I just got coho out of the smoker last night from this recipe and it is really good.   Brine is 2 cups salt, 2 cups sugar and 32 oz of salmon berry juice.   (I can’t remember if I added water or not – if you don’t have enough liquid, add more juice would be my suggestion!)   Mix brine and then put about 1/2 thick strips of coho salmon in for 50 minutes.  I didn’t rinse the strips after taking out of the brine.   Smoke fish   

Took the last smoker-load of salmon from the refrigerator smoker this morning.  Fish looked great.  About half of it was the frames – the backbone and meat left on it after filleting – from our sockeye dipnet trip.  The rest were coho.  I used the hotplate with a pan on top to smoke.  For the last part of the process when you want to finish the cook I put in an electric fry pan from the Salvation Army and that seemed to be just the trick, and I didn’t have to finish the batch in the oven like I did the first time. –

Finally just about finished replacing the cedar beveled siding today that I’d started during hooter season.  Then pulled out all the frames I saved – the backbone part of the fish left after filleting – along with the cohos I had that weren’t taken by others, from the freezer.  I cleaned off the smoker racks, then got together the salt and sugar for brining the fish to go in the smoker.  Got everything in order, and then loaded the smoker after brining the fish. I tried using some of the salmon berry juice saved from the berries in the brine for smoked salmon strips so we’ll see how they come out.  Fall is on it’s way.  We have been making a fire in the woodstove.  Lots of coho salmon showing up to a new release site from the local hatchery.  I drove by there today and a couple was bringing up a stringer made from a tree branch of about 10 nice coho.  My buddies got 8 this afternoon.  I’ve got plenty of fish but have a feeling I’ll be over there trying soon.  The fish aren’t gonna catch themselves. –

With the jam put up and several pies under my belt from all the berries I thought I try pesto with the nettles, fiddleheads and devils club buds picked this past spring. For the fiddleheads, devils club buds and nettles, I took them out frozen, chopped them up a little so I could measure them in a measuring cup to see what I was doing, then blanched them. Fiddle Heads:  4 cups frozen, choppedStinging Nettles: 4 cups frozen, choppedDevils Club buds:  1.5 cups frozen, chopped4 cloves garlic1/4 cup lemon juice6 oz. almondsOlive Oil 1.  Blanche each of the 3 greens, then shock them in cold water and put in a colander to drain.  2.  Grind the almonds in the vitamix, and remove. 3.  Put the cloves of garlic and lemon juice in the vitamix. 4. Add some olive oil  5.  Then add a handful of each of the greens and the almonds. 6.  Pulse or turn on the vitamix low and add some more olive oil to get it to mix. 7.  Continue adding handfuls of each item and oil until it’s all in there.  My vitamix got hot so might have done better in a food processor or I should have added more oil. 8.  Pour the pesto into a bowl and add more olive oil for your desired consistency. 9.  Add salt and pepper to taste. Tastes pretty good off the spoon and looks like pesto.  We’ll see how we like it. I think you could add more garlic to taste, and maybe more almonds or another nut like pine nuts.  –

On Sunday, I was going to get the siding on the house after repairs made in the spring but it was pouring rain.  Really pourting.  I’d stopped by Ron and Jeanne’s on Friday waiting to hear if whale watching trips would happen or not (they did not due to weather), and Jeanne was making jam from last year’s berries.   So I decided to start tackling this year’s harvest.  I pulled out a crate of vacuum packed salmon berries from the freezer to start thawing, and brought down the jars, lids, rings, jar tongs and large canning pots from the garage to get things washed and ready for canning. The first batch was 30 cups of salmonberries and their juice.  I looked at my old notes and guesstimated it would take 10 boxes of no sugar pectin to set.  I read online a good article from a Home Economist or whatever they are called now, and she gave a simple explanation of putting in 1 tbs of lemonjuice per 2 cups of berries, boil that, then add sugar (she said 1 cup sugar to 2 cups berries, but I did less – I kept adding sugar until it tasted just about right, knowing I’d add more since the pectin was mixed with 1/4 cu sugar per box of pectin or 2.5 cups total), and then add the pectin and boil for 1 more minute and take it off the heat.  Then take a little of the jam and put it into a bowl while getting ready to jar the jam.  It should set, and if it doesn’t (mine did), add a little more pectin and lemon juice and boil again until it does. I made 2 big batches.  I tried to boil the berries for 15 minutes to try to soften the seeds a bit before the sugar was added. The second batch seemed thicker than the first, so my pectin may have been a bit over board but I had to use some old Pamona’s pectin when I realized I only had 8 boxes of Kraft pectin left.  I got 88 half pints out of it, and not sure I made a very big dent in the salmonberries but think I’ll make pies from the rest.  I made 2 blueberry pies from dough I’d frozen earlier in the week while making the jam, so got some stuff done in the kitchen. Sara came home from school and got a dinner of Stikine duck on while I went to get a flapper replacement to fix the toilet and packed several boxes of fish while I was out that way.  

Peter Baker and I took off fishing after work after he said he could go “anytime” so I said lets go tonite and he said okay.  We ran down to Pt. Hilda after getting a hot tip.  We passed Ron at Inner Point, where he’d lost 3 or 4 fish and didn’t land any.  We had immediate action….and lost the first 3 fish.  Then we had 2 double headers but only got one fish.  Then we got a second.  Both absolute hogs.  It was flat calm and we fished till after sun down.  Peter said he’d drive home and when he was running about wide open I said we didn’t need to burn all the $4/gallon gas we could getting home.  I cleaned the fish at the dock and Peter took them home.  He’s moving to Washington State and said what I’ve been telling him is the same thing his boss at work has-  tough sledding is ahead for state government.  Oil is a third it was a couple years ago and oil production continues to decline.  Seems every other house on N. Douglas has a for sale sign on it.  The state is going to start bleeding population – and quickly if the PFD goes away.  I’m not worried.  I moved here in 1983 and was here during the last crash in 1986 and never realized the economy was down.  Seems like there’s always a job around the next corner that you find when you are doing one of your two other jobs.   Lots of elbow room will be a good thing. –