Cabin Crafted

Category: Cooking

  • And the shelves fill

    Yesterday’s tomatoes, became today’s pizza sauce. I still don’t have the lids I ordered, still can’t purchase anything but wide mouth ones locally, but I grabbed the 8 regular mouth ones I found on new jars in the basement and made pizza sauce. I tripled the recipe which says it makes 2 half pint jars, but from experience, I know it makes more than that, so I put 8 half pint jars in the biggest stockpot with the strainer basket, that is all that will fit and all the lids I had. It was set to boil to sterilize the jars and later can them and I poured boiling water over the scored and cored tomatoes in two batches. Once one batch was peeled, cored, and diced, the seasoning was added and it started cooking down as I added the second batch of diced tomatoes. When it is a rough sauce, thick enough for pizza, it is ladled into the jars, sealed, and put in the water bath to can.

    The sauce filled the 8 jars and there was a pint left, so it was put in a wide mouth pint with a new lid and it will go in the freezer with the pasta sauce, peas, and beans.

    I will make pasta sauce from the remaining tomatoes that are harvested this season, there were several more turning pink that I saw when I went out to let the hens out this morning.

    As I write this, I hear the satisfying pop of sealing lids on the counter in the kitchen. There will be 15 half pint jars on the shelves and the pint in the freezer. With the quarter pint that went into the freezer with the last batch, that is more than enough for a pizza a week for the next year.

    The Tomatillos from yesterday, though enough for a batch of sauce, were frozen until I get more lids. Son 1 likes the Tomatillo/Jalapeno sauce as green salsa, so I will probably can it for him to use, the first batch will provide enough for my cooking needs. As the Tomatillos are producing prolifically now and will until a frost, I will probably make a batch of Tomatillo Pepper jam which is a good substitute for a barbeque glaze or as a condiment on a Charcuterie plate. Then any more after that will just be frozen for soup or canned halves in quart jars for the same purpose. They can be added to chili or pozole.

    Yesterday morning, I took stock of the dry goods in the house, consolidated jars, washed a dishwasher full of dusty jars, and made a list of pastas, soups, rice, and cereals that can be bought in larger quantities and stored so that we will have to make fewer trips to town if Covid increases here or if we have a bad winter. We will make a large grocery run this week and then keep a close eye on the daily reports on both the virus and the weather. I worry a bit that so much has been frozen with the hurricane that is about to slam Texas or Louisiana with current tracking showing it may turn east after landfall and hit us with some wind and rain next week. We don’t have a generator to keep the freezer going. If I were to plan this house again, the water catchment system that was to be used to water livestock we never got, would be exchanged for a whole house generator that would at least keep the freezer, refrigerator, and well pump going during power outages. Though I don’t like canned vegetables, if I could get lids, the pasta sauce in the freezer could be thawed, boiled, and canned. First we couldn’t get toilet paper, flour, and yeast. Now you can’t get canning lids. I have never canned pasta sauce in wide mouth jars, and usually use pints, but I might can it in wide mouth pints, and if I can get my hands on a dozen regular mouth lids, I could do quarts, I have plenty of jars.

    The garden continues to provide. Last night I opened a jar of last year’s applesauce and noted it was canned on 9/19/2019, so it is only a few short weeks until the fruit on the trees is ready to harvest and make into fruit sauces and jams.

  • Minor roadblock

    Day before yesterday, after dinner, the tomatillos were finely chopped, onion, garlic, jalapenos, lime juice, salt, chili flakes added to a pot to make the simmer sauce. The recipe says it makes 2 half pint jars and I was doubling it, but it looked to me like it was going to make at least 5 or 6 half pint jars after it cooked down. Because it was a small quantity canning, instead of the big canner, I just pulled out the largest stockpot that had one of the deep strainer inserts and started heating up the jars and water. Grabbed the box of lids and a hand full of rings and started setting up. When I opened the box of lids, there were only 4 left, scrabbling through the basket, there were wide mouth ones still boxed, but no more regular mouthed ones. We turned everything off and drove down to the village store, they always have canning supplies. Well, they didn’t and said they can’t get them. Generally when I can, I write in marker on the lid, the contents and date made after they have cooled, and I save a few used lids to use on jars of leftovers or ones going in the freezer as they don’t have to seal. The drawer of used lids had three that weren’t written on, maybe I hadn’t canned with them. I marked those three lids and used them, the recipe had made 6 half pints and 1 quarter pint jar. I figured if for some reason they didn’t seal, I would know which three jars they were and just stick them in the freezer.

