the persistence of squash

My uncle grew Hubbard squash this past summer. I don't know if this was on purpose or by mistake. Hubbard is very very sweet and tasty. It also is huge. My brother got one that was 52 pounds! The first year that Bill and I put in a garden, he insisted that we grow Hubbard. What he really wanted was sweet mama's. A modest sized squash that is sweet and keeps relatively well. When our garden filled with light green monsters, he realized his mistake. The vines even climbed up the hedge.

Liam and Simon with the squash in the field. Liam is eating a cucumber. No wonder the kids grew an inch in a month. He never stops eating.

Our squash was a moderate 26 pounds. I didn't have time to deal with it in the fall so it took up residence in the living room under my loom bench. And then I proceeded to ignore it. Before Christmas I was always so busy and after New Years I just didn't want to deal with it. Memories of my sister dealing with her squash "for days" had me running scared. It started to turn orange

and I played the gardeners version of chicken. Who will give in first? Me or the Squash? The squash gave in first and started to rot. It happened really quickly! Once a squash has decided that it has had enough, it doesn't waste any time.

You can see the black end and the whitish area on the top was also soft.

I had the day off yesterday and it became squash day.

Skins on Hubbard's are thick. Skins on old squash are thick too. So you can imagine how thick and tough an old Hubbard would be. When my big knife only scratched the surface the question became what next?

Thankfully Liam had asked for a hatchet for Christmas. He was going to break in to the squash when it was time, but his friend was more alluring so it became my job. I gave it a few wacks and it split in two.

You can see the thickness of the skin. It is the slightly lighter bit along the edge.  I scooped out the seeds and hacked away the rotten bit (again with the hatchet) and baked it in three pieces. Even after it was baked and I had scooped out the meat, the skin was solid.  What with the loss of weight for the skin, rotten bits, seeds and goo, and possibly loss of moisture over  4 or 5 months, it weighed a lot less than the original 26 pounds. But it was still a lot of squash so I made squash soup.

Squash Soup

9 lbs squash
2 tbsp oil
5 pears seeded and diced
3 large onions chopped
10 cloves garlic
3.5 tbsp curry powder
salt
pepper
4 quarts chicken stock (veggie would also do)
1.5 cups white wine (chardonnay)
1 cup heavy cream

Bake squash until done.
Saute onions and garlic in oil until soft then add pears and cook until soft.
Combine everything (except cream) in a BIG pot and cook until throughly heated.
Blend with a hand blender or in batches in food processor or blender until smooth.
Serve swirled with heavy cream.

To answer a few questions

Mamoo: The pickles are on the shelf in the kitchen. For those of you who have never been in my kitchen, the shelf is a shelf made specifically for holding your canning jars. It was a cast off of a friend and I was happy to take it. What doesn't fit on the shelf, gets put back in the boxes that the jars came in and they are tucked under the bed. Some people have sweaters under their bed. I have pickles.

Teyani: Thanks! And yes we do use them all winter and spring and summer until they are gone. The banana/ crimson hot mix is so delicious that they sometimes get snacked right out of the jar. Sometimes they get placed on a slice of cheese before being devoured. They also make appearances in hamburgers and sandwiches of all types. The juice gets used up for marinades and salad dressings.
The kids around a jar of dill's is reminiscent of lions around a downed zebra. Actually it is more like piranhas around the proverbial cow. They even eat the dill and peppercorns. And can do it in about 15 minutes flat.

The hot pepper recipe is the same basic recipe that I use for dills.

