A Sunday hike

 

trail beside the river

We went for a walk yesterday.  It was relatively mild, although breezy and grey out.   The temperature topped out at 9C or 10 C, but the breeze made it feel a bit cooler.  We bundled up and went for a lovely walk in an area where there is a lake, a river, and it feels like you're walking from one type of terrain to another.   The trail meandered along a river, through some fir forest, up through an aspen and poplar grove, up through an open field and then through a large stand of cedars before we ended up near the start of the trail.  We traversed a small piece of preserved railroad track, by the 2nd lookout point for the lake, not the one I usually take pictures from, and saw a lot of browns, with occasional splashes of colour.  

This is the side view from the lake.  Usually I take photos from the right, where the shore line curves around and the lake ends, or begins I guess.   There used to be a lovely picnic table here and we used to pack a lunch and eat looking over this view.  It was lovely.  Then they moved the table.   It's now in the middle of the V where the trail breaks off into 2 different routes.   Nobody eats there lunch there because there is no privacy from all the people and all the dogs.   They did replace it with a very large, long metal girder or beam.   If you don't mind sitting on the metal, hot in the summer and cold the rest of the time, then you can still sit and view the lake.   It's not quite as easy to share a lunch there now though.

There was this single vine of bittersweet, with red, almost fuchsia husks, with the little orange berries.  It was almost the only bright colour outside of some very limey greens from very young pine trees.    

All of this scenery would have still been stunning if we had blue sky, but we really get a lot of pale, grey and almost white skies during the late autumn and the winter.  A few years back, one horribly grey January, it was recorded that we got a whole 14 hours of sunshine in the month.  

Gah, we have another wasp in the house.   There is some type of wasp that is wintering over in our stacked winter wood.   It's larger than a yellow jacket and at least it's fairly calm.  We're getting several a week, maybe every other day or so.  It's both frustrating and irritating.  As a bonus, this weird, unseasonably mild spell, has brought houseflies back inside.   There should definitely be no flies and wasps in November!

A new weaving project.

I warped up the rigid heddle loom.   I purchased some Sugarbush Drizzle, a mohair/silk yarn which is really thin a couple of years ago.  I bought 2 different colourways and since I had no idea how much I'd need, I bought 4 or 5 skeins of each colour.   It was $3 a skein, so it wasn't a huge outlay to be prepared.   I wove up a purple scarf which was lovely.  It wove up quickly and easily.   I ended up giving it away as a gift.   Two nights ago, I had finished the novel I was reading and didn't have a new one chosen yet.   So I dug up the second colour way of the Drizzle and warped up the loom.  This yarn is perfect for the rigid heddle loom.   I'm using the 7.5 ends per inch reed and the yarn, although very fuzzy, works up well at this sett.   It wasn't quite as easy to start weaving with as I remember the purple being, although time does tend to soften some of the memories.   Once I got into a rhythm, it's working up quite quickly.   The colour way is called Sailor's Sunset, and it really is a lovely combination.

The first photo doesn't show the colour variations very well or at all really.   It's also a photo I should have colour corrected because there is virtually no pink in the yarn at all.   

I did make a stupid mistake, totally my doing.  I forgot to attach a tape measure when I started weaving.  I usually pin one into the centre of the item I'm weaving to try for a fairly accurate idea of the length that I've woven.  I didn't notice this until after I'd advanced the weaving more than a couple of times.   I could unroll the weaving from the front beam, but my experience is that it doesn't always re-roll up with the same nice even tension.   I'm going to guesstimate its length and it might end up being a long scarf!

The corn is being harvested.  It's been dry for ages now, partially because we had such a dry end of the summer.   I found a partial cob in the yard, perhaps missed and thrown by the harvester, or dragged out of their field by a persistent raccoon.   It's a good yellow colour and really hard.  I thought the squirrels would have gotten it, or the chooks, but it's was just sitting there.   Then what interested me, is that the neighbour baled up all the corn stalks.  I'd never seen that done before.   I had to look it up to see why it's done.  Apparently it's used as feed.  It's fairly low in protein though and some of the websites considered it a very low quality fodder, that is usually only fed to cattle in desperation.  However, other websites said that if it's slightly damp, it will start fermenting.  This would make it more like silage, so maybe increase the nutrients a bit.   When I was a 4-H leader, we had a great trip to a dairy farm and good silage smell very much like fermenting beer!  I guess at least the cows would be happy.

Fall colours, the loss of the same, and run up to Xmas

 Ahhhh Blogger, you've updated several times recently and things are now harder to use and my original settings have been changed, hidden or apparently are no longer applicable. Something to keep me on my toes I guess.