    All 7 jars firmly sealed, but I was left with the issue of not being able to get lids. The grocer in town doesn’t have any, the village store doesn’t have any, I won’t go to a big box store in these times. About a decade ago, I bought reusable canning lids and wasn’t very happy with them so I sold them, but hoping they have improved, a went online and purchased a few dozen to have on hand. I still have wide mouth lids, but don’t can much with them.

    Late yesterday afternoon as I was making dinner plans, I realized that the window sill full of tomatoes either needed to be frozen or used, so I scored the blossom ends and poured boiling water over them and set about to make pasta sauce. There was an eggplant in the refrigerator and an 8 oz container of fresh mozzarella, so eggplant Parmesan seemed like a good dinner option. The tomatoes were peeled and chopped, the oregano I picked a couple of days ago, a handful of drying basil leaves, a bit of fresh Thyme and Rosemary, some onion and garlic and all set to simmer while I prepared the eggplant for the oven. A slightly drained ladle of the chunky sauce was put in the bottom of the baking pan and while the sauce continued to simmer down, the eggplant baked and a pot of water boiled for Cappelini, a salad made, vinaigrette mixed and dinner was ready. The extra sauce was put in widemouth pint jars with plenty of headroom to expand, lidded and put in the refrigerator overnight to cool down. This morning, they were added to the supply of pasta sauce already in the freezer. I would prefer to make enough to can at one time, but the tomatoes aren’t coming in fast enough for that and there are no lids. With the chest freezer in the basement and the refrigerator freezer, I will just freeze jars this year.

    When the reuseable lids arrive in the mail, I will can more pizza sauce with the next batch of tomatoes and have lids for Asian pear marmalade later in the fall, more tomatillo sauce, and applesauce if the deer don’t get all the apples. They have eaten the lower branch tips and all of the apples they can reach. They don’t mess with the Asian pears though.

    The garden is providing fresh beans again, a bag shared with daughter who couldn’t find seed for a second planting. I will pick them again today or tomorrow and blanch another batch for the freezer. I am always thankful for whatever the garden gives. The more I freeze and can, the fewer groceries I need to buy shipped in from parts unknown during the off season. I started a dozen spinach plants indoors since it is slow to germinate and the weeds are quick to germinate in the heat and rain, I want to be able to find it when it is planted outside. If we don’t have an early frost, we should have beans, peas, carrots, spinach, maybe a few kale plants to carry us into the cooler weather. There are a few more ears of corn forming, I hope they are more developed than the 4 that were from the first two surviving plants. I don’t think planting sweet corn is worth my time when we don’t care for it frozen and I can purchase it 2 for $1 or $1.50 during the season. Maybe I will return to planting popcorn next year. We will have to purchase our pumpkin for pies this year, every time I planted seed this spring, something ate the small plants before they were more than 4 or 5 leaves in size. Last year, the 3 plants nearly overtook the garden.

  • Keeping Busy

    As event after event have been cancelled for this year, I must keep busy.

    All of the fiber festivals have been cancelled, some are trying virtual; the Agricultural Fair in our Village, the huge street fair in Blacksburg, the retreat that I love to attend, the trips to visit our kids and to the vacation spot of my youth, have all had to not be held this year for the health and safety of the proprietors, vendors, and the participants.

    Added to this, the weather has not be typical. I am generally not mowing grass this time of year, or only doing so rarely, but it has rained and rained some more and in a week’s time the grass gets so tall and so thick that the riding mower has trouble getting through it. Last evening, after a dry day, the front and part of the east side yard were mowed and it was as tall as if I hadn’t mowed just a week ago. I will try to finish today once the dew and fog burn off. The rain has made this a cucumber, pepper, and basil year, but the tomatoes are not doing very well. My single leader up a tall pole idea was good, but they are too close together, shading each other and being shaded by the asparagus ferny tops. We will get enough for pizza sauce, maybe one more big pot of tomato sauce, but not the quantity of years past. The refrigerator and shelves are full of pickles. Two more baskets of basil are drying, one already dry and jarred for winter.

