Flowers, for a few days

Tiny, very early crocuses.  

 How did I manage to actually lose photos from my phone?  We had a few lovely days and some very small, early crocuses bloomed.  I had taken a great photo of them.  It was a day to let the chooks out and hubby was out cooking down syrup, saw them and sent me a photo, which shows them munched on by the girls.  I loved that he was so thoughtful to make sure I saw the flowers though.   I lost a few other photos too, mostly of my first day back cooking at Westfield for the Maple Syrup season.

Just as a note, those crocuses are buried beneath more snow today.  We had a crazy cold front blow in, with wild winds, and limited visibility.  I couldn't see across the road this afternoon, because of the heavy, blowing snow.

Sunday was my first day back at Westfield.  I was in the Misener house, which has an awesome wood cook stove, by William Buck Stove Company.  It's called the Happy Thoughts stove, and it's so pretty.  It works well too, for a woodstove that was made in 1880 or thereabouts.   I made maple gingerbread, maple "not baked" beans, because we were using the oven all day and I had to cook them on top of the stove, and maple butter tarts.   A few of the tarts were a bit over cooked because so many people were streaming through that sometimes we couldn't get to the oven in time.  Also, the only downside of this stove is that the heat from the firebox makes the one side of the oven much hotter than the other, so if you don't turn the baked goods quickly enough, and your oven is a tad too hot, it burns quickly on one side.

I picked up a cast iron waffle iron. It's not antique, nor is it a reproduction.  It's a modern one.  They had two designs, one with short cast iron handles and this one with longer handles.  Hubby convinced me to get the long handle one as he thought it would be safer, and more versatile.   However, it was unseasoned, and this meant I couldn't season it in the oven.  It would need to be done outside, in a campfire or on the bbq.

It was a bit of an ordeal because unseasoned cast iron usually comes with a wax coating on it, which needs to be removed before use.   I scrubbed and scrubbed, but couldn't remove it.   Since hubby been's boiling sap, I was able to put the waffle iron on the campfire to melt off the wax.  I actually put the pieces right beside the burning logs, left it 15 minutes, and turned to get the other side.   Then I had to move the very hot irons into the house, let them cool and rub them with oil.  Back out to the fire and let them heat up again for some time.   The instructions said 15 minutes, but I probably left it longer.   I did that twice.   I was going to take them to Westfield, because they would work well with maple syrup season, but then worried that they could be messy or the learning curve might be too big for a busy day, so decided to wait until a slower day.  I'm looking forward to playing with them.  I'm looking up recipes in the meantime, to find some which might work well.