Gigot a la cuillere

Two years ago, for Christmas, my cousins wife departed from the traditional "gigot de noel" and instead of seeing the entire family fight over 5 minutes more or less of cooking time, she cooked it for the entire day. Yes you read it, the whole day, not 35 minutes nor 40. It was so delicious that since then, this is my preferred way of preparing it. So if you want to get that juicy, melting in the mouth lamb taste, here is how you do it, and it's so easy that I doubt anyone can fail.
To reproduce what I did last sunday, you will need:
- a lamb leg that fits in your dish, we had ~7 pounds of meat with the bone. Got it at our local New Seasons market, they cut off the shank so it would not be too big.
- a dozen of garlic cloves (don't peel them)
- a dozen of mushrooms (the "champignon de Paris" kind)
- 3-4 carrots cut in large chunks
- 2 bay leaves
- a pinch of salt
- optional: a few slices of bacon
Preheat the oven at 275F (135C, that s very low). Put the lamb leg in your oven proof dish (eventually lay the slices of bacon at the bottom of the dish). If there is a side with more fat start with it at the bottom. Add the other ingredients in the dish and 2 glasses of water. Cover with aluminum foil. Put in the Oven for 10 hours. After a few hours (3-5), turn the meat, remove the extra juice and save it for later (pour a bit of juice on the meat). You might want to check another time that there isn't too much juice.
Towards the end you might want to remove the foil and put the oven on broil to finish it. What I did is about 1 hour before the end I added potatoes in another dish with some of the juice and baked them at 400 (leaving the meat covered by the foil). It worked perfectly. Reheat the juice that you saved so your guests can soak their meat as much as they want ! No picture, we destroyed it before I even thought of bringing the camera.


You might want to serve that with green beans, and M would certainly suggest finishing with a raspberry chiffon pie :).

Backpacking Around Mt Adams

Last weekend we headed for a 2 days backpacking trip around Mt Adams with Ian and Jagan. We left Portland at 6:30 am and were at the foot of Mt Adams at 8:30. There was a rather large crowd at the start of the trail as it happened to be the start of the path that climbs up Mt Adams. As soon as our trail separated from theirs we were pretty much alone for 2 days. The views from the side of mount Adams were gorgeous, especially towards Mt Hood and Mt St Helens. Between the flowers, the butterflies and the scenic landscape we were all 4 busy taking pictures all day.
I took advantage of the opportunity to play a little bit with filters and take some Infra Red landscapes. Bellow is a demonstration of the effect. You can see how haze pretty much disappears in Infra Red that offers very detailed and contrasty horizons and skies. Mount Hood and Stream from Mt Adams trail:


Mount St Helens seems to still emit puffs of smoke once in a while:


We established camp away from the trail near a little (dried up) waterfall. I think it was the first time I camped in an area that was "this wild". In France you can never really be that far from civilization in an area that is so untouched. Besides the fact that cellphone network was reaching, there was no sign of civilization and it felt great. We filtered water from a snowpatch melt, hanged our food in the trees for the night and fought mosquitoes all we could (they still mostly won) while playing cards. We played a game called Euchre which happened to be close enough to our good old French Belotte so I had quite some fun :). Ian and Jagan went away at sunset to take pictures, but I slacked and stayed at our camp and snapped from there.

Mount Adams at Sunset


We woke up just after sunrise, just int time for a great Panorama on Mt Hood


You can find the rest of the pictures here and Ian's pictures there.

Seattle with Olivier and Claire

The second weekend of July we drove up to Seattle and spent 2 days with M's dad and old friends of mine from France that were in Seattle for a conference. As they had spent the week around downtown, we picked them and the 2 kids at their hotel and headed for the countryside. We went to the nearby Snoqualmie falls, enjoyed the landscape, went for a (good) burger in the nearby town of Fall City and stopped at Chateau St Michelle winery.

