Puzzles, soup, rain

Today I had nothing scheduled, luckily, because it's been drenching down all day.

Good day for soup. So I organized butternut squash, diced potatoes, red lentils snd barley. 

Here's the pre microwaved squash, insides ready to add to soup rinds for the stock bag, seeds for the squirrels.

Kosher salt, Old Bay, turmeric, garlic, onions 

Barley simmering back there while the potatoes and squash cook.

Then everything blended, drop of lemon juice and pinch more salt, after which the barley goes in to cook more.

And there's lunch, very filling, enough for six more meals.

The jigsaw puzzle is coming along, and I like how the muted and dark edges are ready to explode into flowers any minute, see the illustration in the middle. 

I like to assemble small areas then find where they go, modular fashion, one of my favorite approaches to making.

About containers: I used the barley partly because when I made the custard dessert the other day, I finished up the cornstarch, leaving me with a very nice container. 

I'd noticed the barley in a bag in the freezer, and hadn't used it because I kept forgetting it was there. 

In a container, relabeled, on the counter, it quickly got used. Same with the lentils. They can sit ages in the fridge but as soon as I pour them into a container on the counter, I use them. 

I never actually buy containers, since there are so many coming in with other products in them. Once empty, fine!

In between all this great excitement, i finished glove one and started glove two.

I've been continuing the massive This Golden Fleece, and she's a terrific researcher. She solved a mystery for me, from one of Barbara Pym's books, A Few Green Leaves. 

This is where the vicar goes on endlessly trying to establish if any locals had been "buried in woollen" meaning a wool shroud, in past times.

He's completely unsuccessful, locals all thinking he's a bit lacking, but they like him anyway. Turns out that there was a law passed in the seventeenth century mandating this. It was a way of supporting the wool trade, cornerstone of the economy. It was abolished after a century, largely because ignored, and hard to enforce anyway.

But it would have been a very good dating mechanism for his local history studies if he'd ever managed to find any evidence in church registers or other documents.

So my current reading threw light on what had seemed an obscure fancy of a Pym character. That probably makes Pym a pretty good historian herself, unless maybe it was drawn from a real life clerical acquaintance.

There's no end to her depth! Or my interest in following these niche ideas.

Happy evening everyone, and here's a puzzle for Friday, which is likely to be when you're reading.

And bear with me if your subtle clues fly over my head!