Author: jstv

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New Year Resolutions?

It’s been a rather busy year around here.

As usual we are going to take a few weeks break from posting. Recharge and clean up. We’ll be back around the end of January.

Hope you all are enjoying the holiday break and ready to meet a new year.  Thanks for your support in 2025.  JQ & js

Print Recipe

Cocoa Drop Cookies

Ingredients

Cookies

  • 1 3/4 cup AP flour
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 cup cocoa
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 cup shortening at room temp
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 3/4 cup buttermilk
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1/2 cup walnuts or pecans chopped

Brown Butter Icing

  • 1/4 cup butter
  • 2 cups powdered sugar keep ¼ cup in reserve
  • 2 Tbls heavy cream
  • 1 tsp vanilla

Instructions

  • Sift together dry ingredients in a medium bowl.
  • In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together shortening, sugar and the egg.
  • Add in buttermilk and vanilla. Mix until combined and smooth.
  • Add the dry ingredients, 1/3 at a time, to the liquid and mix until combined before adding next third.
  • Stir in chopped nuts and refrigerate dough for one hour.
  • Preheat oven to 400º
  • Using a cookie scoop, place balls of chilled dough on to parchment lined baking sheets. 
    2 tablespoon measures (30g) will yield about 24 2” cookies.  1 tablespoon measures will give you 1 ½ inch cookies and yield about 45.

Brown Butter Icing

  • Melt butter in sauce pan over medium heat, stirring regularly until it comes to a boil, reduce heat to medium low and continue stirring until it turns a golden brown color.
    Remove from heat and pour over 1 ¾ cup of powdered sugar in a medium bowl.
  • Add in cream and vanilla. Whisk until you have a thick, spreadable icing. You can add the reserved sugar to help get the proper consistency.

 

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Flora and Fauna

As a final post to our Look Back at 2025, it seems appropriate to end with a favorite subject  .  .  .  wildlife.

Every destination, regardless of the season, has interesting sights. Our attention usually focuses on the local inhabitants and their environment.

Young coyote hunting

Whether we came for that purpose or not.

Summer Lake from Winter Ridge

The drive to Summer Lake Wildlife Refuge is a destination specifically to bird watch.

A squadron of American White Pelicans

But other places we stop, say to collect a few rocks or catch a fish, present as much or more variety to observe and photograph.

Canada Geese goslings 
Merganser and ducklings

Hours have been spent sitting at river’s edge, camera trained on a clump of reeds offering protection to a family of Mergansers.

Young osprey and company
Redband trout

We watched a fledgling Osprey hold off a gang of Magpies and attempted to track the flights of butterflies.

With binocs and telephoto lens trained on a raptor we watched it devour a recent catch.

We noticed that the people parked two sites down hadn’t even looked up into the tree branches.

It’s important to take time and look around, to see what you’ve missed. An advantage to this slower pace is nature often comes to you.

Juvenile Great Horned Owl

A lunch on the rivers’ edge is filled with all manner of flora and fauna.   Thankfully we have the time to watch it unfold.

Camera gear makes sharing experiences, as well as getting a better look, possible.

Border Collie (domesticated canine)

BlackDogHair blog serves as a journal on how we spent the week. A month of looking back at those posts reminded us how lucky we’ve been for the opportunity.

 

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Roadworthy

We’ve had our share of ‘risks’ including tumbleweed blocked roads, broken bones, gashes needing stitches, flat tires and dead car batteries.

It’s winter and though we’ve yet to see snowfall, the signs are there. The season has changed. For that reason we’re doing what we always do this time of year.

No  .  .  .  not decorating a tree  .  .  .  we’re putting snow tires on the Subaru.

Taking advantage of a wide spot, while exploring the Great Basin of Central Oregon

For close to three decades an all-wheel drive wagon has served us well. We don’t pamper our cars, they get regular service, but also put on lots of miles.

We’ve driven around wildfires, washed out roads, roaming livestock, and downed trees.

We subscribe to the adage ‘the journey is as important as the destination’ and these treks don’t always take the well traveled route.

To ensure a trip is roadworthy, there are bins, bags and crates carefully packed with essentials.

The high desert is a maze of two track dirt paths and we’ve navigated our share.

We mostly rely on paper maps to show landmarks, as well as numbered roads. Two cloth sleeves tucked into seat pockets are filled with USFS, BLM and USGS topo maps covering every corner of the state.

Some items are semi-permanently stowed; cooking gear, shovel, axe and bucket, water, first aid and simple auto repair kits. The changing seasons require some stores get shifted.

For winter we’ve re-stocked the hot cocoa mix and pulled out the bug spray. Our goal  .  .  .  a standard kit for the road.

Always ready for new adventures

In addition, there are camera cases, a drone, and at least one tripod. Extra socks, hats, and coats are packed neatly in a duffel, which winter necessitates.

Drone pilot prepping for flight  .  .  .  Fort Rock, Lake County, Oregon

You can’t forget sustenance. We don’t picnic in the classic cold chicken and potato salad sense.

Meals are small, pulled from a variety of bento boxes over the course of a day. We choose from a couple of coolers the smaller is good when we’re not hauling cold drinks.

Part of Oregon’s outback, Summer Lake Wildlife Area

We’ve developed these systems so at a glance you can tell the car is packed for the trip. Something may get left out  .  .  .  but it’s rarely of consequence.

 

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Weather or Not

Weather front moves in from the Columbia River, near Biggs, Oregon

The topic of weather is covered in this blog nearly as much as fishing.

Both are important, though when you’re mostly outside, conditions and changes in weather are important facts.

Cursing the rain is pointless, so mentioning what it’s like outside is observation rather than rant.

Low hanging clouds drift along the Deschutes River Canyon

One of the main reasons we moved to the east side of the Cascade range was to get away from gray wet winters.

Salt flats near Summer Lake, Oregon

From December to March, on average, Portland has a 25% chance of clear skies. In Bend it’s more like 40%. In that same period, Bend gets half as much rainfall.

Portland skies can stay gray for weeks on end. However, here the snow may pile up. but it’s usually only a day before the sun is back.

Frost glazes the ground cover along Hwy 97 near Shinako

Living under that blanket of grey wasn’t helping our mental health  .  .  .  more fishing has helped as well.

Salt Creek Falls, Oregon’s second highest single drop waterfall

Nearly forty years ago we migrated to Oregon, drawn by the Pacific Northwest climate.

For a while the lush green was enchanting, but the precipitation that growth required wore thin.

Sun breaks through forest at Sherwood CG on Hwy 35, north of Hood River

We’re in our high desert mode these days. Sage steppe and Ponderosa pine forests are our preferred environment.

These Central Oregon winters aren’t as harsh as what we grew up with in Montana and are tempered with continued assurance of clear skies to come.

Layers of weather over high desert

Another positive aspect of high desert weather is you can see it before it get’s here and long after it’s moved past.

Near the base of Winter Ridge, Lane County, Oregon

The weather app is nearly as important as our bundle of USFS maps. Weather can’t be avoided, but knowing what’s out there is the goal.

And often, it’s a weather front that has us setting up the tripod.