We went for a walk on a local trail.   It's one with a nice boardwalk beside the river.   I suggested we take this one because soon our weather will change.  The cold, wet and snow will make the boardwalk slippery and difficult to traverse.   We no longer take this trail in the winter because it's just not fun.  Winter walks on the trails can be a little bit harder, but not so much fun when you're also dealing with ice patches or long lengths of snow covered rutted ice, which is what that boardwalk becomes.

However, in the nice weather, this trail is interesting.  All the Ash trees have been cut and left lying around, so that it looks in places like something out of a bad Sci-Fi movie.   The trail runs right beside a train track and an industrial area, so there is sometimes a non-nature like soundtrack to accompany the walk.   Today though, it was the light creating interesting reflections on the river which caught my attention.   They were very clear, as the water was oddly still.

The trail was pretty despite the many downed logs.  I noticed that there were some new ones which weren't Ash trees, and there were some still standing which should be cut down as they were obviously going to be a falling risk soon.   Mostly the woods have young trees.   There isn't a lot of undergrowth in places, so the visuals of looking through the forest is interesting.  The undergrowth usually obscures this.  

It was lovely tromping through the fallen leaves.   This was just before the windstorm which meant the landscape went from lovely fall colours, to stark, empty trees in one afternoon.  Waking up the next morning to virtually no leaves left on the trees was interesting.  It was like we had an autumn colour season which went from green, to full colour, to bare trees in just over a week.   I didn't even get a lot of photos of the fall foliage just because the timing was so quick.

There is always an exception though.   This maple always colours last, and always holds its leaves.  It's just starting to drop its leaves and the colour is still turning.   It's really lovely this year as it's changed from the usually all yellow leaves, to yellow, orange and red.    I have a loom looking out the window at it, and it's always lovely to weave in the autumn with that view in sight.

I've been working on this year's Xmas cards. I've found if I don't start by the beginning of November, they become a bit rushed and stressed.  I'd trialed several ideas.  I watched a bunch of online tutorials for new techniques and ended up just painting something simple.  I like them well enough, although my brain tells me that they still need something.   I'm not sure it does though.   Only had 2 mishaps, one where the tape stuck and ripped a bit of the painting and the other when I was mucking around with the sky ideas and I ended up with one which was too dark for my liking. 

  I tried the remove background feature and it did, relatively well, although it did dump some black spots on the one card, which aren't there in real life.  Also, I haven't figured out how to not have the original save as the edit.  On my old computer, I could just save the edited photo as a different name, but this one applies everything to the original.  This works really well for when I'm writing things up as but I'll still need to figure out the photograph part of things.   

I did figure it out but I like the photo with the messy background better.  I painted 15 landscapes for Xmas cards, all similar but not quite the same, just to keep things interesting for me.

October Colour

 

I had to leave the house at 7:50 am.  The sun was just rising.  I had to stop in the driveway to take this photo as the light and colours were spectacular.   While the mornings are late in coming, I'm really not looking forward to the time change.  I'm on the side of keeping one time zone and not switching back and forth.   Switching seems to cause more issues than not.

This was the view across the road two nights ago.  The light was perfect.  The leaf colour change this year have been odd to say the least.  We've been stuck in a no colour zone for ages.  There have been a few trees changing colour but mainly lots of dull green leaves.  Then a couple of days ago when I was locking up the chooks, the trees were still mainly green in our yard.  The next morning though, it was like every one of them had coloured overnight.  So amazing and beautiful, but definitely odd.

The one zucchini plant left was hit by powdery mildew a while ago.  It survived, albeit damaged with greying leaves.  However I went to pull it out the other day and not only is the plant still flowering, but there were 5 zucchini still growing.  One was starting to get too big, but these 4 are still perfect.   I'd though there were only a few leeks left, but this was a lovely surprise.

I saw this stump full of shelf fungi by a woodpile.   While the trees are finally coloured and the leaves are falling astoundingly quickly, there is still a lot of green in the grass and weeds.     This made a nice contrast.

Soon the world around will be white.  The skies will be grey, or watery, pale blue.  We'll get limited sunlight hours, so I'm enjoying the sun and colours while we still get them.

2 Busy Weeks

Colours have been slow to start in our area, and apparently due to the weather.  The slow and mild decent into autumn, is the reason our colours aren't nearly as bright as usual.    My trips to Westfield have been interesting as the leaves coloured there earlier and have been falling.   I've gotten to tromp through the leaves on the way to my building, which is always fun.   

This is one of our favourite local trails, which overlooks a small lake.    The sky really was that blue that day.   Our winter skies, and sometimes our late autumn skies tend to be pale and watery grey blue.   

One of the invasive weeds in our area is Virginia Creeper.   It takes over fence lines and grows into any nearby trees.    I pulled a couple of vines from a large pine tree near our fence line and the rest pulled off the back part of our deck.   I took a couple of bittersweet vines as well because they were growing up in a space between decking boards.   They were all still fairly green, so I wove them into wreaths.  They need to dry flat before I bring them in to decorate them.  I checked them this morning as was surprised how damp the underside felt, so I flipped them over.   I put them in the gazebo to keep any rain or dew off them.

