A Comedy of Errors

This is my stove.  I love this stove.  I bought it when I first moved here.  Paul had a lovely old antique gas range that was cool to look at but hell to cook on...and it had a gas leak...and an oven the size of a breadbox with no thermostat, only a thermometer on the front to tell you what the temperature was inside.  It was a nice period piece but just not going to cut it for someone like me who loves to bake.

This is a dual-fuel range, meaning the cook top is gas and the oven is electric.  This is a great combo if you're a cook; the best of both worlds.  In my previous home, I also had one except it was a Viking.  When I got ready to purchase this one, we did the research and found that, at the time, the Kitchenaid was getting better reviews than the Viking. So that's what we bought. 

In the 9+ years that I've used this stove, I've only had a couple of problems.  The oven lights quit working some time ago.  After replacing several bulbs, only to have them immediately go out, I gave up on having a light in the oven.  I get along fine.  

About 5 years ago, the whole oven stopped working, no display, no nothing.  Turned out it was the "mother board."  Isn't amazing that our appliances have such things?  It was not a cheap fix but it could be fixed and on we went.

About 6 weeks ago, after making biscuits one morning, we heard an odd noise.  It turned out that the interior glass on the oven door cracked and split.  Yikes!  I had never heard of such a thing happening but the appliance repair guys said it wasn't unusual and that we could actually replace it ourselves.  So we ordered the glass and waited.  When the glass arrived, we took the oven door off and started in on dismantling it.  It was a little trying but do-able.  It turns out that there are four pieces of glass in my oven door.  The interior one that broke, the exterior one, and two pieces of tempered glass sandwiched together in the middle.  The two tempered pieces were filthy from air circulation in the oven so I set them on the counter and proceeded to clean them.  I gave them a wipe with a sponge and got out the glass cleaner and some paper towels.  As soon as I touched the paper towel to the first piece, it shattered into a zillion pieces and glass flew everywhere.  It sounded like a rain stick.  According to the appliance repair guys, tempered glass can be well...temperamental.  So they ordered me another piece of glass.  

This one took longer to arrive than the previous one and Paul and I started feeling a bit unsure of how to put the whole thing back together now that it had been some time.  So, we loaded all the pieces into the car and I took it in to the shop for them to take care of.  I figured we'd have it back in the next day or so.  At the end of the second day, I called to check on the progress.  The appliance repair guy said, "Well, I've got a story for you."  It's never good when they say that.  Turns out when they got it back together, the handle was crooked.  They loosened it, straightened it out and started to screw it back down when...crack...the exterior piece of glass broke.  Another piece of glass is ordered (at least I didn't have to pay for this one) and I still don't have an oven door.  At this point it's been two weeks and I'm leaving for the holidays.  So I told them they have a week until I get home and I'll be coming in to pick it up.  When I got there to pick it up, the guy carrying it out to my car suddenly stops in the parking lot, holds up the door, and says, "Hey, come here and look at this."  There, wedged between the glass, was a screw.  Apparently it had come loose and was now hanging out in the oven door.  I had to come back the next day and pick it up.  But, there it was with no broken glass and no runaway screws.  We put it back on the stove and baked away...for 5 whole days.  

One the morning of the sixth day, I went downstairs to find that the display was completely black.  No amount of turning on or off made a difference.  Sigh....it took two weeks for the parts to come in that the appliance repair guys thought it needed, a new display assembly.  Yesterday one of them came to install it only to decide that it wasn't likely the display but was probably the mother board again, which would have to be ordered.  

I have had use of my oven for 5 of the last 48 days (and counting).  We're keeping our fingers crossed that all will be fixed sometime this coming week and that biscuits will once again be part of our breakfast routine (or scones, or muffins, or puffy pancakes)  to say nothing about roasted anything for dinner.  Did I say I love my stove?  I really do, which is why I miss it so much.  At least the cook top is still working (as long as I didn't just jinx it).

Lady Marmalade

It's winter.  Not exactly the time of year one thinks about canning and preserving.  Those busy days are tucked in earlier in the fall when all the garden seems to ripen at once.  I don't do a lot of food preservation anyway...tomato sauce, all sorts of berries, jars of pesto frozen for winter meals that remind of us summer...that sort of thing.    

However, there is one tasty treat that beckons to be made at this time of year, when the citrus from far off places shows up at the store, orange marmalade.  I love the flavor of a good orange marmalade, one without the bitter taste that shows up in some types.  I discovered many years ago that I could make it myself rather easily.  Leave it to the good old Joy of Cooking to come through with a great and easy recipe.  (However I have found that some editions do not have the same recipe.  Mine is from the 1964 edition.)  All it takes is a couple of Valencia oranges, a couple of lemons, water, sugar, and lots of time.  The results are so worth the investment, though.  It's like a bit of sunshine on a winter day.

By the way, apologies for the long gap in posting.  I felt like I had gone through the seasons of my life and talked about everything that could be said.  Maybe not...

Something New

We cook a lot of good food around here.  Both Paul and I love to cook and have our own specialties.  His is usually more ethnic...Indian, Mexican, etc.  Mine tends toward pastas and soups and breakfast foods.  Between the two of us, there isn't much we haven't tried.  However, tonight I made something entirely new, something neither one of us had ever eaten before...gnudi.

Gnudi is a made-up name trying to sound Italian like gnocchi.  Gnocchi is classified as a pasta often made with a potato base.  It looks like little balls of dough and is quite good.  I've made it before using sweet potatoes and it was delicious.

Gnudi was apparently created by the Spotted Pig restaurant in New York City.  It has a base of ricotta cheese, eggs, and flour.  There is also lots of fresh ground nutmeg and some chives involved.  It sounded intriguing so I decided to go for it.  

