Burning Birch

I heard this on Wisconsin Public Radio this morning.

An excerpt: "To burn birch is to split birch. Its charitable, and splits as crisp as celery. Amateurs can impress friends by splitting birch. Among woodsmen, birch is favored of old men in flannel who no longer want to fight oak wars. They have given up on elm- it is no disgrace to give up on elm. Ash is a good substitute, but you will one day be too old for ash. For old men, redemption is birch fire."

Burning Birch, by Justin Isherwood

a dog story

A neighbor up the hill got in touch late this past week, saying she'd seen and heard a dog from the direction of our driveway when she'd been walking down the lane to get mail. She'd wondered if it was our dog, but didn't think so, and whether we knew anything about it. We didn't. 

She said it was a big dog, with a big, throaty bark. We hadn't heard it.

This afternoon we walked down the driveway to get our mail, which we'd forgotten about yesterday. Lupine dashed down the hill and around the curve of the driveway and we heard this unknown dog's big bark. It was baying from the hill above the turn in our lane. It wouldn't come, but wouldn't go far. I hiked up the hill towards it, and a light-colored something on the ground. It was another dog, curled up next to an old wood pile, dead. It was clear that the barking dog had been sleeping in the leaves right next to its dead friend for a number of days and nights. It still wouldn't come to us.

The dead dog had a collar, and a tag with a phone numbere. I called and delivered the news to an older fellow who said he'd been missing two dogs for five days. Jake drove to the township hall to meet him and led him back to our place. The barking dog came to his owner, wagging and whining, and hungry, and Jake carried the other one down the hill and put him in the man's truck. The man was shaken, but thankful we'd called.

We'll never know what happened, there were no visible wounds on the dead dog. I feel badly we didn't know sooner. Maybe they'd been there all week, and we drove by them early morning and late afternoon and didn't hear or see them. I keep thinking about those dogs, and how the barking one, Clyde was his name, wouldn't leave his friend. Buddy. Buddy was the dead one. Clyde barked at people walking by, which where they landed only ended up being our one neighbor and us, asking for help in the only way he knew how. He did the right thing, and got them both home in the end. 

It's Been a Long Time

I hope your late autumns have been lovely. It is a strange time at TelltheBees, when the leaves are down and there's no snow. Not my favorite time of year, certainly. When I wake up at night and look out the window, I can see lights on the opposite ridge, and the noise from the highway over the hill is noticeable now, having no foliage to block its hum, only tree trunks and bare branches to ricochet off of.

The garden is almost completely put to bed. The last of the carrots are out, sweetened having been through a hard frost. The kale and the spinach are hanging on, thanks to the clear plastic sheeting spread across it. We are dreaming of a cold frame. Simplicity is our friend: this simple model that would work well, but we like these, too. 

Some of those carrots were steamed and pureed for baby food. Xan is a good eater, meaning that he eats everything offered with smiles and "mmmms." I've been trying to make as much baby food as I can (below is carrots, peas, and potatoes, frozen in ice cube trays and thawing on a Sunday morning for that day's eats) but this boy is starting to be able to eat what we eat. 

Look at those teeth!

Other recent culinary adventures include tandoori turkey for our 2nd annual Friendsgiving. I used the Bon Apetit recipe linked above which had me toasting spices for tandoori masala and garam masala and had this house smelling deliciously spicy for days. A bestie recently gifted me a Bon Apetit subscription! I'm excited.

@Kathy: your sari was only used as a tablecloth THIS ONCE and weathered the storm unscathed. 

This meal included curried rice, coconut kale, and naan, palak paneer....

MP's photo

... and was so, so good. 

We were delivered these many, many, pounds of pork a few weeks ago, the meat from half the hanging weight of a free-range pig lovingly raised by our friends a few miles from here. 

It is hard to tell from the picture that some of those stacks are five or six packages high. So far we've eaten one of the three (three!) hams, in its original form with my extended family during the latter portion of the Thanksgiving weekend, and in soup and sandwich form for the week following. It is so good, much less salty than conventional ham. 

I don't know how we'll ever get through all this meat, but we're happy to have it. The lard, visible in the picture above to the upper left, will be used for bird food (i.e., suet), or for soap-making, or rendered for cooking. Later, obviously. Right now it happily resides in the freezer.

We've otherwise been keeping busy with sink baths, 

hiking, 

and earring making. I sold my wares at my first craft show yesterday, and was mildly successful.  I'm currently selling at Tulips in Viroqua, and hopefully at other local venues soon. Sorry, no picture.

A few things have made my life better these past few months.

This book:

An interview. 

This radio show:

And, this movie. We went last night, our first sans Xan date. It was simply lovely. A perfect rendition of a well-loved book, which I will forever remember reading on a cot on the covered porch of a rustic cabin in El Yunque. 

We are hopeful for snow, soon, around here. 57 degrees forecasted for December 3rd doesn't bode well, though. 

Best wishes to you and yours.

