Lonicera involucrata

Yesterday I paid a visit to Azalea State Reserve in McKinleyville. It's not far from where I go on Wednesdays to feed the horses from Heart of the Redwoods Horse Rescue, and the azaleas are supposed to start blooming around mid April. 

The buds are definitely more developed than they were on my last visit. In the photo above you can see the different stages of budding out that are taking place. Some plants at the reserve have leafed already, while others haven't, and a couple have bloomed. I'm really hoping there will be a good flush of bloom coming up and the whole place will look just spectacular.

I did find a few flowers, and they're pretty in the otherwise very drab landscape. This shot of the flower is probably one of my favorites from the day.   

While prowling around I also came across the bush pictured above. It stood out because it was one of the few green things along the path, and had those funny little flowers! A look at my plant guide tells me its Lonicera involucrata, black twinberry. It will eventually have black berries, but they aren't considered edible. Apparently the Kwakwaka'wakw people believe that eating the berries would leave a person unable to speak.

Viola sempervirens

I just thought I'd take a moment to share some of the native flora of this area with you.

I'm a slow hiker. I spend a lot of time looking around me--into the bushes, along the ground, up in the trees. I'm always watching for those hidden bits of beauty that spice up the otherwise ordinary lanscape.

Viola sempervirens is something I see very often on our trips through the woods. Also known as the Evergreen violet or Redwood violet, it enjoys moist, partly-shady conditions. I came across a good clump of these guys while we were hiking College Cove in Trinidad a couple of weeks ago, in an area very near to the ocean. They're also seen very often in the redwood forests. Aside from the skunk cabbage, they're the only yellow flower I can remember seeing so far this spring.

Sidenote: 9th Annual Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest  1) Sounds cool, maybe I'll find some things to enter 2) It runs from March 1, 2011, to December 1, 2011. How many hundreds of thousands of entries do you think they'll get?

Pippi!

I recently applied to be on a Swedish game show called The Great Swedish Adventure. I picture it like The Amazing Race, but confined to Sweden. They make you do crazy things, they want to see drama, and in the end, you would have a chance to meet relatives you didn't even know existed.
Well, when you're bordering on unemployed and would love to travel, why not apply for a show that would make fun of Americans on Swedish TV! Sounds like a plan to me!
While I was working on my application profile I had my mom scan and send me a photo...

Weren't we cute!!?? In case you can't tell, the tall one is me, and Mel's sitting down. This was at a Pippi-themed pancake breakfast at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle. I remember it being a distressing morning, because I was definitely the most authentic-looking Pippi in the room, but everyone else kept getting stickers and prizes!
Last month I found a DVD copy of The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking (1983?), which I sent to Mel for her birthday. As I understand it, she tore open the package this weekend and watched it right away.

Pineapple

Last week Winco had pineapple on sale for a "come buy me!" price. I couldn't pass it up. Once I got the fruit home, however, I was immediately intimidated by having this big, yellow, acidic fruit to eat before it went bad. So I put it in the fridge for a few days and started thinking.

I disassembled the beast this morning. It was a juicy job that took me a bit of meticulous time, but completely worth it.

Once the pineapple was nicely diced, I sectioned it out. 2 cups for making pineapple rice, 2 cups for pineapple empanadas, and the extras for plain ol' eating!

I then set to making the empanada filling. Pineapple, a couple of tablespoons of sugar, 1 orange, and a couple of tablespoons to get everything started. Put that in a pot on the stove, and cook away! The fruit released a ton of water, and I stirred quite constantly for about 30 minutes to cook the moisture off. Once the fruit was tender and the water cooked off, I took the pot of the heat, ate some breakfast, and moved it to the fridge to wait until I felt ambitious again. There was an interlude of a few hours as Mary and I visited the Arcata Farmers Market (which is awesome!), and Michael and I took a trip to the beach with a couple of friends.

After our trip to the beach I came back home and started the empanada dough. I used roughly half whole wheat, half all-purpose flour. The dough also had butter, oil, water, and a little bit of vinegar in it. It was mixed until smooth, then put into the freezer to chill. I rolled the chilled dough into flat rounds, dropped 1-2 tablespoons of pineapple filling inside, and closed it up. The whole little pocket baked at 350 for nearly 30 minutes. They smelled pretty good coming out of the oven!

Sadly, I'm not sitting here raving about my wild success and imploring that everyone try one of my pineapple empanadas. I'm not impressed by this outcome. The dough lacks a certian sweetness (which could be due to the whole wheat), and the pineapple doens't have much of a kick left. So, chalk that one up as something I probably won't do again. I'm thinking apple empanadas next time...