Earth Mother

I really didn't set out to be Suzy Homemaker, honestly.  In fact, when I was in my twenties, I was what I called an "Earth Mother" type.  I baked my own bread, used honey and not sugar when baking, canned and froze food, and had a big vegetable garden.  Shoot, I even tried making my own ketchup!  Then I decided I was working way too hard!  I should add that I was also working a full-time job at the time.

And so life went on.  I never lost my love for playing around in the kitchen but did so on a smaller scale most of the time.  However, now that I am "retired,"  I have more time and have found myself going back to my Earth Mother self.  I'm making a lot more things from scratch than I ever did when I was young.   I am baking bread again, both sourdough and whole wheat.  I make raspberry vinegar and homemade vanilla extract (delicious!).  I even make bagels.  I still put a lot of food in the freezer but don't can anymore.  

One thing I tried a couple years ago was making cheese.   The first cheese I tried was ricotta.  It's very simple and tastes creamy and smooth, unlike the sort of gritty feel of the store bought kind.  Then I tried making mozzarella.  It turned out that mozzarella cheese was really difficult.  After a couple of failed attempts, I gave up but, in the process,  I accidentally made cream cheese.  It was really yummy.  

It is more rustic than the smoothed out blocks one buys.  It tends to keep draining whey in the container but that is easily drained off.  It is quite spreadable but not too soft.  And it freezes really well.  It's incredibly easy, too, although it does take a couple of days.  Most of that time it's just sitting and doing it's cheesy thing.  This is a finished batch fresh from hanging overnight in the refrigerator.  It is the perfect topping on one of those homemade bagels!

PS  If you're interested in the recipe for the cream cheese or the ricotta, leave a comment or email me.  I'd be glad to share but it's a little long to post here.

Monkey Business

Sock monkeys were never a part of my childhood.  I had a Barbie and a stuffed animal or two, although I don't remember what any of them were at this point.  But when I became part of this family (Paul and Peter), sock monkeys came into my life.  

Peter has a sock monkey made for him when he was born.  His Aunt Judy is the creator of this monkey.  His name is Blue Eyes and he is definitely part of the family.  Blue Eyes has a funny and distinctive personality, voiced by Paul.  I should explain.  

It all started with a couple of sock monkeys Judy and her husband, Tom, had long ago.  Apparently they would goof around and make the monkeys talk to each other.  Eventually along came Karen Monkey who was given to our niece, Lisa, by her Grandma Inez for Christmas when she was 6.  (She is now 21!) Tom immediately began making Karen talk and hasn't really stopped.  Karen has quite a personality. In fact, she has her own email, blog and Facebook page.  Honestly, I think Karen is Tom's alter-ego.  

Paul said he didn't really understand the sock monkey voice/personality thing until Blue Eyes came along (and Peter).  Thus Paul became Blue Eyes, rascal that he is.  Blue Eyes and his cohorts, Curious George the puppet and Jambo (another stuffed monkey), are constant sources of entertainment for Peter, even at age ten.  In fact, they are the main characters in the lunch notes Paul creates for him.  (click photo to enlarge)


As you can see, sock monkeys are a big deal around here.  

Now there is a new baby in my family.  My nephew has a 6 month old son who will be celebrating his first Christmas this year.  In fact, I will get to meet him for the first time this weekend.  In honor of his first Christmas, I made him a sock monkey.  Peter and Paul helped with some of the details so it has been a fun family project.  We're all excited about passing on the sock monkey tradition.  Now Paul will have to explain to my nephew about becoming a monkey.  Hopefully he will have as much fun with it as Paul and Tom do.

The Cactus Surprise

Christmas cacti are strange plants.  They are actually a genus called Schlumbergera and originated in the coastal mountains of Brazil.  I didn't know that until I just looked them up.  I have three of them, all given to me by my Mom.  One of them was started from my great-grandmother's plant.  It's the only one that has ever bloomed.  If I remember, it is a lovely dark pink color.