I wove a scarf on the rigid heddle loom using some lovely yarn I'd picked up.   I did the calculations for the sett before I dressed the loom and using 10 dents per inch worked out perfectly .  However, the yarn was fuzzy, not quite as bad as a mohair yarn, but noticeably fuzzy.    Hindsight, after only weaving a few rows, says I should have gone down to a 7.5 dent to make the fuzzy yarn easier to weave.   I had to open every shed with a pick up stick before weaving.    I have more yarn, so I'll try that next time.

Regardless, the scarf, while taking a bit longer to weave, was quite nice until a quick check of the underside showed that I had some small floats from skipped threads: about 5 of them.  Instead of bothering to fix them, I ironed some lightweight interfacing on the back and cut up some  shapes to make stuffed woven strawberries.   I stitched them by machine, cut little leafy top green bits free hand from felt and sewed them on by hand, adding some hemp twine for hangers.   I'm going to see if the guild wants them for their $5 ornament fundraiser.  If they don't, I have lots more materials and there will be strawberry ornaments for everyone this year!

I had my sock machine, a Legare 400 in at Westfield to demo.  It was a slow day, but the people who did come in were really interested in both the building and the machine.   I had some really great conversations with people which made a somewhat slow day actually good fun and interesting.  Plus the day went by fairly quickly.    I'm going to need to make a nice little acceptable travel table though as finding an antique  table which can support the machine really securely and not wobble, or fit properly has been difficult.   Still it was a great day and I got a pair of socks made in-between conversations.

 

Open German Tart

 I was fiddling around with a cooking challenge and was skimming through an issue of Godey's Lady's book, 1863 and I found this recipe for a very simple pie.   If you've never made a pie before, this would be easy enough from scratch and could look amazing.   Of course you don't have to make it all pretty, but it was easy to do.

I didn't convert to volume from weights because I rather like baking with the accuracy of weights.   Anyway, the pie crust is more of a cookie dough and came together really easily.   I sliced up some apples and laid them on top, and popped it in the oven until the scent of cooking apples was noticeable.   I checked it, left it another 10 minutes and it was done.    I set the tart in at 400F for about 15 minutes and then lowered the temperature to 350F until it was done.

I had used a baking sheet to do this and the edges on the pan meant I had to let it cool before it was strong enough to lift over the pan edges.  Next time I'd turn the pan upside down and bake it on the underside so that I could just slide it off onto the cooling rack.   The crispness of the crust was great the first day, but the next day was just a tad soft, and I think this might be why.  I'd make it again though as it was really fast to throw together.  The taste was not of an apple pie, since there are no spices and no liquid to keep the apples soft.  However the crust is like a shortbread or sugar cookie, with the apples on top and was really nice.   It would be really nice with some ice cream or maybe a drizzle of caramel sauce, for a more modern dessert.

I sliced up 4 medium apples and it was probably too much.  It allowed me to get fancy with the layering of the fruit though and make it look a bit like a flower.  You don't have to be fancy about it though.   The downside is the pie is a little lacking in colour.  I was wondering if maybe running a bit of egg wash over the edges would help.   Whatever it was lacking in colour though, the delicate taste made up for it.   

Open German Tart

3 or 4 apples, peeled, cored and sliced

1/2 lb flour

1/4 lb butter, softened

1/4 lb sugar

 1 egg

 

I just dumped all the ingredients in a bowl and mixed it together to make a dough.  I greased a pan and rolled out the dough into a circle and transferred it to the greased pan.  I trimmed the edges a bit and fixed couple of tears in the dough .  This was easy as the dough was a bit soft and easily manipulated.   I then rolled up the edges to make the rim.   I placed the apples in a circle and when I realised I had too many of them, I went back and reset them, over lapping a bit more like petals.    Once all the apples, well all but 3 slices were in place, I popped the tray into a pre-heated oven.    Really super easy, fairly fast and impressively pretty without a lot of effort.

Godey's Lady's Book - Jan-April, 1863, pg 302

It's two volumes in one book, so this volume is the second one, starting at page 586 or so and is available on the Internet Archive.

End of Summer Activities

 It's getting dark so early now.  The chooks are headed back to the coop by 6:45pm and it's getting dark so quickly afterwards that I rarely have time to get a bit of walking in.  During the summer I tend to walk in the evenings, as it's still plenty light out and the temperatures are starting to cool down.  Now though, it's too dark about 10 or 15 minutes after I lock up the girls.  I've gotten into the habit of downloading a trashy audio book from the library and listening to it while I walk.  I've discovered that most modern regency romances are really silly and worth a few chuckles while I'm out walking.

