catching up

it's been a couple of months since i last posted here.  quite a bit has happened.

i went to maryland sheep and wool with my friend kristin and her mom and aunt.  this was my haul.  i see two sweaters, several shawls, two cowls, and the motherlode of wollmeise. 

the verdant gryphon had a codex update, and i bought the devil's dictionary.  at first i was thinking a shrug sweater but i think it really wants to be a shawl.


clearly i lost the april through june pantsdown stashdown.  :/

after many starts and stops and some mixed up skeins, my age of brass and steam shawl is steaming (ha!) ahead...


i'm going to KDO again this fall and am taking a steeks class and a intro to crochet (!!) class.  here is my homework (i still have a seed stitch square to do.  i loathe seed stitch.)


i took a class at a new yarn shop and learned to do a sweet tomato heel.


i signed up to do tour de fleece this year.  i am on team spindler.  clearly i am deluded, becos my spinning sucks, sucks sucks!  i really need a wheel...


black betty came out of hibernation so i stitched up some project bags...


it's canning time again, so i made two kinds of strawberry jam, two kinds of cherry jam, and black forest jam (cherry and chocolate and almond, yum!).  i'm hoping to add some sliced and whole fruit and veggies to my canning, provided i can find a pressure canner.


i got serious about my garden this year and planted three heirloom tomato plants, three roma tomato plants (for sauce!), two pepper plants, two cucumber plants, and a couple of herbs.  i have some dill drying down cellar, picked two huge (albeit green) heirloom tomatoes and downed these little beauties. mother nature has been kind to our garden and has kept our rain barrels full, so we don't have to rely on our public water.  i also shredded irish spring soap to deter the squirrels (still finding holes, the little dirtballs!) and bought slug repellent to chase the slugs away (might be working?)  i also planted my usual variety of flowers and they are flourishing as well.


speaking of rain barrels, i finally painted these after looking at their gaudy blue exteriors for nearly four years.  now they blend in with the scenery.


my mojo wavered quite a bit, so i read.  a lot.  and i have more to go.


the kids keep me hopping.  school has been out for nearly a month, and in that time they attended two bible schools (our church and my parents' church), celebrated the end of school with a trip to chuck e cheese and the book store, and play with the neighbor kid.

the kiddos enjoy visits to the park...


they graduated from preschool (the three year old class, anyway...)


and freddie is obsessed with the movie cars.  we watch it at least once a day, sometimes twice.  the kid can do movie karaoke with it, and i actually have a couple favorite scenes and songs.


the kids are learning to ride bike.  petunia quickly learned and often flies past her brothers.  freddie is more content with his trike.  not to be outdone by the kiddos, the boy is learning to ride too.  they ride up at my parents' house, who live across from a large cemetery, the same one where i learned to ride my bike.  they ride around in circles and sometimes take a tumble, but i'm glad that they are getting exercise.


the boy participated in his second soapbox derby.  he said he didn't care that he didn't place, he enjoyed just doing it.


this summer the boy will be going to church camp.  it's his first time away from home without family.  he's a little nervous, but i think he'll have fun.

prolly the kids' favorite summer activity - playing in our backyard.



we have other activities planned for the summer - visits to knoebels, summer reading at the library, sleeping over at grandparents' homes and a family picnic with hubby's extended family.  before we know it, we will be shopping for notebooks and pencils, new sneakers and jeans, and trading evening play in the yard for settling down for homework and early bedtimes.  there's so much left to do, and i don't want to miss anything!

jewish penicillin

last weekend we went to penn state for hubby's LCM board meeting.  we ate lunch at the the deli where i had the most delicious bowl of matzo ball soup.  the kids are still sick with colds and hubby is half hatching it as well, so i decided to arm myself with homemade jewish penicillin.

i roasted a chicken earlier this week and made stock from the carcass.  it made the most wonderful chicken stock, flavorful and fragrant.  this is the broth recipe i followed, more or less, except i didn't have any parsnip. i froze two quarts of it, froze another quart of it via a muffin tin (making half cup disks to flavor things up in cooking) and i had another quart and a pint of stock that i my matzo ball soup with.

i reheated the broth on the stovetop.  after it started simmering i added about a half cup of shredded carrot, one stalk of celery diced, and half a chicken breast, shredded.  i mixed up a packet of matzo ball mix and made matzo balls and simmered them in the broth.  i added two cups of water to the soup to stretch the broth a bit (the balls really soak it up).

golly ned did this really hit the spot.  fragrant, flavorful chicken broth with salty matzo balls.

