Oktoberfest and Computer Woes

Fun stuff! Pics from the Oktoberfest fund raising dinner hosted by Knights of Columbus in Merritt which I attended with my husband...there was Schnitzel, Bratwurst, rotkohl, weiskohl (red - YUMMY- and white cabbage), kartoffeln (potatoes), gravy, spaetzlie- I don't know how to even spell that- it's like a flour pasta that's hand cut but they kind of cheated by putting it through a meat grinder to get it to form shapes and used wholewheat flour (oops!). Also baked pretzels and Black Forest cake for desert!
Only sad part was not having Bill there. I'm sure he would have attended. But despite that it was really fun- who can resist oomphah musik? I even danced once- lol

Knights of Columbus Fund-raising Oktoberfest Dinner- as a panorama.


Our brave and fearless leader Mayor Rolene pouring the 'first' beer from the tap.


Germans love their hats adorned with isignia from their home regions and clubs.


Traditional German dress for men consists of white shirt, suspenders and lederhosen (leather pants that usually end above the knees), wooly socks...and beer!


German/Cowboy crossover style! German women's traditional dress is usually a snug laced vest over a feminine blouse and a skirt past the knees with a fancy apron. The whole ensemble is called a Dirndl Kleid.


Celtic Elf style posing with a beer whilst selling pretzles!


German Oompah band from Chilliwack- sorry I can't remember the name guys!


Due to changes within our local art club I am finally updating our groups online presence. Unfortunately there is a stall on that front because of some ruckus in our membership so I won't bother linking to anything just yet which is just as well- I've spent enough time on it and the members need to see printed stuff.
Topping it off I had a bizarre thing happen to my computer yesterday- 2 partitions just disappeared. 1 of them had my whole photo collection. I was a bit panicked at first but was relatively sure my pre-backup was up-to-date. Just confirmed that today but wasted a whole day yesterday trying to retrieve the partitions AND figure out what happened.

I felt sure I had been hacked somehow because this happened to my photo collection- my livelihood you could say- and the partition that held that data was neat as a pin and super well organized. The other missing partition was literally something I just kept around as a separate area for fiddling with websites and what not.

After some hours of looking at the state of damage I think that this doesn't really look like a targeted hack after all- that didn't stop me from spending a few hours dwelling on just how low a life of a loser a hacker must have; mean-spirited, no doubt friendless or whose only friends are similarly pathetic and disgusting.

More and more this is looking like: a. Hard drive failure (which I doubt) or b. Re-installation of the printer driver the night before had done some kind of drastic damage...if that is the case (and I am starting to think it is) then how is having logical partitions on the main drive useful at all? I understood that data retrieval is quicker on the partitions closest to C but is that all it's good for? I only think the reinstall of a hardware's driver (a small necessary program) might be at fault because a Microsoft website implies that this is possible based on the error message-if I'm reading that correctly.

You know on the old fashioned record players when the needle hits a tiny speck and skitters across the whole platter leaving a scratch? Now you have a crackling bit of sound on every song that fell under the scratch...the little bit of space between songs was no barrier to the needle.

I think it's something like that with the hard drive. Whatever. I often go to Major Geeks for answers to my questions. Need to figure out how to get the space lost from the absence of those drives back.

Adams River Salmon Run

I want to dedicate this post to Bill Otway who passed away in Merritt last Sunday. He was a champion of the rights of hunters, fishers, and the environment.

***

About 20 years ago I saw a thin red line on the southern bank of the Thompson River south of Spences Bridge, B.C. I had been swimming in this river on an off all August while I was living in the area after the carnival I had been working on had parked it's gear for the winter and I wasn't in any hurry to go home.

But as August cooled into October and the weather began to change I had decided that I could no longer handle the cold river because the lovely heat of summer had gone but I was still drawn to the river where I also had enjoyed sketching and reading. The day after that decision I walked across the highway to see how my swimming hole was looking and was shocked to see a blood red streak racing upriver.
I instantly recalled that this must be the massive fish migration we learned about in school and barreled down to see it up close.

I can't even begin to say how awed I was to see this. If I had been willing to get my feet wet I could have grabbed salmon right out of the water without any effort. Every shade of red and degree of abrasion was to be seen on these salmon as they swam their way against the rough current on their way to the Shuswap and onward to their place of birth on the Adams River. At this point in the river they had come about 2/3 of the way.

Over the years I often thought about that experience and always kept my eye on the river banks in October in the hopes of seeing this again. When I lived in Maple Ridge with my husband for a year I did manage to see chum salmon moving up Kanaka Creek and almost walked right into a bear eating salmon on that same river. But since we moved to Merritt a few years ago I made a vow that I would visit the spawning grounds - only a two hour drive from home - and show my husband this wonderful phenomena

It was a really fun day for us and I was awed and amazed at the sheer numbers of fish in the river. You could practically walk across their backs in some places. There were heavily congested parts of the river where the fish churned around restlessly waiting for the spawning beds to open up and further along they were evenly spread across the shallow gravels. Still in other places where the river meandered off into streams the salmon were going about their waiting in a more leisurely way.

I was also impressed with the turnout of people in Roderick Haig-Brown Park where the best viewing was to be had. I took videos on my phone to show Bill the next day but to our great sadness he had passed away that morning. We miss him and I know I will always think of him whenever I go to a river and see a salmon heading upstream in fall on it's way to finish off it's last days in the Shuswap.

The running of the salmon on the Adam's River.


Educating the younger generation.


A relatively calm pair of salmon.


Deformed head of a male salmon breaking water and showing his teeth.


Daring to touch!


A great view of all those fish.


The living swim among the dead.


Salmon awaiting space in the salmon beds downstream- one shows a tag.

