Prompt this week is to share an image inspired by dinnertime — whether you take a photo of food or simply shoot during the evening hours is up to you!
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Harken back to the 17th century for the preparation for the evening meal at Plimouth Plantation — Plymouth, MA. This picture was taken Oct 2015.
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/photo-challenges/dinnertime/
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Tagged food, Massachusetts, meals, New England, Photographs, Pilgrims, postaweek, postaweek/postaday, weekly prompt
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Tagged DIY, food, illustration, recipe, Thanksgiving
I’ve got the spring planning bug pretty bad right now.
I’ve been studying all of the seed catalogs that keep showing up, drawing out plans for the gardens, making plans to add more garden space (I know…..scary!), and thinking about all of the projects and cleanup I need to do. The place is kind of a wreck right now, since none of us wants to be out in the cold more than necessary. I’ve got A LOT of work ahead of me if this place isn’t going to continue to look like it got hit with the ugly stick!
What I’m focused on right now, though, is seed starting. I am ordering a new cover for my tiny greenhouse because it’s torn pretty badly and won’t hold any heat in or keep out the bugs and weather. Within the next week to week and a half I plan to start tomato and pepper seeds in it. This is going to be my year, darn it! Everything I’ve learned over the last few years will hopefully pay off this summer.
Sadly, it’s still February, and we probably have at least one more snow before I can fully give in to spring fever.
Now, on to sauce!
When I was in high school, I dated this guy who was two or three years ahead of me. We were together for a good two years, right into the second year of college. At the time, we had similar interests; Ann Rice was hugely popular and we were both avid readers of her books. He was big into Dungeons and Dragons, and I *gasp* even dabbled in it a bit myself (I just lost some major cool points there, I know. Or gained a lot, perhaps. It depends on what end of the geek/nerd spectrum you fall, I think). Either way, we were together long enough that I spent many, many nights with his parents for dinner. His dad came from a Sicilian family, and his mom decidedly did not. She was a sweet lady, though, and really tried her best to put familiar Italian dishes in the table. The trouble was…….she really sucked at making sauce. And sauce is pretty central to a lot of your staple Italian dishes.
It was thin and liquidy; more soup than sauce, lacking any body or flavor. When it was poured over your pasta, it disappeared under them and pooled around the sides of it, but not sticking to it at all. I died a bit inside whenever I saw her making it. I’m pretty sure she simply opened a can of tomato sauce and mixed it with an equal portion of water. Maybe she added spices? If she did, you wouldn’t have known.
I think about her every damn time I make pasta sauce, to this day. About how I wish I could go back and show her how to make a kick-ass sauce in next to no time any night of the week.
Instead, I’m going to post it here, in case anyone else needs some help with their sauce game.
First, you’ll need more than tomato sauce and water.
I like to pour a generous glug of olive oil into a sturdy pot – usually one of my cast iron dutch ovens.
Then I add chopped red onion – about half of a fairly good sized one. Once that has sauteed over medium to medium-high heat, I add at least two heaping tablespoons of minced garlic. Garlic is GOOD.
I let them simmer together until they are getting good and fragrant and then I add in some dried oregano, dried basil, dried parsley, dried red pepper (not too much or it will be spicy!), and salt. I swirl that around a bit and let it fill the kitchen with its comforting and enticing aromas. Yum.
Next I add a good 1/3 cup or so of red wine. Honestly, and old cheap red wine will do, so if you’re not a wine drinker and you only buy it for cooking, you can absolutely use the $3 Trader Joes brand. As for me, I very much enjoy red wine, and making pasta sauce is a great excuse to open a bottle. A glug for the pot, a glass for me! With Italian, I’m partial to a good Amarone or Barolo, but you do you!
The only caveat here is the sweetness of the sauce. I know some people like their sauce a bit on the sweeter side, and add sugar. I am here to tell you that there is enough natural sugar in the wine to round out the saltiness perfectly, but if you want it a little sweeter, you can use a sweeter red wine to achieve it, and you don’t need to use sugar.
Once the wine has simmered down and reduced most of the way (I like for there to still be about 1/4 to 1/8 cup), I add a big can of crushed tomatoes.