i must do some research on canning broth and stock and soups.  i froze my broth in freezer jars but i'd rather have shelf stable jars of stock.  next time i make broth, i'll have to break out my pressure cooker as well becos i think that's the only way to ensure safe canning of broth or soup.

i also discovered that using a pasta pot (a pot with a large basket that fits inside) is awesome for making stock.  i used my mom's pasta pot, putting the carcass, Mirepoix and tea balls of herbs in the pasta basket.  my broth was less cloudy and had less bits of herbs floating around, plus it was easy to just toss the cooked bones and vegetables into the garbage (saving the tea balls, of course).

i'm a huge advocate of making broth from roasted bones.  you'll find frozen carcasses in my freezer awaiting stock day.  i love using my own stock and broth becos i know what is in it, unlike the broth and stocks you buy at the store.  it just tastes better.

pie

i cut back on my sweets becos of my diabetes, but i allowed myself some treats only if they were homemade.  to wit:  pie!

grams used to make pumpkin pie for us and it was a treat for fall.  i couldn't wait for it to get cool enough to bake.  

grams used the recipe on the can of pumpkin pie filling, but i use canned pumpkin and add my own spices.  it makes a ton of batter, enough for two pies and a couple of ramekins.  honestly, i should just make the filling in ramekins - forget the pie crust!

petunia helped out by testing the filling.  a topping of cool whip finished off the pie.

i kept a pie and sent the other home with mom and dad.  they ate half of it at my house.  and they were supposed to share it with grams!  ours lasted a bit longer - 3 days.  i couldn't pig out on it becos holy hanna did it raise my blood sugars!

grams' other pie specialty was apple pie.  this is more like a tart as there is no crust on top.  basically a mixture of flour/brown/white sugar, pared apple halves and bits of apples, sprinkled with brown sugar, fill the shell with milk, then sprinkled with cinnamon.

what frankenstorm?  i have PIE.  the pie on the left went home with mom and dad to share with grams. i figured i owed it to them since i sent my sick kids for a weekend visit.


i don't make my own pie crust - frozen pie shells suffice for me.  some day i WILL attempt my own pie crust, but it won't be today.

yum.

peach melba upside down cake

i was cleaning out the fridge and found a small basket of raspberries and half a dozen peaches.  i wanted to make a dessert with them.  i planned to make a pineapple upside down cake but wondered if i could use the peaches and raspberries instead.

i sliced the peaches in half and skinned them.  i rinsed the berries and picked the plumpest ones to fill the center of each peach.

i followed the pioneer woman's pineapple upside down cake recipe (from her cookbook; couldn't find it online).  for the batter, i had to omit the reserved pineapple juice becos, obviously, i had none.  i placed the peaches, cut side down, on top of the butter and brown sugar.  i had a lot of berries left over and quite a bit of space (even with my 8 inch cast iron pan).  i smoothed the cake batter over the peaches and berries then baked for 40 minutes at 350 degrees fahrenheit.  when i checked at 40 minutes, the batter was still a bit wet so i baked it another 7 minutes.  also, use the biggest pan you have, becos mine overflowed!

(the crispy bits, by the way, are outstanding.)

the fruits (heh) of my labor.  not too beautiful...

but so yum.

another jam session

i made black cherry jam.  it's my dad's favorite flavor, and i like it too.  the last batch i made was only a few jars and i wanted to make more to share.

i bought 4 pints of cherries, soaked them in a wash of water and baking soda and had a blast pitting them with my cherry pitter:

then i mashed them to bits with my gram's red handle potato masher:

i needed 4 cups of mashed cherries - had enough and then some:

i cut the amount of sugar to 4 cups instead of 4.5 and added 2 tbs of lemon juice and a pat of butter (to help with foaming - didn't work anyway)...

simmered until it coated a spoon, then i let it rip for a minute, skimmed the foam...

ladled the mixture into half pint jars...

after the jars were cleaned and lids screwed on, they took a dip in the hot water bath for 10 minutes...


the fruits of my labor (pun intended):

one of the most pleasant sounds in the world is hearing the lids of your work go *POP*!

i had a tiny bit of jam left that i scraped into a small jar and chilled in the fridge.  after it cooled i used some to make a butter and jelly sandwich.  it was one of the best butter and jelly sandwiches i ever ate! when i make cherry jam again, i'll cut the sugar even more - the jam is pretty sweet, and bing cherries are naturally sweet on their own.

i'm looking out for grapes now - the place we buy our meats have a small vineyard and sell the best concord grapes.  my next project - grape jelly.  beside cherry jelly, grape is my absolute favorite jelly.