    The oregano was pruned and put in a basket to dry and the plant moved from the half barrel to the herb bed in the new walled garden while the soil was still damp.

    Enough tomatillos were picked today to give me the quantity needed to make a batch of simmer sauce and since about a half dozen more jalapenos were clipped, it will be the spicy version. That will be made later today as dinner prep is easy tonight.

    The summer reading has been mostly Appalachian fiction, some of it historical fiction, and a book recommended on the spindle group in a conversation.

    When not cooking, gardening, or reading, I continue to spin on the Jenkins Turkish spindles. I find the process soothing and calming and can spin anywhere; in my stressless chair, on a porch, in the car, in the kitchen while waiting for the next step in the cooking process.

    I guess I will have to find a use for all the yarn I have created since I won’t have Holiday markets to vend in this year. Many of the yarns are in my Etsy shop, but it isn’t seeing much activity during this time either.

    At times I stay busy, at times I get low and cry over the losses, especially not being able to visit with our children and grandchildren. We are ever so grateful to Son 2 and his family for reaching out and making a stop near enough for us to meet our youngest grandson, even though it was masked and socially distanced. I know we aren’t alone in this, but that doesn’t make it any easier to accept.

  • Tomato Time

    I went out this morning to plant fall peas and there were more tomatoes. Mostly slicers this time. It was time to start processing them. The first to ripen were Amish paste tomatoes and I have been coring them and popping them in a big bag in the freezer until there were enough to bother with firing up the canner and heating up the kitchen with a stock pot. The kitchen window sill was full of ones that hadn’t been frozen. The frozen ones were dumped in a sink of tepid water, the fresh ones were scored on the blossom end and had boiling water dumped over them. While they cooled, the frozen ones were peeled, chopped and put in a stock pot. Then the fresh ones were also peeled and chopped. The whole mess seasoned with salt, herbs, and citric acid and cooked down to pizza sauce consistency. Seven half pints were canned and all sealed, and there was enough left over to fill a 4 ounce jar that will go in the freezer for the next pizza night. A half pint jar makes 2 or 3 pizzas for the two of us and what is left in the jar is frozen until needed again. I will have another batch to do when there are enough so we have enough for our pizzas in the coming months.

    This was the first non pickle canning session of the year. My memory photo of today is of ripe grapes that were about to become jelly, but the grapes aren’t ripe yet this year. The refrigerator is filling with quick brined and fermented pickled cucumbers, and quick brined pickled jalapenos, fermented sauerkraut and dilly beans. The canning shelves still have some of last year’s applesauce and this year’s canned Bread and Butter pickles, and Garlic Dill pickles. Tonight, the pizza sauce will join them. The freezer has pasta sauce, green beans, and peas. The storage area of the basement has onions and potatoes, and the garlic braid and a basket of drying basil are in the kitchen.

    There are enough frozen tomatillos to make about 3 half pints of simmer sauce, but I will wait until there is enough for 6 or 7, then another canning session will be held. I hope there are enough tomatillos to do that and also a small batch of tomatillo/jalapeno jam. The simmer sauce can be used as salsa or over meat or veggies. The Tomatillo/jalapeno jam can be used like pepper jelly on cream cheese with crackers or as a condiment on a Charcuterie board.

    The sunflowers are great at attracting native bees and the hummingbirds. The bees gather pollen on their legs until it looks like they can’t possibly fly.

    Thunder is rumbling up the river. We had heavy rain showers yesterday afternoon here, but went in after dinner to walk the rail grade last evening and it was dry there. The forecast looks like this will be the norm again for a while, but next week is much cooler daytime temperatures.

    Stay safe everyone.

  • They Fixed It

    VDOT actually came out yesterday morning and dug out the ditch and culvert. I didn’t climb down in the ditch to see how far into the culvert they cleared, but hopefully far enough that when it starts raining again later this week, the water will run under the driveway, not down it. They didn’t rebuild my mini berm across the top, I may take a load of watermelon sized rocks up there and make the base with them, then pile some soil and gravel over and behind it. That also help redirect the flow off of our driveway.