NOT TOMATO SAUCE. It will not give your finished product much texture or flavor. If you need your sauce to be a bit thinner, you can always add a smaller can of tomato sauce, but your main tomato ingredient should be chunky, not thin.
San Marzano is my favorite to use. It has a much less “tinny” taste to it. And the gorgeous Italian there is one of my favorite reds to use/drink.
In the summer, when I’ve had a good tomato crop, I will substitute slow-roasted tomatoes for the crushed tomatoes, and puree some fresh tomatoes to keep it from being too thick. But in the interest of saving time, a good can of crushed tomatoes will do.
See the red wine that’s reduced around the edges of the pot? Adds such a lovely depth of flavor.
Now I turn the heat to low and let it simmer for about 45 minutes or so.
The finished sauce will stand up nicely to your pasta, and sit on top of it, rather than pooling under.
Am I here to tell you this sauce is life-changing? Nope. Is it the best sauce ever created? Probably not. But it’s fresh, it’s tasty, it’s easy, and it’s quick. For a weeknight meal, it’s a perfect way to serve a sauce that doesn’t taste like it came from a can, or that you threw together at the last minute.
And Dawn, if you’re out there, I hope you’ve found a better way to make your own sauce.
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Tagged food, Uncategorized
Hey there! Seems I’ve been away from my computer a bit too long, and neglectful of this space.
We’ve simply been focused on school and routine appointments and Girl Scouts. It hasn’t helped that I had the cold from the deepest depths of Hell that lasted for days and days and days.
When I emerged, I had to catch up on school work with the kids and deep clean the house (not that you can tell anymore….amazing how quick the clutter and dirt builds back up!).
I’ve been working on my Chimney Fire Sweater pretty diligently; Girl Scout Sundays are great for that. I hang out and knit for the two hours the older girls are in their meeting. I also finally got around to plugging in to season 2 of Serial. Add in a nice latte and it’s a rather enjoyable two hours for me.
This weekend we’ve been prepping for more snow (which started a few hours ago) and trying to manage the cold. In addition, Paul tore open the ceiling in the kitchen to try and fix the upstairs plumbing issues. As soon as he got the hole open where water had been dripping, a whole lot MORE water poured out, despite that bath not having been used for well over a week. We’ve discovered just how poorly this house was put together, and to boot, I now have a hole in my ceiling until we can be sure it’s properly solved.
In dog news, Lucy has been banished outside with the sheep and working dogs. She managed to slip out the gate last week when I was moving it, and came back with a skunk pelt. She refused to relinquish her prize, and spent the better part of a few days chewing and consuming it. Eventually she came back in the house, where we soon discovered that ingested skunk causes diarrhea.
She’s not in any danger of dehydration (it’s not frequent, but it’s once a day, and it’s awful, and she was doing it in the house), and she’s slowly recovering, but she’s not coming back in until I know she’s over it.
As for the kittens, they are getting bigger and cuddlier every day.
Little Widget is a regular lap cat for me, and Poppet loves to cuddle with Maddie and her boyfriend John. They’ve definitely been our furry little Valentines this weekend.
Speaking of Valentine’s Day, I took the opportunity to try a few recipes from the Joy the Baker cookbooks I’ve got. I made a Banana Coconut Cream pie Friday night, knowing Paul would love it (the rest of us aren’t big on banana pie, but it was pretty tasty nonetheless).
For brunch Saturday I put together the Breakfast Nachos.
Let me tell you.
This was HEAVEN.
Oven-crisped potatoes topped with crumbled breakfast sausage, cheddar cheese sauce, and sunny-side up eggs, with pico de gallo, guacamole, and sour cream on the side.
This was a HUGE hit here. It would also be a weekend regular for us if it wasn’t so decadent! Seriously, it is too delicious to resist overeating by A LOT. And then going back an hour later to pick at it some more.
Considering we also had our traditional Chinese take-out for dinner tonight, I can’t imagine what the scale is going to say in the morning. And you know what? Totally worth it!
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Tagged food, Knitting, Pets, Uncategorized
Greetings from cold virus central!
