Vegtravaganza and red crest lichen

Roast vegetables on a sheet pan are my go-to at the moment.

Today baby bellas, fingerlings, onions, broccoli, celery. Old Bay seasoning, sprigs of Thai basil, tarragon.  425°f twenty minutes, turn them over, another 20 minutes.

Three meals.  

Cool sunny weather, and one of my favorite sights, before it vanishes for the winter

See the tiny red flowers on grey green foliage? There's a big colony of this red crest lichen on top of my old gate. Earlier in the year there are crowds of the red flowers or whatever they are. I love the miniature world of lichen, and here are proofs that other people do, too

I follow a couple of lichen accounts on Twitter, a pretty niche interest, i think you'll agree.

The only issue is that mostly it's a world of scholars talking in lichenese, many terms I haven't got yet. But I love how they crawl around under logs and over rocks and up trees studying this world, and uploading great photos.  

I'm amused when people who've never ventured into Twitter talk about the dark side of it as if that's all it is. We who follow lichen, birding in the Orkneys, medieval manuscripts, animal sanctuaries, artists, writers,  select political news, and a few quirky folk, never encounter any of that. We do get a lot of value from it, though.

I'll miss my personal lichen colony when,  eventually the wood fences and gates are replaced with composition material.

But there are plenty of lichens and fungi in this damp, tree-rich region, so I won't run out.

Catching the Fall sun and other things

I've extended my walks to take in more of the area around the development, and with the fall of the leaves, you can see more.

This idyllic scene of trees reflected in quiet water is in fact a flood avoidance scheme. It's the retention pond on the golf course. But beautiful anyway.

And later, a sudden burst of red evening sky lighting up the trees.

Today was good for roasting vegetables, 

here fingerlings, spinach, onions, then at the end an egg broken over to cook in the heat remaining after the oven's off.

Cold enough to wear my mitered square  jacket of many colors. I finished it in spring when the weather was already warming up. 

I'm really glad I made it, cosy and cheerful, with big pockets.

Soup, roast veg, Thai basil, seedling id

This afternoon being the six months follow up mammogram appointment, where I find out if things are okay, this morning was spent in displacement activity,  busily making soup. 

Butternut, cashew, carrot, to be exact.

The little seedling continued, see also below. And the Thai basil is in for the season, complete with seeds off the plant, so my garnish is back.

If you're thinking hmmm, not many carrots there, it's all I had left after making this yesterday

Broccoli, sweet potato, carrots, onions, garlic, hot sausage. And remember that couscous I accidentally made a lot of? It's back from the freezer, and goes really well with this veg assortment. It's under there.

Back to the Rose of Sharon, it's always back to the Rose of Sharon around here. 

Here's the seedling, and though it did have the seed attached, looks unlike an R of S. I know the first two leaves don't always look like the mature ones, but I wonder.

Meanwhile, nature is getting on with the dollar spot fungus without any help from me. I think it's beautiful with early morning rain, so here it is. Again. 

Later today is Textiles and Tea, more tomorrow about that. And Handsome Son has announced a visit tomorrow, great timing, what with oatmeal cookies and great blueberry and other muffin things around the place.

Good vibes for this afternoon, please. 

Meanwhile, life's a banquet. I might not like all the courses.

Coda: tomato jam, roast vegetables

About the tomato lemon jam, I had some on wholewheat Irish buttered bread for breakfast. The flavor is lovely,  just tangy enough. This recipe is for one fewer cups of sugar, from the other one I used,  and it's good. They're both good. Here's both. You choose.

The supposedly Amish one, probably just a traditional recipe, really, but it was in a book of Amish lore and food, I've used for years. As you see from the stains and the notes.

Here's the one I used yesterday

I would suggest longer boiling though, to get a better consistency. I might even try reboiling some as an experiment. You do boil the tomato pulp a while, but I think it would have been good to boil the whole mixture at least a few more minutes. It's also possible I over did the lemon, since I like it, and introduced too much liquid. I think that can be solved by reboiling. 

In other adventures, I embarked on resticking, with newly purchased scotch tape, the pieces of the trouser pattern (I made one pattern, so I'm an insider now, we say pant and trouser) which I cut yesterday.

And made the discovery which I should have realized, that parchment paper is processed specially to be nonstick, duh. Which is why you use it in baking. Oh. Explains the failing painter's tape yesterday. 

