Summer camping got into full swing this week. We are doing short one and two day trips to fine tune the systems in our Eurovan camper. We will eventually do longer trips but for now we are working out kinks.
On a recent Crooked River trip we were treated to an afternoon summer storm. Watched it roll over the canyon walls and in about 30 minutes it was gone.
It took the muggy warm day and left us with a very pleasant evening. Fishing wasn’t all that good but we did get caught up on our reading.
It is summertime and we are thinking about making potato salad.
But wait, don’t boil the eggs in with the potatoes. I’ve discovered a method for perfect hard cooked eggs that are also easy to peel. No more pock-marked whites.
Start with about an inch of water in a sauce pan, sized to hold a steamer basket with the lid on. Bring the water to a boil, add the steamer basket with half a dozen eggs (works best with 4 or more). Reduce the heat and cover the pan.
Cook (steam) for 12 to 15 minutes (longer for harder yolks). Have a bowl of ice water handy, and when the time is up, transfer the eggs to the water bath.
After five minutes or so, pull out, tap and roll on hard surface to pre-crack the shell. then peel. You are going to be amazed at how easy the shells come off. You’re welcome!
Something we discovered after moving to Central Oregon is there is minimal light pollution. Even around Bend the night sky is spectacular. A couple of local facilities are open in the warmer months to help the public understand all those bright lights overhead.
The Nature Center at Sunriver has an Observatory open to the public Wednesday thru Saturday evenings and even boasts of the “largest collection of telescopes for public viewing.”
On the top of a mountain half an hour east of Bend is University of Oregon’s Pine Mountain Observatory. Primarily a research center, they do open up to the public on Friday and Saturday nights. There are fewer telescopes, but also fewer people clamoring for a peek at the heavens.
We picked the first dark moon night of the season (they open from Memorial Day to end of September) and made the short journey to the top of Pine Mountain. This night the cumulous clouds offered an impressive distant lightning storm and brought some additional drama to the sunset.
In the end they obscured our view of the Milky Way and southern sky. It wasn’t the astrological viewing we’d hoped for.
However, there was a quick look at Mars and we watched the international space station streak across the evening sky. Did you realize it flies past us every 90 minutes? Who Knew?
We’ve been attempting to reduce the amount of carbohydrates in meals and to this end have started working from meal plans. Most of these menus started with material pulled off “eatingwell.com.“ In the process a lot of great recipes are getting discovered. The most recent is a different kind of enchilada.
The key to a good pan of enchiladas is sauce and for this we don’t use EatingWell. Recipe is attached and it is best if you use Gebhardt’s Chile Powder which isn’t easy to find, but worth the search.
Now the part that is different is … these enchiladas are wrapped in thin strips of zucchini. A mandolin or even a nice sharp vegetable peeler works. The long slices need to be 0.5mm or an ⅛ of an inch thick. Test by wrapping a slice around a couple of fingers if it doesn’t break it will work.
Our take on the original EatingWell recipe is attached and it makes 16 enchiladas with 4 being a serving size. These are actually about half or two-thirds the size you’d get from regular tortillas so you can plan accordingly.
First summerlike day and we headed to the Crooked River. It started as a Euro Nymphing practice session. The river was kind of high and turbid so we didn’t really expect much action. But the cooler was full, the kindles loaded up … so we were ready for anything.
As I was rigging up the nymph leaders, I noticed that JQ was taking a great deal of interest in a juniper near the stream’s edge. There was a Black Caddis Hatch and the tree’s branches were alive with the tent winged bugs.
Didn’t see much surface feeding, so I continued with the wet fly rig. This was moderately successful. But what got my attention was all the rises just downstream.
I headed back to the car and got out a dry fly rig. The rest of the afternoon was spent catching six to ten inch Red Band Trout.
