Take it slow
It’s 2 pm on a sunny Sunday, cool breezes coming in through the open windows. There’s cat grass I grew for Callie on the windowsill, and tomatoes from my plants ripening on the porch outside. I’ve been trying to take it slow today instead of cramming every possible thing into the available hours. So here I am lying on the couch with my computer.
I dug out the Halloween and fall decorations today. It’s been rainy and chilly this week, so it felt like the right time. This morning at the farmer’s market we brought home a sweet pumpkin for baking. At that point I decided it was a great weekend to go to a pumpkin patch. An hour later we had brought home a rather large pumpkin whose long, curly stem really cracked us up. We also procured a small warty gourd and a bundle of wheat. In a few minutes I’m going into the kitchen to stick my arm into that pumpkin up to my elbows and turn that handsome guy into a jack-o-lantern. Sticky! I haven’t decided what face to carve on my pumpkin yet
Later this week I have plans for butternut squash soup, corn chowder, gingerbread and pumpkin pie. Oh, I do so love this season. Even if it were only food and not weather and leaves and Halloween too, I’d still love it the most. But the whole package really makes me happy. Somehow I ended up being a traditional person, and fall and winter tend to hold all the traditions I love the most, and which mean something to me. I know lots of people who forgo Halloween, Thanksgiving and winter celebrating if there aren’t kids around to decorate for, but what’s the fun in that?! I hope I can always make time for and be enthusiastic about the simple, fun things.
9:20 pm Update: I successfully carved a snaggly-toothed jack-o-lantern! It’s now flickering cheerfully and mostly non-threateningly outside using one of those LED “candles.” It may be slightly cheesy, but at least I won’t burn my house down! I also have pumpkin seeds from two pumpkins ready for baking, a gallon bag full of pumpkin to make into puree for various purposes, and a general sense of accomplishment. I did think at one point that I would be separating seeds from gooey mess for the rest of my life, but I prevailed.
Hope your days have been lovely and filled with rest and things you love too!
P.S. I published this, then went in to correct a typo, somehow overwrote all my changes, decided I ought to unpublish it because it was too late to fix it, but nevertheless it was sent out by email this morning. Blogging is not an exact science …
‘Bye to November
And so we come to the last day of November, and the last post. I will probably not get one of the prizes given out, but I will reward myself by not posting again until I actually have an internet connection at home. Your email inboxes and RSS readers have 11 months to recover before I commence next year’s assault (assuming I do this again next year). I have earned the right to add another one of these to some place on my blog. I’m not 100% certain I got a sense of satisfaction out of it, perhaps more of a sense of relief at this stage.
Instead of posting for a while, I’m going to work on doing some actual crafting, putting my house together, finally unpacking items that have been packed since October of last year, and moving into my new crafting space as well. This weekend I’m going to join my cousins and go pick out a tree on a farm, and get some Christmas going around here.
Thanksgiving Dinner: By the way, last Friday I did make Thanksgiving dinner (you didn’t think I’d let that pass, did you?). There weren’t any pictures, but I did make seven items:
- a Field Roast (this is too easy, does this even count?)
- stuffing with sourdough, apples, caramelized onions, chopped walnuts and fried sage (fried sage is totally gratuitous, but yummy)
- mashed taters with roasted garlic
- butternut squash risotto
- green bean casserole with homemade sweet & wild mushroom soup
- cranberry-orange-ginger chutney (a 1/4 cup of ginger = very spicy!)
- Alton Brown’s pumpkin yogurt pie (my very favoritest pie)
Sweet & Wild Green Bean Casserole: Most of these items are things I consider easy, and are on my usual round of dinner fixins. The one that isn’t usual is the green bean casserole. I love this stuff, but a few years ago I got tired of it being the Same Old Too Salty Boring Thing. I tried using garlic mushroom soup, but last year I finally realized I should just start making it from scratch – fresh beans, fresh mushrooms, my own fried onions. Last year I used the Emerilized Green Bean Casserole and Alton Brown’s baked onions. This year I made my own recipe, and since my brother was there for dinner so I made the cream of mushroom soup with almond milk instead. MUCH simpler than Emeril’s version, and tasty!
- Saute wild mushroom mix in butter (my holiday treat to myself) and a dash or so or balsamic vinegar.
- The real trick: I used a technique of steeping the milk with spices/herbs. I chose whole nutmeg, a cinnamon stick, caraway seeds, whole allspice and whole peppercorns. Let it simmer at a very low temperature for a while (15 minutes or so? I wasn’t timing it) and then strain it to remove the spices. After a while you stir in your flour after making a slurry with a bit of the milk and bring to a boil to thicken.
- Mix the mushrooms into the thickened cream base.
- Mix the soup in with fresh green beans and homemade fried onions. Or French’s onions. I’d be happy either way.
The taste is different, almost sweet, and it was lovely!
Oh, and cooking in my new kitchen. WONDERFUL. I LOVE IT. SEVEN DISHES NO PROBLEM. Three things baking at a time! After such a long time of having no counter space and cramped spaces, it’s just heavenly. Then when I was done, there was a dishwasher (not me!). Ah well. After my year of crazy tiny kitchens, I’m now a dab hand at cooking in awkward situations while camping, I’ll tell you that.
Thanks, and toodles: I’m going to go be one with my new apartment and ‘hood now. Thank you to everyone who came by for reading my silliness all through this November. You’re all lovely, even if most of you don’t stop by to say hello in the comments. Which you should.
Three years ago
Today I decided to take a look back at what I was doing in 2007, 2008 and 2009 on this day.
November 28, 2007
I’m wearing the Silliest Slippers
It looks as though I’ve always been busy in November. Three years ago I had just come back from a Thanksgiving trip to Anchorage, Alaska to visit my brother, one of the most interesting trips I’ve taken (that’s me on the Matanuska glacier). Jeff had just lost his grandmother, and I was just remembering my uncle who had passed the previous November. I had only been writing this blog for 5 months. I bought my hiking shoes and my camera in Alaska, the former in anticipation of what’s now a frequent pastime, the latter in response to the photography needs of this blog. Oh, and they really were the silliest slippers!
November 28, 2008
Shell Stitch Baby Blanket
The baby blanket remains one of my favorite projects when I look at all my projects in Ravelry. I just like the soft colors and the pattern. Amazing that baby is now almost two!! I still remember my friend telling me she was pregnant, right out of the blue! That November was relatively quiet – it was December that was eventful, when my brother graduated from college and we had a fun trip to visit him in Bellingham. It was then that Audrey got sick, though, which was not the best way to end the year.
November 28, 2009
Jeff’s Blue Beanie
Last year I remember visiting my mom for Thanksgiving and working on a blue beanie for Jeff for Blue Beanie Day (a nerd awareness day). I also remember overdoing the cooking on Thanksgiving at Jennifer’s house. It was a fun day! I was quite grateful that there were no tragedies last year. On the other hand, I did move into my tiny apartment last year, so it was not a November without excitement.
Writing a journal is an interesting exercise in memory. I don’t remember the blanket being that far back, for example, nor my Alaska trip being over three years ago. Some of my projects from quite a while back seem as if I just finished them a few months ago, not a few years ago!
I’ll try to remember this next year during NaBloPoMo and on a different day. Next year, hopefully, I will be busy being grateful I don’t have to move again!
P.S. I’m expecting something to go terribly awry with this post. I very laboriously composed it with WordPress for iPhone with pictures and everything. The cafe trip didn’t work out, so all I have is my phone for Internet right now. This app is TERRIBLE! It’s very crashy, very unlike the ease of other iPhone apps. The WordPress people ought to be ashamed of themselves for writing such a crap application.
