[Right after a nap.]

I take back what I wrote last week about how Ronin’s sleep was getting better because it’s not better anymore. She has been doing the whole spastic scream, scrub at mouth with fist, tear into fist with the gums like a rabid animal, then cry miserably thing again. So I get the Tylenol, which, I should add, Ronin really likes. Baby acetaminophen is an acrid grit suspended in grape-flavored mucous; both Joshua and I tasted it to be sure there wasn’t something we were missing out on but it’s pretty much disgusting. Disturbingly, Ronin stops crying and opens her mouth wide when she sees the dropper. Kind of makes me wonder what sort of an eater she’ll eventually be.

Or maybe the problem is crawling. She takes hours to get to sleep but can’t stay asleep more than 40 minutes it seems lately. We hear strangled sleep-cry noises and go in to find her on all fours, rocking. Half asleep, super tired, and just miserable and crying. Poor thing.

At any rate, we keep trying to get a photo of the teeth but every time we approach with the camera, she clams up or tries to get the lens cap, leaving us with tight-lipped blurry photos. I did find this one though where you can sort of kind of see them.

[In lieu of sleep, we just spend a lot of time lolling around the bed. Trying to learn to crawl, etc.]

A fuzzy close-up of the teeth. They stick up about maybe 1mm now. Slow going. I can’t believe we have to go through this for all twenty teeth. I think the bags under my eyes will be permanent by that point.

Two years ago, we were in Maine visiting Kurt and Ilana and we went on a hike at Mt. Pisgah looking for blueberries. We found no blueberries but we did find a bunch of chanterelles! So this year, we loaded up the car with paper mushrooming bags, babies, baby gear, baby diapering accouterments, baby snacks, baby toys, baby carriers, and extra baby clothing in case of extreme cold or diaper escapage, and went out on the very same hike with chanterelles as our foraging target. Sadly, after much peeling of eyes and stomping around in the underbrush, we gathered only a handful of soggy, maggoty specimens. We resigned ourselves to a nice hike in the mosquito-rich environment and climbed the fire tower, which incidentally seemed scarier this time around with babies in tow. On our way back to the car via the fire road, we encountered the blueberries! LOTS of blueberries. Our vestigial monkey brains took over from there. We would have gotten more had the mosquitoes not been so gnarly (or the babies so crabby).

Happily, we had just the right amount for a pie. Here’s the recipe we used.

WILD BLUEBERRY PIE (adapted from Cooks Illustrated)

Crust: (We made a vodka crust, which turned out great. The crust is important but it’s not Thee important part of this pie. Whatever usual crust you like to make will work just fine.)

This vodka crust recipe is standard mostly:
* 2.5c flour
* 1t salt
* 2T sugar
* 1.5 stick butter plus another half cup (1 stick) shortening, which is a lot of butter. Not that I’m complaining.
* Then you add 1/4c ice water, and
* 1/4c vodka (preferably out of the freezer). This makes the dough very malleable and easy to roll out. Divide into two parts, press into two thick discs, and refrigerate at least 45 minutes before using.

Take one half of the pie dough, roll out and fit it into the pie plate. Put it back in the fridge while you prepare the filling.

[The goods: seven cups of blueberries, apples, and a spiraling/coring machine.]

FILLING
* 6-7c fresh wild blueberries that you just picked on your hike back from Mt. Pisgah (which is really just a hill)
* 1 apple, peeled and coarsely grated
* 2t grated lemon zest and juice from 1 lemon
* 3/4c sugar
* 2T tapioca flour/starch (you can grind up quick-cooking tapioca in a coffee grinder, etc.). I imagine you could use corn starch if you have no tapioca but be sure to check conversions: corn starch sets up much more robustly than tapioca. You need much less is what I’m saying.
* Pinch salt
* 2T butter, cut into pieces (for on top of the filling)

Take half of the berries and heat on the stovetop (med. heat) until they release their juices, mashing them a bit if necessary. Cook around 8 minutes until the berries have broken down somewhat and thickened. Cool slightly, then mix together with the apple, rest of berries, rest of ingredients. Mix to coat everything evenly.

Remove the crust from the fridge, pour in the filling and put butter bits over the top. Roll out the other half of the pie crust and place over the top. Crimp edges, decorate decoratively, etc. You can brush the top with egg whites (we did I think).

Bake at 400 deg for 30 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 350, baking for an additional 30-40 minutes (until filling is bubbling and the crust is nice and golden).

[Blueberry pie awesomeness.]

We also made an apple rhubarb pie out of rhubarb from the garden. This is an excellent combination. I don’t know exactly what we did for the filling but I would imagine some sugar (enough to counter the tartness of the rhubarb), cinnamon, and maybe a bit of flour went in to coat the apples and rhubarb. We used the same vodka crust.

