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Chasing Rain Clouds

A high desert spring day offered an assortment of cloudscapes, wildlife sightings, and a view of Fort Rock. The drive out Highway 31 towards Summer Lake is a tour through a variety of habitats, pine forest to lava beds and back.

This week’s escape from the house was a loop east on 31, out into the high desert and then back toward Bend and through a Ponderosa and lodge pole forest just south of Pine Mt. Observatory.

Partly cloudy forecast means something a bit different on the high desert steppes around Fort Rock. Here you can see the small storm cells moving over ridges. You’re greeted with bursts of sun amid the light rainfall.

The pocked face on the southside of Fort Rock didn’t offer up much raptor viewing. Song birds and ravens were in abundance, as was the occasional herd of migrating mule deer and antelope.

Not until we got near Highway 20 and were headed back to Bend did we encounter humans. As we headed home, trucks and their OHV loaded trailers headed to the network of paths crisscrossing the area.  By the time their engine noise filled the forest we were long gone.

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Pie for Dinner

Today’s quiche features cauliflower, carrots, kale, onion, and bell pepper, with a mix of monterey jack and parmesan cheese.

So, you are at home and out of harm’s way, good.

Now what’s for dinner? We came up with a new take on an old classic … Deep Dish Quiche.

By cooking it in an eight inch spring form pan, there is more room for the vegetables, cheese, and other fillings. Same amount of egg custard, just more of everything else. JQ never really liked the egg part anyway.

We’ve always used the Quiche Lorraine recipe out of Beard on Food (see attached). But we totally change out the fillings to suit whatever is in the fridge. This makes a perfect quarantine meal.

So the basic custard or crust ingredients are the same. However, it took about twice as long to bake … hey, it’s twice as thick! The results are a nice slice of dinner (or lunch) goodness.

Print Recipe

Quiche (Lorraine)

Classic quiche uses bread dough, but this is a pastry shell and then fridge raid to fill.

Ingredients

Pastry Shell

  • 2 cups AP flour
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/4 lb unsalted butter cut in small pieces at room temperature
  • 1 egg
  • 1 Tbsp lemon juice

Filling

  • 3 egg yolks
  • 2 eggs
  • 2/3 cup heavy cream
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • pinch pepper or more, if you like
  • 1 cup shredded cheese some or all Parmesan, we like a mix of cheeses
  • 1 to 2 cups lightly steamed vegtables and / or cooked meat

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 425º. LIghtly butter the bottom of an 8 inch spring form pan (Beard uses an 8 to 9 inch tart tin) and cover bottom with a round piece of parchment.

Pastry Shell

  • Place flour in a food processor and add butter, then pulse until butter is cut into flour. Whisk egg with lemon juice and add to processor. Run processor until a ball forms. You can add additional cold water if dough is too dry. Turn out onto lightly floured surface, form into a ball. Chill for 30 minutes.
  • Roll dough out between parchment sheets to about 1/8 inch thick and transfer to the spring form pan. Be careful not to stretch the dough as you form it to the sides of the pan. Crimp the top edge. Fit parchment to the inside of the pan and weigh it down with a couple cups of uncooked beans. This will keep the pie crust from puffing up. I also add a foil shield around the top of the shell crust to prevent it from browning too quickly.
    Bake at 425º for 18 minutes. Remove the beans and brush the inside of the shell with a thin coat of mustard. Return to oven and bake an additional 3 minutes. Allow to cool a bit before filling.

Egg Custard and Filling

  • Beat yolks and eggs along with cream, salt and pepper in a small bowl.
  • Chop and saute onion in skillet until soft. Add chopped vegetables and cook no more than two minutes. Place this mixture on the bottom of the shell.
  • If you are using cooked meat, add that to the shell.
  • Cover with grated cheese, then pour egg mixture to cover all of the ingredients. I like to top with a sprinkle of pepper.
  • Bake in a 375º oven for about 60 minutes or until a knife comes out clean. Near the end of bakiing (last 10 minutes), remove the foil shield to allow crust to brown. (If you are using a shallow tart/pie pan, cooking time is about 25 minutes.)
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At Distance, still

We’ve been “stay at home” for just about a month … except for a couple of trips to re-supply fresh produce.  Then the weather got real nice, making it that much harder to just walk the neighborhood.

