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The Lake.

View from the Dock. Morning.

It wasn’t smoky. The mornings were cool but not cold, by any means. It was possibly perfect weather, really.

I’m not sure I have ever visited Christina Lake in August. Generally, we head up in July for a couple of weeks, but given the insanity of this year, we decided to sneak up for a few days over the last weekend. That, and the cabin was sitting unused, begging for attention. Our July time slot has as much to do with the fact that we can’t wait until August to get away as anything else, and a second summer trip up there might just become a more regular occurrence.

As always happens, food was a major part of the trip. Heck, there wasn’t much else to do except zip around in the boat, read books, swim… Take the dog for a walk. Plan and prepare food, we did that, too.

There was no work (not that there is a lot these days, anyway) and no household tasks, as they were left far behind.

We defaulted to the usual cabin fare – pizza on the barbecue – and no scorched dough this time, which was good. I tried to just cook just the dough off a little bit, which I think worked all right as the charcoal barbecue I have offers zero heat from above and as a consequence pizza can be a bit soggy. A pizza oven the barbecue is not. It *was my impression* that my mother-in-law (who is the owner of said cabin on said lake and the final arbiter of what is permitted to be set up at the cabin) seemed to be somewhat keen on me building a wood-fired pizza oven, but I might have been mistaken. I’ll have to double check before I bring over several sacks of pre-mix and start troweling.

Regardless, pizza was good. We also did some steaks, and a pulled pork. Before I give the impression that all we did was resort to our inner palaeolithic selves, most of what we ate was vegetables. The pork shoulder did triple duty as dinner for 8 in tacos one night, breakfast the next morning and then a second breakfast the next day, along with numerous incidental snacks.

Lunches were a mish-mash of brunch (as teenagers tend to sleep in quite a bit) and some salads. Rather good, really.

In hindsight, what made the food so good (aside from the fact that everything tastes better at the lake) is that we had the space, mentally, to plan and prepare great meals. We weren’t rushed to try to make any appointments. We didn’t have too many expectations on what we were going to eat – it was all pretty simple and straightforward.

The ancient cookware didn’t help things, but we managed to get around that. I will bring a couple of new non-stick pans out next year as well as a decent French knife. It seems that the entirety of the kitchen is made up with items that are old or superfluous from other kitchens. Some of the cutlery feels like it was never actually meant to be used in a kitchen situation at all. And a couple of the pots have bottoms so thin that they scorch the contents in a moment.

What did help was the fresh fruit we picked up on the way to the lake – there are some farming communities along the route and August is prime season for pretty much everything.

What also helped was my mother-in-law raiding her garden. Salad greens, cherry tomatoes, green onions…

That and some decent sunshine made for unlimited good food.

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Charcoal

Getting hot in here.

It’s a ton of work. I get to cook with it about two weeks out of every year and as a consequence I have very little experience in figuring out how it works. Practice makes perfect, as they say, and I’m really out of practice. What is more, every time I come back to the charcoal grill, I have forgotten *most* of what I learned the last time I cooked with it. And I like to keep things interesting by doing things like buying lump charcoal and seeing how THAT works. My wife and kids tolerate this insanity because I don’t mess things up too terribly (that often) but it is a testament to the triumph of hope over experience.

Hey, I love a challenge. A few days ago I did a brisket on the grill, and that worked out much better than expected. I’ll suggest that it was beginners’ luck and a fortuitous Google search for ‘barbecue beef brisket’ rather than any type of hard experience informing the outcome, but the family was happy and so am I. What is more is that I read all kinds of brisket horror stories and I managed to avoid all of them. It was delightful. Watch this space for the next time I toss one of them on the grill. Maybe it’ll be even better. Maybe not.

Charcoal tonight is for ribs. Here’s hoping they’ll be Ok. I expect they will, as I have had a fair amount of experience with ribs.

Regardless of the challenges, the entire process is tremendously enjoyable. Not that I have much else going on here at the lake. My daily highlights are, in no particular order: coffee. Dog walk. Book reading. Swim. Taking a few photos. Making dinner on the grill. Vacations should be like that.

That said, I’m not sure I would love it as much if it were November. 

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Perk. 33 and 1/3 percent more perk.

Best I could come up with. The Perk coffee pot photo seems to be unavailable.

There is one place I’ll consider drinking coffee out of a percolator. Well, maybe two places but the second place is generally the basement of a church, somewhere, and let’s not discuss that any more.


The one place is the lake, or as we know it, The Lake. The Lake is Christina Lake, just north of the Canada/US border above Spokane, Washington. My in-laws have a cabin at Christina. It is a lovely spot, and it is boat access and decidedly off-grid. On a good day I’ll have 2 bars of LTE cell service which is just enough to be incredibly maddening when trying to pick up email or do a blog post. We have propane for a fridge and a water heater and we have a lovely set of deep cycle batteries and solar panels that require near-constant attention.


The coffee has been a source of great discussion, as one might reasonably expect – and as evidenced by other posts on this blog. We have a stove-top espresso machine, a Moka pot, which makes a decent cup of coffee. Aeropress is in regular use – always good coffee there – and there is the perk pot from, oh, the 1960s? Maybe the 1970s. This is my mother-in-law’s coffee world and she makes the perk coffee. In fact, there is even an extra pot in reserve lest something untowards happen to the pot in regular rotation. Woe betide the fool who decides to move to a different coffee option. Well, I’m still alive, but I think it’s noteworthy to point out that the perk pot is still in constant use and there is, literally, a collection of other, unused coffee options in the cupboard. All have been tried, and all have failed. Only the Corningware option remains. Shelly would probably have something pithy to say about that, “Look on my coffee options, ye mighty and despair!!”

