Summer Cabin Trip 07

Each and every year my good friend Josh Holland has a cabin trip in August. His parents' cabin is in the Wallowa Mnts, right at the base of Mount Joseph, named after Chief Joseph. He has been doing this for quite some time now, more than 12 years I think. I have been to about 6 or 7 of them, half is pretty good considering that we had three kids in the last five years. He use to do it on the same weekend as the Blues and Booze festival, but it got to be to crazy in Joseph and around the lake, so he moved it to the week before WSU starts classes.

The Eagle Cap Wilderness Area offers some of the best hiking and backpacking in the U.S. I have only been a couple of miles in, but plan on backpacking it fairly extensively once my kids get a little older. The surrounding area also has some great little rivers and creeks for fly fishing Rainbow, Brook and Brown Trout. The lake itself, at over 300 ft deep has Lake Trout, but you are going to need a boat and down rigger equ. to fish it. I might try fishing the shores this weekend with Liam.

We got a flat tire on Saturday evening around 7:15PM. We were able to make it back to Josh's cabin but we didn't feel comfortable driving 90 miles back to Lewiston on the donut tire. So we will be going back down again this Friday. We will take all the kids this time and maybe Katie, Darcy and Charlotte to stay the night and play at the lake on Saturday morning. Liam really wants to go fishing, so I think I should take him out early in the morning and try the lake a little after dawn.

Fun weekend! and I am looking forward to another.

Thai Turkey

I can't believe I finally did it. I made a Thai Turkey. It was pretty good. I ended up just doing the turkey and not all the other stuff, but it was fun. Here is the recipe.

8 lb Turkey (defrosted)
3 Tbsp brown sugar
3 tsp honey
3 tsp sesame oil
3 tsp soy sauce
3 dried red chili peppers (chopped w/ seeds)
6 garlic cloves (chopped)
3 tsp Five Spice
3 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350. Mix all the stuff up in a bowl (you can use a food processor if you like) and then rub it all over the bird, inside and out. Put a little bit of water in a roaster pan and then put in a rack. Place the bird on the rack, cover, and cook for about 2 hours. Serve with your favorite thanksgiving foods (potato, beans, stuffing, corn).

I think that I might try this one for thanksgiving. I was thinking with a saffron rice with potato tadehk, pumpkin and sweat potato curry, spicy Thai green beans and asparagus... I am getting hungry.

Preparing for a big feast

Cooking something new is pretty fun for me. Two thanksgivings ago, I made a Thai Roast Duck. It was very good, but it got me thinking that I could do better. So, ViviAnne got me a turkey a couple of months ago. I took it out of the freezer yesterday and I think that I will cook it up on Friday. I was thinking a Thai Roast Turkey (using the same recipe from the Roast Duck), with a saffron rice and some other semi traditional Thai/Thanksgiving combinations, like sweat potato curry and a spicy green bean/asparagus stir fry. I suppose I should invite some people over to enjoy the food, but then again, maybe not. Maybe I will eat it all my self and make everyone jealous:) Ha!