Garlic Dressing

Tis' the season for fresh salad, and fresh ingredients, which after a long winter are now available from the local Growers Markets.
I headed down around noon today to get the ingredients to restock the GD we have been out of for well over a week. No small thing in this food oriented household...
Picked up some organic flat leaf parsley from Fry Family Farms produce stand and some fresh garlic so freshly picked, the skins were pure white and cloves still wet and packed with some serious heat. Along with some beautiful red onions, clearly the best purchase made on the way out, was a bunch of gorgeous Peonies for a mere three dollars.
Back to the garlic dressing, to provide a historical angle, it started with The Backroads' fresh salads and their incredibly delicious sweet garlic dressing.
We were hooked. They sell it there at the restaurant, but its ridiculously expensive for a small container, and they close down for three months in the winter.
Dave grows a crop of around 200 fantastic garlic each year, organic, huge and so tasty. Since I had the garlic to experiment with, I started working the waiters for clues to the ingredients. Coupled with some research online, I was off and running and eventually came up with this recipe.
My dressing varies depending on the amount of garlic I put in, and the heat the variety packs. Dave grows a mild sweet crop, but occasionally I will purchase some (like today) that is hot and adds a whole nuter' element.
We use it on and in everything, from salads to stir fry, grilled salmon, dipping sauce for home baked pizza, pasta, eventually, everything tastes boring without it poured on top, or worked into the recipe (must be the italian in me..) so I'm posting my recipe, I never measure specific, just general amounts, you can't ruin it.
Everything with garlic rules!

Roses' Garlic sauce/dressing
6 heads of garlic
one generous cup of EVO (Extra Virgin Olive Oil)
one cup of water (or more depending on the consistency you like)
about... 1/4 cup Cider Vinegar
about...1/4 cup or less of Brown Sugar
about ...!/3 cup chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
a very generous splash of soy sauce
a generous amount of Kosher Salt and lots of Fresh Ground Pepper
....about two tablespoons each.
Get started by cutting the tops off three of the garlic heads and drizzle some olive oil on them, wrap in aluminum foil and bake in the oven until the kitchen has that fantastic smell of roasted garlic, about 30 minutes at 350. and let sit in the oven while it cools down. This can be done the night before or even a day or two before.
Start peeling the rest of the raw heads of garlic. I smash them with the knife-its supposed to make them more potent...
Squeeze the roasted garlic out through the cut tops, or strip them and put the raw and the roasted garlic together in the food processor along with the olive oil and process for a few minutes until combined, add the rest of the ingredients in any order or all at once, except for the water and process till thick and creamy. Then through the feeding tube in the top of the processor with the unit slowly running start adding the cup of water until it becomes a thinner consistency, if its too garlicky, add more oil or water to taste, I like mine totally heavy on the garlic....
Enjoy!

Friday again?

Shocking how fast the week flys by, I haven't even had a chance to count how many ads I've designed over the past few weeks, in addition to an additional 8 pages to layout this month.
Up visiting from the Bay Area last weekend, Deb gave me some fantastic tips and coupled with the online InDesign classes I have been taking from Creativetechs, I am having a great time designing the June issue, even if it has eaten my life and any free time.
On the homefront, its raining blobs of cotton from my cottonwood trees. A gust of wind and it looks like its snowing. The driveway looks like a washer has overflowed and the suds distributed along the gravel. Every year I deal with this in a different way, I've learned the hard way, not to bend up and down and pluck every blob on the lawn up - I can't move the following day. Raking takes forever, mowing it clogs the engine, and I sure can't afford to have my lawn mower go down... I might try leaf blowing it into the blackberries bushes along the edge of the lawn, or talk to the nice lawn maintenance guy down the road and see if he has such a thing as a lawn vacuum for hire.
Moving on to less stressful topics, we finally made it to Medford this week for the Britts' seasons summer concert tickets. This has to be one of the most disappointing line ups of the past ten years. I didn't sign on to volunteer this summer, my job has limited my available time. I cashed in my raffle sellers prize from last summer in exchange for two tickets to see Elvis Costello, and we purchased tickets for the Indigo Girls, Pink Martini, and Michael Franti and Spearhead, back for a fourth year, can't wait to see them again.
Well, the sun is now rising, my coffee helping to motivate me, and I'm reminded of a quote I just highlighted in a story we are running this month on Aggie Pilgrim.
“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is our gift, and we better use it wisely.” Agnes Baker-Pilgrim
On that note, I think I'll wander outside, water the garden and take some pictures of the cotton everywhere!
Y'all have a great weekend, Ms Leah, hope you're not too sore to get back on those ponies and ride!

Summertime!

Last weekend we took a road trip up to Applegate lake instead of the coast as planned and explored a piece of paradise close to the California border.
Its finally settling into some warm weather and I'm analyzing the pattern I moan about in the winter as I enjoy the benefits of the brick house I hate for 6 months and love the rest of the year. This time of the year I love sleeping with the windows open and hearing the birds calling to each other in the morning. The day closes with crickets cricketing and the sight of bats circling overhead fading out to a starry sky that is a canopy of twinkling diamonds.
When winter rolls around I'm scratching my head why I am still here in the miserable grey weather that is the Pacific Northwest, but in the summer its a love affair.
The picture above is worth a thousand words.

Whats Up....