Percolator pots are annoying and time consuming. They have to be watched as if you were boiling an egg. Bring to the boil, wait 7 minutes, enjoy! But it is boiling the coffee and having it drip through the grounds. Not my first choice for coffee…

But enjoy we do. Well, my older daughter was complaining it was a bit watery, but her young taste buds just need some mellowing.

What would barely pass muster in any other environment is rather tasty at the lake. My mother would insist it’s the water we use and she may well have a point. But I think that there is some coffee magic in this place. Makes every cup taste better, even the coffee made the old fashioned way.

Unless we try the coffee left from the year before. No amount of wizardry will allow that to pass muster.

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Moka.

Slowly… Slowly…

One of the many coffee options at the lake. The Bialetti Moka pot makes a great cup of coffee, but it does take a fair amount of work. Strange how often that dichotomy appears in life, let alone in food preparation.

The idea is rather ingenious. Water in the bottom is forced up through coffee grounds when it comes to the boil. It goes up through a stack on the top and collects in the upper chamber. It’s a perk pot where the water only passes through the grounds once, as opposed to continuously, for 7 minutes.

The base is rather small and it takes forever and a day to boil the water in there. So one needs a kettle to get the water scalding hot before the contraption is assembled. As a consequence, a towel to keep your hands from burning is a must, as is a way to keep the funnel of coffee upright before it goes into the base. I should do a video on how this all fits together.

Story of my coffee life. I always seem to make everything more complicated. Makes for great coffee, but there is a real dance to it all.

That said, the results are worth the effort. Lovely, strong espresso-like coffee. I mix it with hot milk and it is great.

I often take it down to the dock and enjoy it in the sun – except for today, where the clouds are stubbornly keeping the sun at bay. There are all these spots of blue sky but none seem to be able to find their way in front of the sun. Oh well, it’ll happen soon enough. Any time now. Waiting. Ahhhhhh. Much better.

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Mid-Year

Mid-year. Thankfully it’s looking more summer-like

June is always rainy in Vancouver. Well, not always but often enough so I can say it always rains in June. It isn’t currently raining, but it will, soon.

The weather for the rest of the week is looking pretty good, thankfully.

It’s about this time of year (and again in Mid-December) when things kinda fall off the rails, food-wise. We were going to go to Italy this summer, but that is off the table, obviously. So we’ll go to the lake, instead. We leave early July and in the next two weeks it’s going to be a major challenge to get through the days, as everyone is looking for a few days off.

I’m not sure how it is that everyone can just go and go and go and then barely deal, but that’s how it works in our household.

Of course, it is an excellent opportunity to eat up all the frozen things we have, as well as revisit some family favourites. Meals for the next two weeks aren’t about ‘interesting’, they’re about ‘easy’ and ‘surviving’.

Come mid-July we’ll be (hopefully) energized again.

Man, I need a vacation, somehow more this year than most.

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Lake Coffee

Coffee at the lake. First thing in the morning. Best part of a great day.

Coffee at the Lake is really rather strange. My mother used to talk about how, when we were kids, the tea at the lake (different lake, but same idea) always tasted better than it did at home. My mom was not a huge fan of the lake, (especially when it poured with rain for the two weeks we spent there one summer) but she does know a good cup of tea.

Right. Coffee. Lake. One year (last year or the one before) I took a notion to upgrade the coffee at the lake by buying, in order, a Moka coffee pot and then an Aeropress coffee maker. My mother-in-law generally just makes it in a perk pot. You know, half a cup of ground coffee in the filter part… let it come to the boil and then perk for 7 minutes – as if, somehow, 8 minutes of boiling coffee would make it terrible and 6 minutes wouldn’t be enough. Reminds me of the scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail when they are reading instructions about the Holy hand Grenade of Anioch from the Book of Armaments (4:16-20)

“Then did he raise on high the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying, “Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.” And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the lambs and toads and tree-sloths and fruit-bats and orangutans and breakfast cereals … Now did the Lord say, “First thou pullest the Holy Pin. Then thou must count to three. Three shall be the number of the counting and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the number of the counting, be reached, then lobbest thou the Holy Hand Grenade in the direction of thine foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.”

Now I’m REALLY getting off topic. Perk coffee sucks at the best of times.

But at the lake not only is it palatable, it’s really rather good. In fact, my sister-in-law, who is nearly as much of a coffee snob as I am (OK, probably not possible, but…) prefers the perk coffee to my Aeropress coffee or the Moka.

I was out at the lake this weekend opening up the cabin. Setting up the water; pulling out solar cells; general spring cleaning… That sort of thing. Betty made some coffee from last year’s coffee – it had sat in the cabin over the winter. Since August at least – or 9 months.

Wasn’t that good. What they say about fresh coffee is absolutely true. But here’s the kicker. It was perfectly drinkable, even black, and I was yet again amazed at how good a cup of coffee can be at the lake.

Must be magic. Or the water. Possibly both.

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