Bolinas Pirate Shack

This past weekend we decided to take advantage of Stacey's short time off between teaching quarters at Stanford and get away for a few days. We stayed in a "Pirate Shack" on the coast in Bolinas, CA, which was part bohemian bungalow and part greenhouse.  We managed to beat the rain for most of the trip, so we were able to explore the Point Reyes coast without getting too wet.

Facing away from the ocean, looking at the cottage from the path leading up to it

Inside the cottage, honeysuckle making its way over to the canopy bed

Bougainvillea snaking its way around the cafe table in the corner

The Pirate Shack was filled with colorful odds and ends

View from the deck

The backyard

Flowers blooming next to the outdoor shower

Echium blooming along the edge of the property

Downtown Bolinas has a handful of little shops and a cafe or two

Tide pooling along Agate Beach

Point Reyes Lighthouse, where we looked for whales but didn't see any

Tons of Douglas Iris in bloom all along the hillsides

Point Reyes has an incredible diversity of plant species

These red and green succulents were everywhere

Lots of orange lichens, too

The full collection of photos lives over here.

Mustard!

We headed up to the city yesterday to take a class in mustard making with good friends.  The class started with a blind taste test of 6 different mustards (ranging from the artisan to the generic), and then local mustard expert Kelly McVicker took us through the basics. She shared some of her recipes, and we each got to experiment with two of our own mustard recipes. We won't know whether the results are edible for a few more days, but so far so good!  

 

Our mustard varieties from left to right: white wine honey, red wine rosemary, Lagunitas Maximas IPA, deli-style spicy brown


UPDATE:
Results are promising!  We ground up the mustard last night, and they look (and taste) like the real thing! 

Favorite Hike

Yesterday was a gorgeous day and perfect for an afternoon under the redwoods, so we headed out to Butano for one of our favorite hikes.  We love this park, not only because it is beautiful, but also because it always seems to be deserted.  We took our time investigating the banana slugs (194), newts (10), lichen, and fungi along the trail. The complete set of photos is here.

Sunday brunch

Matt and I were lucky enough to get a mushroom-growing kit for Christmas last year (thanks, mom and dad!).  We've been anxiously awaiting our first crop of mushrooms, and on Sunday we decided to do mushroomy brunch in celebration.  Matt baked some no-knead bread to go along -- heaven!

Matt's No-Knead Bread:

3 cups unbleached flour (loose, not packed)
1/4 teaspoon yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1.5 cups warm water

Thoroughly mix the dry ingredients in a bowl -- preferably a bread bowl or dutch oven. Warm the water for about 40 sec in the microwave (you want it to be pretty warm but not burning hot to the touch).  Add the warm water, all at once. Mix with a wooden spoon. Eventually you'll get an evenly consistent, super wet dough. Once the dough is evenly mixed, cover with saran wrap (or lid) and let sit for 12-24 hours. Dough should double or triple in size and be covered in bubbles. Lightly flour a cutting board (not waxed paper! We learned this the hard way), and gently scrape the dough onto it. It will be stuck to the sides of the bowl, so you'll have to scoop it out with your fingers. Get it out in one piece, and try to squish it down as little as possible in the process. Grab one edge at a time and quickly pull out then fold over on to itself. Do this 4 times (12 o'clock, 3 o'clock, 6 o'clock, 9 o'clock). Again, don't punch down the dough. Loosely cover with saran wrap and let sit 1-2 hours on the counter. 

Preheat oven to 450F with dutch oven inside, lid off for faster heating. Once preheated, go another 15-20 minutes to make sure dutch oven is evenly heated. I normally just wait 30 minutes from the time I turn on the oven. Remove dutch oven. Scrape dough off board into dutch oven, don't try to pick it up. It doesn't matter if it doesn't land right in the center, looks ugly, etc. Immediately put lid on dutch oven, then transfer back to 450F oven. Cook for 35 minutes. Remove lid. Cook another 5-10 until nicely browned. I've been going until some of the little cracked bits are just starting to burn. Remove from oven, and dump bread onto cutting board or cooling rack. It should fall right out. Cool 30 minutes before cutting.  Devour with butter and/or honey.

Garrapata State Park

We weren't going to let the first long weekend of the year slip by without a day trip, so we headed down to Big Sur to check out Garrapata State Park, a relatively undeveloped park with a barely-noticable entrance off of Hwy 1.  This park is part chaparral, part desert cactus garden, and part redwood forest.  The borders between ecosystems and microclimates are abrupt, and often the trail led from one straight into the other with almost no transition zone.  We did an easy hike along Soberanes canyon before heading back to the trailhead.

 

Winter colors

Hearts!

Cactus fields

Old Craggy

Fog rolling in

Picnic lunch 

Pinnacles National Park

Matt and I haven't been on a proper hike in ages, so we decided to skip our usual Saturday morning yoga routine and get on the road.  We drove south to Pinnacles National Park, which was just added to the National Park system earlier this year.  It's known for towering rock formations left over from an extinct volcano, which makes the park pretty popular with rock climbers.  Pinnacles is also known for talus caves, which are essentially caves formed by piles of huge boulders.  The caves house at least thirteen species of bats, although we looked but didn't see any of them on our hike.  Matt also read that Pinnacles has one of the highest diversity of bees on the planet -- over 400 species live in the park.  And if that weren't enough, Pinnacles is also a release site for the endangered California Condor.  We didn't see much beyond the occasional ground squirrel and a small flock of deer, but we were also in a cave half the time, so that might account for the lack of wildlife sightings.

We decided to skip the highest elevations this time around and headed for Bear Gulch Cave instead.  We started out hiking along a dry stream bed, stopping along the way to admire the large Ponderosa Pine and Chestnut trees.  The California Sycamore were also showing their fall colors, which made the first part of the hike quite colorful.  

Once we got to the caves, we climbed up through piles of huge boulders and stairs carved into the rock.  At times it was pitch dark without our flashlights, and all we could hear was the trickle of water through the cave.  Matt was on the lookout for bats, but we never found any.  We emerged at the top of the cave system and had lunch by a little water reservoir.

From the reservoir, we skirted a few large rock formations before heading back down to lower elevations.  There were glimpses of even more Pinnacles from the trail, but the sun was getting low, so we decided to come back another day to explore the highest peaks.