On Monday before we left to come home, we went down to the vegetable patch to harvest some potatoes.
Here is a picture of Karin digging up some of the heirloom fingerling potatoes she likes.
And I took this picture because there was just something about this old outhouse, weathered and standing out in the field, that seemed so picturesque and perfect.
Here are some pictures you might enjoy of our puppy (we can’t call her “new” anymore, can we?), Beulah Mae. On Sunday afternoon we went for a drive up the North Shore, beyond Grand Marais and past Five Mile Rock to a long beach that is good for walking and agate-hunting.
Beulah and Harald walking on the beach.
Isn’t she growing up into a beautiful dog?
Proof for all those who think I’ve lost weight – clearly it isn’t so! But Beulah loves me just the same.
What is one wonderful and delicious way to spend your Labor Day weekend on a relaxing trip to the North Shore? Why, making jelly, of course! After we arrived on Saturday morning, Karin took me on a trip around the land on the Gator and we stopped by one apple tree on the way toward the garden to check out the squash and cabbage and potatoes and ….
Well, one thing led to another and before you know it, Karin had very helpfully driven me around to some particularly good apple and crabapple trees and we headed back to the house with bags of our fresh-picked fruit. A quick conference with Helen and Kaare and we were back on the Gator headed down to a few more crabapple trees to pick even more fruit. And Helen went out later and picked a while bunch of really beautiful pink crabapples from a tree she knew about.
When it was all said and done, we took about 45 pounds of apples (or thereabouts) and with some ingenuity, a little hard work, the help of a cooler, strong stick and a clean pillow case (not to mention a small mountain of sugar), we had turned that fruit into 56 jars of apple-crabapple jelly. We had fun coming up with a name (after all, you don’t expect us NOT to christen it, do you?) and think we will hereafter refer to it as:
It was a blast. And a little bittersweet, because it reminded me of making jelly or preserves with my Grandma on summer days. Below are some pictures taken from all the fun we had:
Me cleaning crabapples – for what seemed a very long time!
What a colorful batch of crabapple fruit, huh?
The lovely, rosey-pink crabapples that Helen found and picked.
Helen cleaning and cutting her pink crabapples.
Fruit in the pot, about to get boiled.
Pots of fruit boiling away on the stove to render the needed juice.
The bag of cooked and crushed fruit, draining into a cooler, the only thing we had that was big enough.
The jellymaker and his bag. Dontchaknow a watched bag never drains!
The next day, cooking some juice to make it into jelly.
Jars and lids sterilizing on the stove, jelly cooking in the back.
Adding the sugar to the boiling juice.
Sugar added, the juice bubbling up thick and hot like lava.
Getting the jars out of the boiling water and ready to fill.
The hot, clear crabapple jelly before it gets canned.
Filling the jars with the lucious pink liquid.
Jars that just came out of their hot water bath, cooling and sealing.
The sun shone on the beautiful jars of jelly.
The jellymakers and the delicious product of their labors.
That’s right, we are! Next Tuesday, in fact. When I took Beulah to the vet yesterday to be checked for a possible ear infection (turns out she has a nasty case of one), there was the most adorable little kitten at the vet with a sign that he was looking for a good home. He was found hiding in the roots of an Sweet Maple tree on a farm and had a bad upper respiratory infection and eye infection. The eye infection was so bad that his third eyelid had adhered to his cornea. An operation fixed that and his eye seems to be healing nicely. When I went over to check the little guy out, he was so playful and even at only 8 weeks you can tell he’s got an absolutely sparkling personality. I called Harald on my cell phone and he agreed to come by after work to check him out. Right now, his name is Simon Jr., because he looks a lot like the other cat, Simon, that has a permanent home at Gehrman Animal Hospital. All the staff have been calling him J.R. We’ll pick a new name, course, and our top two choices so far are Cletus and Tofu, though we are still searching for the perfect name for him. The vet has agreed to hold him until we get back in town next week so we will pick him up on Tuesday and bring him home and have a trial run with Cleo to see if she will accept him. We already took him out of his cage and let him play with Beulah and she was so glad to finally have a cat to play with. He was fearless with her and liked the licks and attention. So keep your fingers crossed that all goes well and we have a new addition to the ever larger brood at Douglas Avenue!
For days now I’ve been wanting to post a picture of a quilt I finished at the Gibbon retreat last weekend for my dearest and most beloved of friends, Nancy. But she reads my blog so I couldn’t give it away! Well, I just got a phone call from Nancy that FedEx had delivered her package and she got it opened after finishing a rush and now she’s all verklempt over realizing it was made just because I love her and she’s such a spectacular person. So here’s the picture. I’m sorry it took so long girl! Hopefully, the matching pillow shams won’t take as long as the quilt did. Hey, it’s only about two years overdue!
