson Ryan who is visiting all of his Oregon relatives for a while.

    Lower collage:  Those are our other two younger Grandkids, Sarah & Collin, and some more pictures of Ryan (and Aunt Cyndi) at the Lake. 

    Summertime!  Kids!  Gotta' love 'em!  They make us feel young again (well, almost anyway).

    Temp2

    Temp21

  • FROM OUR LITTLE KITCHEN

    Our kitchen 40 There are millions of good recipes on the Internet.  But those aren't as much fun as the ones that are connected to a story — when you remember where you got the recipe and maybe when you cooked it.  A must-have in our little kitchen is a version of the family cookbook our daughter put together for us as a Christmas present years ago.  She got tired of hearing me whine "someday I'm going to organize all those recipe clippings" and so she did it for me.   Her gift gave me the incentive to keep the book up-to-date and I've done that ever since, adding new favorites and food-sharing memories along the way.  Its fun to remember people and places while I cook.

    When we started our RV life, I updated the book by removing supersized recipes that easily fed a family of teenagers.  Although I might never cook some of those early recipes again, the original version of the book is stored in Oregon with our photo albums and other priceless memories that we don't have room to carry with us in our home on wheels.  Here's our modified version with the original Cookbook38dedication page.  (It really WAS quite a few years ago!)  

    The recipe below for refrigerator muffins is a "litened up" version of one we have in the original recipe book. 

    Here's something wonderful that I learned last summer.  Muffins can be cooked in the microwave.   Wow!  Why didn't I know this trick back in 1976 when we had six people who needed to get out of the house by 7 a.m.?  It works just as well for two people with no particular schedule though (and is especially handy if we don't happen to be breakfasting at the same time). 

    I use a 6-oz pyrex custard cup and fill it a little less than half.  It takes about a minute and a half in our nuker.   Last summer, I baked a dozen the old fashioned way because we were having company for breakfast.  And it was our breakfast guest, our friend Anne Dryman, who told me about microwaving them.  So I used the refrigerated half of the batter for microwaving individually. (The recipe says that the batter keeps up to two weeks — I kept it a little longer and we're still alive and well.) Breakfast01  

    The recipe calls for two cups of buttermilk.  I can only find it in quarts — but you can freeze it for next time.  Just pour the unused half into a freezer bag, seal and pop it in the freezer.  Last week, I made the recipe again with the frozen buttermilk and it works fine.  I have too much in the refrigerator this time though, so next time I'm going to halve the recipe.

    Enjoy breakfast! 

    Lighter Version Refrigerator Bran Muffins


    Ingredients

    2 cups All-Bran cereal
    2/3 cup wheat bran
    1 1/3 cups boiling water
    2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
    1 tablespoon baking soda
    1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
    1/2 teaspoon salt
    1/4 teaspoon grated or ground nutmeg
    Vegetable cooking spray
    2 cups low-fat buttermilk
    1/2 cup pasteurized egg substitute  (The second time I made these I used 2 whole eggs beaten lightly)
    1 cup granulated sugar
    1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
    1/2 cup vegetable oil
    1 teaspoon vanilla extract

    (I added raisins to the batter at the end.)

     

    Instructions

    1. Mix cereal and wheat bran in a large bowl. Add boiling water, stir well and set aside 1 hour.
    2. Whisk together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, salt and nutmeg in a medium bowl.
    3. Preheat oven to 375F. Coat muffin cups with cooking spray.
    4. Add 1 cup buttermilk to bran mixture; stir well with a whisk. Add remaining buttermilk, egg substitute, granulated sugar, brown sugar, oil and vanilla, stirring until smooth.
    4. Add flour mixture; stir until a thick batter forms.
    5. Fill each cup with 2⁄3 cup muffin batter. Bake 20 to 25 minutes, until puffed and lightly browned. Makes 2 dozen muffins.

    Recipe by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough, Relish the Healthy Table, "Waves of Grain," Sept. 2008.

    Nutritional Information (with the egg substitute)

    Per muffin: 150 calories, 5g fat, 0mg chol., 3g prot., 26g carbs., 2g fiber, 250mg sodium.

     

  • LANE COUNTY SUMMER

    Lane County, Oregon — it's a great place to spend a summer.  When we're here, it feels just like home, except in a smaller and more manageable house than the one we lived in for so many years.    That house, in Springfield, was a great place to raise a family but at this stage of life, our traveling home gives us more time and less work. 

    Ryan catfish aug 08 32 The best thing was just hanging out with our family and having a chance to visit with friends. 

    We had great times with our Northwest kids and their families — including all six of our grandchildren.  What could be better?  Most of the time, there were no special occasions, just the gift of having time to spend together.  The picture is our grandson Ryan, with two catfish he caught from our little boat at Fern Ridge Shores. 

    We did have one big family event, Andy and Denae's Labor Day wedding at Buford Park in Eugene. (He's our oldest grandson.)   It was a lovely day.  Click here to link to their blog where you can read about their fantastic adventures in India.  There's a wedding picture in there too.