We unfortunately arrived too late for the winery tour, so we just hanged there for like an hour before heading back to M's dad home. We had a nice relaxing afternoon, sipping beer in the shade and preparing a barbecue for the dinner. Fiona and Tristan enjoyed the house quite a bit and played with the balcony door for easily an hour :).


Snoqualmie falls


Olivier and Fiona


Claire and tristan

Eagle Creek

I know my blog posts are getting totally out of order, that's the result of me posting when I have pictures ready, and as I rotate between film and digital, whatever got taken on film ends up being super delayed... So a few weekends ago, we went to help Amy move to La Center, then went strawberry picking with Ian and Janel (Melvin and Anne were late enough to arrive when we were leaving), cooked a few kilos of Jam, and the next day Ian took us for a hike to Eagle Creek in the Gorges.



It was our first long hike since Ethiopia, but despite the fast pace I survived :). Our target was Cave Falls, some 6.5 miles away from the start:

The path is actually passing in a cave behind the waterfall around the middle of the cliff, that is quite impressive. There was another nice fall right after it:


The rest of the pictures of the hike and from our Sauvie Island harvest can be found here.

Strawberry picking

Last weekend of June we went strawberry picking, and made about 5kg of jam afterward. Here is a quick picture that summarizes well the Saturday afternoon:


(I love Kodak Ektar's colors, I wish I could get that with digital).

4th of July at Rainier National Park

Ian organized a 3 day weekend camping trip at Rainier National Park. We car pooled with them and setup camp Friday around noon and ate some sandwiches at the campsite. I was surprised to see how nice the campsite was. Each tent spot was surrounded by a patch of forest that was isolating it from the other tents. That way it felt almost like we were camping by ourselves despite being in a rather large campsite. Each spot has a fire pit where you can cook your food as long as you buy/bring wood. There was even bathrooms with drinkable water, and even toilet paper... 5 star luxury camping if you're asking me. Only downside was probably the swarms of mosquitoes. Not that much of a problem for me as there was plenty of honeypots around ;).
From left to right: Melvin, Allen, Ian, Janel, Andy, Kevin and Michelle. Missing: Anne, Jason and myself.


We then spent the afternoon on a short hike to Comet falls. We almost missed the falls as we stopped there:


To realize that we had to walk a few steps more to get to see this one: the real Comet falls !


We had a nice evening around the fire, barbecued lots of salmon, drank a few local brews and some bourbon and went to bed. Next morning at 4:45 Ian and I were up for some sunrise photography action. We drove straight to Reflection Lake and got some very nice shots of Mount Rainier.


A few hours later we drove to Paradise, which is the starting point to climb up Mount Rainier and deserves its name: the view is gorgeous. We then climbed for like 2 hours in snow until we got tired and decided the view would not improve by going higher.

Looking up towards Mount Rainier:


Looking south, towards Oregon we can see mount Adams to the left and Mount Saint Helens to the right (Mount Hood is hidden in this picture).


Once we arrived down the place was literally packed with visitors. It was one of the most fantastic hikes I've done in term of ease of access and quality of the view. I must admit that hiking in the snow in July felt quite good.


We came back to our campsite and met Jason that had just drove up to join us. M, Andy, Kevin and Jason went on another "short" (it was a lot longer than the ranger had told us) hike for the afternoon while Janel, Ian and myself slacked at the camp. We prepared the fire for our 4th of July's dinner (Melvin's first as an American citizen). We had a fun night around the fire, playing with sparklers, eating sausages and chatting.

You can find the rest of the pictures here, or read about it with more pictures on Ian and Janel's blog.

B&W Portland

The other day I had to go to the lab to get some film developed and I decided to just do the 4 miles by foot and bring a camera with me. The weather was great and I got a few B&W shots of Portland I like. All the pictures were shot on my Zeiss Super Ikonta III from the fifties with medium format rolls of Kodak Tri-X. Most of my path was on the waterfront so you'll see quite a few bridges in these pictures.
In the afternoon, there is a guy sitting by the stop sign at the entrance of the Hawthorn bridge. He's cool, a bit weird but does a good job at entertaining the long line of cars slowly passing by.


