Spring 2013

I foresee some ground-breaking on this hill in the near future, if Mother Nature will cooperate.

Last week, I dragged the big tiller out of the shed to see if he was willing to work.  One pull, and he fired up.  Check!

The Husband had the local Farmer's Co-Op come out and fix the flat tire on the big tractor, so it's ready to go.  Check!

Seeds bought.  Check!

All we need now is some dry ground and some time to work.

Quilting Weather

Awwww, you've gotta love Tennessee weather.  Last weekend's temperatures were in the 70 degree range.  Early in the week, we had a monstrous rainstorm, after which the mercury plummeted into the 20s at night.  Yesterday at noon, I went outdoors dressed in a hat and a light coat and was almost too warm.  Last night it snowed, blizzard-like, for about 10 minutes, then it quit.

Screw it.  I'm just going to stay inside and quilt.

One of the first quilts I ever made was what we refer to as "the clan quilt."  The Husband's family has ancestral roots in Scotland; their clan had a tartan pattern and a motto.  I made a simple 9-patch quilt in the colors of the tartan and sewed a big, gaudy, silver lame' badge and motto applique in the middle of it.  Both of my sons said, "I want that quilt when you die."  Since they both can't have it, I decided to make one for each of them.  

I wanted to make theirs better than mine, which should not be hard to do, considering how bad my skills were back then.  Carpal tunnel syndrome discourages hand quilting these days.  To compensate, I've added a short-arm quilting machine to the mix, engineering a whole new set of troubles for myself.  There's a ways to go before I master that beast. 

Mastery or no, I finished the first "clan quilt" earlier this month.  The end result did not exactly match my original "vision."  The official clan tartan colors are reportedly black, blue, green, and white.  For this quilt, I used navy and dark sage for the blue and the green.  As you can see, there's not enough shade variance between the navy and the black, and the chunks of white are too big.  (The pattern, by the way, is called "Clay's Choice," which I chose because my son's name is Clay.)  I tried to lighten the blue sections by stipple-quilting them with a blue variegated thread, but it didn't work very well.  I also tried to differentiate the black from the blue by quilting with white thread on the black blocks, but that didn't work very well, either.  Lightening *both* the blue and the black kind of cancelled each other out, but the idea seemed good at the time.  Sorry I had to smudge out the badge (on account of cyber creeps, you know) - it's kind of the best part.  It's machine embroidered in black, with our last name beneath it.  I wanted to add some subtle Scottish symbols, such as thistles, but I could not figure out how to do it.

The second one, a "Walls of Jericho" pattern - I couldn't find a pattern with "Joshua" in the name - is in the frame now.  (I've added some borders since this picture was taken.)  I'm happier with the color choices, though the green is a bit strange.  While I was working on Clay's quilt, I figured out how to do the symbols, but by then I was too far along to incorporate them.  The blue squares will have Celtic knots quilted in them.  The black strips will have diamonds.  I think I'll pebble the white parts.  I'll figure out what to do with the green when I get there.  I'm quilting a stylized thistle vine ("stylized," I say, because thistles don't grow on vines) on the outmost border.  In my mind, it was stunning; in reality, it's...just o-kay..., way too much buck for the bang, but at least it's not awful.  The big mistake happened on the next border.  While working on the thistles, I discovered that another Scottish symbol is the unicorn.  If this quilt were for a little girl, I might consider putting unicorns frolicking around the border.  But this quilt is for a man who would shoot and make stew out of a unicorn if he encountered one in the woods, so I thought to use just the horn, the distinctive spiral horn, two of them, butted together end-to-end.

It was an unfortunate thought. 

This thing looks like a cross between a UFO and the Michelin Man.  I put some lotus flower-looking things in there, to break up the "poke-y" factor, but it's still bad.  Bad.  But it's staying.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to you (both).  :)

I hosted a New Year's Day lunch for my siblings yesterday.  The main dish was cabbage rolls, with sides of black-eyed peas, candied sweet potatoes, fried okra, slaw, and garlic cheese biscuits.  The cabbage rolls were my own adaptation/combination of the many recipes I found, and I have been encouraged to write the recipe down before I forget what I did.  So, here goes:

Cabbage Rolls - makes 15 - 20 rolls

1 large head of cabbage
2 pounds of ground pork sausage (the breakfast kind)
1 box of Uncle Ben's 5-minute Wild & Brown Rice
1 tbs. olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
6 cloves of garlic, finely minced
1 stalk of celery, sliced
2 large cans of diced tomatoes
1 bay leaf


Oven 350
Boil a couple of quarts of water.  Remove the core from the head of cabbage.  Place the cabbage upside-down in a bowl.  Pour the boiling water over the cabbage and let it soak for 10 minutes, then drain it, right-side up so that the water runs out.

