Winnowing, jamming, baking, botanizing

Here's a wild spiderwort, tradescantia virginiana, named for John Tradescant, Elizabethan plantsman to the stars, along with his son.  Tradescant swiped a lot of American continent plants for European propagation for his wealthy bosses, including the queen.

This one's started by my path. See that tiny blue flower?

Then there's a cultivated variety growing down the street.

This is a handy illustration of the term "common or garden". Mine's the common,  wild one, my neighbor's is the garden, cultivated one. It refers to plants seen both wild and cultivated. Around here the daylily is another, both common and garden growing all over.

Then to the serious business of the day.

Lunch. Which consisted of heating up frozen carrot cashew red lentil soup. And it occurred to me that the seven minutes it took in the microwave could be employed to do a kitchen job that's been annoying me for ages. 

Namely the cabinet where I keep, well, stuff, bags for freezing. Far too many, and many too small anyway. So I thought I'd pull the lot out, sort, recycle and put back.

No before picture, too depressing, one of those doors with bags sticking out on all sides. 

I recycled a large number of small bags, retrieved pieces of foil and parchment paper which I reuse, restored order, and, bonus, found the container of  tools and caulking compound I thought I'd lost. That's it on the shelf.

I can find everything now, and it literally took only as long as the time to heat the soup. Very smug about this.

 Then came cornbread. I needed some breadesque item and had just enough cornmeal and sugar available to do this.

I used my new Polish tool and it's great. Mixes fine, doesn't just shove the batter around, great buy. It's a lovely piece of engineering.

But your overachiever was not done yet.

Then I thought I'd cook the Misfits potatoes ready to use. Microwave for another seven minutes, that seems to be today's unit of time, then cool, peel, freeze. 

In the background you will see an added reason for this activity. A sink packed to the gunwales with dirty dishes. Postponement. It amazes me how one person can generate so many dishes.

And then the next featured performance.

Canteloupe and ginger jam happened. This involved a bit of pectin because I wasn't sure about the natural pectins, if any, in canteloupe. 

I added in ginger chunks because I like ginger with fresh canteloupe, so why not. And the recipe I (sort of)  used, involved seasalt, so I thought fine, I'll go for that.

I just squeaked out enough sugar for this. And I boiled it for quite a while before it seemed to gel. At one point I thought the chunks were a bit big, so I used the stick blender for just a few seconds to reduce them. 

Blending boiling jam is not for the faint of heart, but it seemed to work. I'll remember this for future reference.

We'll see how this comes out when it's cool.

Meanwhile I'm going to read and snack.

I've earned a bit of repose.

Not bread and roses but close

Walk today, finding blossoms everywhere. And a shouted chat with a neighbor I haven't seen in ages.

Then home, not in the mood to bake regular bread, also low in flour, so I made yet another version of cornbread. This one, judging from the scrap of printed recipe on cardboard in my binder, must have come from a box of cornmeal. One of those bland test kitchen recipes.

This one wanted skim milk, but I have whole, so I used that, and vegetable oil, so I thought okay, we'll see, and egg whites.

Now it just happened that I had egg whites frozen from back when I made lemon curd using yolks, so I broke the block of four, used half, put the rest back.

Verdict: pale in color, because of no egg yolk nor butter, firm texture, a bit bready. Okay but not a winner. Slice with butter ready to spread. It needs butter.

Interrupted by a neighbor wanting to march into the house to visit with her dog, force of habit, until I said sorry, no one comes in right now.  So we had another shouted conversation, with her talking through a slightly open storm door and me well back in the living room. Her husband's working from home, and I think she needed a break from him.

It's heavy being alone at this time, but I don't have to cope with anyone unless I make contact, so there's that! I notice in the two conversations I had today, my voice is rusty with disuse. I'll do a bit of singing during my music time today.

Important daily treats

I think it's really important, living alone, to eat well always, even without the pressure of other hungry people in the house.

The soup I made yesterday was really good, better than previous ones. It's black bean, pink bean, tomato, onion, garlic, homemade curry powder etc, usual suspects.

 And this time I added in a big branch of thyme from the freezer. The whole thing. I fished out the actual twigs after cooking and before blending. The leaves were all cooked off by then. Last I added chunks of raw fish, then simmered till tender. Fresh chives cut over, and it was really good. Also filling.

I never faff about stripping leaves off thyme, just sling in a handful of stems. If it's something like peas, just lift the thyme out, leaving the flavor behind.  Same with roast meat or veggies.

And sometimes I reheat meatballs from the freezer with mash. Diner food. These meatballs were four alarm hot, so the mash had a nice extinguisher effect. Assisted by ketchup.


Always there's a little something for teatime

Here warm fresh cornbread with butter.

Listening to a Joanna Trollope novel today, and one of the characters comments on the odd idea of having a cleaning lady named Petra. Which amused me because I have two, mother and daughter. Plus the Dad. Family business.

 I had to ask them not to come this month, in the interest of safety, everyone's.  I did tentatively keep the next appointment, act of faith.

 I can't afford to pay the whole fee without service,  but sent them a check for half, as a cancellation fee. I know what it's like to have a business where you can't replace income when there's a cancellation. So I thought this only fair, to do the bit I can. They don't have a cancellation fee, tend to reschedule instead. But this situation is different.

 I mentioned it to other clients, in case they haven't been aware, never having had to support themselves with a service biz.

Best we can do.

Cornbread seems to have happened

Aka don't ask me, I only work here.

However one thing is clear. Chili and cornbread for dinner tonight.