Staying distant as possible, we took a road trip to the Prineville Reservoir. Mostly we just wanted to see what was and what was not open.

Turns out the BLM has gated off the places with parking lots. Campgrounds were closed to camping and the signs said to keep socially separated.

That wasn’t a problem.  Tip found a spot to cool down and roll in some dirt.

Yeah, he needed that!

The drive didn’t really cover much distance, but it did wonders for our spirits.

There are lots of places you can go and still be more than six feet … just have to be careful about parking at trail heads, boat landings and campgrounds.

 

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Biscuits with Fruit Compote

Berry Cobbler featuring a mix of tired blueberries and raspberries. WOW! This biscuit is great!

It is recommended you eat more fresh fruit and veggies as part of a defense against the virus. That is all well and good, but what is fresh about a stay-at-home scenario?

In these times, going to the grocery store has been reduced to a once in a month activity. This requires suiting up before you go, sanitizing along the way, and disinfecting upon return.

Perfect for breakfast, second breakfast and tea … okay, delicious anytime of the day.

The few remaining apples we got on the last supply run are starting to show their age. Grocery re-stock is a week off. So, I core, peel and slice the apples, cover with some sugar and cinnamon do a light saute and serve them with a biscuit.

These aren’t just any biscuits. These morsels came as part of a cobbler recipe. We’ve found that you don’t need berry cobbler to enjoy a really tasty treat. It’s kind of healthy … and they are delicious slathered with butter and jam.

Print Recipe

Blueberry Cobbler

Ingredients

filling

  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 Tbsp corn starch
  • pinch cinnamon
  • pinch salt
  • 6 cups berries
  • 1 1/2 tsp lemon zest
  • 1 Tbsp lemon juice

Biscuit topping

  • 1 cup unbleached AP flour
  • 2 Tbsp stone-ground cornmeal
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp baking soda
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 4 Tbsp unsalted butter melted
  • 1/3 cup buttermilk
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla
  • 1/8 tsp cinnamon
  • 2 tsp sugar

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 375º and adjust rack to lower-middle.

Filling

  • Stir the sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, and salt together in a large bowl. Add the berries and mix gently with a rubber spatual until evenly coated; add the lemon zest and juice and mix to combine. Transfer the berry mixture to a 9- inch glass pie plate (8-inch square works too). Place on a rimmed baking sheet, and bake until the filling is hot and bubbling around the edges, about 25 minutes.

Biscuit

  • Whisk the flour, cornmeal, ¼ cup of sugar, baking powder, soda and salt in a large bowl to combine. Whisk the melted butter, buttermilk, and vanilla together in a small bowl. Mix the remaining 2 tsps sugar and cinnamon in a second small bowl and set aside. One minute before the berries come out of the oven, add the wet to dry ingredients; stir with a rubber spatula until just combined and no dry pockets remain.

Assemble and Bake

  • Remove the berries from the oven. Increase the temp. to 425º. Pinch off 8 equal pieces of biscuit dough and place them on top of the hot berry filling, spacing them at least ½ inches apart. Sprinkle each mound of dough with cinnamon sugar. Bake until the filling is bubbling and the biscuits are golden brown on top and cooked through, 15 to 18 minutes. Cool the cobbler on a wire rack for 20 minutes and serve.
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A Bit of Distance

 

How are you doing with the quarantine? Yeah, us too.

Even though we’ve embraced the social distance concept, there is a limit to how much you can ‘stay at home.’ We aren’t gallivanting across the countryside … but we have found a number of places nearby that allow for zero contact with other people and include a nice walk.

Surprisingly, there are few people at the Sunriver Nature Center during the week, so it has become a great morning destination when the neighborhood walk starts to get a bit stale.

As we’ve mentioned in these blog posts, there are a huge variety of walking trails and most are paved. The nature center sits near the Deschutes River and away from most of the resort’s development.

There is a pond with lots of water fowl, lined with benches to sit and soak in the spring sun. We have enjoyed this space alot and it seems like we’ll be able to continue to do so … for now.