Other than that, I demonstrated Dorset buttons and spinning for 2 days at the local fair.   The buttons on the Saturday and spinning on the Sunday with a couple of weavers.   The weather was perfect and didn't start to turn until after the fair had closed on Sunday.   I got to eat my lunch, sitting on a straw bale, listening to 2 different bands.  One was quite good, who played modern country music.  The steel guitar player was good and the music was nicely amped so you could actually hear it.   I fell in love with the steel guitar  at that moment.  I messaged hubby that maybe one should be added to our instrument collection, but apparently it's priced in line with the Hurdy Gurdy I'd like to have as well. That means it's well out of our price range.   

The other musician was a John Denver impersonator.   He does a great job and this year he costumed up before he hit the stage, which made it perfect.  Last year he was on stage without his wig, and without a full costume, so the look didn't match the music.   If you closed your eyes though, it was almost right...  I got to eat my lunch, listening to good music, with a really nice antique tractor on display.  What's not to like about that?

The Dorset Button display went really well and lots of people stopped by to ask about them.  Last year not a single person talked to be about spinning as they were all interested in the weavers.  This year it was the opposite.  You just can tell what people will be interested any particular year.

A friend asked me for some heritage recipe help for a friend of hers, who needed a Quince jam recipe from an earlier time period.   I spent about half an hour or so digging up some recipes and sending them on.   Then I found another recipe, slightly different which I passed on too, with all the citations of course.    I got a lovely invitation to come and pick quinces from her quince grove.  That was fun.  These fruits smell amazing.  I walk into the kitchen and there is a sweet, spicy almost cinnamon scent.  They are also huge.  I've only seen one quince before and it was quite small.  These things are as large or larger than my hand!  I'm letting them ripen up a bit while I decide what to make with them.   I'll make a period 1860's quince marmalade for sure, and maybe some quince paste, which seems to be a fruit leather type of recipe. I'm looking forward to trying these and will post the results of my attempts.

End of August update

The river on a late summer hike

 This morning had a bit of unexpected excitement.  When I put my glasses on when I woke up, I realised that they were broken!  They were fine when I took them off at bedtime.   Of course without my glasses I couldn't see what was wrong with them, although I did find the missing lens and knew that the frame was unattached at the earpiece thing.   Luckily hubby figured out that a tiny screw had fallen out and by disassembling an old pair of glasses, he was able to fix mine with the scavenged screw.  I was so happy to be able to see clearly again without old glasses or sneaking hubby's glasses, which worked okay in a pinch, although not perfect.

Yesterday I harvested some garden tomatoes.    They are finally starting to ripen.  I've eaten a cucumber and cherry tomatoes for lunch for half the summer, which was lovely.   I've gotten 1.25kg of blackberries in the freezer.   I could easily get another 1 or 2 pickings in,  but I'm not sure it's worth it.   This time of year the seedy berries sometimes get even seedier and they are smaller pickings, for the same amount of work.   I have more than enough for a good batch of jam.

Last time I made blackberry jam, I pressed all the berries though a sieve with a wooden spoon. I've been looking for a Foley's food mill to make that job easier but they don't seem to be available any longer.  These are the metal cone mortar and pestle shaped ones.   The last time I saw one in a store a couple of years ago, I was very tempted to buy it as I've wanted one for years, but the price was really crazy high.   Amazon has one but it's fairly small  and almost $100.   I'm not sure I want to spend that much for a tool I'll only use a few times a year.

 Second choice is a grinder type food mill.   They are more reasonably priced.   When the kids were young, a friend and I would get together a couple of nights in the fall to freeze corn and make apple sauce.  It meant that we each had a freezer full with only a couple of hours of work and fun.    She had a food mill, which was old but really sturdy.  It ground up the apples in no time.   I'm hoping to find one as well built as that.  

I'm ticked at myself for not buying Plums when they were in the store.   Prune plums make spectacular jam.  If you chop them fine enough, you don't even have to peel them, as the peels will dissolve while cooking.   Maybe there will be some left at the market.

On a grey, damp day we went for a walk through the antique mall.   One booth had a few copper moulds in it.  One was $25 and another shopper and I commiserated over that being a ridiculous price for a jelly mould.   She would only pay $5 for one, and because I will pay a couple of dollars more if it's one I really like and don't have, I found these 3.  The strawberry one had some gunk on it, which the $25 one, the same strawberry mould didn't have.   I paid $8 for these and the gunk washed right off the mould with no scratching, discolouration or residue.  I was happy.   

canning and garden update

I wanted to make a batch of bread and butter pickles and some relish, but didn't have enough small cucumbers from my garden.    We went to the local "farm market", which is a shop which brings in local produce, rather than a farmers market because it's only open on Saturday morning, and the timing was wrong.   It was $8 for a small basket of pickling cucumbers and I'd need 4 baskets for the 2 recipes.  There was a half bushel for $30, which was less than the 4 baskets so of course being frugal, I got the half bushel.   