Meanwhile, sautee the chopped onion, garlic and celery in the olive oil.  Set aside to cool.

In a large bowl, combine the raw sausage, the UNCOOKED rice mix, and HALF of the sauteed vegetables.  I added part of the seasoning from the rice package, as well.

Peel off a cabbage leaf, pat it dry with a paper towel, and cut out the large, tough vein.  (If the leaf is large, you can cut it in half length-wise and make two rolls out of one leaf.)  Overlap the cut edges (if you're using a whole leaf from which you have cut the vein).  Take a little handful - about a scant 1/4 cup - of the sausage/rice mixture, shape it into a loose cylinder, and position it at the bottom of the cabbage leaf.  Roll the cabbage around the meat once, then fold the sides over the ends of the meat and keep rolling.  (Don't sweat it if the sides aren't wide enough to fold over the ends, just roll it up and move on.)  Lay the roll in a pan, seam side down so that it doesn't unroll.  Continue with remaining leaves/meat mixture.

Now make a tomato "gravy" to pour over it as follows:  Add the diced tomatoes, liquid and all, and the bay leaf to the remaining sauteed vegetables.  Simmer for 5 minutes or so, then pour it over the cabbage rolls.  Add enough water (or broth or stock or tomato juice) to almost cover the rolls.  Cover the pan with a lid or foil.  Bake for about an hour.

(Some recipes said that you can cook these entirely on top of the stove.)

When I took my rolls out of the oven, I uncovered them and dipped off most of the fat. 

I made these a day early - since it was an experiment, I wanted to give myself time to invoke "Plan B" if they turned out horribly - and re-heated them at 300 degrees for another 45 minutes before serving.  They were fine re-heated. 

Post Season: First Snow

On Christmas Eve, we were out and about without coats.  By yesterday morning (Christmas Day)....BRRRR!  We woke up today to a couple of inches of show on the ground, and it's still falling. 

There's always breakfast at Nanny's house on Christmas morning:  home-made biscuits, country ham and sausage, sawmill gravy, eggs, potatoes, pies, and cakes.  Between the feasting and the present-opening, I took a quick stroll out to the garden to see how the "fall garden" was faring.

You might recall that I planted sugar snap peas, broccoli, brussels sprouts, radishes, beets, and greens in October.  It appears that I planted them a little too late.  We've been eating greens and radishes for a few weeks now.  A couple of the broccoli plants have tennis ball heads on them, but they've been nipped by the few frosts that we've had and don't look very appetizing.  The brussels sprouts have formed promising-looking leaf cups in the center, but no stalks yet.  It will be interesting to see how they react to seriously cold weather.  I'm going to leave them in the ground and see if they'll kick into gear in the spring. 

I was hopeful that we would be eating snap peas this fall.  They grew and bloomed nicely, but I haven't seen a single pea pod.  Judging from the hoof prints up and down the row and the truncated vines, the deer apparently have seen them and have relieved me of the chore of picking and eating them. 

It looks like my outdoor gardening is officially over for 2012.  But, just think, it's only about 6 more weeks until it's time to break ground for the early spring crops, like potatoes and cabbages and broccoli.  I have seeds left over from the fall plants; it'll soon be time to start them indoors for the spring garden. 

Meanwhile, there's a quilt in the quilt frame that's demanding my attention, one in pieces on my work counter, and one more still in the fabric store sack that I haven't even cut out, yet.  I'd best get busy if they're to be finished by spring. 

Holiday decorating

This past weekend, The Husband and I went shopping for a birthday present for our grandson.  As we passed through the Christmas decorations section, he spotted a bin of plastic, lighted candy canes, the 2-ft. tall kind that people put along their driveways and sidewalks, and had to have some for our yard.

His vision was to line both sides of our driveway and front walk with them.

He intended to buy 8 of them, and to set them about 5 feet apart.

I said, "Eight is not going to do it.  If we're going to do both sides of the driveway and the front walk, we need at least 20."  We commenced picking through the bin, making sure that the ones we chose still had their plastic stakes attached, making sure that we had an equal number of red-striped canes and green-striped canes....

Since the birthday party wasn't until later in the afternoon, we came back home after our shopping trip and unloaded our purchases.  The Husband immediately started removing the plastic wrapping from the candy canes (a chore so onerous that it deserves its own blog entry).  Upon unwrapping the first cane, he discovered that its electrical cord was only about a foot long. 

Our 100 feet of lighting suddenly shrank to 20 feet.  Our options were to scale down our project, or buy 20 extension cords.

Ok, so maybe we'll do JUST the front walk, and just one side of it.

