Slow tired day but things got done anyway

I'm a bit low in gumption today, tired, but I did get around to a few things.

This morning I noticed a corner of the patio which worked like an illustration of plant lifespan.

Deciduous Japanese maple foliage, evergreen pachysandra, daylily with bud, bloom and spent blossom next to honesty now in full seed setting mode. That's a lot of information in a couple of square feet.

I finally got around to the quiches I've been going on about, two as easy to make as one. Here they are, smelling great coming hot from the oven.

Crustless spinach with several cheeses. Patti, if you're reading here, this is Diane's recipe from Utne Cafe days, still going!

And today's bouquet included two teeny pink zinnias. If you pick, they keep blooming to replace the flowers.

 There will soon be more black eyed susans. A couple of these items will probably root in water and I may pot them up. The peppermint and the wandering dude are what I have in mind.

I did hold up the striped fabric to myself, to remember how much there is. Plenty for a robe and belt if I don't feel like weaving a belt. We'll see. Whatever I make will be simple.

Not up for drawing today, though I think I'll eventually make an artist book from my July drawings and paintings, using  paintings for front and back covers.

But I did draw you a coloring template if you fancy printing it out and coloring it or giving it to a kid likewise.

You have plenty of choices about showing layers or depth, whatever you fancy.

Happy day! Color inside or outside the lines today.  Or both. It's all good. No colors? Use a pen or pencil to create patterns inside the shapes. Just an idea.

Signs of spring and a surfeit of eggs

You can see it's nearly March, how did that happen, because the State extension people are out with their list of Banned Botanicals.

Quite a few of these around here, which I see when I'm out walking to the pond.  Some are escapees from cheap mass landscaping, some were planted before people knew better, some just barged in.  

There's a date by which you have to eradicate them if they're on your property and by which nurseries have to stop selling them if they ever did. 

I doubt if this is the whole list, just the most likely. 

So Know Your Enemy is a sign of spring to our extension crew. 

And while I was knitting and eating breakfast,  cheese muffin, and idly checking what's new on YouTube, I found Ash LG, making a surcoat.

Ash is a larper, always into creating historical costumes, but regularly remembering the keen followers with less skill than Ash. 

So here's my summer sewing future 

In previous summers I've handsewn skirts and a couple of sleeveless lined surcoats will go with them a treat, with a cap sleeved top. I have skirts and tops, now to check fabrics around the place for surcoat purposes. This is where my portieres find themselves conscripted into use. One is batik cotton, one Indian sari silk, and there are sheets.. 

You see the complete notes needed to do this including translating cm to ins, she's a Brit. I remember as a teenager making a thing like this. I also made several in the 70s to go with matching short skirts. We called them tunic sets and thought we were all that.

Meanwhile I'm dealing with having over-ordered eggs, by making a spinach quiche using five of them.  With onion, garlic powder, shredded cheese. Started on top of the stove then baked in the oven, in trusty castiron pan. Amazing how spinach cooks down.

And here's lunch. I didn't cook the spinach ahead of time, just tore it up and added to the caramelized onions. Then thirty minutes baking and it's done enough for my taste.

Happy day everyone, spring might soon get here, after maybe a couple more snowstorms, we never know in March.

Unexpected partners, quiche and red chili oil

There was quite a bit of cooking on a grey cold Monday morning,  crust free spinach quiche and red chili oil. I've been thinking about both for a while, and thought well why not both? 

The red chili oil is from Yeung Man Cooking on YouTube and the  quiche from a long ago internet friend (Patti, if you're reading, it's Diane's recipe!)

So many spices in play for the oil. I subbed long red pepper for the Chinese red pepper he used, caraway seeds for tahini seeds, didn't have star anise, nor ghost peppers, but I used jalapenos, same idea.  I don't make as much as he does, because it lasts a while for me. 

I used the jar my berbere had been in, without wiping, since the remaining berbere would add heat, fine.

On the right you see spices and seeds toasting in a dry pan, other items waiting around. 

Meanwhile on the other counter

The doings for the quiche. I added in mashed firm tofu with the cheese, and beat the onions and torn up spinach into the egg mixture. Worked a treat.

Here's the chili oil, red because of the red pepper in it, and the quiche ready for the oven, 350°f  for twenty minutes.

Here it is, smelling great and ready to serve 

And here's lunch 

This really was excellent, even if I do say it myself. The spices were mellowed by toasting and sauteing, and the onions and garlic, too. 

The idea just occurred to me when I realized the onions were cooked in the oil for flavor then strained out, so there they were ready to use, no need to make another lot for the quiche. A rush of brains to the head.

I was thinking about old language after the first footing discussion, and the Viking influence on the region I'm from. 

You see it in place names

And Norse words were common in the language of my childhood, particularly in the country. 

If you were tugging in the thumb latch on the back door, you'd be told "Don't rive at that sneck!". And playing out: if you go up fell, don't fall in 't beck! Translation if you're playing near the hill don't fall in the stream.

When I went to the uni I had to drop a lot of terms that the other students didn't understand, being from non Norse regions. And some pronunciation, too. 

We lived in Gribdale, outside of Great Ayton, famous for Captain Cook. The next village was Little Ayton, known to us as Canny Atton

but when I asked a farmer about that a couple of years ago, he being a new resident from the south, he was baffled. And there's Chop Gate, said as Shop Yat, and I hear that pronunciation is gone too.  

Times change and we change with them. 

Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis. That's as accurate as I can get it without researching, but I don't remember who said it. 

Probably a Roman complaining the language had gone to hell since all the foreigners moved in.

Happy day everyone, you say you!

Memories of Marigold as long as we're reminiscing. This was her last night, age 16. 

Back to the pond, Texas snitchline, baking and Alaska

 1-866-786-5972. Texas snitchline, I mean tipline. Just sayin'. I'm supplying you with sand here. Especially if you're in Texas. 

I made it to the pond Friday, hot but manageable and not too wet underfoot. Frogs basking on the banks screamed and flew through the air into the water. Some already in the shallows with heads out, just watched me quietly. 

The Friday duffers were out on the golf course. I'd already found and shied back a golf ball far out of bounds. Good thing there's a belt of trees outside the boundary. I hear shots rattling off them before they land near me. There's a great Wooster and Jeeves scene like that, ball ricocheting wildly and Bertie ducking.

And the cooking requirements of the day, spinach quiche and plum torte, both need the same oven temperature I find. So why not do both at once. In my two Corningware pie dishes.

They'll both work to avoid cooking for several days.

The quiche is crustless, as I like it, so it needs a lot of eggs, five, to hold it together. 

The torte, look up Marian Burros if you want to bake it, really needs 12 small prune plums halved.  We rarely see them, so I use whatever plums I can find in August, plum time.  These are larger, so I cut them in quarters and all the plum quarters that fit got in there.

Sprinkled with lemon juice, sugar and cinnamon, seen here,  as the quiche comes out, the torte goes in. 

Here's the baked plum torte with the quiche, missing the piece I had for lunch. I used sharp cheddar and crumbled feta for the cheese component, very good combo, which added salt.

Afternoon tea with a murder matinee and plum torte.

And I decided to make a dessert of key lime yogurt with plums 

Meanwhile Alaska was on it, protests everywhere 

Not a bad day in the kitchen. Or in defence of democracy in Alaska.  Some of the signs they carried were great.

Happy day everyone, keep finding and applying sand. We can do this. Next, since creating is resisting, I need to choose and frame the artwork for the fall group show. We can do this, sez Ted and Big Ursy