    The Big Bad Harley is still in the shop in the city. Yesterday hubby checked on the repair and they are still awaiting the mirror.

    Yesterday’s gardening and harvesting efforts produced more cucumbers even though I had pruned them severely, they are still provided a few more each day. Another half gallon of Turmeric Dill Quick Brine pickles was made this morning and is cooling on the counter enough to put in the refrigerator without breaking the glass shelf.

    About a month or more ago, I fell prey to an ad on Instagram and foolishly ordered the product without carefully checking out the vendor. It wasn’t expensive, under $20, paid for through PayPal so the vendor didn’t get my credit card info. Yes, it was another Chinese company and after waiting forever, the product came and it was a “bait and switch” situation, not what I had ordered. An email to the vendor produced a reply obviously from a non native English speaker whose response was, I see you have filed a complaint with PayPal (I had not, yet), but basically said, I got what I ordered. It clearly was not. So I did file a dispute with PayPal, but of course, the original item is nowhere to be found in an ad now (so no screen shot and the confirmation email doesn’t specify the item), so it is my word against theirs. Yesterday, I received an email from PayPal saying they needed for me to file a police report and send them a copy. Our little county sheriff’s department would laugh me to the curb for filing a police report over a $20 claim to a Chinese company who has probably already changed their name. I told PayPal that and that I had learned two lessons, 1) not to order from a Chinese company, 2) not to pay for goods with PayPal. The vendor will win this one, a pure scam because PayPal will rule in favor of the dishonest vendor. I had just finished dealing with this when hubby because a rewards debit card he has awaiting but still had not come for three weeks that would be used to help defray the cost of the Harley repair, called the credit card company. These rewards can only be spent in the Harley shop for goods or services. The credit card company said they sent it digitally though he had specifically asked for a card because of difficulty using the digital reward at the shop once before. I went from the frustration of dealing with PayPal to the frustration of finding the digital reward email in his Spam folder, trying to help him log on to his HD site to find his password had expired and we needed the old password to create a new one, but the one he had written down didn’t work. A trip through the lost password, reset password route, finally got us to the reward which we were able to print as a pdf, but by then, I was snapping at everything he said, probably would have taken his head off for even saying thank you. Because his riding days are numbered, he isn’t using that card now, he is back to using our joint card that has cash rewards.

    Though the mail did not bring his reward card, it did bring another new to me Jenkins Turkish spindle. It is a tiny Black and White Ebony Kuchulu, the ones that are only about 2.5″ in diameter, but perfect for toting in my bag in a little tea tin to protect it so I always have a spindle and fiber with me.

    Here it is with the Kingwood Finch (about 4″ diameter) on the left and the Chechen wood Kuchulu and Olive Finch to the right. I love these spindles and the way they spin.

    The young farmers came over yesterday right after lunch and got the hay baled and hauled off to the farm for winter feed for their cattle. It was a good first cut, they got 84 large round bales, plus three shaggy half bales, one of which they left for my use up by the coop. Usually the first cutting is down, baled, and moved by the end of the first week of July. All of the equipment is gone except for an old hay rake. They will have to ride one of the tractors back over with no attachment to pick it up. The upper field they did first is already a foot high and the stickweed (Yellow Crownbeard) is thick this year. It is such an invasive broadleaf weed. I sprayed some of it around the yard hydrant with the Citric acid spray and it didn’t touch it. The only fields that aren’t thick with it around here are fields that are sprayed with 2,4-d or ones that are sprayed with Round Up and seeded with grain or corn. We are going to have to get a bush hog again soon and I will resume mid summer and late fall mowing to keep it from going to seed. That doesn’t kill it, but it does help control it some. Even without reseeding, Yellow Crownbeard is a perennial that grows out from a rhizome crown and continues to spread outward. It has gotten worse each year we have owned this farm.

