Saying Goodbye to February

I don't mind the winter. I like cuddling up in the house under quilts, reading, sipping hot tea. Wearing wool socks, and sweaters (or wearing p.j.'s all day ). Baking cakes and pies and cookies.  

Winter is the season for the comfort food I love - hearty soups, stews and pot pies. 

Winter is the season for recharging; for resting up for a busy spring.  

As February comes to an end and March roars in, I'm having a hard time being in the present.  I find myself looking forward to being outside working in the garden.

 Looking forward to soaking up the pink and the green freshness.

I'm hoping that we can make our new home as special as this home has been.

And anticipating having fun trying.

<3 Karen

Blustery Winter Days

Blustery days and and a bowl of hot, hearty soup go together. 

Busy days and soup go together. 

I've been packing. And packing. And packing.

So far, seventeen boxes of china. 

Yep - that's right - I said seventeen. Boxes of china. 

And then cleaned out the basement. There I found three truckloads of miscellany fit to go to St. Vincent's.  And three giant bags of garbage  fit to go to the road.  

At the end of the day I was so relieved to have put a pot of bean soup on to simmer.  

Try it on your next busy day. It would probably work in a crock pot too, if you're not going to be home. 

Bean Soup

In a large stock pot or dutch oven place:

1 smoked pork hock or meaty ham bone.

3 cups dried white beans or black eyed peas

2 large potatoes, halved

2 medium carrots, in large chunks 

2 yellow onions, chopped

2 bay leaves

rosemary or thyme ( whichever or neither ) 

freshly ground pepper 

Cover generously with water  ( start with 8 cups and add more if necessary ) 

Simmer until beans are tender and vegetables are soft. 

Remove pork hock or ham bone and pick off and chop the meat,

Use a potato masher to chop up the potatoes and carrot in the pot.

OK - now the secret ingredient - pour in about 1/4 cup or so of molasses. 

It improves the colour and makes it super yummy.

Enjoy!

( it's even better the next day )

<3 Karen 

Diamond in the Rough

Our dream home. Well not yet, exactly.  

We put an offer on this little house set on about 2 acres of lovely peace and quiet.

Theres a chicken coop and garden shed...

a greenhouse ( be still my heart ) 

and a three car garage ( be still Mike's heart )

What we love about it? The yard is like a park and we're close to town, but not on main street. 

Most of all, it's a  fresh start that we can call ours. 

Not Mike's house or my house. Our home.

I'm optimistic.

<3 Karen 

In the Mail

I grew up in a town that had no door to door mail delivery. Each day ( before any of us had begun kindergarten ) my mother walked us 3 kids up to the post office to pick up our mail. It was a big adventure. We ran along pretending to use the key to open imaginary doors in hydro poles, trash cans, and flower pots all along the way. Inside the post office, rows and rows of shiny silver doors with hundreds of little locks filled up 3 whole walls. Imagine three little kids bouncing around, arms waving,  shrieking " It's my turn to open it! I want to use the key!"  I was filled with anticipation that today would be the day just one piece of mail would be addressed to me!  Although it rarely happened, my enthusiasm never dampened. 

Now, I've gotten used to finding mostly bills, bank statements, and flyers.  

But this week! I picked up lots of special deliveries...  

Air mail from the U.K.!

Christmas wishes from Haley ( she started her own big adventure in September ). 

I miss her...

And then the fabric I ordered arrived. 

Pretty cotton voile, crisp linen and cozy wool.

And again! 

All the way from Japan...

Just look at the special attention to packaging! 

Pattern books. Even though I'm not surprised I'm no less thrilled. 

 Woo Hoo! It's Christmas early!

 

I read pattern books and cook books like fiction...

I'll be sewing dresses,

and blouses,

 and dresses,

and tops, 

and more dresses.

I love the vintage styling of this one, 

and this one

How pretty! 

Not your ordinary, everyday, old mail...

bye for now - I've got work to do!

<3 K 

 I usually spend my Saturdays cleaning and running errands. Last weekend I set aside the day for sewing with the girls. 

Just hangin' out, drinkin' wine, eatin' jube jubes, listening to some great music and sewing away.

Laughing and creating. 

From 7 in the morning to 7 at night. No chores, no laundry, no grocery shopping.

I found this pattern on the Moda website. It's called the "lawn chair " quilt.

It kinda does look like one of those old school woven lawn chairs. 

I now have 4 tops to layer up and quilt! 

Esther started laying already! 

Beautiful sage green eggs with a sunny yellow yolk

Woo Hoo! 

Hope you all had a great weekend doing something you love to do. :-) 

<3 Karen

New Girls

I may have started collecting chickens...

We went back to the chicken auction and I came home with 2 gorgeous Arucaunas. 

They'll lay blue/green eggs! Who could resist that? 

Meet Esther. She's shy so it was difficult to get a shot that wasn't blurry. 

And this is Goldie. Mike named her. ( after himself )

Chickens are kind of like sheep in that they stick together. They move around the yard as a group, always within a couple of feet of each other, doing their own thing.

Except Goldie.

She hangs around Mike. 

Honest. 

We thought it was cute the first couple of days, but expected that it would end once she got used to her new digs.  She didn't give a hoot where the other girls were. Just Mike. For two days, she didn't stray more that 3 feet from Mike. She tried to adopt Mr Vintage too.

I came home from work one day this very week and saw Mike running around the back yard in circles and this chicken running around after him.  "yup, she's following me!"

Insurance broker / chicken whisperer. 

She's much friendlier than she looks.

I'll let you know when I get coloured eggs.

<3 Karen

Brioche and Bread Pudding

I love love love bread. Especially in autumn. I normally use the dough setting on my bread maker to do the needing and the first rise, but I don't bake in it because I prefer a thinner crust than the machine delivers. It saves so much on time and clean-up. 

My youngest son doesn't trust me to not sneak in some healthy ingredients. He considers everything that's not white to be whole wheat and he'd rather go without - forever - than eat whole wheat!  He prefers store bought, white sandwich bread. I think any sandwich tastes better with home baked peasant style bread. I walk by the bakery at the grocery store and swoon over all the artisan bread you can find now, but I'm too cheap  frugal to buy it when it's so simple to bake your own. So when I stumbled across the  Artisan Bread in Five minutes a Day website I was pretty thrilled. They use a technique that doesn't involve kneading. When I saw the book at Chapters, I couldn't not buy it even though I swore I could find any recipe I needed online, and that I would never buy another cookbook. 

This week I made Brioche. 

You can find the recipe and the technique here.   

You can see that I didn't use a brioche pan and I didn't add the little "tete" on top either.

It didn't matter.

Yum, yum, yum. 

We ate it smeared with butter along with a bowl of turkey soup, toasted with home made grape jelly, toasted and dripping with honey and I used it to make the most amazing bread pudding. 

You should try it.

Apple Cinnamon Bread Pudding with Maple Sauce.

In an 8" square pan, lay out evenly :

4 cups cubed Brioche 

2 smallish apples, chopped ( I used empire ) 

Combine and sprinkle over the bread and apples:

1/3 cup sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

Wisk together and pour over the bread:

3 large eggs

1 cup milk

1 cup cream 

( or you could substitute 2 cups milk ) 

2 tsp vanilla

Bake at 350 for 45 minutes or until set.

Serve warm drizzled with Maple Sauce.

Maple Sauce

Combine in a small saucepan and simmer until the sugar melts:

1/3 cup maple sugar

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup butter 

Sprinkling the sugar and cinnamon on top rather than mixing with the eggs and milk makes the bread and apples all crispy on the top. 

mmm - that's just it. 

<3 Karen