A Treat for Your Valentines

Marbled Red Velvet Cheesecake Brownies

These are not as time consuming as they look, and they're delicious. There are no calories in the scraps (of course not), so you can nibble those between meals.

I found this recipe in The Herald, but it comes originally from Jessica Segarra's blog thenovicechefblog.com.

Yield: 16 hearts, depending on size of cutter

Ingredients:

Red Velvet Layer:
3 1/4 cups flour
2 1/4 cups granulated sugar
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3 large eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
4 tablespoons milk, divided
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon red food coloring
2 teaspoons white vinegar

Cheesecake Layer:
2 8oz packages cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 13 x 18 jelly roll pan with butter or cooking spray.

In large bowl, whisk or sift together flour, sugar, cocoa powder, salt, and baking powder. Set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs, vegetable oil, 2 tablespoons milk, vanilla extract, red food coloring, and white vinegar.

Combine the dry and wet ingredients, until completely combined. The batter will be a really thick, almost moldable texture...but don't worry, that's what you want. Remove 3/4 cup of the batter and place it in a medium bowl. Blend in the remaining 2 tablespoons of milk. Set aside the 3/4 cup batter.
Scrape the remaining batter into the prepared jelly roll pan. Smooth the batter to reach all the edges.

Now, with an electric mixer, beat cream cheese and sugar until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add eggs and vanilla, beating until combined and there are no lumps. Pour the cream cheese mixture on top of the red velvet layer and smooth mixture till it reaches all the edges.

Drop spoonfuls of the remaining red velvet batter (that you mixed with milk) onto the top of the cheesecake layer. Drag the tip of a knife up and down through the red velvet and the cheesecake layers, then back and forth to create swirls.


Use a heavy pan to prevent brownies from burning on the bottom. Bake for 25 minutes, rotating half way through, or just until the center is set and it no longer jiggles. Let cool completely on a wire rack before cutting. Use a medium sized heart cookie cutter to create the perfect Valentine's Day treat!

 
Tips: I found it hard to push the heart-shaped cutter all the way through the baked brownies. So I placed the flat side of a pancake turner on top and pushed down with my hand.

To get the brownie out of the cookie cutter, hold it upside down and push on the bottom with your fingers.

If you don't want to eat the scraps plain, you can whirl them into a milkshake.

Two Heroes

I just talked to my friend Vera Penz, who helps her husband Dave run the Kako retreat center for villagers in the vast, lightly populated Yukon-Kuskokwim delta of western Alaska. In summer, the Penzes get their supplies via Yukon River barge or by air. Winter travel is by bush plane or snowmobile.

The Penzes have help from volunteers who come from other areas of Alaska and across the lower forty-eight, but “winter is hard,” Vera says. They are mostly alone then. At age eighty, she is the sole bookkeeper, letter writer and paperwork person for the mission enterprise. Dave is battling a form of leukemia. When I called, he’d been out all day plowing snow from the runway and clearing paths between the buildings. It had “warmed up” to 11 degrees from last night’s 16 below zero. As we talked, I stood at our window, looking out at a light mist falling and rubbing goosebumps. It was 40 degrees outside our house. And I thought I was cold?

Within a radius of 160 miles of Kako there are fifty villages. Many are afflicted with alcoholism and attendant social evils. The subsistence lifestyle is as hard as it ever was, and there are few paying jobs, so many people live below the poverty level. Kako offers hope, through summer camps for children, teacher’s retreats, marriage seminars, men's and women's retreats, and short term Bible seminars. Most of the attendees are flown in, as are workers, speakers, and everything needed for their stays.

“In two weeks, we have a speaker from Moody coming to teach about forgiveness,” Vera told me. 

 Forgiveness is an appropriate topic in a place where abuse goes hand in hand with alcoholism.

“We’re so glad for the warmer weather and plenty of snow. The trails are good for those close enough to come by snowmobile, but we’ll have to fly people in from farther out.”

Dave and Vera both came to Alaska in the early ‘60s. They married after having lost their respective spouses and have since spent the last thirty years at Kako, reaching out to the people of the delta. Did I mention that they are two of my heroes?

A Good Day for Birds

A flock of snow geese with Mt. Baker as backdrop

A large proportion of this flock are gray-feathered young birds. Note one wears a collar.