Samhain

The older I get, the more I like Halloween, the more modern name of the Celtic harvest holiday Samhain. I like the timing of it, mostly.  Samhain is old Irish for "summer's end," and likewise, this holiday marks the start of the winter season and its darker, shorter days. A time for taking stock and preparing for the cold weather, with some ghoulish fun thrown in. Same as Thanksgiving, really, and as a Northerner for all of my days, its always seemed Thanksgiving is a month too late.

Xan's first jack-o-lantern.

Shelled beans from the garden.

Part of the gleanings from yesterday's 2nd annual Halloween Slaughterfest. 4 chickens, 2 geese, 2 ducks in the freezer for those darker, colder days. 

Dinner tonight. We just happen to have apple brandy, homemade, and delivered by our good friends yesterday. Brussels sprouts instead of turnips, with buttered barley. Yummmmmmmm.

In other news: suddenly, we are parents of a big baby. This guy has real personality and can do a lot of exciting things these days. I put together a playspace for him this weekend. He loves it! Opposite of his mirror is a desk and Jake recently installed some speakers upstairs, so we played and listened to NPR and worked together lots this weekend. 

Happy Halloween, readers. 

Autumn Update

Its been ages since I've written... apparently I'm not good at documenting the busy times.

I stopped and took about a hundred pictures of this mid-October rainbow on my way home from work on Friday. 

This weekend was an unexpectedly homebound one, and though I was disappointed to miss out on the revelry happening amongst and in honor of my friends, it was nice to be home, as well. 

We are in the midst of squash season. I just made several batches of squashiladas, attempting to emulate our friends' excellent recipe which we sampled alongside squash soup and jack-o-lanterns Friday night. I made pumpkin ice cream, sans ice cream maker, which couldn't have been easier or more delicious, especially studded with maple walnuts. I like some texture in my ice cream. Frozen in a mason jar! 

Xan even got in on some squash action, to mediocre review. 

In other news, Lupine is becoming a good dog. 

Xan is loving his cousin's hand-me-down backpack.

Without fail, time marches on. He'll be six months old this week! This picture was taken during a break from the fussiness two breaking teeth ensured for most of the weekend, and the smile made up for all of it.

We hope your autumn is marching on as well. 

Fall

It is simply beautiful around here right now. I laughed out loud this morning on the way to work... it was almost unbelievable! Wildlife, fall colors, mist coming off the streams and swamps, that golden light!

Here's how my canned goods fared at the fair: 

Apple Butter

Maple Syrup

Sauerkraut

There were only two entries in the Sauerkraut division, and yet I got 4th place! That only enhances the mystery. Oh, the enigma of the county fair canned foods judge... they don't even taste the goods! 

Even sadder, I didn't get back to the fair on the Sunday night it closed in time to pick up my entries... most mourned is that maple syrup! March isn't too far, though.

Lupine

We made it about six weeks without a canine companion at TelltheBees. I could hardly stand living without a dog! 

After a couple of false starts in our dog-search, we found this girl. She's about a year old, has quite a pronounced underbite not so visible in this picture, and is very sweet. We're working on her manners... she is quite taken with the cats and chickens and rabbit, though the feeling is not, understandably, mutual. She has endeared herself to us by kissing Xan, greeting us at the door with whimpers and wags, and collecting things from around the house to surround her as she sleeps on her pillow. This morning Jake found her in the middle of a pair of his shoes, a pair of my flip-flops, and three throw pillows. None were chewed upon, just brought there to keep her company as she slept at the bottom of the stairs, apparently. 

I think she'll be a good dog, and it feels so much better being home now that she's here. 

Snippets

All food-related snippets, as it turns out.

Being back at school and busy with all kinds of other activities makes me want to be intentional about what we're eating so we don't end up eating convenient things like frozen pizza, which is so good and such a temptation! So far that has meant me cooking a lot on Sundays and pre-packing lots of lunches and preparing lots of meals to warm up throughout the week. Eggs, as always, play a prominent role, and that is another post in the making. Here are some other things happening in our kitchen.

Apple cider made the house smell wonderful today! I didn't have cinnamon sticks so I emptied out an old teabag and refilled it with apple pie spice, and wrapped it up with a twist tie.

Wanted to remember this way to preserve "fresh" ginger in the refrigerator: slice and store in a jar of cooking sherry! Sherry is often in Thai cooking anyway, and in which I most often use fresh ginger, so it all works out.

Kraut is currently fermenting itself in our pantry... still in a plastic bucket. We are on the lookout for a real kraut crock.

The best salsa we've ever made, pre-canning. I think the kicker was the roasted corn, and the use of apple-cider vinegar instead of white. We used the end as a base for chili tonight, which was great.

A new Sunday ritual is making granola. In this week's batch, I included toasted amaranth and quinoa grains, which add a delightful crunch. It is sweetened with maple syrup.

Look at these incredible maple sugar crystals that ended up on the inside of our jug! I'm trying to figure out something else to store in there that could be infused with all that great maple sugar flavor. 

I hope you're eating as well around your place!  