When your friends cry tears of happiness, you know you did good.
Update: Credit must be paid. The quilting in this quilt was done by another dear friend and spectacular soul, Maxine Rosenthal, she of One-Block Wonders fame and soon to be famous for so much more. Of course, she’s already a legend in my mind!
I can’t even begin to tell you all what a good time I had and how much I enjoyed myself this past weekend! It was annual trek to Gibbon, Minnesota and Gallagher’s Retreat Center for my local quilt guild – we call ourselves Frayed Edges. It was so nice to reconnect with my quilting buddies by spending time with them. I got more sewing done that I’ve probably gotten done in the past 2-3 years, and even after I got home last night and unpacked I sat down to sew a little more. At the retreat I finally got finished one quilt that I’ve been working on a while. I got a top put together and the borders on for a “friendship quilt” that various quilt guild buddies had made for me. And I got H’s 40th birthday quilt (note: He turns 45 in May) finally laid out on the design wall, arranged pleasingly, and the pieces all numbered for assembly so I don’t have to have the whole thing up on the wall anymore. I even got the top two feet or so of his quilt top pieced. H came in the sewing room and suggested we do some things to liven it up and make it a more enjoyable room in the house. I think he’s got the right idea! I also went to the Bird Island quilt store and bought some kits of quilts I want to make. I’m definitely taking four days next summer to go again. I’ve decided if I have only one quilt-related trip a year, it’s going to be to go on retreat with this guild. They are all my closest quilting friends and I enjoy their company so much.
Every time I go to Gibbon I swear I’m going to buy myself one of those steam generator irons they have there because it makes everything so easy to press. I can’t believe it, but I did it this time. I bought myself one of those Rowenta steam generator irons. My friend Phyllis mentioned a Rowenta professional model she likes, but that was over $100 just for an ordinary iron. And Allbrands.com had a brand new Rowenta DG-980 (the one with the removable water tank) for the right price so I bought it. Good lord this turned out to be an expensive weekend. Thinking about all those cotton shirts I can iron more easily for the two of us makes me regret it a little less. On the other hand, I have to remind myself that I haven’t bought fabric in well over a year, so splurging a little this one time isn’t quite so bad (how’s that for rationalization, eh?) . I suppose if you don’t spend hours and hours pressing fabric like most of us do you would not understand why we make such a big deal over our irons. Even the very best home iron model usually isn’t strong enough to keep up with a serious quilter. I can burn through an iron in less than a year when I’m sewing a lot. And I usually buy very good quality ones. This iron will hold quite a lot of water and give 1.5 hours of uninterrupted, pressurized steam. You should see how perfectly flat your blocks come out when you press them in Gibbon! Hopefully my iron will arrive soon.
The best part of the weekend is the uninterrupted sewing/working time. No one had to worry about food (the B&B owner caters it), or laundry, or phones, or kids, or pets, or partners or *anything*. All we had to do was sew and eat every now and then. Total creative isolation – it was heaven! Most people were up and sewing in the work room by 9:00 am and except for breaks for lunch and dinner, people would still be sewing well past 11:00 at night. One night, most people didn’t get to bed until 2:00 A.M.! I made it to bed every night by 10:30 or so, but some of those women are like machines! I got to stay in the front bedroom this time. I’ve haven’t stayed in that room before. It was lovely and quiet and cheerful all done up in yellows and blues and I slept so good both nights. Not to mention what a lovely drive through the country I make to get to this place. You go through farm fields and quaint little towns. On the way home, I went down one farmer’s road to the house, following the signs for freshly harvested vegetables and came home with everything to make ratatouille last night, which we ate for dinner. All in all, it was just about the perfect weekend I would say!
Harald’s quilt up on the design wall.
Joan putting together her quilt made from Maxine Rosenthal’s book “One Block Wonders.”
The working room behind the house at Gallagher’s Retreat.
Five of us from Frayed Edges who were present at this retreat. From left to right we are, Susan, Boyd, Phyllis, Joan and Kathy.
Harald just call to tell me that he would be out of town over the second weekend in November. OK, I wondered, what for? He just got a call that he an another teacher had been accepted as presenters at the bi-annual Minnesota Reading Association in Duluth. So my sweetie will be up on the North Shore, sharing what he knows to a group of earnest listeners. As he progresses in his doctoral program, these conference presentations are important. I can’t begin to tell you how proud I am of him. I always knew he was star material, and now he will get to show that to others, too!