I made dill pickles.

I made cucumber relish

I made a second batch of dill pickles, these ones sliced into rounds instead of spears.

I made bread and butter pickles, my favourite!

I gave 3 lbs of cucumbers to my daughter so she could make pickles.

I still have enough pickles in the fridge to make another batch!

We have more pickles in the pantry than we can eat in a year!  I even started canning some in small jars as give aways!

Last week the blackberries started ripening. They don't all ripen at once, so it's not an onerous task.   If you leave 3 days between picking, or sometimes 4, then it's worth the effort.   This is including the fact that I neglected to weed out the nettles earlier in the season, and keep forgetting to wear long pants and sleeves, resulting in tingling legs and arms.   Anyway, I've got just over 1 kg of blackberries frozen, for use later in the season, when the weather cools down a bit for more comfortable processing.  There are still quite a lot of berries left on the brambles though, so I'm guessing several more pickings before I give up and leave the rest to go to seed.

I also pruned the tomatoes back to get rid of a lot of excess leaves and hopefully aid the fruit in ripening.   I'm not sure I cut away enough of the excess leaves though.  They are still pretty full. The plants have quite a lot of fruit on them, but it's all still very green, due to another summer of less than adequate sunshine.    I may have to buy some tomatoes just to make sure there are some canned in the pantry for the winter.   I use all of the 1/2 bushel that I put up when I have to buy them, but could easily use more.

I have herbs to dry, mainly oregano, basil and parsley this year, and potatoes to harvest.  The tomatoes are wait and see.   The cucumbers are still producing and I'm getting one or two pickling cucumbers a day, which I generally eat for lunch, along with whatever cherry tomatoes are ripe.  The zucchini is still producing, but they are just starting to get a bit of mildew on them, so they'll be done soon.   Peppers, hot Hungarian banana peppers are growing fast and furiously this year.   I will need to harvest soon and I'll likely have to pickle them for winter use too.   They are pretty delicious.  

Quick Trip to PEI

 

View from take off 

It was a quick holiday, with a few travel glitches but full of family and fun.  First there was a power failure, so no elevators which left all of us scrambling to find a place for us to sleep the night before we left.  Since it was an early flight, it made more sense to be safely ensconced close to the airport, rather than several hours away.   The power came back on and all was good.   The plane we were supposed to take was delayed on their departure, so we had a leisurely morning rather than a rushed one.    We didn't have to worry about missing our connecting flight as it was on the same plane we flew in on.   Regardless of a bit more airport time than one would like, for things outside of anyone's control, the service from Porter Airlines was excellent, friendly and professional.  

We landed at the Charlottetown airport in drizzle.   It drizzled all afternoon and evening.   We tried to find a restaurant for supper but there was nothing available.  It was high tourist season after all.  Finally we found a totally empty restaurant, with tons of seating and people coming in and out for take out.   It was a Chinese food restaurant and after talking with the owner, we found out that after a 4 week closure for renovations, this was their first night open.   The food ranged from good to excellent.  Their schezwan noodles were really, really good!   When the guys asked if they were licensed, they were, had no beer, but the owner said just a minute, and rushed to the liquor/beer store half a block away and brought back a shopping cart full of different beers to stock his cooler.  All because two guys wanted a beer with supper, on their opening night.  Partway through dinner the sun broke out, and it was like every glitch suddenly disappeared.

Red boat in harbour was unloading gravel

Charlottetown is a lovely little city.  With a large area set up for tourism, there are lots of restaurants and little shops.  The waterfront is lovely with a great board walk and lots of things to see.   We had rooms in a boutique hotel very close to downtown, so we could walk down regularly.   

We had rented a car so we got to see much of the island.   We did a day of museums, the L.M. Montgomery birthplace, the Green Gables museum, the Potato museum, which had the Agriculture museum attached.   The L.M. Montgomery museum came highly recommended and it was interesting and full of the authors scrap books and some other documents.   The Green Gables museum though was full of "scope for the imagination".   It was a home that was owned by Montgomery's aunt and in it were various items that she'd incorporated into her books, like the blue chest, the china cabinet from Emily of New Moon?, and the view from the window to the lake of shining waters!   It enjoyed it very much.