I taught a class in iWeb this past weekend at The Guild, it was actually pretty fun especially creating the support sheets and learning some additional things via the awesome Apple videos. Here's the link to the excellent iLife tutorials http://www.apple.com/ilife/tutorials/#iphoto starting with iPhoto, these are for the 09' version, but you can do a search for previous ones.
iWeb is a fantastic program, smoothly integrating with iPhoto, and its so user friendly. Equally impressive are the templates in iWeb and also the iWorks program- so well designed and a joy to play around with. I hope to do a class in the future on creating a portfolio with Keynote. One of the other impressive features is the ability to export to other formats, pdf, to email, or a Powerpoint presentation that is PC friendly for those not on a Mac.
I'm working on the Young at Heart June issue and enjoying the creative process, just added an additional 8 pages to this issue and there are so many more ads being sold, I'm cranking out ads daily! I just completed working up a logo/type design and PR kit, with Pages (the print part of iWorks) for the next event Young at Heart is sponsoring in October, A Medford Senior Affair.
There are times that my muse is satisfied with the creative challenges of this job and other times I am challenged by the limitations. Today I choose to see the glass overflowing.

Picking up the pieces...

If compliments paid my mortgage and kind words soothed my heart I would be flying.
But they don't, and its been a stretch since I have been able to find the time and the desire to return to this blog. Losing Maggie ran me off the proverbial road and I have been trying to find my voice and return to my routine and the gratification that this blog has given me since my last post.
I started working for Young at Heart publications in January, creating display ads and upgrading their marketing materials. At the end of March I was hired to redesign the newspaper and take over design and production. Having a number of additional creative projects has been helpful and rewarding and I have felt truly blessed by the work.
This months production just wrapped up and it has been an insane two weeks. I hoped to get off to the coast with Dave the past two days but the weather has been seriously stormy and its looking like the end of the week instead since sunny days and warm temperatures are returning.
The Southern Oregon Guilds'gallery, which was renovated as part of the RCC building project opened the past month and it was fun to see the transformation from the raw space we were assembling display cabinets in this past January, to a light bright open space filled with art and now awaiting the final touch, carpeting. As a member of the Guild, I have been pro/bono, working on redesigning their logo, website and print materials over the past two years, and was anxious to see the banners I designed for the outside of the building and road. It was a challenging project to get so much copy condensed and designed all into a pleasing vertical format.
We went out to Kerby for the opening and evening festivities and we toured Its a Burl, right down the road. Despite driving by numerous times over the years I had not been in there but one quick stop 12 years ago. I wanted to take some pictures since I was writing an article for the Young at Heart paper on exploring the Illinois Valley and road tripping up to the Oregon Caves, which turned out to be our spontaneous destination on Easter Sunday. It was a fantastic maze of burl art galleries and awesome pottery. Music was happening on the porch, dogs lay around in the dust and I loved meeting Joy and Harvey the owners while we were there. I took a lot of pictures (what else is new) making it so difficult to pick only two for the article.
This past week Jamie and Paul came up from the Bay Area, Jamie has a cabin in Wimer she bought years ago and spends a month or two a year escaping to, and Paul being the avid cyclist he is has a new hybrid road/mountain bike and enjoyed the local scenery and thankfully had no encounters this time with the local rednecks.
We went up there on Sunday and it was a sweet time. We left feeling grateful for making the call to do the hour drive to get there. As crazy as things have seemed lately, theres something so soothing and spiritual about feeling surrounded by tall trees and walking on pine needles with friends while the dogs run wildly through the woods.

Coming unglued

"There is sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love." -Washington Irving (1783-1859)

All those cliches about one door opening and another closing, life turning on a dime, appreciate each day for the gift it is, are small reminders and nano comfort these days. Frankly I've been having a terrible time getting on with things. The depressing rainy weather hand in hand with my seemingly endless flow of tears contributes to my feeling still in shock. I am so eternally thankful for Dave in my life he has been my rock and lifeboat, and has left Pepper here with me when he is not. She has in fact been here since losing Maggie. There is no replacing one dog with another but I see fully the benefit gained by the distraction. Plus she is very cute.
When I lost Mona, I waited six months before adopting Maggie at the local animal shelter, or even going through the effort of looking. I'm not sure why I waited so long, life was so sure quiet without a dog for those months. Really quiet. But looking back, I was waiting for her. When I broke down and went down the row of barking lunging dogs at the pound, she was the only one sitting quietly in her cell staring at me. She had a pink slip on her door, not a job dismissal, and when she came outside with me, she circled my legs like a cat and stole my heart.
Its been ten years and life without her seems so hard, everyday gets a little easier, but I'm still coming apart at the seams. Photos of her, phone calls and comforting emails from friends and family all still seem to push me over the edge. She was larger than life, and I believe leaves my life better because of her presence in it.

Free Falling

U is for UNPREPARED for losing Maggie
The bus ran off the road on Friday, it started off like any other day. Had I known it would end like it did I would have not spent so much time working on the computer and would have skipped my volunteer shift on Thursday. I would have made more time to stroke her head and tell her what an incredible companion she has been since the day I brought her home from the pound. She was always so funny, smart, so undemanding, loyal and devoted but independent, so if I was busy working she was totally content. We had our rhythm, which after living ten years 24/7 together is no surprise.
She had been having some difficulties, and was hardly eating, and drinking more water than normal so I called the vet and scheduled an appointment for 3.
She had been to the vet in December but saw a new vet who said the lump in her side Dave felt was just a full bladder, took no x-rays or showed any concern despite our worries that she was kind of lethargic. But she had lost BuBu 5 months previously, and we all were still recovering that loss.
Friday was different, our regular vet felt her swollen belly, immediately took an x-ray and she was in surgery 15 minutes later. She said she probably wouldn't have made it through the weekend. I prayed for a miracle but when the vet came out, I only had to look at the expression of pain on her face to know I had lost her. It was cancer and it had spread to her liver.
I still feel heartbroken I had less than five minutes to say goodbye, I was so not prepared. In my worst nightmare, never would I have thought I would be taking her to the vet that day and not bringing her home.
Now there is a giant hole in my life and heart and I am still falling into it.