3 cups vinegar
3 cups water
1/3 cup pickling salt

bring to a gentle boil and scoop in a couple of cups of sliced hot peppers of your choice. Let heat for about 1 minute and transfer with a slotted spoon to jars. The reason that I do this is to soften the peppers a bit so that they will pack more efficiently. They will settle a bit and you can top them up with pepper rings until the peppers are about 1/2 inch from the top. Continue until you have enough full jars for a batch. Ladle the pickling liquid into the jars. I usually use a sieve to catch the excess seeds. Wipe rims. Put on softened snap lids. Apply screw bands.Process in boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Christine: Most ripe crimson hots were made into pickled peppers. We used to freeze some and make a wonderful hot sauce, but we have found that the hot sauce wasn't getting eaten as much as it used to be, so we stopped. There are still some in the freezer from last year. A lot of the peppers that were in the pepper cookies were green crimson hots as well as the smaller and unripe bananas.
And I have found that the chopped peppers take up a lot less space!

I would also like to note that not all of my produce is in my possession anymore. When I ran out of jars, I put out a call at work asking for mason jars. I offered one jar of pickles for 6 empty jars. I actually had quite a few responses. One woman also offered to buy her pickles from me instead of the lady that she had been buying them from. Which lead to one of her neighbours wanting some Lady Ashburnhams too. Some have also been gifted out. And more will be going out the door at Christmas time. But most of the dills will be staying to be consumed by the children.

Change my name to Peter

As in .....Peter piper picked a peck
(including jalapeno,
crimson hot, and banana peppers)
of pickled peppers.
This is of course a small sampling of the jars and jars that we pickled last week. First we did the crimson hots and banana peppers and the I switched to jalapeno. And you can see from the middle jar that the switch over happened mid jar. And there are more to come.

For those of you who are interested in pickling your own hot peppers.....

3 cups vinegar
3 cups water
1/3 cup pickling salt

bring to just boiling point
spoon sliced peppers (Bill does all of ours by hand, but if I have to do them, I do them in the food slicer) and let simmer 1 minute
scoop out of pickling liquid with slotted spoon into clean jars and pack lightly
ladle pickling liquid to within 1/2 inch from top of jar
wipe rim and apply snap lid and screw bands
put in boiling water bath for 10 minutes
let cool on counter on towels
remove screw bands and wipe jars

Snow Day. The Valentine's Edition.

As suspected, schools are closed today, roads are in horrible condition, both UNB and the Craft College are closed until noon. I won't be going in this afternoon because I don't want my mom (the babysitter) to have to drive on slippery roads.

Here is a shot of yesterday that I took on the way home.
This mornings offering of the house across the street.
Streets and the driveway that are icy. The city crews are concentrating on the roads and the sidewalks on the main streets. Which means that our sidewalk will probably not be plowed for a couple of days. I am NOT looking forward to walking on them.

And yesterday after I got home from work, Liam and I set off for the grocery store to pick up a few things for supper tonight. I was short a few esential items for Scandinavian Chicken Salad. that is going to be our supper tonight and the forcast was for rain yesterday evening. I didn't want to be out in it.
Liam (not surprisingly) said that he wanted a treat, and I agreed on the condition that he act as my pack mule and carry the groceries home. He readily agreed. We ended up in the junk food isle and he chose a sugary drink. He only complained a little bit on the way home.
I can harldy wait for supper time!

Update: the link to the recipe is fixed. Thanks to Bill for pointing it out to me.

Guess What I'm Having for Supper Tonight

The first night that I went to Bill's for supper we had Spicy Chicken with Peanuts. I got there about 6 and didn't leave till 3am. We ate, yakked, and drank wine (and also went through a copious amount of kleenex because we both had nasty colds). So some were around 1 or 2 am Bill hauled some of this out of the fridge because he had made it a couple of nights before and there was some leftovers. It was sooooo good. He said that he stole the recipe from a magazine. Stole, because he never actually bought the magazine but went back three times to the store to stand in line at the check out in order to memorize it. It was a bit on the dry side, so when he made it, he added the wine.