    Stay safe everyone. This spring and summer have passed in a blur or what day is it questions. With little outside contact, I am ever grateful when one of our kids starts a stream of text messages about kids, gardens, or cooking. Not being able to see them, hug them, visit with them has been the hardest. Daughter will come by once in a while with her kids and we social distance, masked in the yard and that helps some. Last Christmas, she asked for her kids to be given activities with relatives rather than physical gifts and as a result, most all of their gifts have had to be cancelled, not just ours, but ones scheduled by daughter and the other grandparents. It was such a good idea at the time, but little did we know that three months later, we would all be in social isolation.

  • A morning surprise

    I get up shortly after the sky lightens in the morning and go about my morning routine of personal hygiene, letting the pups out and preparing their food while they are out, heating the kettle to make a pot of tea I will drink iced during the day and to make my morning pour over mug of coffee, letting the hens out to a morning treat, and hanging the bird feeder. Once that is all done, I sit with my breakfast and a book or podcast. This morning, I had finished that and moved up to my chair to spin and post an update on the spinning challenge and the earth moved. There was a 5.1 earthquake about 100 miles almost due south of us. That is the second quake we have felt since moving here, things rattle and it is over, wondering what just happened. It was subtle enough here that it didn’t even wake hubby.

    My spinning update had me clearing all three spindles last night and this morning. Everything was plied or wound into ply balls and two spindles were started with more fiber. One spindle is sitting idle for now. For the challenge, we spin a minimum of 25 grams during the month. We get extra credit if the fiber is a rare breed and as the challengers are worldwide, the rare breed list varies with the U.S. participants using the Livestock Conservancy list that is also used for the Shave ‘Em to Save ‘Em challenge that I completed last year. As it turns out, all of the fiber that I was spinning qualifies as two were Shetland and one was Tunis.

    The two Shetland fibers are blended with silk and that wouldn’t count for the Livestock Conservancy challenge, but does count for this, however when I asked, initially I was told it has to be pure or blended with another rare breed, so I had bought the Tunis fiber, the blue above. The teal is Gray Shetland and silk dyed, and the purple ply ball is Shetland and silk that is in the bowl with shades from ruby red to dark purple.

    We went in to take a walk on the railgrade trail and there were so many people out, most not wearing masks and many disregarding social distancing, walking three abreast on the trail. We drop into single file when we pass someone, but few others bother. It was brutally hot again, about 90 f (32+ c), but dry. Fortunately, most of the section we walked is in the shade of the tree canopy.

    Once home, since I was already hot and sweaty, I resolved to get some garden work done and see what I could harvest. The long shoots on the grapevine that are not bearing fruit were pruned back to the confines of the arbor posts. About half of the garden was weeded, sunflowers cut for the house, and peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes picked and brought in. Soon there will be beans again.

    To give you some perspective on how sloped my garden plot is, the two tall sunflowers are both 9 feet tall, I measured them today.

    When we moved here, there was a Korean restaurant in the next little town to the west. She has since retired and sold it to a BBQ place. Another Korean restaurant was supposed to open in Blacksburg, but the pandemic closing has halted that. I don’t know whether it will ever open there. Son 1 recently posted that they have started doing Korean BBQ and Chinese Hot Pot at home since going to a restaurant isn’t an option now. That inspired me to try a Korean meal. We will be having Pork Bulgogi bowls with steamed rice tonight. I’m sure it won’t be as good as Connie’s, but at least it will be different. I’ll let you know if it is repeatable.

  • He got out

    The forecast is for 85% chance of rain today and was low yesterday until late afternoon, so the Big Bad HD was ridden to the city yesterday for it’s annual servicing and inspection. My efforts to repair the driveway were successful enough that he got the bike up the gravel driveway, on to the gravel road, and safely on the hardtop. I followed along in my car to bring him home as the bike was being left until service and a couple replacement parts that had to be ordered come in for installation. The bike had a broken rearview mirror on the left side and the left tail light was out, so I tried to stay close enough to prevent someone from getting between us, but far enough back to not crowd him in case of a problem. Only twice did another vehicle get between us.