I know I have been terribly tardy about posting pics of our new puppy. She grows up so much each week and she’s now more than twice as big as when we picked her up in June. So all you puppy lovers out there, here are some more Beulah pictures taken recently.
Looking perfectly adorable and nothing but loveable.
She rarely stops moving long enough to get a good shot, but she must have been tired when this picture was taken!
Beulah trying to figure out whether going down the steps is as much of an option as going up the steps, and Cleo sitting a few steps above her – because she likes to tease Beulah into chasing her around the house, especially if Beulah isn’t paying any attention to her.
Now you knows I loves me some salty food. Yes I do! Sometimes I just crave something salty, like some hot french fries or potato chips. And, of course, I have an unhealthy love of salting my food gently. Now those of you who know Harald know that he can’t stand salty things, for the most part. Well, at least one of us has made that particularly healthy decision. But I’m finding this particular book, Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky and fun and interesting read. As Anthony Bourdain says, this book is “a must have for any serious cook or foodie.”
From the publisher’s web site comes this: “Mark Kurlansky, the bestselling author of Cod and The Basque History of the World, here turns his attention to a common household item with a long and intriguing history: salt. The only rock we eat, salt has shaped civilization from the very beginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part of the history of humankind. A substance so valuable it served as currency, salt has influenced the establishment of trade routes and cities, provoked and financed wars, secured empires, and inspired revolutions. Populated by colorful characters and filled with an unending series of fascinating details, Kurlansky’s kaleidoscopic history is a supremely entertaining, multi-layered masterpiece.”
You may know that there are few things I enjoy as much as a really fine potato salad. My bestest friend, Nancy, joins me in my unbridled love for the stuff. So you can imagine my surprise and delight when I came across a book not to long ago of nothing but potato salad recipes. “Potato Salad: Fifty Favorite Recipes” by Barbara Lauterbach has, amongst other things, turned many people I know (thanks to the frequency with which I’ve made it) onto the magic of using orange and rosemary as the predominant flavors in a potato salad. If you buy this book for no other reason, by it for the Orange-Rosemary Potato Salad recipe (the Seattle Times has an adaptation of this recipe here) and experience the revelation for yourself. It’s magical. Music in your mouth. Or as one guest said “Definitely NOT your mother’s potato salad!”
Anyway, I’ve had (and made) a whole lot of southern-style potato salad in my life but the recipe from this book (with modifications noted) will be my new master recipe for southern potato salad. Without further ado, I present you with:
Blue Ribbon Southern Potato Salad
8 red or brown all-purpose potatoes, peeled and cut in 1/2-inch cubes
1/2 cup diced green celery
1/2 cup diced green bell pepper
1/4 diced yellow onion
3 hard-boiled eggs, chopped
1 jar (8 oz) sweet pickle cubes or 1 cup diced sweet pickle
1 small jar (4 oz) pimientos, drained, dried on paper towels and diced
Dressing:
1 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup sour cream
1 1/2 teaspoons yellow mustard
dash of sugar
dash of salt
Steam potatoes, testing for doneness after 8 minutes. Continue to cook until done but not overly soft. Drain and let cool.
In a large bowl, mix together the cooled potatoes, celery, green bell pepper, onion, eggs, pickle cubes and pimientos.
To make the dressing, in a separate bowl, mix together the mayonnaise, sour cream, mustard, sugar and salt. Add to the potato mixture, toss gently but thoroughly, cover, and chill before serving.
Boyd notes:
1. I used Yukon Gold potatoes. You can get away with boiling them gently if you are *very* careful not to overcook them.
2. I took a pointer from an old Cooks Illustrated test kitchen article and spread them out on a cookie sheet in a single layer to cool them. While still warm, I sprinkled them with salt, pepper and sprinkled some sweet pickle juice on them. Then I let them cool *completely* to room temperature.
3. I used a small jar of cornichons instead of pickle cubes or relish. I have one of those mini food processors I whizzed them in for a few seconds to chop them up. The juice I saved for use as noted above.
4. I added a small amount of chopped capers and some fresh finely chopped parsley to mine.
5. I grate my onion instead of dicing it.
6. I add a teaspoon or so (maybe more) of Dijon to the dressing (in addition to the yellow mustard) because I like the extra punch of more mustard flavor.
7. I also have to do what my grandma always did and add some egg slices and a sprinkle of paprika on top before I chill it. Tradition, dontchaknow!