The bridge has a central part which is 2 ways, 2 side parts that are 1 way and 2 sidewalks with markings for a bike lane and a pedestrian lane. It's interesting to see that cars actually just drive on a metallic grid and you can see the water bellow under the "road". Kind of creepy (and slippery as well). The central part of the bridge lifts between the 2 towers, kind of like an elevator, to let tall boats pass. There's a guy that is sitting there all day, waiting for big boats to horn. I've seen it up only twice, but there is probably 1 or 2 boats a day :). When it happens the entertainer gets a lot of work as the line grows: operation of the bridge is really slooow.


There's a pedestrian path on both banks of the Willamette in the downtown section, with drinkable water fountains. Lots of people walk around there, or run, bike. It's a very live and enjoyable area.


More B&W Portland pictures here.

Cathar Castles

Our last day as tourists was well spent, we went around the Corbieres mountains which are well known for hosting the ruins of many of the Cathar castles. These castles were often built in such way that you could see the next castle from one's tower. That way they had an easy network of communication and could defend themselves easier. It didn't prevent them succumbing to the crusade that was started by the French King and pushed by the Vatican.

We started with Montsegur, which was the last one standing against the crusade. Once you are there you understand why it resisted so long, it took us about 30 minutes to reach it from the bottom of the hill and it was quite steep.


The view from atop is fantastic:




We then headed for Puivert, another castle that is a lot more accessible. This one is actually privately owned and they get the renovation money by renting it for movies or events. It was in quite a nice shape.




We finished the day by stopping in Mirepoix, another nice local town charged with history.


On our way we probably spotted 4 different Cathar castles dominating the valleys. This is a fantastic area for longer vacations, and hiking around the castles. The rest of the pictures is here.

Albi

I have to say that we were originally just going there because it was kind of on the way and was supposed to have a pretty interesting cathedral. In the end it's probably the place we visited during that trip that we enjoyed the most. Albi is the home of Toulouse-Lautrec museum, which unfortunately was... closed the day we came, but the main sight is this gigantic, massive, actually ginormus is probably the appropriate term cathedral that was built by the Catholic church after the crusade against the Cathars to remind them that they had lost.


It is located on the Tarn river, and we love cities with bridges (with Portland we are actually well served).


The inside of the cathedral was even more impressive. For once I accepted to take an audio-guide and it proved extremely interesting.


We finished the visit by just going around town and doing some shopping. M found nice shoes and shirts at Cop. Copine, and I bought some "local" gear at the 64 shop, including some rugby shirts :).

We visited some more churches before going back home, including a nice cloister:


The rest of the pictures is here.

Cordes sur Ciel

Yet another touristic destination: we drove to Cordes-sur-Ciel, a beautifully renovated old town located on top of a hill, 1 hour north of Toulouse. This is apparently a very touristic destination, has a lot of shops for local crafts and arts, but we were there in march and it's kind of the dead season. The streets of the village were quite deserted and it looked like many of our mountain villages, beautifull, old and desert. However the houses were in such great shape that there was no doubt it was living.

This is the view you get when you arrive:


Nice steep streets:


Beautiful houses:


We just spent the morning there, had lunch in the only open restaurant around which was a rip-off (prices and taste were targeted towards tourists = really poor ratio). We then drove to Albi. The rest of the pictures is here.

Carcassonne

We did a 1 day trip to Carcassonne. The main attraction of the city is its renovated citadel that reminded M all kind of fairy tales: the city actually wasn't like that in the old times but the architect in charge of the renovation decided to build on and improve on the original citadel. The result is a bit too much, but is still gorgeous. Plus I had been there when I was 2 and wanted to see it again and actually remember it this time.

The Citadel, in the middle of the vineyards.


I told you it looked like a fairy tale:


We spent a day going around the castle and stopping to eat a great Cassoulet. This is kind of heavy, but so good that in a week I probably ate at least 3 of them :). I even cooked 2 once back in the US (1 for us and 1 when M's dad visited us).

