Ingredient proportions by weight:

• 10 parts rose hips (blender chopped)
• 10 parts dried blueberries (blender chopped)
• 10 parts elderberries (blender chopped)
• 9 parts butterfly pea flower
• 7 parts blackberry leaf
• 6 parts lemon peal
• 4 parts lemon balm
• 3 parts lemongrass
• 1 part calendula petals (or as much as you can gather)

• 2 c packed chives
• 1 c packed parsley
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 handful toasted walnuts (10 minutes at 350)
• 1 oz parmesan
• juice of 1 lemon (2-3 Tbsp)
• 1/2 t salt
• 1/2 c oil

Add all ingredients except oil to the food processor. Mix well. Slowly drizzle oil while machine is on.

Use a 9” standard pie pan (spring form pan would probably work equally well) Preheat oven to 375

Crust:

• 10 graham crackers
• 7 Tbs melted butter
• Half an egg white (reserve the yolk for the chocolate filling)
• Two pinches salt (skip if using salted butter)

Put the graham crackers in a food processor, breaking them up a little and pulse until they are crumbs. Drizzle butter, egg white, and salt over them and pulse until evenly blended. Should be like a damp scuptable sand. Pat it into the pie pan. Don’t worry much about going up the sides, it will slump down to the bottom when baked and that is ok. Parbake it about 10 minutes or until appears set and beginning to brown slightly.

Chocolate pudding filling:

• 1 Tbs corn starch
• 2.5 Tbs sugar
• 1.5 Tbs unsweetened cocoa powder
• ⅛ tsp salt
• 1 Egg yolk
• 1.5 cups whole milk (a blend of lactose free whole milk and almond/coconut half&half worked well)
• 2 oz bittersweet chocolate chips
• ½ tsp vanilla

Mix the corn starch, sugar, cocoa powder, and salt in a medium sauce pan until blended. Drizzle in a little milk and whisk to prevent lumps. Whisk in the egg yolk while the mixture is still cool. Then slowly drizzle some more in, while starting to heat the mixture. Finish pouring all the milk in and continue whisking until it boils for one minute. Turn off heat and add the chocolate chips and vanilla, whisking until melted in and smooth. Pour immediately into the barbaked crust. It is thick enough it won’t flow to the edge, spread it around like a frosting until it covers the crust evenly.

Chestnut cream:

• 1 to 1.25 lb Fresh chestnuts
• ⅓ cup sugar
• 1 cup water
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 oz almond paste

Score an X in the flat side of the chestnuts and boil them in plain water 10 minutes. Remove from the water and while still warm, peel the shells and the papery layer entirely off them. Put the cleaned chestnuts in a saucepan and ad ⅓ cup sugar, ¾ cup water, and about 1 tsp vanilla. Cover and boil until the chestnuts are tender, about 30 minutes. If the water evaporates, add a little more to keep the chestnuts mostly submerged. Fish out the chestnuts and place in a food processor, reserve the liquid. Pulse them until powdery. Add the almond paste and drizzle in the reserved cooking liquid about ¼ cup at a time, running he food processor, until the mixture is soft and smooth enough to pipe, but still holds its shape. Might need even more than the cooking liquid, ok to use water or milk or milk substitute. Put the mixture into a piping bag with a broad star tip and pipe over the chocolate layer of the pie.

Top with shaved chocolate bits if desired. Chill before slicing, keep any leftovers refrigerated.

• 2 parts whiskey (Bunker Rye)
• 1 part vermouth (sweet)
• dash of Angostera bitters (per drink)
• 5 ice cubes (per drink)

Shake for 5 seconds, and then strain and pour into small glasses.

• 1 part compari
• 1 part gin
• 1 part vermouth (sweet)

Mix and pour over ice. Add an orange zest to each glass.

I recently build a couple of building with board and batten siding and needed to find a project in which to use the offcuts. A perfect project is wooden crates, which can make use of an offcut only 12” long.

Having made quite a few wooden crates, I prefer crates that are 12” by 20”. Of course, the actual dimensions can vary a bit depending on their use and the materials, but this is a good size that feels comfortable in my hands. Typically I use 12x or 10x material that’s planed to around 5/8” thick.

The crates fit together with 1/2” finger joints and have a rabbet for a bottom board. The bottom board can either be a solid 12x board that’s 1/2” thick, or fine 1/4” plywood such as ApplyPly or EuroPly. The plywood is expensive (over $100), but a single sheet can make 20 crates ($5-6 per crate).

A critical part is the handle, which I cut out of each end. I form a 4.5” slot centered 2” down by first drilling two 1 1/8” holes. I next use a router bit to join the holes into a slot. And then a roundover router bit to give the handles a radiused edge.

Since the materials are construction offcuts, they typically have a fair amount of cupping to them, so for the glue-up I need to use a lot of clamps to get everything nice and tight together. Ideally my joints fit tightly together by hand without pounding, but if they are too tight, then I can use hide glue so they slide together.

Pine tar used to be a major export from Scandanavia as a wood preservation. It was essential for maintaining wooden ships and it is still used as a wood preservative today. We decided to use it on our new house.

My first experience with pine tar was not the best. I bought something generic meant for horse hooves and it had an intense creosote odor. Lia absolutely hated the smell, which completely permeated a room if even a small amount were used. I wouldn’t buy pine tar from a farm store again.

We previously had a bad experience using just linseed oil (bought from the hardware store) as well. We had applied it to a woodshed once, and it caused the wood to turn black with mold and look terrible. I had heard that the higher quality linseed oil doesn’t promote mold growth and the pine tar additionally protects the wood.

