BBQ Salmon

Here is a recipe that has become a favorite of mine. It doesn't have a name because it is a recipe of my own, but I just call it BBQ or Baked Salmon, depending on how I cook it.




Ingredients:

I add more or less of any of these depending on what I feel like at the time. If we want it spicy, I add more Sriracha. If we want it over rice, I add more of this teriyaki or soy sauce.

To taste: (brackets are what I use or sometimes substitute)
soy sauce
chile sauce (Sriracha and Mae Ploy)
ginger ( powder)
garlic ( 2 cloves, pressed)
lime juice
lime zest
brown sugar (teriyaki sauce)
green onions (onion powder)

I mix up enough sauce to coat two portions of salmon, wrap them in tinfoil crimped along the opening, and BBQ 4-5 minutes per side or bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. My favorite is the BBQ, because it blackens part of the salmon and spices and it is so yummy! Serve with more warmed sauce, rice or potatoes and some sort of vegetable. I love green beans with butter, salt, pepper and a bit of lime juice.

Sunday School Picnic

On the 8th, we had our Sunday School Picnic. It was such a blast. Their were games for everyone including foot races, stilts, a scavenger hunt, fishing for prizes and relay races. Debbie (Grandma C) planned the picnic and it turned out so good. Thanks Debbie!

Here is a cute little video of the 2-3 year olds footrace. It was so cute. The runner's are Esther, Honeybee and Dolly.

Grandma C handing out the prizes.

Sallad and Drooler's Daddy try out the stilts.

Mt. Baker Hydro Electric Dam

(First things first, look at my announcements section at the bottom on the page. Ioi had her baby and it's a cute, chubby cheeked little girl! Follow the link to read her blog. Congratulations to ioi and family!!!!)

Well, as you may have noticed this month, I fell off track and today is the day I am trying to re-rail myself. Ok, so maybe re-rail isn't a word, but I say if you can derail, you can re-rail! If I want to do this right, I have to start where I left off, which is technically here. Which would mean that I have not yet posted about the dam, so I better do so! Since Sallad works for the company that owns and runs the dam, he was able to get us a tour of the facility and it was so amazing. It was neat seeing how everything works, the hundreds of buttons and knobs and all the different areas of the dam. We took the staircase, opting to save the hassle of the tiny elevator and our huge group, and it was so crazy. Stairs and stairs and more stairs climbing into the depths of the dam. Once we reached the main area where the energy is made, we got to see so much and it was a really neat experience. Here just a few pictures.

Drooler's Daddy, Drooler (in the background), Sallad and The Mr. near the middle of the dam. Look how high it is. It was so weird to think that there was a whole lotta water on the other side!

Different parts inside the dam.

The base of the dam on the side where the water comes out. So beautiful!

At the top of the dam, looking down through the fence at the base of the dam. The water you can see is the same water as in the photos shown above.

Honky Tonk

My parents, The Mr. and I went to a great old fashioned toy store in Lynden, WA yesterday. We love walking Front Street and visiting the shops. There are a lot of antique shops, coffee and local pie type shops as well as restaurants. The toy shop is always a favorite stop for me because they have a lot of classic toys and neat decor. The best thing in the whole toy shop is the Wurlitzer Nickelodeon. You put in a nickel, and it plays an entire song all by itself. It was so cool to watch and listen to this piano and was one of the highlights of our day. So neat!

ps: let me know if you can view the video or not. I am still figuring this all out!

Visitors!

My parents are here! Not only did Mom and I go shopping today and bring home some bargains, she also brought me some clothes from the store that she works at. Tons of bright colorful socks for fall and t-shirts.


I have tons and tons of blogs swirling around in my mind, and a lot of pictures to go with them, but no time to blog! I am SO excited to have my parents here to visit. The Mr. has the next two days off and we haven't figured out where to go yet, but it should be a lot of fun!

Mt. Baker- Incredible as Always.

This post is a continuation of a re-cap of our trip to Baker Lake Lodge over the Labor Day long weekend. I will warn you ahead of time that it is picture heavy. If you have a slow connection, I apologize that I seem to have a habit of this. I hope you will bear with me, and enjoy the photos once they have loaded. :)

On Saturday (September 1st) we decided as a group that it looked like a good day to go on a hike. We all piled into cars and drove up as high up to Mt. Baker as we could- the Park Butte trail head. We had packed lunches, Sallad had bought forest passes which were needed for parking at the trail head, and we were armed and ready with water bottles and running shoes. We hiked through areas with trees, mushrooms and huckleberries galore, areas with ponds and fallen trees and open grassy areas with lots of tall grasses and blooming flowers.