We had a late lunch at the potato museum, which mainly served potatoes.   The servings were massive and one of the meals was a stuffed baked potato with a side of potatoes!   I bucked the trend and had a bowl of chilli.   None of us were ready for supper yet, so we took a sunset boat tour of the harbour.  It advertised seeing seals and lobsters.   We'd looked for whale watching but hadn't found an available tour, so this one was instead of that.   The evening tour didn't go to the seals, but we were treated to love music, a lot of island information and a very educational program on lobsters.  This included being able to pet a lobster, fresh from the trap.  I will admit that I didn't pet the lobster as it was passed around from passenger to passenger before it was put back into the sea.  The captain had a special permit allowing him to have one trap for educational purposes.   

We went swimming the next day at a provincial park and got to play in the water and a unique white sand beach, on an island with mostly red sand and clay.   We left once it got busy and realised as we drove back to the hotel that we'd seen most of the island.   DH really enjoyed the rental car which was a sub compact SUV.   Even after another delay on the way home due for reasons that apparently included a broken loo door, we got home.   I will say that the landing on a short runway surrounded by water showed me how very much I'm not good with plane landings.   The only downside of the trip was the ride home on the GO train, packed beyond capacity with people from the Jays game and the Toronto Indy races.  

All in all it was a fabulous trip.   We had a blast.   The cats were happy to see us when we got home and the chooks were happy to be let out to free range, as we'd told our son to keep them in, so he had less work.  The only thing I didn't do was find a special skein of sock yarn to have as a souvenir.   Otherwise the trip was perfect and the first time we'd been away for anything at all in over 4 years!

Strawberry Jam Fairy

starting point

 Today I was told that I was the Strawberry Jam fairy by a guest at Westfield, as I was delivering some samples of jam that we'd made at Westfield, to some nearby busy staff members.   

I was working with Ryan today, who is great fun to be with.  He doesn't mind helping out with things, including talking with people, any cleaning chores etc.   Today, he helped with the strawberry jam, which I'd planned to make on the Happy Thoughts Wood cook stove.  

Most jam recipes in historical cookery books call for a 1:1 ratio in weight of

Almost done

fruit to sugar.   The Wife's Own Book of Cookery, 1856, has recipes which call for 1 to .75 ratio of fruit to sugar.  This makes an amazingly flavourful jam.   Today I used 1 kg of strawberries to 750g of sugar.   It was cooked on a wood stove, using a cast iron pot.   I used frozen berries for convenience.  They were still frozen when the jam was started, so they we took turns manually chopping them with a wooden spatula we had to stir with.   It worked well.   The spatula was about 4 inches wide and had small holes in it, which worked a treat at keeping the jam from sticking to the bottom of the pot.

Jam and tea

We cooked it until it started to thicken up and the bubbles blooped appropriately.   When the jam is starting to thicken, the boiling changes and you can tell when it is done.  We were given little paper cups for handing out samples.  We had about 1/4 of the cast iron pot of jam when done, and used most of it up for samples.    It took about an hour to make the jam and for most of that hour, the house smelled awesomely of strawberries.  We also took turns stirring as the jam needed to be constantly stirred for the whole hour.

You don't need to add any water to the fruit in the beginning.  The sugar quickly draws out the moisture from the fruit creating all the liquid that is needed to make the jam.   Early recipes don't add lemon like modern recipes.  This drops the ph to help keep the bacteria away.   Since there was no intention to keep this jam for months, because we were eating it fresh, it wasn't needed anyway.   If I were to make this jam to eat over the winter, I might add a tbsp of lemon juice.  I'd also pre-heat the jars to add the hot jam once it was made, and water bath can the filled jam jars for 10 minutes.  This length of time changes with different altitudes.    

Also, the tea is gingerale.   It looks quite proper in the cups and hides the modern drink well.  I didn't bring enough water with me for both clean up and tea, so this made an acceptable drink with our taste test of the jam.

1839 chocolate ice cream

I made a chocolate ice cream recipe from The Kentucky Housewife cookbook, published in 1839.  I did a bit of research on 18th and 19th century ice creams before I settled on this particular recipe.  It's not completely authentic though I followed the receipt, but chocolate as we know it, be it bar chocolate or even processed cocoa is not the same product as it was in earlier times.   Also, not having a sorbetiere, or even a manual ice cream maker, I ended up using my electric ice cream maker, which I will admit is very enjoyable to use.

Several cookery books have very specific instructions on how to make ice cream, but no, or few actual recipes.   However the 1830 The Cooks Dictionary tells us not only how to make ice cream, but how to adjust recipes for "creams" to make ice cream, as well as having a number of different ice cream recipes.   Most of the cookbooks have recipes for creams, which are custardy, mousse, pudding-like desserts.  Apparently you just make the cream recipe a little less thick and then use it to make ice cream.  