I had thought we made it through with relative ease, but then either we had a second virus hit right away, or this cold had a nasty one-two punch. This second wind has been much, much worse. With Maddie nannying for a friend’s family, we seem to be passing our germs back and forth between the households (sorry, Lisa!).
Today I’m directing school activities from the couch, under a wool blanket.
Oona has finished most of her reading and is knitting. Emily will draw out her reading assignment for as long as possible while she cuddles various kitties. Neve is handling the home-ec portion by cleaning the kitchen and taking out the garbage (you know she’s desperate to escape another day of schoolwork when she volunteers for dish and garbage duty). They’re all feeling just a bit salty that they didn’t get a buttload of snow days like their public school counterparts did.
Hey, algebra waits for no man.
Also, Happy Groundhog Day! We’ll be watching the Bill Murray movie after schoolwork has been completed and Oona has made us popcorn.
We’ve also been talking a lot about weather; it’s warmed up quite a bit, and we had rain yesterday. With the smell of fresh, green earth in the air we all felt ready for spring. It’s a cruel joke, of course. There’s still plenty of time left for winter to hit us with more snow or polar air. Still, a couch-bound girl can dream, and spend time looking at seed catalogs and planning out the 2016 gardens, right?
I’ve been thinking quite a bit about this year’s gardens, and farm work. We didn’t breed, so there won’t be any lambs or kids this spring, but that’s okay. We wanted to focus on getting our current flock healthy and fat, and repairing fences and outsmarting our escapee dogs and goats.
We ARE expecting a shipment of chicks sometime later in the spring, since our current hen situation is lacking; we have maybe 15 hens, and a few of them are getting on in years.
Not only will we be adding to our chicken flock then, but we will also be ordering more bees. My hive seems to have absconded sometime since Christmas. There’s a complete lack of any bee in there, not even dead ones. There is one potentially erupted queen cell, but it’s hard to tell. I HAVE noticed honeybees flying around the last few days, however. They are going into the old hive and stealing honey from the stores that were there. I only ever see maybe 8 or 10, but I’m hoping that means that my absconded colony found a good home to overwinter.
There’s also these lovelies that recently arrived. When I’m feeling better I’ll be in the kitchen whipping up some of her yummy recipes. The challenge is choosing one to start with! (well, actually, the challenge is not eating 10,000 calories worth of baked goods every day).
And, since I’m unable to manage much else, I’ve of course been working on my sweater. I finally got to the point where I put my sleeve stitches on a holder and I’m working on the lower body. I’m really pleased with how it’s going.
Now let’s all keep our fingers crossed that today is my last day of feeling like garbage; Emily gets her braces on tomorrow!
My February pictures are.. the wall calendar on the left is of a beautiful amaryllis that a friend gave me.
The desk calendar picture on the right was taken in CT last February on my birthday… went to Rowayton, CT to meet a friend for coffee. Before my daughter and I got there my friend had hung a ‘happy birthday’ banner over the table and had gifts and all kinds of pastries for us. It was a spur-of-the moment get together and it was a lot of fun.
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Tagged calendar pictures, Connecticut, flowers, food, Martha's Vineyard, New England, Photographs, restaurants, signs, winter
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Tagged food, illustration, painting, recipe
After two full days of high winds and heavy snow, the sun woke us this morning, bright and blinding over the deep blanket of snow. I’d say we got at least two feet; in most places it is knee deep, and the drifts between the cars are at waist-deep (and I had to chase a loose hen through there). We are all impressed that we never lost power, though who knows when all the schools, etc, will re-open.
Sadly it wasn’t only the sun that woke me this morning, but a terrible cold that’s left me achey and miserable. Good thing I managed so much work yesterday and could reasonably relax today (though I will admit to having done all of today’s chores and feeding in my pajamas, in a sickly, Cold & Flu Alka-Seltzer – induced haze).
Yesterday there were points where I did begin to worry about the sheep. Not because they had no shelter to escape the snow, but because they had no interest in availing themselves of it. They simply took turns gorging on hay and laying in the snow to chew their cud, allowing it to build up on their backs.