Making Rose Hip Jelly - Part 1

What follows is a bit of stuff I learned about making jelly- specifically rose hip jelly which is something I always wanted to try once I had actually tasted a ripe rose hip- and some general thoughts about recipes and what might constitute 'organic' for those who are concerned about this.

Starting with finding a perfect recipe (online). This will probably never happen. People are either copy-pasting the same recipes around, sharing boring or over-the-top recipes, and ( I suspect ) omitting a key ingredient here and there or simply forgetting to list something.
There are some neat, interesting recipes around but they tend to use a confusing mix of measurements and sometimes the reason for certain odd ingredients are not explained making me not want to take the chance on that recipe. And some people just don't know their stuff; 2 sites said rose hips were high in pectin and sites said they were low. I still don't have a definitive answer on the pectin content of rose hips.
In the end I found about 10 unique recipes for rose hip jelly/jam and I tried to distill the basic similarities and concepts into one general idea.


It comes down to what you want out of your final product: a clear jelly, a cloudy jelly, a mixed jelly, or a jam? Do you want to use a pectin product or go totally natural? How much time do you have and patience as well?
Each choice of ingredient affects the look of the product, the taste, and the amount of work you must do but I have to say the work IS WORTH IT for the end result.

EDIT: I forgot to add that the taste of rose hip jelly is hard to describe as it's unique but it is definitely reminiscent of citrus- but sweeter...rosier! I've read some comparisons to 'red zinger' tea which I have never drank so can't comment on it.

Types of rose hip products:
1 To make a clear jelly means first rinsing and then trimming the hips, chopping them up and cooking them in water followed by a bit of mashing and then finally straining the hips for a pure syrup. You add other ingredients that don't affect clarity (lemon, sugar, pectin etc.) and the whole process is relatively easy but wasteful of the hips full potential which is bothersome considering the work that goes into gathering them.
2 If you don't mind a cloudy or mixed jelly which looks just as nice in my opinion then you would go the extra step of squeezing the straining bag (cheese cloth) to get out more of the rose hip syrup. This will gain you probably double the amount of raw product then the first situation. You will obviously feel freer to add other things to the jelly you are familiar with...cloves, apple purre etc. Again you must wash and trim the tails off the hips as they will interfere in the squeezing or wringing out of the straining bag.
3 Jam: the most work but uses the full hips potential. Besides washing the hips have to be sorted to make certain there are only perfect specimens and the seeds HAVE TO BE REMOVED by cutting them out.
4 Syrup...I didn't set out to make it but do have two batches that didn't gel...I will call them syrup!



Other considerations based on Cooking times: to add pectin or not. Pectin is a natural product that is also produced commercially and it is used to help jellies and jams 'set'. Pectin is responsible for binding the fruit flesh together- fruit glue. Using pectin affects the cooking time... you spend less time boiling all the goodness out of the fruit; flavor and vitamins remain at a more optimal level.
What if you don't want to use pectin? Good luck with that. The problem is that different fruits have different pectin contents which is why recipes sometimes call for the addition of other fruit which are naturally high in pectin - like apple and/or apple juice. Commercial pectin is generally regarded as safe and has been in use for a long time but I would not call it an organic product. My opinion.
The biggest issue for rose hip jelly and jam is how much pectin to use. It can be overdone. That hasn't been the case for me yet.

Sugar etc.:
You will have to add sugar- the amount will vary. Online recipes are wildly divergent on this ingredient! Some call for a 1 to 1 ratio of rose hip to sugar while others suggest 1 to 2 or 1 to 4...nuts! I've seen one recipe call for honey but I have no idea how that is measured against dry product. Sugar sweetens and also helps to bind the fruit.
You will also have to add lemon for acid- or lemon juice. Again, that messes with the organic idea a bit but not in a huge way.
(I regard citrus products as non organic unless it's stated on the bag/box/bottle that no pesticides, hormones etc were used on the main crops or in the green houses and even then I am skeptical. Sugar for that matter is a refined product so it is something to consider for the purists out there!)

The most important part I learned from my reading is that rose hips are difficult to quantify (can't think of a better word) in real world measurements due to how they are acquired, what the end product should be, and our own degree of conservation and frugality, particularly as people who make home preserves.


I spent almost 2 hours happily gathering rose hips one morning and when I came home and dumped them all out into large pans it took almost 3 casual days before all of them had their tales pulled off (and my husband helped) which fortunately was easy because they were perfectly ripe. There was NO NEED TO CUT THEM OFF which is tiresome and evidently damaging to them on a few levels. In the end I had 10 pounds! 10 pounds of a fussy, fussy fruit to deal with! It was kind of overwhelming and caused the great deal of research that followed.

The recipes on line were difficult to follow because of the weird mix of measurements; quarts should be banned. Either use measurements that are listed on measuring cups like 'cups' or go totally metric!
Then there was the deciding how much to get rid of and the work involved. The seeds and tails have to go if you plan on making jam. Tails aren't difficult but seeds are time consuming. The hips have to be cut and the insides scooped out. The seed hairs can irritate some people- they used to be an ingredient in 'itching powder'!
You could put the strained mash through a sieve to remove the seeds but this is time consuming as well.
This is why there are many, many recipes for simply syrup!


For me, in the end most of them were cooked and strained for syrup which is what went into the jelly as the main ingredient naturally. I still have the mash however and there is little time left to decide what should be done with it as it is full of those terrible hairy little seeds.
I still have about 4 cups of whole hips that can be hulled (deseeded ) and turned into jam. I will write part 2 of this subject once I have sampled the products and can say something conclusive about taste, constancy, texture and all that...

Feel free to share your experiences on this subject :)