    The number of COVID cases are much higher in the city and we saw a much better compliance with mask wearing, except at the Harley dealership. I did not see a single mask on a front end employee through the windows and not a customer going in or coming out wearing one. Hubby kept his helmet on with the face shield down until he was back to the car where he donned a mask. You know you have been confined too long when a trip to the city staying in the car followed by carry out from “The Weiner Stand” is an exciting day.

    Early in the week, after yet another big basket of cucumbers were harvested, instead of pulling the vines, I pruned them sharply to slow down the volume of fruits being harvested. I still want some fresh cucumbers for salad, but I am pickled out. Day before yesterday, another batch of spicy Bread and Butter pickles were salted and left to sit and weep for the day, another quart of fermented dill spears started. That evening, the Bread and Butters were finished and canned, having wisely started the water bath to heat up while I was preparing dinner. DIL is excited that if we can pass in the night somewhere, sometime, she will get a new flat of pickles for her shelves. The refrigerator is full here with quick brines and ferments of pickles, beans, and kraut. I am seriously considering looking for a dorm size refrigerator to put in the basement, just for those items. I am just starting on pickling the jalapenos and if history is followed, there will be 8 to 10 quarts of them before the first frost. I may can some so they are shelf stable. I have had to purchase 3 quart cans of pickled jalapenos for hubby as we ran out of last year’s before more were ready.

    They do make a pretty presentation.

    I am jealous of Son1 and DIL’s garden. This spring, their first in their new house, they build several long raised beds and heavily mulched the paths and their garden is gorgeous from the photos I have seen. Their back yard is flat. Since many of my cedar boxes, including ones I restructured this past winter and spring are rotting away, I am thinking about reusing some of the old deck materials to make 4 by 16′ beds which will be fairly easy as most rows are either a series of 4 X 4′ boxes or a 4 X 8′ box and a 4 x 4′ box. This will eliminate the down hill paths and perhaps slow the downhill run off. If I do this, I will invest in a load of mulch to put down in the paths after first putting down another layer of cardboard. The old hay I currently use always has some grasses that sprout in the paths, even with cardboard. With the new walled garden bed, I will not be using the plastic half barrels in the back, so I think I will replant the raspberries in them as the bottoms of the wooden ones have rotted out. If I move them while transplanting, I can extend the blueberry bed another 4 to 8 feet and add more blueberry bushes.

    Each day, some time is spent on the spindles, spinning the two fibers currently being spun into yarn. The two make a vibrant bowl of color by my chair.

    I recently purchased another smaller spindle from someone and the tracking says it is out for delivery. The one I bought is a better size to carry with me in a small tea tin with a bit of fiber to have when we are sitting behind roadwork or an accident as happened last weekend, or when I am passenger in the car headed in to town to pick up curbside groceries from the Eats, our natural food store.

    Stay safe everyone.

  • Canning has commenced

    and putting by continues. The garlic is ready to braid. I can braid hair, surely I can figure out how to braid garlic. The onions are nearly ready to relocate to the cooler, drier basement out of the hot humid garage. The potato tops are nearly all brown. I dug one plant to have new potatoes with fresh green beans, cucumbers and vinaigrette, and sauteed Chinese cabbage and onion with last night pork loin roast. I will give the potatoes about a week more to toughen the skins, then dig them and put on the wire shelves in the basement as well. The cucumbers are producing prolifically. We have been enjoying the first of them in salads and with onions in vinaigrette, but there were finally enough to make the first batch of pickles today. Son 1’s family, especially DIL and grandson 1 really like a recipe that I modified several years ago. Food in Jars by Melissa McClellan has a Bread and Butter pickle recipe in it. I substituted about 1/2 c of sliced Jalapenos for some of the sweet red pepper that it called for and it make a sweet and spicy pickle. I had red, yellow, and orange peppers sliced in the freezer and a pint bag of sliced jalapenos, a huge yellow sweet onion and all the spices I needed. The veggies were cut, tossed with the pickling salt, covered and put in the refrigerator this morning early.

    My giant pottery bread bowl was called into service. After dinner tonight, the water bath canner was hauled down off the high shelf, filled with pint jars and water and set on the stove to heat up. The veggies were rinsed, the brine made, the veggies cooked in the brine until hot and packed in the jars. I had put an extra 12 ounce jar in the canner because the recipe says it makes 5 pints. I have had it make more and less, so I want to be prepared. It made 5 3/4 pints this time.

