Castle Rock State Park

Today we went to Castle Rock State Park with our good friend Brad for some much-needed outdoor time.  It's hard to believe we haven't been hiking since Half Dome, which was mid-September!  We did our favorite 5 mile loop and stopped periodically for great views and impromptu freestyle rock-climbing.

Homemade blackberry jam, bread, and butter

Last weekend the Milk Pail had containers of blackberries for super cheap. Since making homemade cranberry sauce, pies, whipped cream, stuffing, turkey, and other delicious things for Thanksgiving didn't quite satiate our desire for cooking, we decided to embark on a day of homemade deliciousness. I  made up a recipe for blackberry jam (which thankfully turned out well) while Matt made bread and butter.


Blackberry jam
12 cups washed blackberries
4 cups sugar
1 cup orange juice
lemon juice from one lemon, plus zest

Directions:  In a large pot, combine ingredients and simmer until blackberries soften and begin to break apart, about 20-30 mins.  Separately, sterilize a bunch of jars (I filled about 10 jars of various sizes) in a pot of boiling water for at least 20 mins.  Transfer the jam to hot jars, tighten lids, and re-boil for about 10 minutes.

What 12 cups of blackberries look like

Boiling away and smelling delicious

The finished jam jars

Bread
1 cup warm water
2 teaspoons yeast
pinch of salt
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
~2.5 cups unbleached white flour
enough buttermilk for the top

Directions: Put yeast in warm water, along with a tiny bit of honey, sugar, or flour. After a few minutes there should be foam on top, which tells you the yeast is happily munching on the honey, and you should proceed. In a large bowl, add the water+yeast, the whole wheat flour, and about a cup of white flour. Mix together, then add salt. Slowly add the rest of the flour as you knead the dough. Knead for about 10 minutes. Let sit for 1 hour for the dough to rise. Punch down and let rise a second time. Punch down and form a loaf on a baking sheet. Let rise a final time. Brush the top of the loaf with buttermilk to brown.  Place in 375F oven for ~35 minutes.

Measuring and kneading

Freshly baked loaf

Butter
1 pint heavy cream
pinch of salt

Directions: Put heavy cream in a jar of at least double the volume. Let sit for a couple hours - apparently this works better with cream that is closer to room temperature. Shake the jar for about 20 minutes. After a little while the cream will double in volume and turn into whipped cream. Keep going! At a certain point it will seem like nothing is happening, but keep shaking. Eventually, and dramatically, the whipped cream will suddenly separate into a ball of butter surrounded by buttermilk. Keep going for a couple minutes. Open the jar and drain out the buttermilk - you can drink this, use in pancakes, or feed to your cat. Next, wash the butter with cold water by filling, shaking, and pouring out the jar ~10 times until the water runs clear. Next, you want to knead the butter. The goal is to get rid of any excess buttermilk, which will cause the butter to go bad. We used a spatula on a cutting board, but you could probably also do this with your hands under cold running water. Once you're satisfied that you got most of the buttermilk out, add a pinch of salt to the butter, scoop into a container, and refrigerate.

ready set go!

Shake shake shake!

Pouring off the buttermilk

We made butter!

Enjoying the fruits of our labors

Napa

This weekend Stacey and I went for a scenic drive up to wine country. We visited William Hill, Robert Sinskey, Clos du Val, and Rutherford Hill Wineries.

Outside tasting area at William Hill Winery

The views from William Hill Winery, overlooking the vineyard

We next stopped at Clos du Val for more beautiful scenery and lots of fall color.

We stopped in at Sunshine Foods in St Helena to grab some picnic lunch items, then headed up to Rutherford Hill Winery for a picnic in their olive grove. The weather was perfect for a leisurely lunch in the shade of the olive trees.

Finally, we stopped at Wine Country Chocolates in Glen Ellen for a box of the most delicious chocolates ever. We ended up with a box of pumpkin ganache, amaretto, coconut, and cinnamon + clover honey truffles. We ate them all before we could take a picture of them, so you'll have to use your imagination.

All of the photos from the day can be found here.

Pumpkin chocolate chip "breakfast" cookies

I got this recipe for pumpkin chocolate chip cookies from a friend of mine and decided to try them out.  They turned out surprisingly well!  The first bite is unexpectedly subtle, I think because you expect them to taste like old fashioned chocolate chip cookies.  But the pumpkin and spices are a nice surprise.


