A Day in my Kitchen...

I've had a lot on my mind lately, and sometimes the best thing I can do to get grounded is to spend a whole day in the kitchen.  Fortunately, today, I was able to.  When I went in the kitchen early this morning, I saw this... if you look closely, you can see two quart jars of sprouting wheat over there.  On the counter is a little paper napkin with 4 persimmon seeds drying. (That is from my first EVER persimmon off of our young persimmon trees.)  On the stove is a bowl with a batch of the crock pot sourdough rye bread that has been fermenting since yesterday.  Sitting on top of the toaster is an African violet pot.  I want to get one to plant in it, so I set it there to help me remember.  In the foreground is my little sourdough crock.

 

 I decided to make some Vegetable-Beef soup. Here are some of the ingredients gathered together... frozen tomatoes, green peppers, onions, frozen cooked lentils, a couple of large garlic cloves, 2 carrots, 2 pints of frozen stock, some frozen corn, a cabbage and some frozen shank bone sections.

 The crockpot bread is done!

 The Essene bread is baking:

 Here are the shank beef bone slices in my stainless steel pressure saucepan.  Can you believe it?  I bought that at a thrift store for $10 !!!  I was thrilled.  I've wished for one for a long time.  Cooking the beef in here with a quart of water not only makes very tender beef, but also some more broth for the soup.

 Here it is, on the flame:

 And here is the soup pot with most of the ingredients in it.  I think that is a beautiful sight!

 The beef shanks are cooked nicely.  See the yummy and healthy bone marrow there?  I cut up the meat and set it aside to put in the soup at the end, so it wouldn't just fall apart.  The broth went into the soup pot and the bones and fat went into a jar in the freezer where I collect things to make stock.

 8, 1/2-gallon jars that I just emptied of fresh goat milk... We save it up until there are 4 gallons and then I make a batch of my cheddar cheese.

 Here's all that milk in my huge pot I use for making cheese:

 Now the jars are clean!

 Stirring the curd as the pan sits in a sink of warm water before draining:

 Here is the lovely curd from all of that milk!

 Now the cheese is in the press.  It will stay there until tomorrow morning.

 And here is the Essene bread and the crock pot rye cooling:

Today was a soup/bread/cheese day.  I feel like I accomplished a lot, and it was very therapeutic. What do you do to take your mind off of your worries?

Am I the only one?

I have a jacket that I bought about 12 years ago.  It is down-filled and has given me a lot of service.  It has a nice comfy hood and snaps at the wrists, so is very warm and cozy.  In recent years, since it "has seen better days,"  I mainly use it to go outside and work in the winter or to milk the goats.  Two years ago, the zipper broke.  Now, please understand, I sew for other folks all of the time and have replaced zippers in many coats and jackets.  I even posted a very popular tutorial on how to do it HERE.  You would think I would have immediately replaced my own zipper, right?  Sigh....  No, I just did it a few weeks ago, after struggling with no zipper in my winter work jacket.  That has got to be the height of laziness.  I wore it for the first time a few days ago, and I have to tell you, zipping up that nice, sturdy, metal zipper made me very happy!  WHY do I do this to myself? 

I thought this would be a good time to mention the tutorial, as winter is fast approaching and some of you Gentle Readers might not know it is on my blog.

Here is my jacket with the new zipper!  Yay!!!

Green Tomatoes...

By Monday, we will be having freezing temperatures, so today I went out to the garden and picked all of the green tomatoes.  Here you can see them laid out in cardboard boxes. I covered the boxes with a light blanket.  Not all of them will make it, of course, but many will ripen and be perfectly lovely within the next few weeks.  If I'm lucky, there could even be one for Christmas!

I also picked the rest of the peppers.  And here they are:

The only things left to do are to plant garlic cloves, dig the rest of the potatoes and put the garden "to bed."

The wood rack is full in the room where our wood heating stove is.  The stove is all cleaned out and a fire is laid, ready for that moment when I can't take the cold anymore.  :)

Come on, winter!!! 

The easiest bread I ever made ~ Chapter 3

Here is my third loaf of no - knead sourdough crock pot rye bread.  I like this one even better than the first two!  My husband even likes it!  I wanted to tell you about the changes I made.  Please go here to see the basic recipe.

Here is how I changed it.

After I got all of the ingredients together, I added more rye flour, a little at a time, until the dough was as stiff as one would make it if you were going to knead it.  The previous renditions made a very moist dough.  So, when I got done, it was fairly stiff. 

In the morning, I buttered the little crock pot thoroughly, and just dumped the dough in there without any shaping, put on the lid, set it on "high" and let it bake for 2 hours.  Then I took it out and let it cool.

:)

Winter is coming...

It is supposed to get below freezing by Monday.  Today, I brought in the houseplants and some potted herbs from outside.  It is hard to believe it is actually getting chilly, after the brutal hot and dry summer we just endured.  I am almost looking forward to the cold weather!

A Still Life...

As I mentioned in the last post, I am not a quilter.  Well, I am not an artist or a photographer either.  I hope this photo shows up well.  I went out to the garden to see what I could find to put in a stir-fry for our supper and came back with the front of my shirt piled with these items... a couple green tomatoes, one small paste tomato (which I promptly ate), flat-leaved parsley, a little broccoli and some fresh basil.

As it was sitting there on the cutting board, it just looked so beautiful and I realized, aha!  That must be how "still life" paintings were born.  Someone(s) just happened to have such a lovely scene on their table and decided it would make a nice painting.

Just some early Autumn musings...

I am not a quilter...

Our youngest son recently got married.  I started a "crazy" quilt for them in June and Finally Got It Finished! I don't have any way to hang it up to show the whole thing at once, so I just draped it over our bed.

The top is pieced out of bits and odds and ends that I had collected from other projects through the years plus a few small pieces I had purchased in a bundle from fabric.com quite a while ago.  I was able to make the bias binding out of just one yard of fabric, using this tutorial.

There are 64 blocks, all sewn onto 10.5 inch squares of muslin fabric.  After making each block, I used decorative stitching to secure between each little piece. It makes it more sturdy and also makes it prettier!  The final dimensions are 80 inches by 80 inches.

The batting is a cotton batting that I bought, by-the-yard at a fabric store.

The backing is a piece of bleached muslin that is wide enough (well over 100 inches) to cover the back in one piece.  That was nice.

After it was all put together, I used a little thing on my machine that makes a small heart, to tack the layers together.

I will be mailing it to them next week.  I hope they will be pleased.  It certainly was fun to make.  When I began, since I am NOT a quilter, I somehow thought that making a crazy quilt would be easier and faster than making a quilt from a pattern.  Note to self:  You were wrong.  :)

This post is linked to Simple Lives Thursday #115 ~! and... Fantabulous Friday #32 
AND WIP Wednesday! Also... Homemade Monday #6