NEVER FAR FROM FOOD

I am being kept creatively busy with lots and lots of sewing projects, both big and very small, and some knitting as well. The loom awaits, I believe next week!!

In the mean time my daily thoughts weave around food, its sights, sounds, colors, smells and how they will meld together. My father had an uncanny ability to think the ingredients and in some mental way perceive how they would taste together. I may not be as acutely able to do that, but to some extent, that talent is mine, as well.

Tucked away in an cool, unheated closet upstairs is a crate still filled, or nearly so, with butternut squash from my garden. Each time I go in there I am tempted by their still solid beauty. The other day I just could not resist picking one up and taking it to the kitchen.

One of the things I love about cooking is reading cookbooks, of which I have shelf after shelf full. So I began my journey through some favorite cookbooks, as well as some not so often used. The following recipe came from a recent favorite cookbook: Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, by Deborah Madison.

Rice and Winter Squash Gratin

The utter beauty of the opened squash, its vibrant orange is unrivaled, except perhaps in some of my home grown sweet potatoes, which have a deeper reddish hue.

*cut the squash into pieces

*cook 1 cup long-grain brown rice

*make bechamel sauce
(*cook 1/4 c. chopped onion in 3 tbs. butter in a small saucepan over low heat for 3 minutes. Stir in 2 tbs. flour and cook for 2 minutes longer. Whisk 1 1/2 c. hot milk in all at once, then cook for 20 minutes watching closely and stirring often, add salt and pepper to taste and 1/2 tsp. nutmeg)

*coarsely grate the squash...



*heat 1 tbs. olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat
*add the squash and 1/2 tsp. salt and saute until squash begins to brown in places (about 8 minutes)
*toward the end stir in 2 cloves chopped garlic and 1/4 c. chopped parsley

*combine the rice, sauce, squash and 1/2 cup grated cheese(something on the stronger side) ...taste for salt and pepper, adjust.
*turn into a buttered 2 1/2 qt. baking dish
*bake at 400 degrees for 25-30 minutes.

...and into the oven it went.

...and a short while later, out it came...

Thinking I needed something green to serve along with this colorful dish, I took out Brussels Sprouts from the freezer and roasted them at the same time.

Now, I am mostly a vegetarian, and Freddie though he ever so gladly eats anything I put on the table, does in fact, love meat every once in awhile. It just so happened I recently purchased very, very local pork....Jonel, my daughter, and her husband Andy, who live close by, raised pigs this past summer for slaughter. They did so not just to earn some money, but to provide consciously, environmentally, healthily raised pigs for friends and relatives.

Freddie's plate with the addition of a sauteed pork chop...

...and my plate without. This was such a good meal, and the butternut squash dish, a real hit.

And on another note:
A big THANK YOU to all that voted for me, be it once, or daily for the month of January, I deeply appreciate your vote! Unfortunately, for me at least as the prizes were spectacular, I was not voted the winner. You can see the winner, Jessica, and her winning essay at http://celebratewithorganic.com/winner

A SMALL SPACE

A very important part of my life is centered around creativity. I love to create...be it a woven rug, a knit sweater, a fine meal, or a poem, it is the creating that draws me, the making of the thing.

However, my creativity has been, so to speak, flushed away the past several weeks. When we first moved into this house seventeen years ago, I was struck by the very pink, and I mean very pink, bathroom fixtures: tub, sink and toilet. Not only was I confronted with this pink, my least favorite color, but there were also grayish plastic tiles on the lower half of this very tiny, 5 x 8' at the most, bathroom. We have lived with it all these years, my husband far more comfortable with it than I.

Finally a make-over was on the horizon. Initially I wanted to replace the pink fixtures, especially the toilet which all these years has been borne a very ugly hard-water stain, that no matter what I did, I could not remove. (We have spring water pumped directly into the house, thus lots of minerals.)

The bathroom as it has been for years and years.

I had in mind to replace the tub with an old claw-foot. After actually hunting a couple of them up, I realized that they would literally overwhelm this small space. Looking at new tubs, nothing seemed as sturdy and nice as this pink (adobe, is what I've called it all these years) tub. So, I thought perhaps I could design the room so that the pink would look fine. But the toilet, what to do about that? Researching led me to white-vinegar soaked rags, and a pumice stone, and lots of elbow grease. It worked!!! So, new plan, devise a bathroom I liked and still keep the pink.

(The sink appears to me to be a lighter shade than the toilet and the tub, but nothing I could do about that.)

When I individually chiseled each and every plastic tile off the walls, what was left was a rough grout, or paste, in a beautiful yellowish-orangish-beige color that made the pink take on a brown tint. I loved that color. After much consultation and many paint color chips, I settled on what was called yellow-squash.

I have always loved wainscoting, especially in old homes, and that is what I opted to have done to the lower walls, with a nice trim.


The ceiling fixtures in this entire house are basically a bare bulb screwed into some kind of a not-to-fancy receptacle. I replaced the bathroom ceiling fixture....

...with this.

And if you look at the first photo and pay attention to the floor, it was a pretty horrible linoleum with sparkles scattered here and there. We realized that beneath it were the beautiful hardwood boards that the rest of the house has...so up with the linoleum, and on to a lot of hard work.

Which by the way, was well worth it.

I am not finished with this project yet. I still want to accessorize it with shelves and towel fixtures that suit the space. These I have not found yet, but I will take my time, after all it took seventeen years to get this far.

And although I have continued writing during this time, I haven't been weaving. Hopefully in the next two weeks, the looms will be going!!

A FOOD ADVENTURE

The kitchen was the heart of our home when I was growing up. Our life, it is easy to say, centered around food...good homegrown, homemade, slow food. There were lots of cooks in my home, from my grandmother, my aunt, my mother, to the top chef, my father.

My father made all things Italian, rather Sicilian, but one of the things he never made was gnocchi...pronounced neo-key and not ga-no-key, as I have heard it referred to. So growing up I never had gnocchi, although I had seen it on restaurant menus. And all of my adult life, I have never tried it.

Of late, I seem to see gnocchi everywhere...in my cooking magazines...on menus...in cookbooks. So the other day, out of the blue, I decided to make it and make my grandmother's sauce to go with it.

Since I have started roasting my tomatoes straight from the garden and making a wonderful, fresh tasting roasted tomato sauce, I have not made this family style spaghetti sauce. I thought it fitting to do so for this endeavor, although I did cheat a bit omitting the pork butt and the beef roast. This sauce had home canned tomatoes, meatballs, and Italian sausage, and it simmered on the back of the stove for hours. The aroma transported me to the kitchen on Liberty Street in Fredonia, NY.

Sauteing the meatballs and the sausage before dropping into the sauce.

The gnocchi recipe:

3 cups mashed (unadorned) potatoes (I used my own Yukon Golds)
1 egg
2 egg whites
2 cups flour
pinch of salt
fresh ground black pepper

*Cook, cool, and finely mash the potatoes
*add all other ingredients
*knead until a soft dough is achieved
*if necessary add more flour so it is not too sticky
*place in the refrigerator for at least an hour

Divide the dough into six to eight pieces...

Roll out into ropes about the size of your little finger...

run the tines of a fork along the 'rope' and then snip into small pieces, placing them on a cookie sheet with either waxed paper or parchment paper.

(At this point you could place the tray into the freezer and when frozen put the individual pieces into a container and freeze for later use...or you could use immediately.)

...topped with sauce, meatballs and sausage...

...a loaf of bread straight out of the oven...

...a fresh salad, and a good glass of red wine...

It proved to be a wonderful meal!
Still, as much as I liked the gnocchi, personally I still prefer a good pasta, such as rigatoni.

MY TIME HAS COME

And the heavens opened...and rained down upon us, pure and white, light and fluffy, our first real snow!

It did not take me long to don my skis and take the loop from my garden, up through the woods, over the hills, across the road, along Jug Creek and back.

My dog, leaping eagerly as she heard me coming up the basement stairs clanking the skis and poles.

I know I've said this here before, but even the lowliest of weeds seem so beautiful
when framed by the snow.

It is difficult for me not to take a photo of each and every of the thousands upon thousands of dried 'weeds' covering the fields. Their beauty is truly stunning to me.

They seem graceful and poised at the same time, and perfect in their place.

And the burdock bends and curves while inviting one to really look at what it is, stark against the pure white.

This lovely bunch of red berries hanging from the bush on our front lawn
shouts out to be noticed.

How beautiful the world is in the winter!

!! ALLELUIA !!

MISSING WINTER

Today is January 10th and this is what it looks like out my cabin window. It is in the low fifties, and despite the beauty of the day, I am lamenting we have no winter.

The ground is bare
and brown.
Dried and broken,
nearly beyond recognition,
leaves scatter themselves in the breeze,

and as I walk back to my cabin
my feet cannot avoid the plethora

of pine cones
littered in my path.
I do not mind the
crunch, crunch, crunch.

Still I ache for snow
on this January day,
when at 50 degrees
it seems more like spring.


My skis,
forlorn upright soldiers
lean against the too
warm bricks
of the basement wall
dejectedly,
longing,
longing as do I
for the shush, shush, shush
of winters past.


Longing for the woods,
for the densely white silence
that opens up
and takes us deeply in
until we disperse
our cellular structure
and are no more.

And there just alongside our spring, the grass is winter beautiful, but it is days gone now, for it is no longer cold enough. I pray that global warming has not so altered our seasons that we bypass winter...where silence and beauty prevail.

MOMENTS

January 2012.
Winter...
my favorite season. Yet, there is no snow upon the ground, and I have skied but once this year. I can't help but regret the dire lack of snow, and with the 2 degrees below zero this morning, wish deeply that along with this bitter cold, were the beauty of the snow.

Still, as I walked back to the house from my cabin this morning, I could not help but be struck by the intense beauty of the trees against the sky...

assuring me that there are many facets of winter, and beauty is abundant everywhere, at all times.

These trees, abandon in their beauty, offer a wildness that hints of surprises as they fling themselves into the morning. I, too, shall fling myself into this day, into this year, hopefully with a little wildness of my own. I hope in this coming year to keep in the forefront of my mind, that the present moment offers everything.

One of the reasons that winter is my favorite season is the trees. Bereft of their leaves, stark against the sky, they seem filled with life, and vigor, and a beauty I can not elucidate, no matter how I try.

May I be always be awake in the moment.