Recipe adapted from this one on Allrecipes.com.


Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies

• 1 cup canned pumpkin
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon milk
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
• 
  
• Combine pumpkin, sugar, vegetable oil, and egg. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, ground cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Dissolve the baking soda with the milk and stir in. Add flour mixture to pumpkin mixture and mix well.  Add vanilla, chocolate chips and nuts.  Drop by spoonful on greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for approximately 10 minutes or until lightly brown and firm.  Enjoy with a tall glass of milk!

Montalvo Gardens

This past weekend we took a recommendation from two good friends and went to explore Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, CA. The trip is worth it just for the ridiculous mansions you pass on the way there, but the garden art installations and peaceful woodland setting make this one of our new favorite spots. It helped that on the day we visited, Oct 30, there were very few people there -- my guess was that most people were busy with Halloween activities. The little town of Saratoga seemed to be having a mid-afternoon trick-or-treat session for all the kids, with almost all of the shopkeepers on Main St handing out candy.  

We strolled through the woods briefly and then explored the grounds, stopping periodically on a shady bench to soak up the gorgeous fall day.  We'll be back soon for a picnic on the lawn (or maybe a concert at the amphitheater?), most definitely.

Plastic flower installation + Matt

Wishing Tree, by Yoko Ono 

(Some of the wishes were very sweet, some were hilarious -- one of the most memorable was a child who could barely write wishing for a MacBook Air.  Ah, Silicon Valley)

Birdhouse tree

We stopped to sit on one of these benches for a while.  We were the only ones in this section, and it was very quiet.  We watched the light and shadows on the persimmon trees.  

Persimmons are rather beautiful fruits, aren't they?

Fall leaves! This was the view looking up from our bench.

Oops, it's November...

And we haven't posted much lately. Granted, we did go to Yosemite and hike Half Dome. So, there's that. Also, Matt got a new job, and I traveled to Atlanta briefly and worked absolutely way too many hours in October.

We did manage to squeeze in some fun in the last month or so. For starters, we went to an awesome Bluegrass Festival in SF with friends, visited Harley Farms (again), spent a day picking pumpkins in Pescadero, planted some new veggies, and toured Montalvo Gardens in Saratoga. We also enjoyed lots of yummy autumn-themed food, which apparently is the only thing I've been taking photos of lately. Here's a sampling:

Matt and I went to our favorite pumpkin patch in Pescadero for pumpkins. Matt is also demonstrating inadvertently here that it is still in the 80s here on most days.

We've been roasting and eating a lot of chestnuts.

We discovered a new organic produce stand. 

Look at the amazing texture on those eggs!  The white ones were actually a very pale shade of blue.

Sweet potatoes have made a come-back in our diets lately.  Here's a rosemary potato dish I conjured up for last Saturday's brunch.

New additions to the garden - Kale!

Swiss chard!

English peas!

The peas are growing so fast they've climbed out of their anti-squirrel cage already. Time for another trip to the hardware store...

Wilder Ranch

Today, Stacey and I realized we hadn't gone hiking since our Yosemite excursion a few weeks ago, so we decided to get outside and go to a park we'd never been to before. We went to Wilder Ranch, just north of Santa Cruz. We hiked along the Old Cove Landing Trail to the Ohlone Bluff trail, following a cliff edge about 40 feet above the ocean waves. The shoreline was a mix of shear cliffs interspersed with sandy beaches, most of them inaccessible. We saw cormorants, sea lions, butterflies, pumpkin patches, a skunk skeleton, a couple snakes, and a cute little green and gold frog. The unpaved trail was multi-use for hiking and biking. We might go back sometime with bikes (and unicycle) so we can explore further down the coast than we could on foot.

Hiking Half Dome

We've been waiting for this hike for several months now, having secured our permits early in June. Matt had hiked Half Dome before, so he wisely advised me not to bring my big bulky DSLR in favor of his smaller (and much lighter) point and shoot. He also advised taking as much water as I could carry (we each carried 64 oz, but could have used more), and reassured me that the cables at the top of Half Dome were not that steep.