Chicken Fettuchini with Sundried Tomatoes

1/4 cup olive oil
3 large chicken breasts
1 onion diced
1 clove garlic thinly sliced
1/2 tsp fennel seed
1 medium carrot grated
1/4 cup olive oil soaked, chopped, packed sundried tomatoes
12 oz fettuchini
1 cup fresh grated Parmesan cheese (do not use the stuff in the plastic shaker)
1/3 - 2/3 cup white wine

Cut chicken into thin strips. Saute in olive oil over medium heat. Remove chicken with a slotted spoon to thoroughly drain the oil.
Saute onion, garlic, and fennel seed in the oil for about 6 minutes or until onion is soft.
Add the carrot and tomatoes and cook until carrot is soft.
Have pasta cooking in a separate pot at the same time. When it is ready, drain and put into a large bowl. Pour the wine over the pasta and stir. Add the chicken, and sauteed ingredients and stir. Sprinkle the cheese a little at a time and stir.
Enjoy this dish with the leftover wine.

And speaking of leftovers, When I make this dish now, I always make a double batch because that way there will be leftovers. This dish is wonderful as a leftover.

And now on to other things....

Finished spinning and plying Mermaids Dream the other night. Looks much like my other skein, except that it is 450 yards.
I have put down the shawl for no other reason the I have started mittens. It is getting to be that time of the year when our fingers start to get a bit cold and our thoughts turn to mittens. This is my first pair of mittens in years and they are going surprisingly quickly. I just started them on Monday or Tuesday and I am already halfway through the increase for the thumb gore. Unfortunately, I may have to put them down for a while because I seem to have a bit of bursitis in my shoulder. Maybe if I can stay away from as much shoulder irritating activities as possible this weekend, I have a chance at letting it clear up quickly. Sigh. Maybe I'll try switching to knitting right handed for a while.
I am halfway through threading a new set of shawls on a loom at the school. And I have my next set of shawls all planned out in my mind. I should have been doing this months ago, but somehow lost the initiative to do any weaving beyond my handspun scarves. They are so quick to do up that it makes weaving seem effortless.

Holy Tomatoes Batman!

This is our stash of sundried tomatoes. O.K., dehydrated tomatoes. It all works out to the same thing. I think that we have enough for the winter. Even if we use them every day. Unlikely, but a nice thought. Most of them are dried to quite a crispy consistency although some of them are a little more malleable and are packed in olive oil. We also ground some of the extremely dry ones into a powder and mixed them with some olive oil to have tomato oil for salad dressing.

So I think that I am looking for a few new recipes that use sundried tomatoes. Any suggestions of fish free recipes?

How does your garden grow?

The September edition. Things are really taking off in the garden. Or taking over in the case of the squash. That mound below is squash. And it is about 6 feet high. My mother and I put a cage of sorts under it so that it would have somewhere to go. It climbed the cage, and went through the peppers and into the row of basil.
Within this mass are two types of squash. First up is Akehime. It is a baby sized Japan winter squash. They are about the size of a small cantaloupe. Very cute. I keep peeking in and testing the skin to see if they are ready.
Next is the Fairy squash. The maturity of these says 90 days and I hope that they make it before the frost. We had a rather cold night earlier in the week with temperatures hovering just above freezing. And then yesterday was way up in the 30's ( that would be 90's for all you south of the border). The weather has become rather unpredictable. Both of these squash came from David who didn't get a chance to harvest his garden this year because of a sudden move to Scotland!
And here we have one of the 4 rows of tomatoes. Or maybe it was 5 rows. In any case, the tomatoes are so loaded with fruit that they have knocked over their cages. I hauled up the cages and pounded stakes in about a month ago, but they fell over again. Good enough, says I, stay where you want. So now in order to pick some tomatoes, I have to haul up the cages and pluck the ripe ones from underneath. And there are A LOT of tomatoes coming on. In fact, when I was out there last Thursday, I had and old Eagles song running through my head. Does anyone remember "Hotel California"? That part when the word say "And I was thinking to myself, this could be heaven or this could be hell". I guess that it is all just a matter of perspective. When I was pregnant with Mira 13 summers ago, we planted many, many tomato plants. 40 some I think. Among them were some cherry tomatoes. That grew and grew and grew until they were taller than I was. And they grew out and out and out until that one section of the garden was one mass of tomatoes. I dubbed it "tomato hell" and refused to go in. I would pick from around the edges but not venture in to the heart of tomato hell. 7 months pregnant and a wee bit tippy, I was afraid that I would go in, fall over and not be found until the frost killed the plants. Bill, tomato lover that he is, thought that it was heaven. Except that he was working in another city and had over an hours commute each way. Which left him little time to be in the garden. Needless to say, many tomatoes died in tomato hell that fall.
Thursday I picked about a bushel of tomatoes and I didn't even make a dent.