    I need to put a note in the recipe that it take almost twice the amount of brine that she calls for and every year I end up in the middle of loading the jars, making more brine. The jars are cooling on the counter. At lunch today, I opened one of the last jars from last year’s batch. They are put out at family meals, I use them in tuna salad, but otherwise I am stingy with the ones I keep for me. Most of them will go to Son 1’s family. The next big batch of cucumbers will be made into dill spears, or whole dills if I can catch enough small ones at the same time.

    While the pickles were processing, I shredded a cabbage and salted it. The salt is massaged in until the liquid begins to weep out. It will sit for an hour and then be packed tightly into a sterile quart jar and set up to ferment for sauerkraut. The dilly beans from a few days ago are perfect and I have already enjoyed a few of them.

    The versatile big bowl in service for the second time today. The refrigerator style pickles and ferments were made in greater quantity when there was a second old refrigerator in the basement, but it gave up two years ago, so the ferments are more limited now. If the second or third planting of bush beans are as prolific as the first planting was, I will made some canned dilly beans that will keep on the shelves.

    Between rain storms this afternoon, I planted a third planting of bush green beans. I had used all of my seed, but Southern Exposure Seed company where I get most of my seed still have the one I plant in stock, so I ordered a packet when I ordered my fall vegetable seed and they came yesterday. The first planting of beans are spent, the plants will be pulled soon and the cucumbers can run in that direction too. Their leaf cover will help hold down weed growth in that end of the bed. I thought the cucumbers were semi bush variety, but they have vines 6 or 8 feet long already. Last year the only thing planted in the same bed were sunflowers so I guess they just climbed them. The fence I placed for them is way too short.

    Soon there will be tomatoes and pepper to process and in about a month, the fall veggies planted. I thought the Chinese Cabbage second planting was a failure, but they must just be very slow to germinate as it appears that there may be a dozen or so plants coming up. They will be thinned out to give them space. The one I cooked is more like Napa cabbage than head cabbage, the leaves are bright green.

    That is the one I picked yesterday on the left of the picture. I don’t know how well they will keep. I don’t think they will freeze well, but maybe there will be some Kimchee in the future, or Napa style sauerkraut.

    It is nice to be adding to the larder instead of just using from it. It was exciting to do an entire meal except for the protein from the garden last night. When I planted the beans today, I also planted a short season ground cherry. I have never planted them before and want to try to make some jam from them if they are successful. I hope we get a decent thunderstorm, the earlier one rained only about 15 minutes and it didn’t even wet the soil in the garden. I may have to set up the sprinkler.

    In my post day before yesterday, I showed the results of the Tour de Fleece spinning. Today I took the ply balls and plied them on the wheel. The lighter teal ended up 334.5 yards, less than 2.5 ounces, 16 WPI (light fingering weight) yarn. The darker shiny blue is still on the bobbin as it didn’t fill the bobbin and I have more to spin which I will add before measuring it off.

    There is still about an ounce and a half of that fiber, but no more would fit on the bobbin. I don’t know if I will put it in the shop or knit something for the shop. The fiber is from Three Waters Farm and is Merino, Superwash Merino, and Silk, so very soft and drapey.

    Time to return to making sauerkraut.

    Stay safe. Wear your mask, it isn’t a political statement, it is a health and safety issue.

  • Cool, rainy days

    Looking ahead at the next 10 days of weather, it looks like frost may be behind us. Today is much cooler than yesterday, but tonight the temperature doesn’t fall but a couple of degrees. Cool, rainy days are bread days. There is a loaf and a half of homemade bread in the freezer, but no more rolls for sandwiches that call for a roll rather than a slice. I pulled out the mixer and the dough bowl and made a batch of the sandwich roll recipe, dividing it into 8 rolls instead of 6 at the recommendation of a friend that made them after I did a couple weeks ago. They are a much better size. I also used half whole wheat flour with the all purpose to make them heartier an healthier.

    And pizza dough rising for dinner.