I made fresh ricotta cheese, which is really easy by the way, and let it drain overnight.  Then I added the rest of the ingredients and formed the "dough" into 1" balls.  They were then buried in cups of semolina flour and left overnight in the fridge.  After bringing them back to room temperature, they are dropped in boiling water and cooked until they pop back to the top of the water, just a couple of minutes.  Really pretty easy.

I served them with chanterelle mushrooms (my favorites!) sauteéd in butter with garlic and thyme.  Oh, my!  They were like little pillows of deliciousness, slightly chewy on the outside and soft and gooey on the inside. They have definitely been added to our list of good things to make again.  How fun to discover a new taste treat! 

Saucy Tomatoes

I know, I know I've posted about tomatoes twice before (!) but I just can't help myself.  It's tomato season again (hallelujah) and that means time to make tomato sauce for the freezer.  Every year we plant at least a dozen sauce tomato plants, usually either Roma or San Marzano tomatoes.  And every year Paul would talk dreamily about the Milano Bush tomatoes he used to grow.  Somewhere along the way, he quit starting his own plants and couldn't find the seed for Milanos anymore.  Then, lo and behold, there it was, Milano Bush tomato seed in one of the seed catalogs this year.  Of course, one thing led to another and before you know it we're buying a whole indoor seed growing set-up so we can start our own tomato plants in March!  

I'm happy to say we were successful and planted 10 Milano tomato plants in the garden.  They are just starting to come on.  If all the tomatoes on the plants ripen, we'll have plenty of sauce this year.  

 

Today I made the first batch of sauce from the first real picking of the Milanos.  It really is easy with our tomato saucing contraption.

 I got two pints of sauce from this bunch.  They are in the freezer as I type.  Fresh frozen tomato sauce tastes like it just came from the garden when you use it.  It's definitely a staple around here.  So we get that tomato taste all year round!

The Old Yellow Rose

There is a beautiful bushy yellow rose that grows here on the Palouse.  I'd noticed it around the area the first few years I was here.  One of my neighbors has one growing along his fence.  It gets 5-6 feet tall and just as wide.  There is another one growing across the river from us on an old home site.  The house long ago burned down but some of the flowers are still there.  

My neighbor told me he thought it was called a Harison's rose.  I did a little research and found that it is indeed that rose and that it's origin is quite old.   "The original plant was discovered in the garden of amateur hybridist George F. Harison in Manhattan in 1830.  Suckers of it traveled west with the pioneers.  'Harison's Yellow' rose runs under a few different names including: ' Hogg's Yellow', 'Yellow Rose of Texas', 'Harisonii', the 'Oregon Trail Rose' and 'Pioneer rose'."
      
About three years ago I decided I wanted to try to start one of these roses.  I drove over to the old home site and dug up a couple of suckers and transplanted them along our fence by the road.  Unfortunately, this was the same year of the Vole Wars and those little buggers tunneled right under those starts and they died.  Sigh...


So last spring I headed back to the home site and dug up a few more suckers.  Luckily no one lives around there who cares.  These starts went into the same spot along our old fence and have done quite well.   I was quite excited a few weeks ago when I discovered buds on the bush.  And now it is blooming!  The blossoms aren't large but they smell really sweet.  There is something lovely about continuing the spread of this old rose around the countryside. 

Sew Much Love

Paul, my husband, practices a martial art called aikido.  He's been doing it for 20 years and has a black belt in the art.  As you can guess, it is a big part of his life and very important to him.  Practitioners of aikido wear special clothing on the mat.  One piece of this clothing is called a hakama.  It looks like a pair of very pleated culottes.

So, imagine his chagrin when he needed a new hakama and found that the company he had previously purchased them from had gone out of business.  

Now in my life I have done quite a bit of seamstress work.  I used to make many of my clothes and have done sewing for other folks, too.  I've made everything from tea towels to wedding dresses.  It seemed like making a hakama should be within my realm of skills so I went hunting for a pattern and the proper fabric.  
 

A hakama turns out to be a very complicated garment.  
It has a number of pleats both in the back and the front.  Here is a picture of one so you can get the idea...and that's just the front.  

Once we found the pattern and the right fabric, I set to work.  
Oh, my!  I had no idea how difficult this was going to be.  It got to the point where I would work on it for a while and then have to give my brain a break before I could go back to it.  

 






But I persevered and finally finished it.  Paul is very pleased and a little bit proud, I think, that I made it for him.  

Here he is in his new hakama...





 



and breaking it in getting thrown 
by his sensei. 

Thankfully, a hakama will last for a long time.


The things we do for the ones we love!  And it's totally worth it.

Wildflower Walk

Living out in the country gives us a wonderful place to walk.  We just head out down our gravel road for what we call a "three mile Idaho."  By the time we get about a mile and a half down the road, we're in Idaho.  By the time we get home, we've gone three miles.  

This time of year the walk down the road is awe-inspiring.  The countryside is abloom with wildflowers...lots and lots of wildflowers.  These pictures are ones we took just today on our walk.  If you click on any of them, they will get bigger and show more detail.



 The blue one on the left is Brodiaea.  

The yellow one on the right is Arrowleaf Balsamroot with some purple Delphinium.

This shows a drift of purple Delphinium.

This is Golden Pea close-up

 


...and more down by the river.

This one is Groundsel.

The white one is Prairie Star and the blue one is Blue-eyed Mary.












This shrub is called Serviceberry.  It's growing up into a Ponderosa pine that is also "blooming" with red cone "flowers."

This yellow is Swale Desert Parsley (a type of lomatium).












This last one is a favorite of ours, Camas.  

I have to confess that these last two photos were taken on our property in the prairie Paul has been restoring for the past twenty years.  If you want to read about that project, visit his blog at palouserivermusic.blogspot.com .




We feel so lucky to live in such a beautiful place...all right down the road.