I also have been dealing with cucumbers in the usual way. Almost every meal has is accompanied by a plate of sliced, lightly salted cucumbers. A few jars of dills have been made but due to having 38 jars leftover from last year, only a few. For some reason, the kids have seriously slowed down in their dill eating. Even though they were given free rein on the pickle shelf. This year, I decided to try something new. Well, old, but new to me. I have only made bread and butter pickles once before and didn't really care for them. I have a mustard allergy and so had to modify the recipe a bit but I still didn't like the Zesty Bread and Butter Pickles from the Bernardin cookbook. Utter failure. So I never made them again. Until this year when I found this recipe on Kansasa's blog. She claims that they are the best bread and butter pickles ever. And I would have to agree. I just left out the mustard seed and they turned out fine. Better than fine. One of my original jars didn't seal and quickly got snacked away. So I made another 8 pints. Kansasa also has tutorials for various good ol' down home cooking goodness. And access to a neighbours fruit orchard that makes me green with envy. Especially the apricots that she makes into Apricot Brandy! Not to mention the slickest way to clean a fish.

I think that I have to go eat some tomatoes now.

The answer, my friends....

is blowing in the wind.

Well, actually, it's not. It wasn't windy out when I took this photo. But for some reason, that song is stuck in my head today. This is all my new roving. I am pleased with it. It makes me happy to such a big pile of beautiful fluff just waiting to be spun.

Today is also a special day in our household. 14 years ago, Bill and I had our first date. Good food, good wine, lots of talking and laughing, and a huge box of kleenex are my memories. Bill cooked me diced chicken with peanuts. Tonight's dinner is much more humble, because to be honest, I forgot all about today until I saw the date on the computer.

It has been a glorious day here. Sunny and warmish. Definitely not too hot. I'm looking forward to a few more.

By the way, did any of you notice anything interesting in the picture above? Anybody have the feeling of being watched?

Comfort food

Saturday after market, I was feeling a bit tired and needy. O.K. I was feeling a lot tired. I had another one of those wake up at 3 am and not able to get back to sleep until it was time to get up and get ready for market. But I digress. In any case, I stopped at Victory (a small locally owned grocery store) and picked up the fixings for Scandinavian Chicken Salad. Comfort food if ever there was one. I know that the recipe looks long and involved, but it really isn't.




The following recipe came to the family with my husband, Bill. In as much as I know its history, it originated from a restaurant called Scanway, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and was slightly modified by Bill. He eventually went to that restaurant once and tried their version after he had been making it for a couple of years, and, as is usually the case, it was not nearly as good as what he made at home.

Heart of the dish

2 chicken breasts
dry white wine
salt, pepper, bay leaves, thyme, rosemary, celery tops, herbes de Provence
romaine lettuce (use iceberg lettuce in desperation only)
white rice (preferably basmati)
butter
curry powder
green onion
Sauce
whipping cream
plain yogurt
one can of mandarin oranges (in light syrup)
slivered almonds (not toasted!)
one large orange
english cucumber

Skin two chicken breasts and poach them in a 50:50 mixture of white wine and water. Also include two bay leaves, some thyme, rosemary, celery tops (the leafy bit), black pepper, salt, and herbes de Provence. Use a low heat for a long time so the chicken will be very tender.