We woke up at 5:15am on the day of the hike, drove to the valley, and parked about a mile from the trailhead. We officially started hiking at 6:30am, following the Merced River upstream. The first 2.5 miles were steep and packed with tall stairs made of huge chunks of granite.

Matt climbing the first set of stairs near Vernal Falls

The first major milestone was Vernal Falls, a beautiful (and deadly) 317 ft waterfall spilling out over sheer granite cliffs.

Vernal Falls around 7am (compare to 5pm, later in the post)

The view from the top of Vernal Falls, looking back on the trail through the ravine

Since the sun hadn't risen yet when we started hiking, we were treated to glimpses of golden morning light as the sun rose. It was also nice to get a couple of solid hours of hiking without worrying about sun exposure. The morning was cool and breezy and perfect weather for hiking.

Morning sun warming the cliffs around us

About 2.5 miles into the hike, we reached another milestone, Nevada Falls. We decided to take a break here, having a snack and a water break to breathtaking views.

Matt looking out to the valley below, to the right is Liberty Cap

The view from our snack spot

Liberty Cap with morning light

From here, the trail flattened out for a mile or two, a welcome break from steep stairs. We passed Little Yosemite Valley, a backpacking camp for those who choose to do Half Dome in two days, and then a Ranger Station. Soon after that, the trail began to steepen again, and it remained at a pretty constant grade for the rest of the way to the Sub Dome. I didn't take many pictures for this part, mostly because I was battling the altitude for breath as we climbed higher, but suffice it to say, the forest was beautiful. Yellow pines and the occasional redwood leant some much-needed shade to the trail.

Redwoods with lower branches covered in bright green lichens

We reached the Sub Dome by 10:45am. This last segment before reaching the cables looks incredibly steep and rather daunting as you approach it from the south. But at this point, there's no turning back. We climbed the Sub Dome slowly, and finally made it to the base of the cables around 11:30am where we took a break for lunch before attempting the steepest section of the hike.

The view as the trail approaches the summit. The Sub Dome is the shoulder just below and to the left of Half Dome.

The view from the Sub Dome, looking back on the forested trail (foreground) and the mountains beyond.

After lunch and a rest in the only shady spot on the Sub Dome, Matt and I prepared for the cables. I was terrified, to put it lightly. Matt had assured me on the way up that the cables wouldn't be that steep, but it turns out that his memory was not quite as accurate as he thought. In fact, the cables are the steepest part of the entire hike, going just about as close to vertical as you can get. Without the cables and little bits of wood to hang on to, there's no way Half Dome would be even remotely climbable. As an ominous example of what would happen if you fell, while eating lunch we watched as an empty Nalgene bottle fell out of a climber's back pack at the top of the cables. It tumbled down end-over-end in a free-fall, bouncing off the rock face for a good 30 seconds before finally coming to rest on a tiny ledge at the base of the cables. Not the most reassuring thing I could have witnessed at that moment.

But Matt wasn't going to let me go all that way and not get to the top. So we put on our leather gloves, I swallowed my fears, and we started the ascent. The climb was intense, to say the least. To pull ourselves up the cables required not only leg strength, but core and arm strength as well. To complicate matters, other climbers were coming down as we were coming up, so passing people takes some bravery (as does looking down).

The cables and climbers on Half Dome

Finally, after a lot of hard work we made it to the top around 12:30pm! The views were stunning, and as everyone says, well worth any sweat and pain it took to get there.

Me and Matt on the top of Half Dome, 8,836 ft.


Matt looking out over Yosemite Valley. The cliff dropped off vertically to the valley floor just a few feet from where he is standing.


We conquered Half Dome!


Views of the valley behind us - compare this view with the one from the top of the Sub Dome. You can see the forest that was previously in the foreground is now quite a ways beneath us now.

After summiting, we began the long journey back down the mountain, beginning with descending the cables. I was not looking forward to this part, but Matt went first, and we both hung on tight. After that, we made good time on the way back down, stopping periodically to enjoy the views again from the other direction.

Nevada Falls


Vernal Falls with a rainbow

We ended the hike around 5pm, making the total hike roughly 4,800 ft elevation gain, 17 miles, and about 10.5 hours. Not too bad! Although our feet and knees didn't thank us for the trip, it was an awesome day and one that I won't ever forget. We might even be crazy enough to do it again next year!

One last view of Half Dome from the valley floor