Summer's Last Gasp

I'm so glad Melissa likes to take photos!

Spooky

All Hallows-Eve approaches and the forest spirits can't wait!

Can't you hear him cackling?

Mini Vacation

Melissa has been learning about native peoples of the Americas, when we came upon a chapter about the Mound Builders. A little sleuthing and we discovered we're only about 4 hours away from Effigy Mounds National Monument!


Just a couple of hours outside Des Moines and the countryside began to change rapidly into rolling hills. The juxtaposition of greens with the oranges, reds and browns of fall was breathtaking.



We stopped at this scenic view overlooking the Mississippi about an hour from Harper's Ferry, IA., where Effigy Mounds is located. We bought local honey and maple syrup from farm stands here as well.

Once at the monument, we took the 2 1/2 mile trail up the bluff and through the woods. Scattered along the way were multiple mounds, both ceremonial and burial. The surroundings were so untamed it was easy to imagine the lives of the various groups of peoples who built the mounds hundreds of years ago.

Melissa and Sarah

Small Bear shaped mound. The monument includes multiple mounds in the shapes of bears and even eagles.

The roundish mounds are thought to be burial mounds.

Views from the trail.

Likely a woodpecker hole.

This barge was carrying coal.

It was a great weekend getaway!

The Staff of Life

Baking bread makes me happy. No matter what else I've done - or not done - on a particular day, if I've baked bread, I feel satisfied. Most of my recipes are 100% whole grain, so they don't rise as high as breads made with white flour. Above is a loaf of whole wheat currant bread.

I bought the currants from my local CSA this summer and dried them. When making this bread, I first rehydrated the currants by simmering them in water. I adjusted a raisin bread recipe from Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book, using currants instead of raisins.

The currants are quite tart, so it completely changed the nature of the bread. I do prefer it with raisins, but the currants made this bread 100% local. Above you see it with homemade crab apple jelly, but I preferred it toasted with chevre.

A Mess of Beans

So I bought 20 pounds of green and wax beans from Farm to Folk, my CSA, on Tuesday. I spent nearly 1 1/2 hours cleaning and snapping Wednesday afternoon when impending insanity forced me to quit. The girls finished the job later that afternoon while I read them a chapter of The Sister's Grimm.

Michael came home with two bags of ice and in no time, the beans were blanched, bagged and ready for the freezer.

20 pounds of beans = 18 quarts

Who Needs Puzzles?

Last week Sarah unearthed this nearly completely decomposed bird skeleton. All that remained were some feathers and a little connective tissue.

We have accumulated quite a collection of skulls and other bones during our 20 years as parents, including opposum, raccoon and cow skulls, small mammals from owl pellets, a deer skull and many, many more. I always encouraged the kids to clean up their finds and keep them, because, well, this is the closest I would ever get to living my childhood dream of being an archeologist it's educational.

We've had only one forensic failure, when Stephen placed a dead turtle Sarah found in a bucket of fabric softener instead of bleach solution. It took us a few days to figure out where the stench was coming from.
There was also the summer we bought Stephen a book about identifying roadkill. We spent the rest of the season pulling off of highways and freeways to examine remains, indentify them, and categorize them as "fresh" or "gaggingly old."

The above series of pictures records the girls' recovery of the skeleton and its placement in a weak bleach solution.

Isnt' that foot cool?
The skull and various other unidentified bones.

See the wishbone?

The assembled creature. Anyone else have any of these flying around in their yards?

Emergency! Emergency!

Not to worry.
It's fake.
Cool, huh?

This is homecoming week at Sarah's high school and each day the student's can dress up to fit a different theme. Monday's theme was E.R. day, when students could dress up like anything in the emergency room.

Sarah looked up how to make fake blood (corn syrup and food coloring) and scars (bubble gum). She created this grotesque wound for herself, along with a blood-stained t-shirt and head bandage.

The first sign that something was a little weird happened as she went into the school building. Why was that guy dressed like the Grim Reaper? That's not something in the emergency room...
Then she discovered her error: it wasn't ER day, it was -er, as in the suffix, day. Thankfully, she's a quick thinker and called herself a murder victim.
Somehow, she was the only kid in the entire school to misunderstand the theme. Fortunately, she has a good sense of humor!

This old dog

I can't believe Wally is almost 9 years-old. It seems as if he has been part of our lives forever. I used to call him my "gingerbread dog with the frosting licked off," but in the past 3 years he has turned progressively more and more gray. So now, he's just my gingerbread dog.

The two of us go for a good 2 mile walk nearly every day. Whenever he sees me with socks in hand or putting on shoes, Wally thinks it's time for a walk. I often find myself sneaking out to the porch to put on my shoes or hiding my socks in my pocket if it isn't walk time. I feel so guilty disappointing him!

Wally's world is about to be shaken to its core. In mid-October we're driving to Illinois to pick out our new St. Bernard puppy. She'll be coming home to us in early November. We've tried twice before to add a second dog to our family.

The first time was almost 4 years ago when we adopted Maggie from the Rescue League. We were told that she was a 3 month-old St. Bernard. But when we took her to the vet a few days later, it turned out she was more likely a 5 month-old Corgi/Beagle mix. From then on, we called her our St. Berbacorgle.
Maggie was a sweetheart, but was definitely an alpha dog. We tried for months to train her not to chase and nip at the girls, but worst of all (ooh that sounds bad) she dominated Wally. It got so bad that he didn't want to come back into the house after pottying.
Amidst many tears, we had to return her, letting the rescue people know she needed to be an "only" dog and shouldn't be around small children.


Our second attempt was last summer, with Ivy, a 3 year-old St. Bernard, who was perfect in every way except her desire to eviscerate our cats.

She was returned after only 3 days, on the recommendation of the animal behaviorist who cautioned that she might never be trustworty around cats.
I'm sure this time will work, as we'll be getting a 2 month-old puppy who will already be well-socialized. We'll enroll immediately in a series of dog obedience classes and life will be good.

At least that's what I keep repeating to myself...

A Nutty Idea

Melissa and I had just read about Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest a week or so ago, noting that acorns were a staple of their diet, when I received an email from Stephen, relating what he had just read in a botany text about acorns and how to prepare them. Well, with a coincidence like that, we just had to try our hand at preparing acorns for eating.

We walked over to a park near our neighborhood and gathered two canvas bags of acorns.

Then at home, we used the girls' hammerstones - rocks that are perfect for cracking and crushing - to break the acorns open. They were surprisingly easy to crack and extracting the nuts wasn't difficult, either.

We decided to prepare one canvas bag's worth of acorns to start. It probably took us about 2 hours from start to finish to gather the nuts and remove them from their shells.

I had expected most of the nuts to be wormy, but surprisingly few had to be disgarded.

Before the nuts can be roasted, they first have to be boiled for 3-4 hours, with multiple water changes, to remove the tannins, which cause bitterness.

According to Mother Earth News, acorns aren't poisonous and are one of the oldest foods known to man. They are one of the original "health foods," providing a complete vegetable protein and energy-rich carbohydrates.

After boiling, we allowed the nuts to sit overnight before roasting them for about an hour at 300 degrees.

The roasted nuts.

I tried grinding the nuts into flour in my food processor, but the blade couldn't handle the hardness of the nuts. (I might have roasted them a little too long)

So, out came our trusty, 23 year-old coffee grinder (a wedding present!). The acorns made several cups of flour.

We're storing the flour in the freezer to prevent spoilage. I plan to make a Native American-inspired meal next week which will feature acorn-corn meal muffins.