Grilled Greens and Raw Kale Salad

These were introduced to me early in the summer, and we've been enjoying them with regularity ever since.

A few weeks ago, while visiting my lovely aunt in her lovely home near the lovely Shenandoah National Park, we branched out from the lacinato kale we usually use and into collard greens and curly kale, with great results.

So good we made these three times while we were there! Once plain, once with feta cheese and black pepper, and once to chop up and use as a pizza topping.

We'll be grilling our greens as long as its warm enough to cook outside- there is a forest of kale in our garden! 

To use up some of it, we've been eating a lot of raw kale salad. A few times in the past weeks we've put some roasted garlic and olive oil in the bottom of a salad bowl and then add chopped kale and a little salt. We then "massage" the kale until it wilts a bit and leave it to sit for at least 30 minutes. Our favorite combination has been to add some roasted squash and toasted walnuts. I don't have a picture, but its beautiful!

August, now

The summer's beginning to give up her fight. Lyrics to an old favorite song, that. It is true, say we, with a mix of regret and readiness. Summer is a heady time, full of adventures and possibility and vegetables, but that it is fleeting is a twofold blessing. Not only do we appreciate it all the more come springtime, but we are pre-empted, in these climates, from wheeling out of control with gardening projects and sunburns and long days off.

We are just back from our vacation to the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, arriving home at 4:00 am this morning. It was nice to wake up at home. It is a cool morning, there are a few leaves on the deck, and acorns bouncing off the steel roof. Fall is coming, and I'm ready.

Not quite prepared, but ready anyway. We haven't gone into the garden yet, but I have already put canning jar lids on my shopping list for today, since I'm sure there are tomatoes and beans and grapes to blanch and cut and juice and preserve. And that other harbinger of autumn... the first day of school. It looms not so far off in the future. This week is a week of crossing items off to-do lists, hopefully.

Some preparations for cooler weather have already been made. I've been making and canning and freezing stock for most of the summer, when the opportunity presents itself. A new project: corn stock. Simply simmer the gnawed cobs for several hours, with herbs. It smells divine.

Isn't it lovely? I look forward to using it as a base for soups and chowders. We're a soup-eating crowd at TelltheBees.

The potatoes are dug already. It was a bumper crop! In addition to George's Potatoes, a white heirloom variety I've named after their source, an old gardening neighbor and special friend of my grandparents, we threw some blue and red potatoes that were left at our house in the ground too, to great results. 

We brought some of these with us to Virginia, and have tubs of them resting in the cool dark underneath the cupboards in the sunken greenhouse. 

The bees have been checked and rechecked, but we probably won't harvest any honey this year. We were far too late adding extra space in the spring, busy as we were with other big things, and one of the hives swarmed. Everyone in there is happy now, but even with this long hot summer, they had a slow start. As my dad said, we got a different kind of honey. 

We sure did. 

I couldn't resist buying a case of Michigan peaches at the co-op before we left, and canned a bunch of rhubarb peach sauce, whose intended use is to mix into plain yogurt for a bright spot in my winter breakfasts.  

I didn't follow a recipe here, but added extra citric acid and processing time for safety. I did not, however, add vinegar to the water bath, which made for cloudy jars and lids. 

And now... off to our strategic planning meeting for the week. On it: much gardening, canning, cleaning, preparing, and home-improvement projects.

A coffee toast to a productive week for all!

Around here this weekend...

Jake spent today in the garden. 

Here we have a boatload of basil. We're having a porch and pesto party on Wednesday, so this will all be put to excellent use. 

He picked three shiny beauties whose name I love: Georgia Flame.

This here is a bunch of epazote, an herb we grew to combine with our dried beans. Supposedly it cuts the gas factor when mixed with cooked dried beans. But, it tastes like gasoline. If it works though, it might be worth it. 

 Onions are harvested! They'll cure outside in the sun for a few days. Maybe we have time to grow another set of onions this year... ?

My favorite joke, lately (thanks to my cousin Kelsey):

Q: What does a nosy pepper do?
A: He gets jalapeno business. 

HA! 

We've kind of neglected our garden this summer. Earlier this weekend Jake refused an offer by our house guests to help weed because he was too embarrassed to show it to them. His afternoon out there made it much better. See him waving in the background? He's happier now. 

We've been doing a lot of screen porch living. 

Even this walking stick wanted in on the action.

We had quite the entourage at our Fortnight show last night. 

When we got home, we had a fire. We've been waiting all summer for this, and finally the burn ban was lifted. Someone ate many, many marshmallows.

Tonight, Jake made a fresh marinara. Marcella Hazan says "a sauce must be sufficiently savory to season pasta adequately. Blandness is not a virtue, tastelessness is not a joy."

Continued: "Always taste a sauce before tossing the pasta with it. If it seems barely salty enough on its own, it's not salty enough for the pasta. Remember it must have flavor enough to cover a pound or more of cooked, virtually unsalted pasta."

Jake followed Marcella's Tomato Sauce with Garlic and Basil, sort of. And oh, it was good.