    January and February are soggy months in northwest Washington. The ground gets so saturated the bluffs and hillsides slide under their own weight. Rainwater can’t soak into the flat fields of the Skagit and Stillaguamish Deltas, and it can’t run away, so it lies in a silver sheen beneath the sprouting grass or between furrows.

    The birds love it. Fields become shallow lakes where flocks of ducks preen and dabble. Harriers swoop in search of field mice forced from their burrows. Blue herons hold solitary vigil along the drainage ditches while hundreds of swans muddy their plumage foraging in plowed fields.

    We aren’t expert birders, but we’ve noticed some birds are doing things differently this year. Only a few snow geese spent the winter around Stanwood, compared to the usual thousands. There are far more trumpeter and tundra swans than usual. But we’re told that there are plenty of snow geese in fields farther north. Maybe they just don’t like to share their territory.

    Be that as it may, when the first day of February dawns sunny and bright, we join dozens of other motorists and cyclists on the narrow back roads of the Skagit Delta. Spring is in the air although a chill wind blows streamers of fog inland. New growth is sprouting, pussy willows blooming, alder catkins heavy tasseled with about-to-be-released pollen. Birds and birders are out in force.

    Nearing the village of Edison, we see cars stopped along both sides of the road. Spotting scopes and telephoto lenses aim toward the leafless alders. Eagles, so many I lose count, perch in the trees and pose for the cameras. Why so many? Next weekend Edison holds a birding festival. Maybe the eagles got word and are awaiting the festivities. (For more about the festival, go to http://edisonbirdfestival.com/2013-calendar.)

Of the 5 eagles in this shot, 4 are young ones.

Marching for Life, 2013

l. to r.: Robin Crager, Marv Greenland, Hank Husby, Bob Burkart, Sam Crager in the Capitol Bldg. Photos courtesy of Dick Morrell

Listening to a speaker on the Capitol steps and at the nearby Temple of Justice

Last Tuesday, January 22, was the 40th anniversary of the US Supreme Court’s devasting decision to make Roe vs. Wade the law of the land. Over the last four decades we have lost more than fifty million children, little ones who might have brought joy to childless families. We mourn the tragic waste of potential those lost children represent.

On Tuesday, along with an estimated 3,500 other people, Hank traveled to Olympia for the annual Washington State March for Life. Shortly before noon, the crowd gathered on the steps of the Capitol building. The participants’ purpose was to remind legislators that they are watching. Some legislators took part in order to let their constituents know what they are doing to reverse Roe vs. Wade. Hank was thrilled to discover that we do have a number of strong leaders in state government who are working hard to push back against the culture of death.

Our new state governor is not one of those leaders. According to recent newspaper articles, he supports the abortion mandate presented in Senate Bill 5009. This morally objectionable bill requires insurance companies and employers that provide maternity care to also pay for elective abortions. Representative Brad Klippert of Kennewick led the crowd in a call and response chant about fighting the bill and then led them in singing, “God Bless America.”

The crowd heard from other legislators as well. Senator Mike Paden of Spokane Valley called for support of House Bill 1259, which declares that life begins at conception.

Two new bills regarding parental notification before young girls undergo abortion are Senate Bill 5156 and House Bill 1257. Senator Pam Roach of Auburn said that not giving parents and guardians time to talk to their girls and prepare for their post-abortion care is inconsistent with other laws that forbid giving even an aspirin for headache in school or that forbid those under age 16 to get a tattoo, even with parents’ permission.

After the crowd heard from legislators and the March for Life board, they dispersed to visit with their representatives, senators, and the governor and let them know where they stand on the issues. Hank and his group met with Representative Norma Smith of Clinton. Ms. Smith thanked the group for what they are doing. She said, “Your efforts will have an effect because legislators do pay attention to what their constituents say.” She also asked them to pray for the continued progress of the Right to Life movement.

The Washington State March for Life commented, “Women and children deserve better than abortion. We all do.” Taking part in a March for Life is one way to work for something better.

Bad Decision

Most homes in Shageluk burned wood to keep warm, and Dave and Vera Penz’s was no different. Wood was free, and it was plentiful, if you went far enough away from the village. Early in the fall, Dave went with some villagers to cut their winter wood supply. They took a boat ten miles up a slough to a nice stand of trees and made camp on the shore. For the next couple of days they cut and limbed trees. They dragged some trunks into the water, tied them together into a raft, and piled more wood on top until they had a twenty by twenty foot stack. It was evening when they finished, so they decided to spend one more night at camp...a bad decision.

