Not Mountains, but Not Little Hills

Every now and again I get to do something fun. 
Every now and again I organize my photos folder.  Here we go! 

Soooo... I drove down to Cali and here's the photos of my sorta vacay.
On the way I stopped at Riverside Park in Grants Pass, where I've been before.  It's so pretty! 

The sign says you have to be under twelve.  Bummer. 
But luckily I came at the playground from a different angle and didn't see the sign until I was already all played out, and nobody yelled at me. 

Don't I look under twelve?

That sort of thing right there is why everybody yells "Smile!" at me.
Maybe I should.
I'll make a note.

I did some wandering around in Yreka. 

 

The playground is my favorite place in any town. 

Went to Greenhorn Park!

And climbed, if you want to call it that, those hills, which are a challenge for me at this point, esp in 98 degrees which I'm not exactly used to any more. 

But there's a lovely view from the top, down at the valley with I-5 and Mt Shasta in the distance.

Look at those two pictures. They're basically the same composition, but in one the crowning blob of white is just a little cloud, and in the other it's Mt Shasta.

The next day's bathroom selfie at church, because I still had mountaintop glow on me, or at least it was still in my head and I liked myself for once. 

See, I'm smiling now, because mountain!
The mountain is where we need to live, and why should we ever come down?

Then I went to Medford and went up Table Rock. 

Here's a couple from Wikimedia because none of mine are this cool.  And wowwww, the view from the air! 

Here are the ones I took.

Heading up there. 
Looking at where we're going.

The prettiness on the way

Almost there!

The top and the view from the top.

Very aware of rattlesnakes and poison oak-- which I'm not aware of usually-- I'd just had my consciousness raised.  This horrible-sounding stuff was pointed out to me, and I took a photo of it for reference!

It sounds nasty.  In fact I did not enjoy the trip back down at all because I had to GO and I'm a girl, and that poison stuff was everywhere I looked, so I basically ran all the way back down to the reassuring concrete restroom.

Oh well, fun was had!

It was a journey of a thousand miles, or almost. 

Homemade Shoes, by Janel Shoemaker

I thought if this worked out, I would change my name to "Shoemaker" in pride!  But that's as far as I'll take the idea-- that subject line right up there  :-)

My daughter has really hard-to-fit feet.  Her little toes stick out farther than expected.  In regular shoes her little toenail gets rubbed against the side, or if we order much larger or wider shoes, then the footbed is thrown off and the whole tread is wrong.
She used to be more willing to endure ill-fitting shoes, but she's gotten more sensitive about it over the years.  We've tried various specialty shoes without any luck, and we don't have enough money or live anywhere near a place that makes real custom shoes.

This summer it's come to the point she refuses to wear painful shoes any more, so she's been going around in flip-flops or some soft leather slippers that are dark enough in color to be "moccasins".

I decided to give it a try.

There's lots of ideas on Pinterest but of course I can't use any pattern, that's the whole point  :-)

I just traced around her foot, made a rough pattern and started making tests.

What shall we use for sole material?  I think that doormat was a bit too cheerful, anyway.

It can still be our doormat, I only needed to trim off one side.

The first prototype shoes, made out of tapestry material...

With soles cemented on!

Kept on finding one design flaw after another.  Her heels would pop out of the shoes when she tried to walk, so I added elastic around the top.

But they're on her feet!
They FIT RIGHT and are comfortable.

Just don't look too closely at the patch job on the left toe... I had to make a design adjustment at the last minute before she left for summer camp! No time to make another pair from scratch.  Hand stitching in panic. I really do rise to the occasion WHEN NECESSARY!

"If it wasn't for the last minute, nothing would get done"  :-)

I'll make more, and the next pair will look even better! 

Oatmeal Blob Bars

Pretty basic and don't look like much, but they were exactly what I was going for when I threw things into a bowl-- yet in a way, very surprising! They're heavy and dense with nutrition, as I had planned, but not gooey at all.  The consistency of a chewy oat bar contrasted with the texture of a crispy one.  My mouth was pleasantly confused.
They're only barely sweetened.  Exactly what we'd want to bring along on a hike!