More pictures here.

Toulouse

Yeah I know, I am blogging about old stuff, but I finally got through the 500 pictures I took while in France. So we went in Toulouse for Fifille's wedding and took advantage of the week to go around like real tourists and enjoy the area.

So let's start by a visit of the Capitole:


Let's continue on the piers:


And finish with a nice dinner in good company:


We really enjoyed the city of Toulouse, it's very welcoming, the bricks light up the city in nice colors and the ambiance is very laid back. More pictures here.

Amsterdam

I started to go through my backlog of pictures, so you'll see a few pictures and stories from march popping randomly. On our way from Israel to the USA, we stopped for Fifille's wedding in Toulouse, but our flight connected through Amsterdam so we decided to spend the day there. We spent our day roaming around the city, crossing canals, visiting museums and enjoying the nice winter weather. The whole set of picture is here.

Bikes on a Bridge


Inside the Cathedral


Statue Glowing


Cafe Tapas

Overall a very nice long and tiring day, but well worth delaying the flight to Toulouse by a few hours.

First Hike

Last Sunday we went for our first hike since my surgery. Ian had organized 2 small hikes in the Columbia gorges so Janel and I, both recovering could restart slowly. It was a very nice sunny morning and we enjoyed the shade of the Oregon forest. I also took advantage of the hike to try out my new 56 years old film camera (a Zeiss Super Ikonta III). I didn't have a meter with me as my stuff still had not arrived from Israel so I had to trust my eyes. The camera is 6x6 so most of the square shots you'll be seeing here come from it, the color ones are made on the new ISO100 Kodak Ektar.

The Wahclella Falls:



After the hike, we took the scenic highway back and stopped to enjoy a view on the Gorges:


We realized we were near the Viewpoint Inn, a very nice Inn that had been used in the vampire movie Twilight for the prom party, it's also a place we had been considering eventually for a future event so we decided to find it and have a brunch there. This place has been opened and serving good food at a fantastic vista point since the 30's.

The Viewpoint Inn:


See how Happy, M is ?


And Yes, I know, it took me a week to put these online, but film doesn't develop as fast as digital :).

First Baseball Game

Last Thursday, M took me to my first baseball game in PGE Park. They have a special on Thursdays called thirsty Thursday where beer is sold for only 2.50$ to try to encourage locals to support the Beavers, the local (apparently craptastic) baseball team.

We met a few friends, it was fun, we drank beer, entertained a group of kids, and I got to learn the rules. Oh and the Beavers lost badly. This was a cultural experience, but honestly I preferred my discovery of cricket to baseball.

Beavers attacking:

Astoria Forts

Monday was Memorial Day so we had some more weekend time. We decided to go on a small road trip to visit the old forts near Astoria. Astoria is located at the mouth of the Columbia river, in the northwesternmost tip of Oregon. The forts are both on the peninsula at the exit of the river.

View of the Columbia river, looking towards Mount St Helens, miles before reaching Astoria.


Fort Stevens has mostly remains from a WWII era fortification which was aimed at defending the coast against invaders (in 1942 they even got bombed by a Japanese submarine).


An earlier fort was built there in the 1860s near a Clatsop Indian village (a Chinook tribe), but nothing remains. It was meant to protect the area that could have been disrupted easily with just one boat prior to the fort's construction. The fort was not so interesting to me as it was just another set of bunkers like we have in Normandy... However I really liked the rebuilt Clatsop longhouse. I was expecting Indians to live in tepees but apparently the Northwest Indians lived in nice wooden houses. This kind of breaks yet another Hollywood induced myth.


Later on we visited fort Clatsop, which was the first settlement in Oregon by Lewis and Clark. The Lewis and Clark Expedition (1803–1806), was the first American overland expedition to the Pacific coast and back. The building is a modern rebuilt but it was still very interesting.


Lewis and Clark's room


And more pictures in this gallery.