    My walk in the drizzle up to check for mail revealed the beautiful Dogwood at the top of the drive in full bloom, though they aren’t really, as it is just the colored modified leaves showing now, the real bloom in the center hasn’t opened yet.

    On my way back down to the house, I saw the Momma Wren fly from her Barberry Bush nest so I took a peek.

    Though the one in the garden failed, this wren has 5 hungry babies hidden away. I will leave them alone as I can see the nest from the utility room and will see as they get ready to fledge.

    Yesterday, we went to the local nursery and though I tried to start my own pepper and tomatoes, they look puny and leggy, so I purchased my pepper and tomato starts for the garden. They are under the grow light with hardening off time when the wind and rain permit. I have tried numerous times to start my own starts and never had good results. The 14 starts are healthy and strong and cost less than the 4 packages of seed. I guess I should just plan on buying them each year. I wore a mask and was pleased that all the employees and other customers had on masks. They didn’t even handle my debit card and I had taken my own container to bring them home. Another couple of weeks and they will go in the garden. In the meantime, I need to finish the weeding and prep.

  • Return to Simpler Times

    I have blogged in the past about being a bit hippy in the sense that I have always had a garden, been a recycler before it was popular or required, used up/reused before throwing away. Long before I met my husband, I cooked from scratch, baked my own bread, and was vegetarian by choice, though that aspect is more limited as he is a definite omnivore and cooking two different meals is too onerous. We do have meatless meals occasionally, I do make sides such as macaroni and cheese or au gratin potatoes that I can eat as my meal and he as a side. During my earlier days of omitting meat from my diet, I read several books, bought a couple. Only one of them has stayed in my library, a nutrition guideline and recipe book full of vital information and anecdotes of the lifestyle changes of the authors. The book is “Laurel’s Kitchen.”

    My copy is 2 years older than our marriage, 4 years older than my eldest child, well worn, well loved, and cherished. Though I rarely refer to a recipe anymore in my cooking, it is still pulled off the shelf to check my intuition when returning to cooking something I have let lapse over time.

    One of those processes that lapsed after the kids were grown and less bread consumed, was bread baking. By that time, artisan loaves and whole grain breads could be purchased in the grocer or at the Farmers’ Markets. With us at home and away from others, bread baking has returned to my routine. The internet has a wealth of recipes and instructions on “how to” but I love my old book. Yesterday, I blogged that with our Natural Foods Store doing email orders and no touch curbside delivery, I bought the fixings for a meatless Mediterranean dinner, but needed to make Pita. When I first moved into this home with hubby still working across the state, Son 1 and his family were living here with me and still doing interior work on the house. They were very amenable to meatless meals and both very good cooks, so we would buy Dolmas and olives, they would make hummus and tabbouleh, and I would make Pita bread and we would feast. I haven’t made Pita in at least a dozen years, but knew that when I made them then, the recipe did not come from the internet, but from my beloved book. This morning, I pulled it back off the shelf to refresh my memory. The recipe in the book makes 24 Pitas, or if half of the dough is formed into a loaf, a dozen Pitas and a loaf of bread. I may go for half a dozen Pitas, a loaf of bread and half a dozen sandwich rolls.

    When I was making bread for our growing family, hubby bought me a giant pottery bowl.

    I would mix up 3 or 4 loaves of bread, beating the dough with a large wooden spoon and breaking a few of them over the years as the dough got stiff. Kneading in more flour in the bowl by hand until the dough was not sticky and turning it on a floured board or counter to finish kneading it. At a craft fair at some point, hubby bought me a wooden dough bowl.

    The final kneading and rising could be done in the bowl. It was all done by hand, but alas, a wrist break, wrist surgery, and arthritis make if nearly impossible to do the entire process by hand anymore. I can do the artisan type breads, but that dough doesn’t make good rolls or Pita so we bought me a Kitchen Aid stand mixer.

    It is not a commercial grade one and it struggles toward the end of kneading dough, so it gets the bread started and then I turn it into the wooden dough bowl to do the final kneading and proofing. The dough is proofing covered in that precious wooden dough bowl as I write. Later it will be divided and prepared for baking the bread for dinner and meals later in the week. A slow down in time, a return to a simpler life. There is some good come from this staying at home.