It froze hard that night. When the woodcutters woke, an inch of ice covered the surface of the slough. Their boat was frozen in. They broke the ice to clear a wide area around the boat, started the motor, and proceeded to ram the shelf of ice, using the boat like an icebreaker. Another bad decision. To Dave’s surprise, the sharp ice didn’t break until it had sheared through the bow of the boat as if it were a knife. Water poured in. The men scrambled into the rear of the boat, lifting the bow out of the water. Someone bailed frantically until they got it to shore. They pulled the boat out of the slough, turned it over, and rebuilt its front. Then they motored down a running creek and returned to Shageluk.

The men had to look elsewhere for their winter’s wood supply. All their previous hard work remained frozen in the ice until spring’s high water dispersed it down the slough and into the river.

Shageluk on the Innoko River, with sloughs. ⓒcommerce.state.ak.us

A Memorable Moose Hunt

Our friend Dave Penz has spent most of his life taking the good news of the gospel to the native peoples of western Alaska. One of his first assignments was in the village of Shageluk. He tells this story about one of his early hunting trips.

One of his neighbors, Charlie Wolf, was the son of a white prospector and a native mother. Many offspring of such parentage were energetic and ambitious, but not Charlie. He had a beautiful wife and three children, but he barely managed to keep food on their table. Unfortunately, he was an alcoholic.

One mid-winter day Charlie wanted Dave to go moose hunting with him. He owned three scroungy dogs. Dave had a sled and a good team of dogs, so they hitched up all the dogs and headed into a wooded area where few people went hunting. They set up their camp when it got dark.

Next day they spent the four daylight hours trudging through the woods. Snow fell steadily. Just at dusk they came upon six moose clustered together in a thicket. They shot two of them. They skinned and butchered them and hung the pieces in the trees to keep them from animals. By the time they had finished it was pitch dark.

“I know a short way to get back to camp,” Charlie said. Dave hoisted a large chunk of meat atop his backpack, picked up his gun, and followed Charlie through the foot deep snow. It was so dark he couldn’t see where they were going, but something seemed wrong, especially after Charlie had stopped several times, then started off in a different direction.

The meat grew heavier and heavier, and the gun, too, seemed so heavy that Dave considered leaving it behind. If only they could see where they were going. Suddenly he remembered something. “I think my flashlight might still be in my pack,” he said. He dumped the contents. Sure enough, there was the flashlight at the bottom.

Charlie had refused to admit they were lost, but when Dave flashed the light through the woods, they could see their own tracks circling around to where they stood. They were the only people within many miles, and Charlie couldn’t deny it now. Later Dave would use the story in many of his sermons, telling his listeners that most people don’t know they are lost until they have the light of God’s word in their lives.

While Dave repacked his belongings, he prayed aloud, asking God to help them find their way back to camp. Then he stood watching snowflakes fall in the beam of his flashlight. They fell at a slight slant, telling him the wind was from the north. He knew he had to go east to get to camp.

Dave started out, in the lead this time. Now Charlie thought he heard noises in the woods. Wolves! Maybe they had smelled the meat Dave carried and were following them. He was so frightened he kept stepping on Dave’s heels. He continually asked Dave to shine the light behind them to see if it reflected from the eyes of hungry wolves. There were no wolves, but the last time Dave swung the flashlight around to the front, he caught the faint, snow-covered impression of old sled tracks running across a frozen lake. Now he knew where they were. They followed the tracks across the lake and were soon greeted by the dogs they’d left tied at camp.

The next day they took the dogs and sled back to where they’d left the meat. They were amazed to find the long, heavy front leg of a moose a quarter mile away from the rest of the meat. A wolverine had helped itself, and was probably not far away. The two men hung the leg in a tree and Charlie set one of his traps beneath it.

It took several trips to get the meat and hides back to Shageluk. Oh yes. They also hauled home Charlie’s wolverine, which had come back for its prize and got caught in the trap.

Happy New Year!

The spiders left a gift last night on the neighbor's fire hydrant. It was 22 degrees this morning. I hope they survived their party.