Cook two cups of rice, preferably white basmati or some long-grained white rice. First rinse the rice several times with cold water to remove some of the soluble starch. Drain it well. Add two cups of water for the two cups of rice. Bring the rice to a boil over high heat and as soon as it begins to boil turn the burner to low. Simmer for 15 minutes and then turn off the burner and let the rice sit, covered, for another 15 minutes. When the rice is cooked, add about a third of a cup of butter, some curry powder, and one finely chopped green onion. You should use enough curry powder to give the rice a light flavour; it should kiss you with sweetness, not assault you with heat.

Prepare a sauce from a 50:50 mixture of plain yogurt and whipped cream. Carefully fold into the sauce some of the juice from the can of mandarin oranges until it has a light sweet flavour.

For this dish presentation is important so assemble the plate as follows. Prepare a bed of lettuce, romaine or iceberg. Spoon and shape a pile of rice on the lettuce. Break the chicken into small chunks (about the size of a mandarin orange section) and dot the top of the rice with chunks of chicken and mandarin sections. Spoon a generous quantity of the sauce over the chicken, orange, and rice. Garnish as follows. Take a slice from the centre of an orange and two slices of English cucumber. With one slice of cucumber on each side of the orange slice, split and twist the three of them and place in the centre of the sauce. Surround with a few sections of mandarin. Sprinkle with shaved almonds. I know there are no almonds shown in the picture. For me it's an allergy thing. As for the missing mandarins....ooops.

This dish is one that we all absolutely love. Even on the hottest day in summer this dish sits lightly on the stomach.

As given the recipe serves three. We double the recipe because there are six of us. Oh, and the stock you have left after poaching the chicken is a fantastic chicken stock for any use. As a starter for chicken soup it can't be surpassed.

The meal that launched a family

Yesterday was mine and Bill's 13th anniversary of our first date. That night 13 years ago he had invited me over so he could cook me supper. On the menu was Diced Chicken with Peanuts, a couple of bottles of REALLY excellent wine that he had brought with him from Ontario, and a strawberry desert wine that he had made himself. On my yum. the rest, as they say, is history.

In honour of this anniversary, I made the dish last night. It is still as good and I thought that I could share it with you.

2 or 3 chicken breasts cut into long thin strips marinated at least 2 hours in,

1 tbsp dark soya sauce
1 tbsp dry sherry
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp sugar
1/3 cup of dry red wine
10 to 12 dry red chilies (or less depending on your heat tolerance)

Stir-fry ingredients

1 1/4 cups raw peanuts skinned and shelled
1 large sweet red pepper, sliced
1/2 large green pepper, sliced
1 stalk celery, sliced
3 to 4 cups broccoli florets
2 tsp chopped ginger root
5 cloves garlic chopped
1 cup green onions cut 1/2 inch long
3 tbsp oil to stir fry with

Combine in a jar and set aside

1/3 cup water
2 tbsp soya sauce
1 heaping tbsp corn starch

Cooking Instructions

Put two tbsp oil in the cold wok and add the peanuts, then bring the heat up to medium and stirring constantly, roast them slowly until they are a golden brown. Remove the peanuts with a slotted spoon , leaving the oil behind.
Add peppers and celery and stir fry until cooked. Remove from pan.
Do the same with broccoli.
Add the remaining oil, then add ginger, garlic, and green onions. Cook fro about a minute, then add the chicken and marinade. Cook until the chicken is cooked, but still tender.
Put all of the ingredients back into the wok add the cornstarch mixture, turn down the heat and stir until the sauce thickens. You can remove the chilies before eating, or you can live dangerously.

I hope that someone our there trys and enjoys this dish as much as we do. Even the kids all eat it, although they don't bother with the chilies.

Todays post is also my 100th post. Hard to believe, but there it is.

