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. –

Smilin’ John and I picked berries a few days before he left and got about 12 lbs of red huckleberries and 10 of blue berries.  I shipped him off with a box full of salmon, berries, halibut, rockfish and smoked salmon and my sister said they went to a picnic when she got home and got raves on the salmon.  I’m guessing John was the life of the party.  I went to the cabin on Friday to berry pick. I’m guessing I picked 30 to 40 lbs over the period.  It was blowing 30 all weekend and started to die down this afternoon as forecast.  My boat was tied out in the wind and when I got it to the beach I realized I would not be able to get it off myself, so I pushed it along side me along the spit in water up to my crotch until I could get it around the spit and into the lee and then I hopped on and was off.  A good work out.  I recently watched a show on a couple who walked from Seatte to Unimak and didn’t even take boots – they just got wet- and so I was thinking of that when I went over my new Xtra Tuffs.  Stephens Passage was pretty sloppy.  My boat does well in the trough so it was okay getting across in 3 to 4 footers.  When I got into Fritz Cove, it was blowing easterly straight on and only 1 footers but my boat is not good in straight-on waves and it was a filling-jarring ride into the dock.  My freezer is half full of berries and I haven’t got in any high bush cranberries yet, so I gotta get some more recipes.  I will make jam from the salmon berries and pies and some syrup from the blue berries is what I’ve come up with so far.

John and I went to the cabin after I finished my whale watching trips on Friday evening.  We got to our boat line and pulley haul out at low tide so we could work on it.  We got it freed up a bit and tied the boat off.  We found lots of red huckleberry bushes so picked till it was about dark.  The next morning was a lower low tide and we removed some of the crust from the barnacle-crusted line, and we were able to free it up and move the anchor to a little deeper water.  We then set to pick red huckleberries.  We found a new trail down to our boat, and it had several berry bushes.  We picked our way back to the cabin and in the end picked about 12 lbs of berries.  I made pancakes with the huckleberries and then high bush cranberry syrup on top.  John then laid down on the couch and I could see he was off to nap time listening to the Mariners game.  I went back to picking, and picked blueberries for a couple hours and got about 10 lbs of berries.  We left in the afternoon, fished for a couple hours with no luck, then back to the house.  I ordered a pizza for John and he and I spent an hour or two picking leaves and cleaning the berries, put them in plastic jars, and into the freezer.  The next day, I shook the jars to free the berries from each other, and vac packed the berries into 5 cup portions.  I saved some berries out and John and I made a blueberry and a huckleberry pie for dinner after we fished the after noon for only 1 pink, which we released.   We made the pies and baked them and put them outside to cool. John wanted burgers for dinner, so I took out a package of deer burger and showed him how to thaw the meat block just enough to slice it into flat burgers.  We fried these for burgers, and John sauteed some onions for garnish.  After dinner, we  brought in the pies and put them in the freezer for 15 minutes to cool them further, then got them out to eat.  Sara had whipped some creme for John.  John was pretty happy with his pie.  A blow is on it’s way here so no fishing tomorrow and then John is headed back to Pittsburgh Wednesday morning. –