And when I unfolded the pattern to retape with scotch tape, it all fell into its components parts. Since I had labeled it once, only the main bits, there were now several anonymous shapes to puzzle over. I ended up having to get the master sheets out again and reassemble everything using them, then taping both sides of every seam. Hm.

It's fine now. It did make me wonder at my possible eptness or, more likely, ineptness, at my winter plan of jigsaw puzzling, though.

Anyway, that's done. 

And the next adventure, I wonder if Mercury is in retrograde, was to try sharpening my blunt old fiskars using the knife sharpener.

This did not go well. They will now not cut Irish butter. Nor silk, nor paper, nor anything. They just bite the fabric between the blades.

They're definitely safe. Useless, but safe. Even the one inch of sharpness they had before was barely restored by cutting then sanding with a nail file, the only available emery paper.

That's not cutting, scissors, that's gnawing! Martha Stewart uses a special Fiskars Sharpening  Tool, but I don't think I'll invest in a tool to repair my thirty year old scissors which cost about ten dollars new.  They're in the recycle as of now. I have a backup pair which I will leave alone.

Meanwhile here's what I like to cut fabric with, working fine. One small, one big.

And, to show that this morning has not been a total loss, I realized I have the makings of a great waistband for my forthcoming trouser, or pant. Look at that prestitched edge of the sari silk piece. Wheeee!!

Hope springs eternal. It better around here, considering the blunders executed by the resident human.

I'm off for lunch, pita stuffed with roasted vegetables. Onions, broccoli, mushrooms, hot sausage. Heavily seasoned with Old Bay.

Roasted yesterday to make several meals.

Then a fresh farm peach, like yesterday.

And there's a Stacey Abrams to read this afternoon. The day's looking up.

The morning, seems so long ago, started with a quick sortie out front to pull out the dying Montauk daisy plant. 

I have another variety doing fine, but this one was totally brittle and literally fell out of the ground into my hands. One bag of debris to the trees, back indoors to breathe again, it being a trifle warm out there. 

Who says life's short? Today's been about three weeks long, and it's only one o'clock. 

The garden looks better, all the other plants just instantly filled in the space. There's a lesson in there somewhere.

Back after a totally down day

Yesterday was about tiredness, under the weatherness, falling asleepness, and a lack of doingstuffness. I'm back.

We had tornado warnings and heavy rain during the night. I never noticed. Sleeping.

Which accounts for the humidity today, I suppose. Not too hot, but the humidity is good for the houseplants and dry skin.

The other day I noticed at the library a brand new announcement among the book group and craft group and health group news. 

This one states firmly that NO photography, recording, videos of any kind may be made on the premises. Quite new to this library visitor who's made loads of pix in the past, Dolliver photoshoots, grip-and-grins with the library director on winning my Kindle, a lot.

Turns out there's yet another thing for library employees to look out for: evidently bands of roving right wing characters have been invading police stations and libraries, filming, recording, creating disturbance, provoking reaction then shouting about their first amendment rights. 

Now, since all the public libraries around here seem to be next door to a police station, it's quick to get help, meanwhile there's a New Rule to try to head off confrontation. We'll see how it goes. 

I was so tempted to take a pic of the notice, but heroically refrained. The staff have enough to do without being teased by the likes of me.

Meanwhile I've been working on the beaded and silver-worked figure. Hair is now out of the picture, another better idea having dawned. 

Seen from above, new ruby (!) headpiece in place

The back of the head, which will be different soon. 

I have inserted a handy skewer type thing, and the body will be slid onto it, too, as soon as I make it. I do love couching, that's where you stitch down the silver (or gold) work. Watch this space!

More roasted vegetables today: onions, garlic, ginger, celery, broccoli, leeks, carrots, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, the remaining mixed spices from the chai, seasalt.

40 minutes at 450°f

Stuffed into the last of the pita, must make my own dough again

Dessert of a fresh peach dashed with baharat, plain yogurt. 

I hugely recommend baharat with fresh peaches. It's a lovely warm spice mix because of the cinnamon and nutmeg, as well as a bit peppery. I've started using it on canteloupe, too, instead of ginger. 

Watching a matinee of All Creatures this afternoon, at least some of it. 

All in all, trying not to be completely got down by all the news I can't help with beyond the little things I already do, there are things to enjoy.

Doll's progress, and, how unusual, food

So yesterday my smoke irritated eyes improved to where I was able to do a bit on Doll's hair.  It's filling in now. 