Because I didn't have enough cocoa on hand, and wasn't going to town for a few days, I used baker's chocolate.  I know a number of the recipes call for mixing the chocolate with water, which would be a cocoa product, not bar chocolate as it would seize.   I grated it and it made this lovely pile of soft, tiny chocolate flakes which melted easily into the milk mixture.    Because the chocolate was semi-sweet, I cut the amount of sugar in the ice cream as well.   I used a 10% cream mixture because we only had 1% milk and even our whole milk doesn't have enough fat content to qualify for "rich, sweet milk".   Also because a litre of that mixture was cheaper than purchasing a litre of whole milk and a container of double or whipping cream.   I also only used 4 eggs because my chooks are laying very large eggs, with large yolks.    I followed the directions, melting the chocolate in the milk mixture and then letting it cool a bit.  Then I added the yolks and the sugar  and brought the mixture up to just a boil.   This is pretty important as it cooks the eggs.   I stirred it constantly.   When the custard had boiled just a tad, I removed it from the heat.   I let it cool a bit, then transferred it to a bowl, covered it with plastic wrap and put it into the fridge overnight.  While this step is obviously modern, it is one of the procedures that is suggested in the instructions of the modern ice cream maker.

The next morning, I put the now fairly thick and cold custard into the ice cream maker and in about 15 minutes the ice cream was quite thick.   The instructions say to freeze twice.   In reality this means to pack the ice cream into a mould and re-freeze by setting it in the ice and salt mixture.   I didn't have a suitable mould, so instead I packed it into a lined loaf pan and set it into the freezer.   This second freezing allows the semi-soft frozen ice cream to harden up nicely.  

The ice cream scooped up nicely.  It was so creamy and rich.   It had a great mouth feel and felt very decadent.   I would use less chocolate next time, and try it with a mixture of cocoa and chocolate, which might replicate the actual period chocolate available.   

Would I make this again?   Indeed.  It was well worth the effort.   There is a recipe for peach ice cream in this book and there are tinned peaches left in my cupboard.   That will be the next recipe to try.
 

An Interesting Evening

Yesterday was busy.   In the morning we had a Weavers guild dye day.  We used acid dyes to paint warps and skeins.   It was fun and busy.   I'd thought more people had signed up, so made a bit too much dye.  Luckily it will last several months made up, so hopefully it won't go to waste.   

, in the evening we had tickets to see Romeo and Juliet at Stratford Festival.   I hadn't realised it was a 3 hour production though, so we had a very late night.  The show was fine.  It's early in the season so maybe a little rough on the edges yet.   It was enjoyable with excellent performances by Juliet, Romeo, the Friar and Nurse.   I'm pretty much done for tragedies for a while though.

The best part that we went early so we could find a parking spot along the river.   Parking was $25, but riverside parking was only a few meters away farther and was free!  Who doesn't like free!  There is a nice paved walkway beside the river and took advantage of that.

We had a lovely wander along the river because we had time to kill.  We'd thought we'd see the swans, but instead there were geese, a few ducks and a lone blue heron.  Weirdly, the heron was quite accustomed to people and  let me get quite close for photos in a couple of different places.   The final shot, when he took off in flight, was because someone decided to see what I was doing and tromped noisily down towards the shore, startling the bird.  Still it was an experience that I don't imagine I'll get to experience again.

A much needed update

 Along with crazy busy for the SCA event FOOL, Fruits of our Labours, that I've helped run for 16 years, my old computer decided to get crankier than normal.  After trying to work out its issues, I got it back up and running a bit.  Now though, thanks to a son who handed me a new computer for Mother's Day, I'm moving all my files over, and having to learn a new suite of apps, which work differently on this one.

The lilacs had just started blooming before the Victoria Day weekend and sadly, due to a huge amount of rain and then some ridiculously warm days, when I got home on Monday, they had turned brown and sad.  I missed them completely.    I was drinking my tea outside on Tuesday though, and I got to watch two baby birds fledging.  The parent birds were nearby and kept showing them what to do.  The one chick tried to go back into the nest, but the parent stopped them from entering.  Then suddenly they both took off.  I've been watching them on and off all week and they keep practicing short runs.   It took them the better part of the week.  I didn't see them yesterday so maybe they've moved on.

We spent a morning last weekend cleaning and seasoning cast iron at Westfield.   A lot of the cookware

was in desperate need of cleaning.  It had been sitting all winter and had been in use all last summer.   We scrubbed the inside and outside with steel wool.   Then we rinsed it well and set it on the huge gas stove to dry over the burner pilot lights.   Then we applied a thin layer of oil or shortening and they were baked in the oven to season.  That took over an hour, so while that was happening we went to 3 of the houses with cookstoves and learning how to apply blacking.  The blacking is a liquid with metal particles suspended, which when rubbed on and then heated, hardens on the stove top.  This protects the metal and makes it look less worn.  