A waterfall and stream we passed over by bridge. Huckleberries were easy to find, and very yummy!

Phone Guy, Princess and Chip enjoying the day. Mushrooms that reminded me of Super Mario Brothers.

Here we all come. A storm or two has created this large washout area of stones and water.

At one point we reached a large wash out area full of muddy glacier water. It was quite wide and we had to jump from stone to stone and try and cross it. It wasn't really what I would call a river. It looked like an old landslide of rocks with water rushing down it. More like a lot of small waterfalls and some streams and pools of water. Jamin, Lukey and Wiggle's family as well as the expecting parents Sam and Robyn decided to turn back at that point. (Hiking with three tiny children or a pregnant belly can't be easy. I am pretty sure they went back to the lodge and had wonderful naps as we continued on up the mountain.) As for the ones who found their way across, we felt accomplishment, but little did we know what was to come!

Lupine - they are beautiful flowers! Click on the rocky photo above to view larger. THAT was the water we had to cross!

Drooler simply loves, loves, loves water. As in he wanted to go swimming right then and there in the glacier water!

Our hike turned out to be a lot longer than we anticipated, and after a couple of wrong turns that must have taken place, we changed our route and headed for Railroad Grade, which we were told had a good view of the mountain. We continued on, switchback after switchback, root stair after root stair. Once we were out of the thick trees, every turn offered another spectacular view. At one point, there was a massive rock stairway which I thought would never end, but it made for a pretty neat looking photo.

Rock stairway.

Beautiful sky.

Heidi and Drooler and I had once had a conversation about Heather, and whether it really did make a good, comfortable bed like is often mentioned in old books. So what else could we do but pretend we were in the highlands and lay down on the sweet smelling bed to see if it really is as nice as our once read novels proclaimed. Well, we found that at first it was quite prickly, but if you were wearing a good amount of clothing it would be quite comfortable, because it supports you well. These photos are the most flattering of the set, you can thank me for leaving out all the ones where we pretended to be sleeping. :)

I love these photos. When Drooler is with me he is focused on the camera, he loves cameras.
When he is with Heidi, he is focused on her and it is so sweet.

An extreme close up of Heather in bloom. Some berries on a tree, I am not sure what they are.

We reached a ridge and stopped there to gaze in wonder and awe at the mountain as we ate lunch. I am not sure if it was Railroad Grade or not, but it was amazing. Beneath us was a deep valley with a rushing stream complete with muddy waterfall. There were campers up there with all their gear, and it looked like such a relaxing place to spend time. Some of the campers were either on their way to or their way back from the peak of the mountain. We spoke to one group who said it would take them 6 more hours to reach the peak once they reached base camp. It looked like we were so close, I can't imagine what it would be like to reach the peak. It takes proper gear and lots of training that's for sure! We saw one guide leading his group towards the mountain. He looked like a seasoned climber, and was wearing FLIP FLOPS for the part of the hike that we had just exhausted ourselves hiking!

Mountains in the distance.

Our crazy picnic spot. Along the very top of the ridge, basically sitting on overhangs of dirt.
I was quite nervous and never sat in one place for long. You can see how close we were to the glacier.

This is one of the two peaks of Mt. Baker. From the point at which I took this photo, I would guess it was another hour to the last base camp, and then 6 hours from there to the peak. This photo is poor, because you just can't grasp the "giantness" of this mountain or see all the crevasses and shadows because of the bright snow. You just have to climb up and see it yourself, I highly suggest you do!

Heidi is one strong mom. She carried him all the way down and he was sound asleep and comfy!

We hiked back down and headed back to the lodge to have a comfortable evening, complete with a yummy Lasagna dinner by Princess and Jenn. We relaxed around the fire and then had homemade pies and icecream for dessert. What a day!

Click on the map below to see our route. Follow the red dots. I am not sure if we stopped at the first or second base camp, but I know we were in that area, and that the snow looked very close!

So much for my Mon/Wed/Fri. schedule!

