Category Archives: food and cooking

October Flora

food and cooking, garden


Swiss chard is the most beautiful thing in my garden right now. I did make a tart using it, but the recipe needs work. You can see how crumbly it was, with currants and walnuts falling around.

Also I cooked it too hot, forgetting to reduce the heat, so the crust got too brown. But it was yummy.


I don’t seem to have the flowers that bloom this time of year, but that’s not because they aren’t prolific in some places around here. Like the church garden, where I couldn’t take pictures this week because my camera is not working. I found this hollyhock from last October in my files, so I could show something in the light-and-bright category, and leave my last post behind in its Oreo dirt.

Worms are Tempting Me

art, food and cooking, odds and ends

I don’t like Halloween, and we never participated in the “festivities” with our kids, but we do usually give out candy if we are home. I hate spending the money for it, too! When I was a trick-or-treating child, many people would give us homemade cookies or candy. I know that’s not cool these days.

I think the uncoolness started with evil people giving poisoned cookies, or was it an urban myth? You’d think that would discourage parents from sending kids out, period, but it just means that the homey treats will be thrown out.

Children who carry around pillowcases full of sugary junk can afford to turn up their noses at a mere cookie. BUT I doubt they would find this treat cooked up by Macheesmo boring. I am sorely tempted to get more into the icky Halloween spirit just so I can make them.

Baby Week

family, food and cooking, home, nature, pie, travel, ,


During the week that Seventh Grandson was born, I did take quite a few pictures, but I only lately managed to make them available to my blog. I present a sketchy photo journal of my time here with the family so far.

When I arrived in town, walking was the order of the day. Behind the hospital nature paths wind about, surrounded by ponds and trees such as these birches.

 

 

I am sleeping in a room with this quilt. A grandma in H’s church made this quilt as a wedding present last year. This year she sewed a smaller quilt for Baby.

During the waiting time I sat in a corner of the hospital room and worked on potholder tops. This one uses some scraps from the crib quilt I made earlier.

After a while I did a second free-form design in aqua and purple.

In my sewing basket were two ratty and thin potholders I had basted together already. While H. was in early labor I put a bright spicy new cover on them/it. That item doesn’t need to go home with me and get stuffed and backed, so I gave it to her potholder drawer already.

 

 

Fast forward to Day 3 or 4, and Baby is wrapped in The Quilt, showing its cozy Minky backing.

I took a video of eight deer on the back lawn, while the fawns were prancing about playing with each other. And this still shot of one of the deer looking into the laundry room window. The deer often study us through the windows when we are watching them.
It was raining the first two days of Baby’s life, and when the rain stopped, the leaves had become autumnal.
Some Jonagolds that we got at the apple farm ten days ago went into this pie, which I baked in H’s convection oven. Maybe the oven is the reason it came out looking so perfect? It didn’t taste perfect, though, because those apples don’t have enough complexity in their flavor.

Eleanor of Aquitaine is one of the household cats, and the most curious about this new resident.

She caught her first mouse this week.

 

 

 

When Baby was six days old, H. wrapped him up in a Moby wrap and we three took a walk. We ended up at the back of their property, with its big Ponderosa pines…

 

…and their cones.
The maple tree in the back yard is changing. Baby is changing every day. I wish we lived in clans all together, so I wouldn’t have to leave one part of the family to go be with another. It’s a reminder that this world, always leaving something longed-for, is not our true home.

Waiting-and Ropas Viejas

animals, family, food and cooking, travel

I’m at my daughter’s in the north country, waiting on Baby to arrive. And I brought the recipe with me for the spicy shredded beef the Mexicans call Ropas Viejas. Several people said they would like that recipe after I mentioned having made it in my last post. I got this recipe from Sunset Magazine a long time ago.
This is just a photo copied from my first post about this place, because it’s a shame not to have a picture, it is so lovely up here. As soon as I arrived I glimpsed another part of the deer clan that call it home as well, Crazy Doe and her fawn, and Split Ear (young buck). Maybe I will get some more deer pictures while I am here.

Ropas Viejas

2# boneless beef chuck, trimmed of most of the fat
Place in a 5-6-quart pan with 1/4 cup of water. (I always use cast iron, but I don’t think it’s necessary.) Cover and cook over medium heat for 30 minutes. Uncover and cook until liquid boils away and meat is well-browned; turn as needed.

Lift out meat. To pan, add 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar; scrape to loosen browned bits. Stir in 1 1/2 cups beef broth, 2 tablespoons chili powder, and 1 teaspoon ground cumin.

Return meat to the pan, bring to a boil, cover, and simmer over medium heat until meat is very tender and easily pulled apart, about 2 hours.

Let meat cool, then tear into shreds. Mix with remaining pan juices. Use to fill enchiladas or burritos.