My secondary goal was to use the cheapest ingredients possible-- cheapest as in "least expensive", it's still raw honey, nested eggs, organic flour etc.  I was going for the most nutrition for the least cost. 

Ingredients: 

4 eggs
5 cups oats
1 cup wheat flour
1 cup honey
1/2 cup oil
2 tsp baking soda
2 TBSP vanilla
2 cups raisins

Instructions?
I usually don't, but okay.  "Mix and bake"  :-)

Recipe for Camping Canned Chicken Pot Pie

Four days camping!

I'm happy camping in anything with hard sides. I want STEEL between me and the bears. And lots of pillows. That's all I ask. I'm quite happy just to be in the woods, and exhale, wander around looking at the pretty leaves and stuff, and when it gets dark I want to close the door and lock it.

The van was pretty full with bedding, pillows and kids.  Ten pillows is a necessity.  An ice chest is a luxury I decided to do without. Anyway I didn't think the ice would last for four days.

My idea of camping food is a quick trip through Costco for non-refrigerated comestibles, like cashews, dried blueberries, jerky, those little round nut-and-seed blobs, so delicious, you know the ones.  Food:  *crosses that item off list*

The only problem was there was going to be potluck! What to bring?

A proper church lady must show up with a casserole in a pretty dish!  And not leave it all to the motorhomes and 5th wheels, ice chest or no!

Solution:  canned goods.

Ingredients:

I wouldn't usually buy Campbells Cream of Soup.  Just this once for a good reason.

Crumbled up saltines are indistinguishable once they're mixed into the soup, and the effect is really quite like bits of flaky, golden Marie Callendar's pot pie crust!

When I tested this at home before going camping, the kids loved it and ate the whole batch almost before I could take a picture. 
A week after we got home, they asked if I could make more of that stuff from the campout. 

Success!  :-D 

Homemade Fish and Chips

Happened to be in Walmart when the need for fish and chips became irresistible.

Walmart is a great store, I am not among those who refuse to shop there, rather I APPROVE of Walmart because I find it easier to find Made in USA items there than in any other large store, because they refuse to sell the worst offensive, violent music, and they promote Christian material and gift items with verses.

That being said, it's not the place to find fish fillets with natural ingredients.
Reading the ingredients on Gorton's fish sticks is rather unappetizing, I must say!
But, I was at Walmart when the urge struck...

Walmart had a bag of tilapia loins pre-skinned and individually wrapped!  And they had taters. 

 

I did those properly, first dipped in flour with salt and pepper, then in egg, then in bread crumbs with seasoning.  

How to make chips?  Well, how hard can it be?  

Best fish 'n' chips EV AR.

And by the way, here's what I bought myself for my birthday this year.

Pears!

The quarry-- a big pear tree on sort-of public property. 

The pears are falling and the homeless are ignoring them. 

Admittedly the pears have been picked to the level that tall people can reach.  Let’s think.

Hangar, plastic bag, mailing tape, yardstick. 

I felt a little silly whipping out this contraption in public, up until the moment that it worked.  Pity I didn’t take a video!  The bag goes up around the pear, the end of the hangar snags the stem, a little yank and the pear drops into the bag. 

Yield: 

Now the pear tree is loaded with pears above the level of tall people and clever redneck chicks. 

For the second trip, a modified apparatus. 

One guy who stopped to watch me expressed doubt because, he said, those pears are HARD. Right. Who cares if they’re a little crunchy? They’re like hard CRUNCHY PEAR SUGAR BLASTERS, never tasted such excellence. I gave him a big fat pear and he went away eating it.

Most people who stopped to watch me at this activity (which with a stick this long harks to fishing) told me I was clever, so I gave them nice pears to eat. 

And still took home: 

Plastic Canvas Outgoing Mail Holder

I made one of these aeons ago and it was a cool, useful thing to have on the wall.  Recently someone admired it so I made a copy.  Here's the information in case you'd like to make one. 

As you can see, there is some lag time between photos and blogging  :-)

Front design

The back is reinforced with double layers of canvas to make it stronger.  
I was running out of that blue cord, so I switched from my usual favorite basketweave to half cross on the back to economize, then left the bottom part unstitched.  It's against the wall, so it doesn't show! 

Dimensions to cut the plastic canvas: