And, done.

The grades are in. The books are closed. The students are still emailing, but I’m not rushing to answer them right away. I still have to pick some books for January (the bookstore really must hate me right now), but today I took off in order to finish up my sewing, stand in line at the post office, and brave the grocery stores. Here’s what I’ve learned.
1. Grocery shopping at 5p is dangerous. At 5p the week of Christmas, it’s a nuthouse.
2. People at the post office were pretty calm, given the line. I heard a stat on “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me” a week or so ago that most people begin to wig out after 8.5 minutes of waiting. Interesting.
3. I’m tired. Super tired. Mr. Pea made dinner (sausages sauteed with green pepper, mushrooms and onions, on ciabatta) and I’m just loafing on the couch. Today began with errands, filing my grades, a visit to the chiropractor (I didn’t tell you about that–it’s starting to feel like my home away from home), sewing, visiting with the neighbor, running around. The cat and I are bookends on the couch now, and I’m headed to bed soon to read.
4. Spoon roast is on sale at Whole Foods this week, which has led to a lot of googling people, which has led them here. Hi, Whole Foods Sale Shoppers! Tell me all about your roasts!

In the meantime, I’m planning dinner for Christmas eve, when Mr. Pea’s parents will be visiting. I’m thinking lasagna. I’m going to make my own ricotta and mozzarella (I haven’t made either in quite a while). Then I will be making cinnamon buns for Christmas morning, and mashed potatoes to bring to my brother’s house on Christmas day. I’ll be a busy cooking bee for the next several days. I also think I might bring a pear dessert–we got a huge box of ripe pears as a gift this morning, and while they’re tasty, we’ll not eat 7 more before they get too soft. Any suggestions?

End….of….the….semester! Enh!

I don’t often share photos of myself with you.  Not of my face, anyway.  You might get an arm on occasion, a hand clutching a cup of coffee or cocoa.  But hey, it’s the season of giving.  I give you this.  You’re probably hoping you at least get some cookies, too, and I can’t say that I blame you.

This is the last week of the semester and, of course, the last full week before Christmas.  When I think about that I kind of want to crawl under the dining room table here, wishing there were just a few more days!  But that’s ok.  Today and tomorrow I am reading the research papers of my top-level students, so that’s actually pretty fun.  They write about interesting things, like witches and wars and educational systems.  Then tomorrow night and Friday I get to watch my students perform their final group projects.  I am keenly interested in this.  They were allowed ot pick pretty much any topic–anything from US history, pre-Columbus through the Civil War–and demonstrate what they learned through research in any format they’d like.  I  know there’s at least one puppet show coming, and one ‘talk show, Springer style.’  I’m a little terrified of the latter but also very, very curious.

At the same time, we’re out of un-frozen gingerbread people *and* we’re doing a cookie swap tomorrow, so later today Mr. Pea and I will be making a batch of those divine Peppermint Chocolate Cookies (fudgy deliciousness!) from last year, mainly so we get to keep a few ourselves without indulging in the whole batch.  Oh, yum.  So that’s on the agenda, after haircuts and errands and more grading!

Last night I was tired after fielding student questions at the office and proctoring a colleague’s exam, and really just wanted a burger, some fries, and a beer.  But I didn’t cave in to that crave, particularly since on Sunday I had a cheesesteak and fries (I do have arteries I’d like to use for a while yet).  I roasted a chicken, and it turned out beautifully, which for me is no mean feat.  I patted it dry with towels, seasoned it in and out with salt, pepper, thyme and garlic powder, placed it in a deep skillet (this I think was key), rubbed the outside with half a tablespoon of butter and tossed another half inside, and popped it into a 450* oven for 20 minutes.  Then I turned it down to about 350 for another 50-60 minutes.  It was a 4 pound bird picked up on sale at Whole Foods.   It rested a bit while I made the sides–cheddar mashed potatoes and killer brussel sprouts, halved and put in a skillet with a couple of tablespoons of the juices/fat at the bottom of the chicken pan.  After they browned a bit but were still firm I added half a cup or so of water, covered the pan, and let them simmer; I opened it when they were almost done and let the liquid cook off.  Yum.  And to top it all off, I made a pan gravy with the rest of the juices, which I never ever do, but since I made the chicken in a skillet all I had to do was put it on a burner and add a little flour, plus some broth, and voila.  Heaven, and so much more rewarding (and equally tasty) to going out for burgers and fries.

Tonight, on the other hand, may be a different story!