Recipe time

Today is Jasmine's birthday. Ya gotta do SOMETHING for a kid on her birthday, right? Especially if it is a rainy school day. Enter....

Carrot Pineapple Muffins

3 cups flour
1.5 cups sugar
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon heaping
1 cup oil
2 eggs
1 cup crushed pineapple
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups carrots grated

Measure everything in a large mixing bowl and stir well. Grease muffin tins (or use paper cupcake cups) and fill 3/4 full. Bake at 350 C for 20- 25 minutes or until muffins spring back when lightly poked. Makes 24 muffins.

That is it. It is one of the easiest recipe's that I use. The kids love them. They are nice with cream cheese frosting or a piece of old cheddar. Bill likes them with butter. The mix keeps up to two weeks in a fridge, and the cooked muffins freeze well. What's not to like?

The recipe originally came from a coffee shop where I worked in my other life. Molly's. Actually, back then it was Mim's. An ill fated partnership. In any case, I made at least 3 or 4 batches of this stuff every week and the recipe eventually stuck on my sugared and caffeinated brain. It is an old stand by in my house. Even Liz's boy child, a self confessed carrot loather, loves these.

My freshly dyed weft yarn is almost dry, thanks to the dehumidifier.

And, I now know why there is such a term as "Spring Cleaning". All of a sudden, I have light in my house, thanks to an ever brighter and more powerful sun. I am now seeing all of the grime that was hidden in shadows throughout the winter.

Ick.

So far it has only effected my kitchen. But before long, I know that it shall spread to other parts of my house. I don't know whether to be happy or sad. It might just end up being too much cleaning. But then I shall have a clean house, right? At least until the kids get home.

Soup and Baskets

I have to say that I made the best veggie soup the other day. It was one of those panic moments when Mother Hubbard looked in her substantially depleted cupboards and came up with veggie soup. I have 3 other veggie soup recipes in my hand written cookbook, but they are going to get tossed in favour of this one.

6-10 cloves of garlic sliced
2 onions coarsely chopped
3 sticks of celery 3/4 inch slices
2 med carrots quartered and 3/4 inch slices
1 yellow pepper coarsely chopped
1 green pepper coarsely chopped
2 small zucchini 1/4 inch slices
2 med potatoes 1 inch cubes
1 can chopped tomatoes
3 bay leaves
1 tsp each oregano, rosemary, thyme, salt, pepper
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
oil

Heat oil over medium heat in large pot. Saute onions and garlic in oil about 2 minutes. Add zucchini and celery, cook 2 minutes. Add peppers, carrots, and potatoes. Cover and cook about 10 minutes or until things start to soften.Stir often. Add can of tomatoes and two cans of water, herbs, and vinegar. Cook until done, about 20 minutes.

note: I used the tomato can to measure the two cans of water. Seems obvious, but you never know when someone might go to the store looking for canned water. My daughter is a literalist. I have learned to be careful about what I say.

So maybe my cupboards weren't all that bare. But it was good. This recipe make a big pot of soup, but I cook for 6, so it works out fine for us.

As for basket making.... I don't know about those backpack baskets, and I really have no desire to make one ( my back is wroteoff) but if you all want to learn how to make a small basket then I am more than willing to lead all you wannabe basket making Frederictonians in a informal workshop. But the thing that we need is water and space. The reeds that we use can reach about 10 feet in length, sometimes longer. They tend to get tangled and to untangle them required a bit of shaking. For the course that I took, there were 6 of us, plus the instructor in a room that was about 20' by 12' and that was cramped. As I say to the kids, we all like our eyes. So I will suggest that we go ahead in the summer, when we can soak the reeds (and our feet) in a kiddie pool, ( I have one courtesy of Liz) sit in someone's back yard ( I volunteer mine), and swill beer. Sound good ladies?

And my basket dried out so I gave it a test run last night. It worked out fine with no snagging. It may not work so well with a fine single ply silk like Kate is using, but does the trick for my wool.