And, once filled in, with a trim and some styling I'll move on to the next  stage which may involve a skirt enabling her to stand. Pearls are in the offing, too. I think the hair is probably the most time consuming part.

Meanwhile, a batch of biscuits, bolted flour, I love its flavor, golden raisins and walnuts chopped on my (yellow) walnut chopping board.

Made a very small batch of jam from the apricots. The flavor makes excellent jam even when not quite up to eating fresh. And there was chunk ginger.

So breakfast this sunny high summer morning was tea with jam biscuits.

Doesn't get much better than this.

Then there's lunches, plural, Roasted vegetables, always interesting.

This is a different mix. Leeks, broccoli, cauliflower, onions, I'll probably add yellow potatoes, and maybe mushrooms. Spiced with capers, red pepper flakes, Old Bay, baharat, seasalt, doused with olive oil. Now all sitting to let flavors develop before I roast them. 

Roast vegs for the new year, crochet scarf as part of organizing studio

The freezing weather continues, cold enough for windchills registering in way below zero F, cold enough that the snow squeaks when you walk on it.  Just sayin. We do get cold here in central NJ, but we make sure to whine about it when it comes.

And to roast vegetables as a defense mechanism.  

Here are sweet potatoes, microwaved tender, peeled and added in to Granny Smith apple rings, with all the spices you see in the foreground. Turmeric, mustard seeds, kosher salt, fennel seeds, Bill Veach's #2 curry powder. And one Italian sausage, divided into little chunks shared with both dishes.  I like the orange sweet potatoes for this dish. The white ones are sort of meh. 

30 minutes at 410F, would have been 400F but my hand slipped.  This is enough for several meals, one big dish into the freezer.   I really like fennel seeds in this mix.  Not a fan of fennel in its vegetable form, oddly, but the seeds are fine.  Finocchio!  introduced to it by an Italian American, long ago.  And the apple rings I prepped days ago and froze ready for whenever I felt like cooking them.  I eat much better this way than if I had to start the prep from scratch in order to cook.  Learned this from Lidia.

And the other defense mechanism is to crochet a scarf.  

The crocheting keeps your hands warm, and the openwork of double crochet is really good for trapping warm air when you wear it wrapped around a time or two.  When I do the double crochet for this kind of thing, I send the hook through the opening below, not through a stitch, to start each double crochet. That way the fabric is very flexible. The yarn is part of what I saved when I was winnowing the other day, through my supplies.  

It's beautiful, handspun llama yarn, in variegated natural colors, made in Bolivia by a women's collective, and I paid fair trade price for it.  It has lots of vegetable matter, i.e. Bolivian bits of grass, in it, easy to pick out, but I like very much that they're there. 

Oddly enough, I didn't design the dark to lighter effect so neatly. It just came out that way as I worked.  This scarf will take up both large cakes of yarn, which is fine. I originally got it for a tapestry I was doing, and other fiberarts, but still had quite a bit to use.  I will probably join the two ends, turning it over once, to make another Moebius cowl.

So that's the Keeping Warm Scheme around here. Oh, and speaking of keeping warm, I finally got all my WarmUp America blanket pieces shipped off a while back, and a lovely postcard of thanks came today!  Never expected any acknowledgment, actually, figuring they're busy people, but the postcard design is a montage of blanket parts, people knitting, people holding up finished blankets, etc, very heartwarming. And if you want to take part, go here and see what's what.

Tomorrow my second washing machine arrives, I seem to be in the habit of buying washing machines, and today required moving stuff out of the way.  Including a giant bookcase on the bottom of the staircase, around which they have to maneuver the old machine down and the new one up.  

Hoping that Handsome Son is coming for dinner tomorrow night, because he can be recruited to put back the bookcase and help me replace all the stuff on it.  Largely shoes, since it's out of the way, but I can sit on the stairs to pull boots on.

It needs to go back up one step and turn.  Easier to get it down, for me operating solo, well, there was an exciting moment when I thought it was going to fall on me and trap me in the kitchen doorway, but moving right along.. 

And he can help lug all the bags and boxes of stuff to my car for the thriftie, currently two floors up, in the studio.  Nice stuff which has outlived its time in my life. Ready to move on.  He doesn't know any of this yet, but after a nice dinner, he'll be mellow about it.