One of them is a large plant with very cactus like spines.  I hope it does bloom someday because the blossoms are HUGE, about 6 inches long or so.  

 The third cactus is blooming now, for the first time in my memory.  It is stunningly beautiful.  The plant is covered with buds and blooms.  The blooms are about 3 inches long.  I don't think I've ever seen a lovelier Christmas cactus. 

What a sweet Christmas gift.

Ho Ho Ho

As amazing at it seems, 'tis the season already!  I'm not one who goes overboard with the holiday stuff.  Don't get me wrong, I love the Christmas season and the many wonderful things it brings.  (See this post on toffee)  I am a firm believer in NCUAT (No Christmas Until After Thanksgiving)...but I'm not out on the day after Thanksgiving putting up lights and wreaths and blow-up plastic snowmen on the lawn.   Christmas at our house comes a bit more slowly.  I like to bring it out gradually, a few things at a time.  And there seems to be an order to what comes when, although it's happened unconsciously over time.
 

One of the first hints that Christmas is upon us is the Christmas dishes.  Over thirty years ago, my then mother-in-law gave me a piece of Spode Christmas Tree ware.  It was a lovely pomander which still smells of pine when I shake it.  I fell for the pattern and have collected bits and pieces ever since.  I don't have an overwhelming amount but enough to enjoy during the month of December.  

Interestingly, the original Spode factory closed in 2009 and was bought by another company.  

The pieces are now made in Malaysia or somewhere, so one must look for the "Made in England" stamp for the "real thing" nowadays.  I've noticed that it's become, let's say tackier, in recent years, too.  It makes my old pieces seem all the more precious somehow.



The next items to emerge are the Santas.   I did not set out to collect them but somehow, over the years, I have acquired many.  It has become an anticipated tradition for Peter and me to unwrap and display them together.  I love hearing him talk about them as they come out.  "Oh, my Santa on the tractor!"  To me Santa is the embodiment of the season, of gift-giving and generosity.  

The last of the firsts are the lights on the spruce tree in the garden.  About 19 years ago, Paul planted a dwarf Alberta spruce in the center of the garden beds.  Every year we cover it with little white lights.  As the tree has grown, we've had to add more nets of lights.  It is so lovely to look outside the dining room window and see the lights shining.  Because we are out in the country, you can even see the little white-lit tree from the road across the river.  Very sweet and festive. 

So Christmas is coming to our house, in small, treasured steps.  That's just how I like it.

Breakfast of Champions

Around our house the cold cereal of choice is granola.  We used to buy it in bulk from the Co-op.   Then, one day, I found a recipe for what looked like the same basic granola (Maple Almond) and decided to try it.  It was really yummy, especially after tweaking the recipe a little to suit our tastes.  Being the smart shoppers we are, we priced out the bulk vs. the homemade.  The homemade came in a few cents less expensive.  Plus, we liked it better.  Thus began my career of making granola for the family.  Even the 10-year-old likes it.  

Personally I like fresh fruit on my granola, when I have it.  Luckily so does the rest of the family, so no dried fruit in our cereal.   I also prefer mine with yogurt but milk tastes pretty darn good on it, too.  

This granola is really easy to make and fairly low fat.  I'm sharing it with you just in case you want to try it.  Plus it makes the house smell wonderful!

Dona’s Granola

3 ½ cups old-fashioned oats

1 cup sliced raw almonds OR coarsely chopped pecans

3 T. packed brown sugar

¾ t. ground cinnamon

½ t. ground ginger

¼ t. salt

1/3 cup maple syrup OR honey

2 T. vegetable oil

1 cup dried fruit, if desired

Preheat oven to 300º F.  Line rimmed baking sheet with parchment.  Mix first 6 ingredients in large bowl.  Stir syrup (or honey) and oil in saucepan over medium-low heat until smooth OR microwave it for about 10 seconds (This is what I do).  Pour liquid mixture over oat mixture; toss until well mixed together.  Spread on prepared sheet.   Bake until golden, stirring every 10 minutes for 30 minutes.  Place the baking sheet on a cooling rack.  Stir granola; cool.  Mix in fruit, if using.  Store in an airtight container.

