Showing posts with label oceanbeaches. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oceanbeaches. Show all posts

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Young buck and blustery weather.

The weather in the Ilwaco area was true to form for this time of year at the beach. Windy and rainy were the themes for a lot of our weekend. Of course, that is the main reason I go there this time of year. I love that weather. I love standing out on the beach in that cold, blustery stuff. I have  no idea why, but I do. Here are some pictures taken during the blustery part of the 12th of November. These were mostly taken in Cape Disappointment State Park from the Benson Beach area. 
We saw a young buck when we headed back into the main part of the camp. We wanted to look at the cabins in case we might be interested in renting a couple of them this summer and taking our grandkids to the beach with us.There was a young buck in the yard. It was hard to get his little antlers to show up because he kept moving toward the fence. I also found a way to fix the eyes in these pictures. Most photo programs have red-eye removal, but for some reason it doesn't work on the bright yellow or white that often appears when I take pictures of animals and forget to disable my flash. I discovered that if I use the "remove blemish" tool, it works pretty good. 














Friday, November 18, 2011

Yummy soup.

Tonight I made some yummy soup. It was cream of potato and asparagus. I was going to make cream of asparagus to use up the woody bottoms of the asparagus I had the other day. I cut them up small and simmered them until they were soft. Then I went online to look for a recipe. I saw one recipe where they used potato with the asparagus and decided to try it. I didn't have much asparagus, so mine was more of a cream of potato soup with asparagus. I peeled and diced one potato and added it to the asparagus. I simmered them until the potato was tender and then I used a slotted spoon to move the pieces to the blender. I added dried minced onions to the liquid. (because I am somehow out of onion...a tragedy in my book. sigh) I also added a chicken boullion cube and some garlic.  I let the liquid simmer with those added ingredients while I pureed the potato and asparagus. In the recipes I saw they also had you add pepper and salt. I don't really care for pepper and I try not to add salt. The boullion has more than I need.
I then returned the pureed mixture back to the pot and added about 1/2 a cup of sour cream, and maybe a cup of milk. I don't really measure when I make things up so I can't tell you exactly. I cooked and stirred that over medium heat until it was well blended. I served it with a piece of french bread toasted with butter and garlic. It was delicious. It would taste really good with bacon in it, I think, but I don't use much bacon.
I always thought I hated potato soup because in the ninth grade we made it in home ec and it turned out just terrible. To this day I can't eat chunks of wet potato. But my son made a soup one day and used the potatoes creamed and I found out I actually love that. It's kind of like pureed baked potato.

Here are a few more pictures from my recent ocean trip. We were sitting in the car just enjoying the sounds and smell of the surf. There were hundreds of seagulls sitting or standing on the beach. A few smaller birds came in and landed and then the whole flock came in. I'm not sure if they were Plovers or ? I never got a very good look at them because I was in my car when I saw the first two land and by the time I got out of the car with my camera, the flock showed up and they did some graceful swooping back and forth along the beach. On their last pass in our direction they flew low to the ground and stirred up the seagulls which then took flight. The Plovers? took off to the south and the seagulls came back and resumed resting. It was great to watch. I wish I could have gotten the flock when it was still close to me, however. Someday I will buy the better telephoto lens. Sigh. But, there are other needs right now, so it will have to wait.


The seagulls taking flight.

The flock going North.

Second pass going North.

The first pass coming back South.


Making the turn for the final pass to the South.

Back to resting on the beach.

Away from the madding crowd.


Stand alone. And yes, he really does have two legs. One  is up.