Roast vegetables and Two Fat Ladies

Revisiting roast vegetables today, with sweet potatoes, Granny Smith apple rings, hot Italian sausage, tofu, onions and various spices.  The onions were just halved then unfurled, not chopped, and the only precooked item is the sweet potato, nuked for about 15 minutes, they were big.  Otherwise it won't cook enough in the time you need for the other items.  410F oven, half an hour with a tinfoil hat on, as you see here, waiting, then half an hour sans hat.

This easily makes six meals for me, and freezes up a treat in single serving portions.

Other meals are all about farm produce, great tomatoes, fruit, herbs from my yard, all very virtuous.

I've been revisiting Two Fat Ladies, too, and if you haven't seen them,  all the episodes are on YouTube nowadays, easy to find.  Each episode is a combo of great cooking, very knowledgeable sidenotes by Clarissa, who is a brain of the first water, youngest barrister in England in her day, and spontaneous songs and other such things from Jennifer, while they're busy in the kitchen.  

They visit various touristy type places, so there's scenery, and there's the nice sense of being behind the scenes, in a convent, and in Lincoln's Inn, and cricket clubs, Aldershot military camp, and so on.  Veddy English, and very comic, most of it intentional.  And Clarissa says auregAHno for oregano, too cool.  They both come from great wealth and colorful families with all sorts of posh estates and things and they spare us the rawer facts about them (!) and the feuds. But they do give us all sorts of wild stories which definitely have the ring of truth.

They got through four seasons before Jennifer got ill and died, sadly.  Then Clarissa did seasons of other stuff, like visiting country areas for country pursuits, and I couldn't bear to watch the joy she took in hunting and killing animals and birds, and the total disdain and outright rudeness she reserved for anyone not in her elevated social circle.  So the cooking evidently brought out the best in her, stick with that if you want to watch her. 

Here and there they do something I fancy, like Tomato Tartlets which are a kind of salade nicoise (insert your own cedilla there) in pastry shells, and a pastry made from ground almonds and other things rather than flour, interesting.  Some great baking, too. They are actually very versatile, and in real life did some high end catering for all sorts of events and people.  Jennifer is always the one to point out how a recipe can be adapted for cocktail party use, she being a great fan.

Mostly they slosh incredible amounts of cream and butter about (you should see Clarissa buttering a slice of bread, cor, a week's ration there) and large amounts of alcohol.  For culinary purposes, of course.  And slabs of meat.  So a lot of it is viewing not emulating for me anyway, except that they always get the best ingredients, freshest, etc, good to copy. But great fun, and I recommend them.

Postscript to the yogurt and roasted vegetables caper

Thought you'd like to see that the yogurt was great!  very pleased with the texture and tart taste.  Since I had the rest of the roast spicy vegetables today with mashed potato, and found that the spiciness had developed overnight to the state of four alarm, good thing about the potato, it called for a nice cooling dessert.

So a dish of homemade yogurt with pure honey and a big helping of crushed walnuts found itself on the menu. I put a spoon in so you can sort of experience the texture of the yogurt.  I'll probably be able to get another batch from the end of this batch, but after that may have to buy a bit of yogurt as a starter.  It gets weaker after a time or two, and you need a new boost of the active cultures.

Meanwhile, back at the development, never a dull moment as usual.  I caught a friend just as she left for the hospital for major surgery, and established that she has rides set up, and is going to stay with another friend when they spring her.  Also let her neighbor, another mutual friend, know, so she can check on her.  No privacy for C. at the moment! she was trying to sneak away, keep the drama down, but that didn't quite work out.

Then the pet crates came home again, having successfully got their occupants safely to the airport and to an overnight stay and back home again. Neighbor plans to crate train one of the dogs who whined the whole time, to see if he can get her used to it, since she has a long car journey in her near future.

But this was mid morning, and today started early for me. Woke about 4, couldn't continue sleeping, dang, so figured what the heck, the cats insist this is a great breakfast time, may as well get up and feed them and have some coffee.  

About 5, doorbell went, and it was a neighbor from across the street, very apologetic but as she said, I was up anyway (!) and her freezer had broken down overnight and could I house three bags of food for her.  

I explained I couldn't even house most of my own farmshare, sorry, and she trotted away up the street to another wakeful friend to see if she could get her food installed in her freezer.

Shortly after that, it seemed, the landscapers arrived with industrial strength tree cutting and chipping endless racket.

Home, quiet home..and farmshare this afternoon.