Our latest version is with almonds but we like the pecans, too.  I think any kind of nuts would be fine.

We also switched from honey to maple syrup but we like them both.  I think the maple syrup version is slightly less sweet, which we like.  Also we don’t like dried fruit in our granola so we leave it out.  We prefer fresh fruit on top instead.

Enjoy!

 

Squirreling

It's that time of year again.  Time seems to rush by sometimes.  The first hard freeze of the fall was this past week.  We lucked out that it came so late (for us) since the growing season seemed to be rather late, too.  But now the garden is officially dead and done.  It's time to pull out the plants and put away the hoses.  

Then we start raking the leaves.  We have a LOT of leaves around our place.  Every year I waffle between waiting a little longer for more to fall and starting earlier to get them off the lawn.  I end up somewhere in between.  This is what I got done yesterday...

and this is what's left on the cottonwood.  Sigh...  
Many of the leaves go into the compost bins.  Many more make a thick layer on the garden beds to be added to the compost in the spring.  



It's time to prune back all those lavender bushes.  And chip the dried cornstalks, raspberry canes and those lavender clippings into the compost, too.  

The burn pile went up in flames.  A load of wood is coming soon and the energy logs are stacked in the basement.  This is a busy time of year;  the last flurry before the real flurries start.  

But there are still a few lovely surprises even among the dead leaves.










I like getting things ready for winter, packed up and put away, whether it's garden or wood or food in the freezer.  I call it "squirreling."  It's a satisfying feeling.

Stitching

I must confess to a small addiction.  I always have a cross stitch project going.  I find it a rather calming hobby.  I enjoy coming up with ideas for new projects.  I like the challenge of getting the stitches in the right place even though I sometimes end up pulling out stitches because of a miscount or some such thing.  It is the perfect winter pastime.  I suppose I could be reading more books and expanding my mind but I prefer stitching.  It's easier to put down at a moment's notice for conversation or whatever.  

I just finished another pillow.  It is a design called the Three Hares.  The design itself is quite old.  The first finding of it occurred in cave temples in China in the 6th-7th centuries.  It shows up in sacred sites from the Middle and Far East to England, in Christian churches and Jewish temples.  I find that rather amazing and intriguing.  When I first saw the design, I decided it had to be a pillow.  

I've been doing cross stitch for a long time now.  I honestly can't remember the exact year but I would say somewhere around 1995.  I've done more projects than I can count including this rug copy for Paul that took three years to finish!   It's actual size is 22 inches by 33 inches.  Paul has a rug fragment from around 1550 and he wanted to see what the rug might have looked like.  So he extrapolated the "cartoon"  from the fragment and pictures of similar rugs.  It was an amazing design feat.  That was the beginning of our working together on cross stitch designs.

Here is another favorite.  I originally found this saying on a bathroom wall in a small cafe in Salem.  I loved it and sat there on the commode copying it onto a piece of paper from my purse.  I had it painted on my kitchen wall in California.  When I moved here, I had to make it into a pillow so I could take it with me. 

Collaborating on designs with Paul is really fun.  I will come up with an idea and he will sometimes help figure out the design or, as in this one, create the design entirely.  This was for our dear friends, Christina and Roger, for Christmas last year.  The letters look like the Book of Kells and the adornments reflect their creative outlets, painting and jewelry making.  I love this pillow.



Now that the Three Hares is finished, I've started another pillow.  This one is a challenging design of fall leaves using 14 different but very closely related colors.  I may go cross-eyed but it will be lovely when it's done.  And I have at least three more ideas brewing for future projects.  It's good to have a hobby, right?