Since this was The Husband's idea, he assumed the task of setting up the canes.  Green/white, red/white, green/white, red/white...all perfectly upright in a perfectly straight row.  We lacked about 3 canes having enough to line one side of the front walk all the way to the porch.  I said I'd get more on Monday. 

While I was cleaning up the discarded plastic wrappings, The Husband dragged our other outdoor decorations from the attic:  5 light-and-ornament-laced pine garlands, and 5 pine wreaths with flattened red velvet bows.  Over the years, we've gotten the outdoor decorating business down pat.  We lay the garlands along the brick ledges on the front of our house and hang one across the porch.  The wreaths get suction-cupped to the front windows and front door, et voila!, decorating's done.  While I hung the wreaths, he rounded up the necessary extension cords.  We had just enough time to test the garland lights before it would be time to leave for the birthday party.  When the Husband plugged in the final strand, the entire first strand went out.  He checked the fuse; sure enough, it had blown.  He checked the other lights to see if any of them had a spare fuse in the compartment.  Nope.  He pocketed the blown fuse, and said we'd go in search of a replacement after the party. 

Neither the local hardware store nor the local dollar store had a replacement fuse, nor did they have a matching strand of lights that we could've used for spare parts.  We came home, vowing to continue our search in the coming week, and plugged in the all the lights - garlands and candy canes - to admire our handiwork in the darkness. 

It was then that we discovered that two of the red/white candy canes contained red lights, not white ones like all the rest.

This is the kind of occurrence that drives The Husband crazy.  He likes everything just so. We'd been careful, or so we'd thought, in choosing the canes, never noticing that some of them were stuffed with red lights.  Removing the two red-lit canes would've eliminated the offense, but it would also have upset the green/white-red/white order.  What's a person to do?  I said that I'd get 5 canes, instead of 3, when I went back to the store.  Meanwhile, we'd just have to live with the two anamolies.

Yesterday afternoon when I went to the grocery store, I ventured a little farther in search of a fuse for the garland lights, thinking I might also run across more of the same candy canes we'd bought from the other store.  I struck out at the local stores.  My 5-year-old grandson had accompanied me on this trip, and since he was whining that he was hungry and needed to pee, I gave up the search and came home. 

Not long after I got home, The Husband announced that the fuse problem was solved, as he had found a spare in the only strand of lights that he had not checked the previous day.  I went out to admire his work, and stood way back to take in the overall effect.

Four of the five wreaths had either slid all the way down the windows or had fallen to the ground....

(...likely to be continued....)

It's Fall, Y'all

We've had a few faintly frosty nights lately.  Yesterday, I went down to the garden to see what havoc they caused. 

The purple hull peas are goners.  It's a shame that I did not get the seeds in the ground a couple of weeks earlier; most of the pods did not have time to fully fill out. 

The pepper plants are wilty, but the peppers still hanging on them are fine, since we haven't had freezing temperatures yet.  Ditto for the tomatoes. 

Everything else - greens, radishes, broccoli, and brussels sprouts - stood up well to the frost.  The greens are pickin' size, finally.  Radishes are ready to eat.  The beets are still small, but doing well.  The broccoli and brussels sprouts look as though they're considering doing some work.  The sugar snap peas have bloomed, but I'm not finding any pods yet.  I wonder if the bees have been too cold and sluggish to do any pollenating.

I have decided that I like fall gardening better than summer gardening.

Fall Garden Check-Up

Yesterday afternoon, as soon as we returned from a camping trip (which you can read about at www.susanshappytrails.blogspot.com as soon as I get around to posting), I went to the garden to see how things were growing.

The broccoli and brussels sprouts are looking great!  The radishes have marble-sized roots.  Greens are coming along nicely. 

We have three volunteer plants that I thought were squash.  Never mind that I did not plant any squash where these things sprouted; they had the look of squash plants, and when they bloomed, they looked like squash blooms.  They are starting to fruit now, and I have no idea what they are.  They are shaped like yellow squash, but they are mint green. 

Last Monday, I planted more seeds - bok choy, cabbage, rainbow chard, and lettuce.  It may have been pure insanity to plant these things this late.  I've never even seen rainbow chard, but it looked pretty on the package, so I thought, "Why not?"  It has rained here since I planted this last batch of seeds, and I could not walk between the rows without sinking in the mud.  The whole garden has tiny little green things coming up everywhere, most of which are weeds, and from a distance I could not tell if the new seeds have sprouted.  But I put some of the lettuce seeds in a planter box on the patio, and they have sprouted, so hopefully there's lettuce in the garden, too.

The purple hull peas I planted several weeks ago are starting to mature.  Nanny said that she picked and shelled "a cup full" of peas, and that they may not be purple hull peas because their "eyes" are pink.  Pink eyes or not, we are hoping that the first frost holds off long enough to allow the rest of the crop to mature.