Cooking – Page 6 – Cabin Crafted

How to spend a snow day.

It started hours later than predicted, but the snow is quickly covering the ground and roads and the “Winterstorm Warning” is still saying at least 8″ maybe changing to sleet later today, with the heaviest bands yet to come.

The woodstove is burning and will continue throughout the day and tonight if I can drag myself down to the basement to stoke it in the middle of the night.

Though the house isn’t any cooler than usual, with the wind blowing outside, it seems colder and I am ensconced in my chair, wrapped in the wool shawl that I spun the yarn for a couple years ago for the Shave ’em 2 Save ’em event, then knit into the shawl, and draped in my Breed Blanket that I spun last year on my Jenkins Turkish spindles and knit for the year long challenge. A cup of hot tea, my spindles and wool, and I am set.

The chili and stew will be saved for rewarming if the power goes out and homemade pizza was on the menu for lunch while there is power to cook it.

An after lunch quick trip to dump compost and give the hens thawed water and scratch grains in their coop and gather eggs before they freeze, allowed me to see that the cover is now about 3″ and still falling fast, from an easterly direction so drifting into the coop through a drop window that doesn’t close fully.

The wild birds are flocking to the feeders, Nuthatches, Titmice, Chickadees, Wrens, Finches, a couple of woodpeckers, and a pair of Eastern Bluebirds that should be much farther south by now. I took a short video, but can’t get it to load.

So far we are warm, hope to stay that way. It is so quiet as it gets when snow mutes the outdoor sounds.

Almost a week. . .

Since I posted the Olio post. It has been a cold one, but we have gotten in our walk each day. We got caught in a sprinkling rain one day that turned into real rain and snow showers after we got back to the car.

The weather prognosticators are threatening us with a real winter storm starting tonight. The predictions have been all over the place from 8″ to 16″ of snow, maybe some ice, then more snow. We took heed, I brought in several loads of firewood for the wood stove and the fireplace. Our Sunday grocery run was moved up to Friday, a Farmer’s market run this morning with veggies, meats, and sourdough bread purchased, a large pot of chili made last night and stew tonight that can be heated on the wood stove or camp stove if we end up without power, and we will wait and see what it brings. More than about 6 inches and we won’t be going anywhere, our mountain roads aren’t priority for clearing.

The January spinning challenge has a changing theme every few days, but all encouraging the continuation of the practice. I am working on the batts that hubby gave me for Christmas to make myself a large scarf and simultaneously spinning neutrals for a second blanket that will have some repeat breeds and some I never got to on the first one. I must like these colors.

The base square is one that was too small for the first blanket and I am doing a log cabin pattern around it. It will be a small lap blanket when finished.

It is getting dark, the hens are secured with food and water. Regardless of tomorrow’s weather, they will need thawed water once or twice during the day and probably won’t come out of their coop until they can see hay or grass on the ground. The coop will need cleaning again once they do leave the confines of their indoor shelter.

The fall predictions for this winter were for warmer than average temperatures and wet. Instead it has been colder and white. I have concluded the way to tell the weather is to look outside and see what it is doing.

I have two paperback books and one ebook, lots of yarn, fiber, spindles, spinning wheels, and knitting needles. There are both a two burner camp stove and an alcohol burner that can be used for heating water or cooking. This won’t be the biggest snow we have had and we have no where to go, so we will just enjoy it. Maybe some Senior Olympics can be had with sled runs.

Winter Fresh

Though the past week hasn’t felt much like winter, the garden is gone with the exception of a couple of spinach plants and a few komatso plants. The komasto in the salad hydroponic and some of the lettuce there have suddenly decided to issue forth with greens. The herbs are thriving. This week the menu has included several harvests from both.

The night that hubby got a steak and fries, I made another bowl of Asian inspired soup with quinoa for my protein. The chives, oregano, and komatsu adding the greens, red carrot, garlic, fresh ginger, Szechuan pepper corns, and gochunjang in broth to make it soup. There was enough komatsu that some was sauteed as hubby’s green vegetable.

Tonight, the lettuce and herbs were harvested for a salad. I think as the 6 young lettuces that are just getting a start begin to mature, there will be greens and salads for the winter when other fresh food is scarce. These two units take up little counter space on a part of the counter that I rarely use and having fresh herbs and greens is a bonus.

As we enjoy the fresh produce, the seed catalogs have started filling the mailbox and they can provide a wish list for the spring garden. I need to get the soil tested this winter and supplement the beds for the spring. The garlic never got planted this past autumn and some of the crops grown last year, won’t be repeated while others will be added. In the meantime, I really need to cook down several 2 gallon sacks of frozen paste tomatoes.