Author: jstv

Posted on

A turn at every road

In traveling Central Oregon roads, you’ll notice that in this high desert country there are no shortage of side roads. Dirt tracks, some of which have a USFS number, others are just a couple of tire tracks off a road apron. The open understory of these forests make it pretty easy to lay out a road and unlike the rain dense forests on the West side, the understory doesn’t overgrow even some ancient logging tracks.

What happens is that even with a winter snow, you can find walkable side routes and Tip has grown accustomed to these impromptu walks. So much so, that as we are heading up for a day hike or other excursion, he will ask to stop. OK, so technically he’s not saying anything, but he’s developed a series of huffs and nose whistles that are as good as any established language. Everyone in the car understands what is being communicated.

This is in no way a complaint. To the contrary. We have made some interesting discoveries prompted by Tip’s suggestions. And many of these brief stops have found us exploring a different direction. After all, the idea was to get out and walk, so this may be as good a place as any.

Posted on

Chutney packs flavor

It may not sound like a great combo, but TRUST US, this is delicious! 

This year we smoked a turkey breast (in the Webber grill) for our holiday feast. The addition of this chutney really added some pop to the meal and spiced up sandwiches for days after.  We came across this recipe at Savory Spice and it has now been added to our permanent recipe file. A printable version of this recipe is available at the end of this post.

This is the season when you can find fresh NW cranberries, often on sale, so we took advantage, bought a couple of bags and preserved a quadruple batch. We used the Ball Canning guide for cranberry relish and put up half pint jars. The original recipe called for twice the amount of chilies, so if you like it hot you can increase those portions to suit your taste. It did mellow out after a couple of days sitting in the fridge, but the recipe here is how we like it. We’ll let you know if the same thing happens to the canned chutney.

It’s not very likely you’ll find crushed Urfa chilies, or even whole ones for that matter at your regular grocer. Did a bit of digging and seems that Urfa or Urfa Biber is a pepper grown in Turkey, has a moderate heat level and after harvest is sun dried and then the whole pepper is crushed or ground. It is used for it’s smoky flavor and you can can substitute Aleppo peppers (dried and crushed) or smoked paprika.

The trick to this recipe is patience. The recipe says 15 to 20 minutes to reduce the sauce, but JQ went about twice that on a single batch and we did nearly 50 minutes on today’s large batch for canning.  As for ‘coat the back of a spoon’ – that’s a simple test. Dip a spoon into the sauce, hold it on edge over the pan. A finger run through the sauce should leave a clean line. We did the coating test, but think honey as a consistency example when chutney is running off the spoon.  

Print Recipe

Smoked Serrano Cranberry Chutney

Prep Time10 minutes
Cook Time40 minutes
Total Time50 minutes
Servings: 2 cups

Ingredients

  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1/2 cup orange juice
  • 1 1/2 cups cranberries fresh or frozen
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 2 chilies smoked serrano stemmed and seeded
  • 1 Tbl Urfa chilies crushed
  • 1/4 cup dried apricots diced
  • 2 Tbls crystallized ginger minced
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 Tbl apple cider vinegar

Instructions

  • In sauce pan, bring water and orange juice to a boil.
  • Stir in cranberries and brown sugar.
  • Reduce to simmer and stir in remaining ingredients.
  • Continue to simmer, stirring occasionally. Reduce sauce to thicken, about 15 to 20 minutes.  Should coat the back of a spoon.
  • Remove from heat. Can be served warm, at room temp or chilled.
Posted on

Holiday birding


Turns out we don’t have to go very far to do some bird watching. The Sunriver Nature Center is on a small lake that is home to a nesting pair of Trumpeter Swans. And JQ’s camera captured one, along with numerous Canada geese all hunkered down on a crisp winter morning.

We visit this place often when we want to get in a little walking and take in the
 seasonal changes. Sunriver isn’t the easiest place to find your way around, but after a couple of trips we’ve mastered the route with it’s four different roads and two traffic circles.

In the summer the trails are full of bike riders, but late fall and winter there is hardly anyone around and the birds don’t seem to care that the pond is clogged with ice.

Posted on

Getting started, again

Getting the web site/blog back into operation has been an ongoing task. We’re finally ready to start posting. A bit over a year ago, life shifted for us. We moved physically, quit the daily scheduled grind, and settled into a more leisurely pace. Nothing like quitting the day job to present a new prospective on what you’re going to do today.

We’ve chosen to rename the site “that’ll do” because with change comes the refocusing for what needs to get done. The content of these pages will hold the random wanderings of it’s authors and their BC.

For web search you tag and categorize the web site, but ‘lifestyle blog’ only starts to define content. So there is going to be lots of #lifestyle and even some #vanlife, #SHTF, #retirementlife, #flyfishing, #foodie and of course #bordercolliesrock but also some stuff we’ve not even thought of yet.

Initally posts will go up every Sunday and hold bits and pieces of that week’s explorations. Comments are accepted, words of encouragement are appreciated and we might even entertain the occasional criticisim.  Here’s hoping a good time is had by all.

Posted on

Why blog

We are gearing up for the offical start of a weekly post on “That’ll Do,” and for us a re-set on blogging. So why, in the age of Facebook, Instagram and Squarespace, are we managing a hosted WordPress blog? Control mostly.

Web logs originally offered designers a space to store and share Internet stuff. This grew into personal journal sites and at one point even Apple and iWeb got into the game with blog formatting software. Social media has taken over the shared experience posts for most people. But there are lots of problems with those free social media sites, and control is only part of it.

Blog ‘etiquette’ places the most recent post at the top of a page with past entries scrolling underneath. Regardless of when you find us, all the material we have is here to read, or not.  A blog lets us store and share anything we find of interest.

If you read the Welcome and About pages, you’ll see we are here with our personal journal, lots of images, as well as videos, recipes and updates. If that engages you… bookmark this page and come back.

We’ll be here.

JS & JQ