i'm getting used to canning and putting up produce.  in the past few weeks i put up two dozen ears of corn (steamed, cut off the cob and frozen) and two quarts of green beans (steamed, blanched and frozen).  hubby canned 8 pints of tomato sauce plus we're making more today.  it'll be nice to have a little bit of summer during the dark cold winter months.

keep it cool

this summer was one of the hottest on record.  it's important to stay hydrated when it's hot out, so you'll find me with a bottle of water and my favorite water glass on the end table next to me.  i use glass water pitchers becos i think plastic or resin pitchers make water taste funny.  i have this pitcher and two similar one liter pitchers.  i also love my tap water bottle.

a few weeks ago i was feeling bad about myself, and i needed a pick me up.  i remembered my fish jug and filled it with cold water and a few glugs of lemonade.  it holds about 2 glasses of water, so i made a lot of trips to the kitchen to refill it.  best of all, the "glug glug glug" sound the pitcher makes when you pour the water makes me giggle.  

this jug sat on my microwave stand for a better part of a year, ignored.  what a waste!  lesson learned - don't let things sit and gather dust - use them!  my jug is cheerful and using it makes me feel like a million bucks!

leftovers

we got to enjoy some treats after our trip to cleveland.

goulash and spaetzle from das schnitzel haus.  it heated up well and tasted great.  the gravy was beef instead of tomato as we're accustomed to, but it was delicious, especially with the spaetzle.

perogies from the perogie palace from west side market.  some mixed feelings here.  they look beautiful (just look at that braided edge) and were good sized dumplings, but they seemed to be more dough, less filling.  i gave mom and dad some of my perogies and she fried them with onions and found them very chewy and doughy.  i cooked mine potsticker style with butter and they seemed more cooked, but the still more chewy to my taste.  hubby boiled his and they turned out tender.  i guess if we got these again i'd boil them first then fry them up.  also, these perogies go a looooong way... i ate four of them and probably only needed two (probably all the dough).  they are very filling.

cheese on the left, german on the right...


the filling of the german perogie.  there were bits of bacon in there.  mom thought they were bacon bits. she didn't care for the german dumplings.



roast beef pasty from reilly's...


i thought there'd be gravy in the pasty but it was dry - just diced potatoes, carrots and beef.  but sooo good...while the filling is savory, the pastry is sweet!  this pie was so filling, i gave hubby half of it.  he liked it too.

we also noshed on cupcakes and the cream horn (it was really sweet for my taste), and cheese popcorn, and cookies from whole foods (that's not a big deal but since we get to WF rarely, it was a treat).

i love how the food memories linger on, long after the suitcases have been unpacked.

good eats west side market cleveland

on wednesday morning we visited west side market.  it's open mondays, wednesdays, fridays and saturdays.  it is a foodie's paradise.  it reminded me of reading terminal market in philly and central market in lancaster.


we visited the produce hall first.  fruits and vegetables neatly displayed, from veggies chips (i got the kiddos green bean chips) to champagne grapes.


greeting us through the front entrance...

we had crepes for breakfast - mine had fresh strawberries and belgian chocolate, and hubby had a savory crepe of chicken, bacon and cheese...


there were several bakeries.  there was so much to choose from - cakes and cookies, pastries and donuts.  here are creme horns...

i bought a monk and hubby bought an oreo cheesecake.  the monk was decadent...dark chocolate cake with chocolate mousse, wrapped in chocolate.  i'm lucky i didn't go into diabetic shop, but so so good...

the meat and fish stands were so enticing.  if we had more cooler space, i probably would have brought home a couple of steaks and chops.  everything looked so fresh - definitely not what you'd see at the grocery store.  up close and personal with escargot...

hubby thought these italian rollups looked delicious...

there were also many specialty stands.  this one sold hot sauces...


this mexican stand sold enchiladas...


we bought a couple dozen perogies - i got cheese and german (bacon and cheese) and hubby got mushroom and swedish meatball.  i could have sampled them all!  they also had pigeons but i would have had to buy a whole pan of them...


at a deli stand hubby took a picture of my green fluff (it had nuts in it)...


you could sample all kinds of popcorn flavors.  we got cheese popcorn and dichotomy popcorn (cheese and caramel mix, supposedly an exclusive chicago flavor)...


i got one roast beef pasty and a scottish pie at this irish food stand...


there were several bakeries (i got a loaf of sesame bread), middle eastern stands, herb stands, cheese stands, even a noodle stand.  a couple stands were closed for vacation.  visiting a town's farmer's market is a great way to become acquainted with the area's ethnic eating heritage.  i wish our local farmer's market was this diverse - with a mix of old eastern european and increasing middle east presence,  west side market is a great place to explore!