Book Review: Made From Scratch

I have been wanting to read Jenna Woginrich’s book, Made from Scratch, for a while now.  Our library didn’t have it, but when I got a gift certificate to Amazon, it was on its way.

Woginrich’s subtitle, ‘Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life,’ was what originally drew me to the volume.  Those of you who have been reading this for a while know I enjoy making things by hand and have, over the years, made more and more stuff that way.  I haven’t bought bread in ages (save one emergency loaf six months ago), I rarely buy cookies (only the occasional Joe Joe’s!), and I like to sew.  a lot.  I’ve also gotten better at repairing sewn goods that I’ve bought, and grown my own veggies. I see what Jenna is after in her book, and I get it.

Woginrich provides lots of examples of her hit and miss homesteading out in Idaho.  I appreciate her honesty, and it helps remind a novice urbanite (or, suburbanite, now) like myself that homesteading is hard work.  Sure, sometimes I dream of a little flock of chickens laying eggs for me and a hive of bees to fertilize my plants and provide me with honey, but it’s a pretty romantic dream.  Starting those projects, as Woginrich learned, and maintaining them are hard work.  She divulges the real heartbreak she’s had in the process, but is always encouraging.  So maybe I will get a beehive someday.  But it won’t be soon.

Woginrich was very enthusiastic about bread baking.  I remember the thrill of making my first loaf of bread, and noticing just how much better it was than anything I’d bought in the store.  Dear readers have seen me make many, many loaves of bread on this blog, some with better success than others.  Woginrich provides a fairly fool-proof recipe for country white bread, which, having not made it in ages, I eagerly assembled.  It has great structure and holds up well for several days; you don’t get a lot of crumbling, which is often the case with homemade wheat breads.  It lacks a little bit in the flavor department, but adding a little more salt and swapping in butter for veggie oil might do the trick.  As it is, though, it makes excellent french toast and is a great vehicle for peanut butter.

Woginrich has written an easy read with a nice little index section.  It might be enough to get me to buy my own banjo…

Halloween!

This is my Halloween gift to you–a freakish carrot pulled by Mr. Pea when he closed down our community garden plot today.  He came home with a couple of dozen carrots–most of them enormous and stout, which makes me wonder–but this one is hte winner as our oddest veg of the year.

 

Pardon my silence this week–I’ve had a terrible setback with the vertigo, prompting panicky doctor’s visits and general mayhem.  I’ll post more soon–making some country bread right now, plus a book review.

Artisanal Cheese

I bought this cheese last week at the local farmer’s market.  The women who sell it are very sweet and let you try a whole bunch of different ones.  I have to confess that once in the summer I tried this, loved it, but was feeling poor and hot (hot as in it was 90*, not as in I felt sexy or anything).  So I sheepishly scurried away, as walking it back to my house would have resulted in some melty bacteria-filled cheese, nothing particularly lovely.

But last week when I went to the market there they were and I decided it was high time I put my money where my mouth is.  I think it’s really nice and really important to support local growers and local artisans.  I really appreciate people who make things with their hands, and I love the idea of keeping them in business.  This cheese would not be terribly pricey to one who buys nice cheese a lot, but for me, $17.50 a pound or whatever it was is well outside my usual cheddar-and-mozzarella price range.  But I got a nice little quarter-pound of this–Herbs de Provence cheese, made by Beaver Brook Farm in Lyme, CT.  It’s a creamy cheese, somewhere, texturally speaking, in between cream cheese and feta, coated with a layer of herbs.  It’s divine.  Mr. Pea brought home some crusty bread last week so we could eat some; we’ve since put some in scrambled eggs, too, which was just heavenly.  I couldn’t necessarily afford this stuff every week, but man, it was worth the few extra bucks!

Steel Cut Oats

This morning, since I had a little extra time, I made steel cut oats for breakfast.  I’ve never had them before; I usually make rolled oats but lately have seen steel cut pop up in so many places (online, magazines, etc.) that I figured it was worth a go.  Whole Foods carries them in bulk, so I could get just a little to try them, rather than getting a pricey, huge container.

Steel cut oats taste like oatmeal, but the texture is different.  They are whole groats, chopped, rather than rolled thin and flat.  They kind of pop in your mouth, which is fun.  They take a long while to cook, though I read several recipes yesterday that recommend using an overnight method or the crock pot.  The process itself is simple, only a little time-consuming.  I used a ratio of 2 cups of water and a pinch of salt to 1/2 cup of oats.  First I boiled the salted water, then added the oats, and then simmered them gently for about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.  When they were done I ate half the batch with a sliced banana and a drizzle of maple syrup.  Yummy, filling, and warm.  You can’t beat that on a fall morning!