This awesomeness was hand knit by Ilana for Ronin. We call him Throttle.

Ronin has slept downright “well” these past few nights. I’m amazed and quite relieved; I’d be a lot more enthusiastic about it if she managed to sleep beyond 6am this morning. It’s still DARK at 6am. It’s just not right. Previously, she was taking upwards of two and a half hours to get down at night, nearly every moment of which was a whine or all out shriekfest and naps were no better. You would think we were killing her instead of laying peacefully on the bed with her, rubbing her tummy or whatever. It may have been the discomfort of growing teeth or maybe she’s about to break out a new milestone for us. Crawling maybe. Or ordering clothes online with my credit card.

Back to Maine:

Does anyone remember the Ashland band Dead River? Doug Hill, some other guys… Anyway, we were amused so see a Dead River company (and convenience store) in Maine. Except instead of being an alcohol-steeped college band from the early 90s, it is an oil and gas company. Dead River. An oil and gas company. Is this not weird? *

We sped by at 45 mph, because all the roads in Maine are small two-lane affairs and windy, and caught sight of this… thing on the side of the road. We turned around and drove back to check it out. The lintel had engraved, “Jefferson Cattle Pound Built by Silas Noyes in 1828 for $28.” We then spent hours pondering how exactly $28 1828 dollars had been spent to make the thing. Labor? Materials? Buying off officials? Why did they bother to mention the price tag; was $28 an astoundingly great deal for a cattle pound? Was Silas Noyes ripped off and now nobody would ever forget it? We had no answers.

Coffee on the east coast is sub-par. I’m sorry all you Dunkin Donuts fans, but that shit is nasty. Whatever it is they use for cream (and you don’t even know what it is because they don’t actually allow you to self-administer your own coffee accoutrements) leaves an evil pasty-gritty feel in your mouth after drinking. The donuts are just ho-hum donuts (in their defense I have only Voodoo doughnuts to compare) but I have to warn everyone: what they call an “Old fashioned” on the east coast is NOT what they call an “Old fashioned” here on the west. Basically I was left gritty-mouthed and hugely dissatisfied after my Dunkin Donuts experience.

What everyone else in the world calls a “Lake” is called a “Pond” in Maine. I always equated ponds with green scummy water, ducks, and quaint willow-clad islands in the middle. Maine’s ponds are crystal clear, swimably warm (mostly), and surrounded by lush mosquito-clad foliage.

MUSHROOMS

We got lucky in that the weeks before our arrival were rainy and dreary. During our stay, the weather was brilliant and clear and the mushrooms were popping up all over the place. Generally when we go mushrooming in Oregon, we set out with a target species and find perhaps three or four predominant species, maybe a few randoms, and that’s pretty much it. In Maine, we found an incredible variety of different species, the most notable of which was the Amanita bisporigera, or “Angel of death”/“Destroying angel.” While we have seen zillions of Amanita phalloides (“Death cap”) on the west coast, we maybe have seen only one Angel of death (the species generally found on the west coast is Amanita ocreata, which looks about the same but a bit more robust). The ones on our walk at Jamie’s Pond were numerous and pristine. They are really a very beautiful mushroom, perfectly clean and snow-white.

[Some identifying characteristics are that they are entirely white (gills, spores, stalk, cap), they grow from a bulb or volva (ball at base of stalk), they have a ring (annulus; the skirt-like thing dangling off the stalk).]

[Big pretty Amanita muscarias were around too. We never saw the red variety on the east coast.]

[I don’t know what this is but it’s cool.]

[We didn’t have our book with us this day; we thought this might be a grisette of some kind.]

[A great big bolete of some sort; there is a bitter-tasting eastern bolete we though it might be.]

[Another unidentified gilled, scaley-topped mushroom. Clean and pretty.]

[“Dyer’s polypore,” Phaeolus schweinitzii. I think.]

[We saw a lot of different corals, mostly these two. I wish I knew more about corals because when we find them, we generally find a LOT of them. Unfortunately, they are tricky to identify and many are not good to eat.]

* Okay – I googled “dead river” hoping I’d come up with something about the very famous and well known band from Ashland and all I found were river rafting trips on the Dead River in Maine. So it’s not as weird as I initially thought but it’s a creepy thing to call a gas and oil company.

The 16th Portland Juggling Festival is this coming weekend (Sept. 26-28). In addition to local talent, performers at the Saturday night Vaudeville Extravaganza include Kaori Matsuzawa, Thomas Dietz , Tony Duncan, and Reid Belstock.