For our house project we bought Ausen genuine pine tar 850 which we ordered from https://sagerestoration.com/ along with Allbëck Pure Linseed Oil. Pine tar by itself is rather thick, so we thinned it with a 1:1 solution of pine tar to linseed oil. I’m curious how it would work in comparison to use just pine tar and turpentine to thin it, but we didn’t do this anywhere on the building.

The pine tar/linseed oil mixture is still quite thick, so we needed to brush it in to an even thickness. We bought an expensive brush that immediately paid off. It quickly applies oil to a large area, and then can spread it quickly with a single stroke. It’s not a very agile brush though, so we used a smaller brush for any edges and corners.

While the pine tar is a pale golden color on planed wood, it turned the rough bandsawn cedar a deep brown. I think this is just because more pine tar ends up on the rough texture. While at first the darkness was rather alarming, we ended up loving the look. I’m curious if over time the color will darken or lighten.

The pine tar dries very slowly. We applied it in the summer, and even after a couple of weeks some boards would still be wet. But after a few weeks things seemed mostly dry and the smell was less noticible. Pine tar smells like a campfire, and the odor is quite strong after initial application. Our electrician showed up for work the next day and the inside of the house smelled like pine tar, so he was worried that something was burning. He eventually figured out that it was just the backside of the house.

Over most of the house we did 1:1, but on the chevron at the peak of the gable we did a 2:1 solution (more dilute pine tar). Surprisingly the 2:1 solution made the wood look more dark. I’m curious how it will age in time compared to the rest of the house.

2025 Update

We first applied pine tar in the late summer / fall of 2024, so I wanted to update this post with some pictures of how the house is looking a year later. Overall the colors has become much lighter.

Our house build had quite a few 2x12” rafter offcuts and I wanted to find a use for them. I ended up making some “construction stools”–small stools made entirely of construction offcuts. To keep the design simple, I made them 11” x 22” with a 24 degree splay.

I bored 1” mortises and cut a 2.5” tenon on each leg. The legs were initially cut to 14” so the stool would be about 12” high after leveling. I shaped them as octogons with a drawknife and shaped a tenon on the lathe. Assembly is simply knocking the legs in and wedging them. I used white glue rather than hide glue because they might sit out in the weather.

I’ve only had these stools a few months, but they’ve proven quite handy. They are lightweight and, so far, quite durable. We will see how they survive the winter.

• https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/21/nyregion/long-island-at-its-best-whos-the-longest-of-them-all.html

Whidbey Island Popcorn Tour

Free popcorn is tablestakes for businesses on the island. The following locations have been verified to have free popcorn in the past, and thus are part of the Whidbey Island Popcorn Tour. The pandemic put a dent in free popcorn, but it has recently been making a comeback.

1. Tires Les Schwab, Clinton
2. Pet store? (this may be a legend)
3. The Clyde, Langley (costs money, but is a great deal)
4. Sebos, Bayview
5. Hansens, Bayview
6. Ace, Freeland
7. Greenbank Store, Greenbank (currently closed)
8. Skagit Valley College, Oak Harbor

I’m obsessed with walnuts. Why walnuts? Well, I think they are the king of nuts. I told my friend Roy Schwartz this and he responded, “Walnuts are not the king of nuts. In Israel, walnuts are the cheapest nuts!” I was sold, and booked my tickets to Israel soon thereafter. During my trip, of course I learned that in Hebrew walnuts are literally called the king’s nut. Roy could not have been more wrong!

What can you do with walnuts?

• Eat them, as they are delicious in both sweet and savory dishes.

• Build beautiful furniture out of walnut wood. It’s a native American species that has an exotic, tropical appearance.

  

• Use them to dye natural fabrics.

• You can soak walnuts in alchohol to create nocino, a dark black liquor with a earthy tannic walnut flavor and other spices.

• Use them as a commercial abrasive.

Black Walnuts

While English Walnuts are great, my true passion is for the black walnut–one of the native walnuts of North America. Ever since I stumbled across a mature tree dropping its fruit in Everett, WA I’ve been fascinated with this special nut.

I buy black walnuts in 5 lb boxes from Hammons so I can eat black walnuts every day on my oatmeal. I know they have more protein than any other nut, and hope they are as good for my brain as English walnuts even though the black walnuts does not resemble a brain.

Here are some fun facts about black walnuts:

• Black walnuts are among the hardest nuts to crack. You can do it with a hammer and some railroad rail or you need a dedicated black walnut nut cracker, such as the Grandpa’s Goody Getter. Many people (my father included) remember the struggle of cracking black walnuts in their youth for their parents.

• Black walnuts are foraged from the wild, because that’s the easiest way to get them. Presently most people eat very few wild foods, if any, as most have been highly domesticated.

• Black walnuts have the highest protein of any nut.

• Black walnut ice cream used to be a common flavor. It was one of my grandmother’s favorites.

More evidence that I’m obsessed with walnuts

• My boat is the Salty Walnut. Whenever it needs a wooden component, I try to source appropriate black walnut lumber.

  

• I own 10 acres near Langley on Whidbey Island, where I’ve planted 8 walnut trees. 2 black walnut, 4 english walnut, and 2 butternut. I can’t wait until I can harvest my own walnuts, but the squirrels may have other plans.

• Walnut is my favorite color. Nothing beats a walnut dyed t-shirt.

• My idea of a work party is bringing in the Goody Getter and a bowl full of walnuts to crack. People are immediately drawn the contraption and love the challenge of cracking a black walnut.

  

Walnuts and your health

Walnuts are one of the best superfoods. In fact, they make the inner wall of your colon glisten, a condition known as “walnut colon”. Learn more from Dr. John Birk in this NY Times article.

Walnut recipes

• Walnut cookies
• Linzor torte, with a walnut crust.
• Walnut Beebka

More walnut reading

• Inside the world’s largest walnut forest
• The Walnut Cookbook