Appreciating the Small Things

It’s been a bit of a whirlwind this past weekend–there was a death in my family, a wedding in Mr. Pea’s, a half-marathon, a nor’easter, a college ceremony, a bit of a revival of the vertigo, and a knock to the head thanks to my parents’ dog. Seriously–this was Thursday through Sunday. I did not cook–who had time? But such chaos made me reflect on small things, and how much we take them for granted when our lives seem to spin out of control.

I’ve been listening to a lot of classical music–sometimes because it’s soothing, sometimes because it suits my mood.
I really want to bake something.
I saw lots of family I hadn’t seen in a decade, easily, last week, which was really nice despite the somber circumstances.

Molly over at Mommycoddle, one of my favorite blogs, had a piece recently on appreciating the normal. Our average everydays seem pretty dull sometimes–but we miss them when they are replaced with zaniness. So, she says, we should try and appreciate the ordinary days, to notice them, to enjoy them for what they are, as there are more of them than any others and we suffer when they leave. You can read it here.

I also started reading an interesting blog last week called Small Measure. It’s written by Ashley, who lives in the hills of North Carolina and really embodies a do-it-yourself ethos that I appreciate, even if I can’t quite do as much as she does. She’s got some great posts on sustainability, cooking, canning, baking, sewing. I’ve been reading through the archives in the last few weeks, particularly those from colder months that make me want to finish the coin quilt so I can snuggle under it.

So those are my thoughts for today. I’m hoping to bake my sugar pumpkins this week so I can make some pumpkin bread, or maybe a pumpkin custard. It’s that time of year and I feel behind the curve. But that’s ok. I’ll show you my freezer soon–all those veggies from the seasonal market have it stuffed to the gills. More later this week!

A last hurrah of preserving!

Holy cow, folks.  That’s all I have to say.  Last night Mr. Pea’s mom called to tell me that their local farmstand (a huge one) was closing for the season and that everything was on sale.  Would I like anything? she asked.  But of course!  Maybe a couple squashes!  Some tomatoes!  Do they have sugar pumpkins?

This is what she sent Mr. Pea home with, after he spent his Monday off helping them with some projects.

Would you like a tally?

2 enormous boxes of field tomatoes.  I don’t even know how many pounds there are.  lots.  I am planning on blanching and freezing them, cutting out the less desireable parts and popping them in gallon bags.  And eating them.  Tonight we had one in enchiladas.

6 butternut squash.  Six.  Thankfully, they’re all under a pound.

3 acorn squash

2 enormous spaghetti squash

3 sugar pumpkins

12 ears of corn.  12.  I put one in the enchiladas tonight–why not?  I am planning on blanching and stripping the rest for freezing.

Holy cow.  I don’t have time for mass preserving, so I’m really, really grateful that the squash will last a while on their own, probably most of the winter.  I’d like to can the tomatoes, but I’m not messing around with those quart jars again after the last disaster–when I couldn’t get enough water to go over them to seal well and made a heck of a mess of my stove.  I don’t feel like buying more pint jars, though I definitely wish I’d done that in the first place way back when.  I’m very grateful for all these veggies, and I think we’ll enjoy them for months to come.

I hope next time she sends him back with a bigger freezer.

Two things

One:  I have found a blog (new to me, but around for a while) full of delicious baked goods.  It has gorgeous photography and delicious recipes.  Here, go peek at <a href=”http://www.peterandrewryan.com/baking/”>Pete Bakes!</a>

Two:  I love that my stats always shoot up on Sundays.  It seems to mainly be because I’ve blogged about Spoon Roast, one of those unusual names for a cut of meat you can’t find everywhere, and thus not frequently written about.  Every Sunday, a bunch of folks come here looking for help with their roasts.  To them I say, “Hi there!  Good luck!” and once they’ve made their roast, I hope they come back so I can ask, “Isn’t it delicious?  It makes a great topping, thinly sliced, on pizza!”  I like being a part of that warm fuzzy Sunday dinner prep.  I think most people, if they make 1 serious meal a week, make it on Sunday, and I like that I get to share in that process with perfect strangers.

Happy Sunday!  I’m only making tacos tonight, I think, but I’ll be back with recipes next week.  On tap?  Apple bread, using some of the bounty we picked last weekend.

A lone survivor!

Look, a survivor!  One tomato survived the blight.  I picked it when it was green and ripened it on the windowsill.  I can’t remember what variety it was–an heirloom, maybe called Tuscan Plum?  Something like that.  It sure was tasty.  Better luck next year.