    Click here (and scroll down) to read previous posts about our Oregon summer.  Here are a few extra random bits.  

    Spooky island g 6 This picture is Spooky Island on the lower McKenzie River.  It's about three miles from the RV Park in Coburg where we stayed in July and just a few blocks from where we used to live in Springfield.  Our kids used to play here.  There is a huge new modern hospital now right across from here (where there used to be bean fields that provided summer jobs for all the neighborhood kids, including ours).This is it:Peace health hosp riverbend11

     

     

    Oly trials 14 Some friends and I had fun on a 6K Volkswalk that took us through the Olympics Track Trials Fan Village at the University of Oregon's Hayward Field.  We got to see some of the meet on the big screen and enjoy the excitement — no cost, and great fun and exercise.  Eugene did a very good job on the Trials. I thought it would make it more fun to watch the Bejing Olympics, but sadly nobody we saw did very well there.   

    Oregon has a bunch of excellent wineries, several in Lane County.  The picture below right is at King Estates, probably the best-known one.  King estates06

    The wine is good and the scenery is terrific.

    One day we drove to McMinnville with friends to see the Spruce Goose Museum (below). It's an interesting museum and kind of amazing story the way this iconic plane ended up in this tiny town.  That is one big plane!  There are a bunch of other air-related exhibits, the miniatures of the plane's interior and exterior that were used in shooting the film "The Aviator" and an I-Max Theater. 

    Sg021 

    Our feet start to get itchy when Oregon's rainy season approaches.  But since we never have quite enough time to see all we want to of our family and friends, it is always hard to leave Oregon.  I guess we have split personalities.  When we're in Oregon, the part of us that enjoys routine and familiarity kicks in and it becomes difficult to leave.  We always seem to put off our departure day several times before we finally hit the road.  Thus, it was mid-October before our summer in Lane County ended. 

    We enjoyed every minute of it.  Thank you everybody for the wonderful times.  We love y'all!

  • THE LITTLE BOAT

    "There is nothing- absolutely nothing-
    half so much worth doing
    as simply messing about in boats."

    (Rat:  The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame)

     
     
    Boat at fern ridge lake 024

    Here's Bill messing about with our little bay boat.  It's moored at Fern Ridge Shores RV Park, holding its own with the big boys that are docked here.  It's not really a lake boat, but we have had fun putt-putting about this summer.   If we're home in the afternoon and the weather is cooperating, we take it down the Coyote Creek Channel to watch birds, then tie up and enjoy cocktail hour "on board".  Frchannel58

    We've had this little boat since 2001, when we spent our first of two full summers at Winchester Bay, near Reedsport.  We still owned our house in Springfield back then and were trying to make up our minds to sell out.  

    So we put the Fifth-Wheeler over there at the beautiful Salmon Harbor Marina RV Park.  We were there for only about a week when we came down with a serious case of boat envy.  This boat was the result.  We have taken most of our kids, all of our grandkids, and a lot of their friends and ours out on the Bay to catch crabs.   So much fun.  This is one of our sons and a grandson and grand-daughter with Bill when we were on a visit back to Oregon and Winchester Bay a couple of years ago.  Cooking crabs 1131  

    Crab cooker 1136

    There's no crabbing on Fern Ridge Lake, of course, but we have fun with our little boat anyway.

     

     

     

     

    Below is a link to a blog that has some terrific pictures of Fern Ridge and the kind of boats that are really made for this Lake. They were taken by Anne, an RVing friend of ours.  They live on the Lake when they aren't RVing. 

     

    Anne Dryman pictures

    It's beautiful in Oregon in the summer.  If you don't live here already, you should  visit.

  • A CORNBREAD STORY

    Cornbread  Yesterday I baked a perfect pan of cornbread.  Now, normally this would certainly not be blog-worthy news.  But just this one time it really is.  Because earlier in the day, "we" installed our NEW CONVECTION OVEN!  (Click on the posts listed in Food and Drink category on the right to read the whole saga of our microwave troubles.)  This time we have changed brands completely and we have a Sharp.  It fits in the space where the old one was!  It works like it is supposed to!  Life is good!   

    We like cornbread and there is a kind of family history to it that we enjoy thinking about while we eat:

    Bill's dad was the oldest in a family of nine children, growing up during the Depression.  He told us that cornmeal was a family staple when money was scarce. He remembered that on several birthdays, the cake was a big pan of cornbread with a candle in the middle.  This actually might not be as sad as it sounds, because this grandmother, (who was still alive and healthy well after our children were born) was a wonderful cook — she worked some in restaurants and scout camps — probably not too different than cooking for her family had been.  So if anyone could make cornbread into a celebration, she was the one.    My father-in-law still liked to eat it all his life, so I guess it must have been good. 

    We like it too — but not for birthdays!

    There's no recipe to accompany this Food post, because I just use the one that's always on the box of cornmeal.  I wish I had Bill's Grandmother's though; I'm sure it was better.