Sabine and Orzo weren’t exactly thrilled about being out in it, but they spent enough time running about in it that they kept the area around the hay bale and feeders rather packed down and easy to access.
Oona braved it for longer than anyone. It was pretty hard to see with the wind blowing the snow directly into our eyes, but she loved it.
I just couldn’t believe how heavy and for how long it snowed; I haven’t seen winter weather like this since I lived in New York. Not this intensity, anyway. I love this kind of weather, and I know how crazy a lot of people think I am for it. But I will tell you this: if we reliably had snow like this that stuck around, I’d be investing in cross-country skis. I miss that!
I’m loving this view from the living room window.
With the weather outside so…..frightful (ha!)…..I did what any sane person (who loves to eat) would do: I made cinnamon rolls. As always, I used Susan’s recipe, because it’s fool-proof.
I’m so glad I did, too. Waking up feeling like the back of a bus this morning was made somewhat better when I simply had to pop a roll in the microwave for 10 seconds and I could console myself with a delicious treat.
The cats spent the day watching all of the birds out at the feeders.
And THIS, my friends, is a happy man who worked very hard and fixed his tractor. He’s currently out plowing. We did discuss wishing we knew for sure who the neighbor is that threatened our dogs (we’re pretty sure, but not 100%), so he could plow everyone else OUT, and him IN.
Oh well.
He’s out there anyway. Most of the neighbors will be very happy and thank him. Some won’t. That’s life, and people, I guess.
Either way, I’m grateful it’s him, and not me. I need to sleep off this cold virus.
Right after I enjoy how still, and clean, and fresh everything looks and smells. Breathe it all in, everyone. It’s fleeting.
We’ve been waiting all week for impending doom in the form of a blizzard. All of the kids’ (and mine, let’s be real) fevered dreams of epic amounts of snow seem to finally be coming true. The weather reports have been wildly different in the total amount we should expect; anywhere from 3 inches to 30. Either way it doesn’t actually matter to us, because our road isn’t going to be plowed. Since the developer is no longer in the picture and our road isn’t state maintained (and our tractor is currently broken), we are officially stuck home for the duration, and potentially a while after. Generally in our county the power tends to go out during storms like this (last time a storm like this blew through, many people were without power for a week or better, including Susan), so we’ve prepared.
The generator has been checked and we have extra fuel for it. Our kerosene heater has been serviced and we have plenty of kerosene. The cars are all full of fuel. We have plenty of food and animal feed. We have plenty of books and knitting and board games.
In other words, bring it on!
The kitties are another source of both warmth and entertainment.
This guy is pretty happy with the prospect of idle laps this weekend, just waiting for him to fill them.
I’ve also been baking a lot. This is the batter for Smitten Kitchen’s Banana Bread, and it is THE BEST banana bread I have ever made or eaten, ever. Probably because it contains this:
I need to buy stock in this bourbon, because seriously, HEAVEN.
I also made some regular bread to go along with dinner, which was a delightful Kale and Potato Soup.
I added a sprinkling of sharp cheddar on top and everyone loved it. It was the perfect foil to the cold and blowing snowstorm happening outside, and a great reward after the work to make sure the animals would be okay.
Just as the snow was starting this morning we got the heated buckets filled with water. We left the gate in the position that allows everyone access to the covered front porch, and I filled the goat shelter with fresh straw and hay. There’s a fresh hay bale out for them to eat. They’re all set to get snowed in, too.
Basil and Caramel wouldn’t let anyone else in for awhile.
I’m not looking forward to lugging more buckets of water out tomorrow morning first thing, but all things considered, I’ll take it. With a broken tractor, having to manage buckets out in the back pasture would have been a complete disaster. This winter, it’s just a few steps outside my front door. Absolute heaven compared to last year!
Paul has been in the garage all day working on the tractor, and now that I’ve gotten all of our creatures (and ourselves) fed for the day, I’m going to settle in with knitting and a lap cat. It’s still coming down out there (and the wind is crazy!), so I can’t wait to see how things look in the morning. But for now, it’s cozy time!
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Tagged Farm, food, Knitting, Pets, Uncategorized