Things are busy around here. The Mr. and I were in Kirkland for Monday and Tuesday so I didn't post on Monday and now I am only posting to tell you that I am not going to write today! I use Picasa and their online web album, and for some reason it is broken today. The rest of the Baker Lake Lodge story is still to come, three more days actually! It doesn't make sense to post the story without the photos, so I will patiently wait.

Baker Lake Lodge

As I had mentioned earlier, it turned out that The Mr. had a four day weekend fall right into place for the Labor Day festivities. We were able to attend a gathering of young couples at Baker Lake Lodge, which is owned by PSE, Sallad's employer. Click the link and you can see a picture of the huge fireplace that makes the room look dwarfed! PSE rents it out to employees for an amazingly discounted price. Sallad and Grace arranged the trip and invited 8 couples to attend. Drooler's family, Chip's family, Andy and Jennie, Harrison and Anna, Dave and Jenn, Wiggle and Luke's family, Sam and Robyn and The Mr. and I.

The lodge was incredible. There was a dining area with a large buffet area, complete with buffet warming dishes for food. The kitchen was a full professional kitchen, with anything you would ever need. You could open any cupboard and find numerous stacks of serving ware, pyrex and corningware dishes, platters, electric skillets, cutting boards and hung along the ceiling and sides of the room were frying pans, stock pots, water pitchers and a huge amount of different serving and cooking utensils.... the list would be endless if I tried to type it all out. It was a dream situation, and most of us brought things from home that we wouldn't have even needed. Of course for a kitchen lover like myself, it was so much fun to use and it felt like playing restaurant as a kid. When each meal was done and the dishes were piled up in the bins, each one got sprayed off with a huge industrial sprayer and loaded it into the big dishwasher. It was pretty cool, and I developed quite an addiction to washing dishes. Unfortunately, it didn't carry over to my home life- my dishwasher isn't half as fun!

The Kitchen

The guys dish up. Heidi and I decided to just serve
from the pots- much less clean up!

H and A. Notice the huge industrial fridge
and freezer behind them!

Jamin, Lukey, Bonnie and Wiggles.

The living area of the lodge was huge and included a pool table, table tennis, bar area where we served dessert and hot drinks each night, piano, leather couches and the biggest fireplace I have ever sat in front of. We had fires the whole time we were there and it created such a nice atmosphere. The kitchen provided as much coffee, hot chocolate, tea or cider that we wanted because there was a hot water tap on the coffee maker. Each night we had a bible reading, and they all turned out very nice. It was such a neat feeling to be able to sit down with so many young couples and be able to read the Word and talk about it. Sunday evening we had a sing after our bible reading, and we had Bonnie to play the piano - for once we actually carried a steady tempo and tune!

Bonnie wow's Drooler. I love how he is just sitting back and
watching her play. Usually he plays along!

This was a constant sight around the pool table. For some reason,
the guys were always laughing more than they were playing.

The lodge had 9 bedrooms layed out hotel style down a long hallway, and included all usual amenities, as well as things like toothbrushes and paste, razors, unlimited bedding and towels etc. Each one had their own bathroom, and their were additional bathrooms in the hallway, as well as a sauna and laundry room.

The three D kids all tucked in for the night. They were SO excited
to sleep in bunk beds. The twins had never slept in a real bed before, and
Lukey did end up falling out sometime in the night, although he slept through it!
I love how the twins shared the bottom bunk- one on either end!

I have many more pictures and stories to share about Baker and our daily activities, so check back later!

Fall

Fall is almost here in Birch Bay. The leaves are starting to turn their golden shades and a few have fallen. I didn't take the photo above, but love it's simplicity. We used our heat for the first time Monday night. We both love the sounds and smells of the heater turning on for the first time of the season. Such a nice atmosphere is created. I feel like lighting candles with scents like cinnamon apple and spiced pumpkin. I itch to bring out the fall decorations and strings of pine cones and berries. I feel like sitting and sipping warm earl grey with milk and honey. I also turn 25 this month, and I am not sure whether I feel dread or excitement. It seems like it is one of those milestone years, and that I will age considerably or mature over night into someone who acts like they are 25. I guess we'll see!

We went to a lodge at Mt. Baker over the long weekend with eight other couples. The Mr.'s shift fell into place perfectly so we had a four day weekend. It was so much fun and once I upload the pictures to the internet, I will share about our time there!