It's raining again.  There are 16 bags of triple mix, 3 bags of manure and a bale of straw waiting for me to finish up the third raised bed.  We've put a thick layer of sticks, small limbs and other wood stuff from our scrap pile in the bottom.  Then a layer of composting straw was put on top of that and it was mixed with some older manure from the chicken pen.   We didn't have any green stuff, grass clippings etc, so this will have to do.   Now I need to layer on the triple mix to top it off.   The straw will go to mulch the tops of the beds once they are planted. I need to also top up the planters because they need a bit of new soil or compost each year and as well, the chooks have been having fun digging through them and they aren't very neat.

My garden is going in late this year.   Usually it's mainly in by now, but with the weather and the new bed, it's delayed, not only because of the new bed, but because instead of getting some of my seeds locally, I had my daughter pick up some specialty seeds from a seed nursery closer to her.  I'm trying the self pollinating zucchini and cucumbers this year, as well as a new variety of green beens which is supposed to have a longer season.  My son in law has grown some extra grape tomato plants and a couple of unique slicing styles.  I'm only planting Roma tomatoes.  I couldn't find Amish plum tomatoes, so I ended up with a generic Roma tomato with a short season.  Hopefully these will ripen up earlier than last year's tomatoes.

While I missed the lilacs, the poppies are strong this year and looking lovely.

Nothing on the loom except some mug rugs from a warping demo.   A couple of pairs of summer socks knitted on the CSM, and a shawl, almost finished from hand spun yarn.   Photos to come!

Crazy busy times post

I've been trying to sit down at the computer and post an update. Between other computer things taking up my time, some weird updates at the most inopportune times,  crazy amount of meetings and events, it didn't happen.  I had it all figured out. It was some sort of poetic drivel about the early spring greening up, with the trees showing a green haze.   It's actually amazing to see, with the green just showing on the trees, especially in the neighbour's bush lot.   The colours are so bright and fresh!  However, we have baby leaves now, and it doesn't seem quite so appropriate.   Instead....

This is a Mock Angel Food cake from a cookery book dated 1914.   It looks great!   It tasted exactly like an Angel Food cake but only used 2 eggs.  I deemed it a failure in the end though, despite the taste and the look.   The texture was off.  It was almost sticky and wet.  I tasted it and couldn't eat it.  My men folk didn't like it.  In the end I tried to feed it to the chooks, but they weren't impressed either and left half my offering untouched.    I'm not posting the recipe since I don't think it would be worth really trying.

There's been some rumour of the Trilliums being out early this year.  We went for a walk looking for them.  I found a single red trillium in bloom and only 2 very tiny clumps of trillium leaves with no blooms.  Still, it was a nice walk. The weather was fresh and cool, but there was some sunshine which made a difference.  The folks who look after that trail had been in and took down most of the dead ash trees, so it was looking a bit apocalyptic in places.  The trail was clean and easy to walk though and with the early spring, it was very pretty.

 The hyacinths are looking a little bedraggled this year.   We've had a wild mixture of weather this spring with so much rain, wind, frosts, snow and even a few days of sunshine.   The hyacinths came up looking  a little worse for wear.  It's not been a still enough day to enjoy their scent but I've been able to sit out with my tea, and a book or my banjo and soak in the good weather.   The nice thing about having no neighbours is that I can practice the banjo outside and nobody complains at all!

I made a thing!  It's a Circular Sock Machine novelty item which has been going around the csm community the past couple of weeks.  It's a Yip Yip, like the Muppet aliens from so long ago.  It was definitely fun to make, although a bit fussy.  I wish I had some solid coloured yarn for the inside of the mouth and lining, which would give a bit more contrast and a better look, but this was from scraps.

 

 

 

1889 Escalloped Potatoes - from a Suffragette Cookbook

 

Escalloped Potatoes

The Woman Suffrage Cookbook - Hattie A.Burr, 1889

A simple scalloped potato recipe which was easy and fairly quick to make. It cooked up perfectly. I used the only earthenware baking dish I had. The only thing I changed was that I added 1/2 cup more milk because the original amount didn't seem like enough in the dish I used. This recipe used a lot less liquid than modern recipes, so I wasn't sure how it would turn out. In fact, they were absolutely perfect. The potatoes were soft and well cooked, while the top was nicely crisp. They had a great flavour and weren't overly saucy or drippy. I would use this recipe again in an instant. Even my testers who aren't fond of scalloped potatoes liked them. Next time I'd use less flour on top, however, the flour toasted and gave it a lovely nuttyish taste, rather than being inedible

This cookbook is a community cookbook filled with recipes from both suffragettes and supporters. It has a huge array of everyday type recipes and if you ignore the suggestions for how long to cook vegetables, it looks to be a great resource for regular home cooking at the time. The recipes I read seem to be complete with even a few having other suggestions for serving, mainly in the cake section. It was a delight to peruse through and some of the more odd recipes like those using squash will come in handy in the fall for autumnal cooking demos.