Pretty Kitchen Corner

I am not quite sure how the hours of every day get sucked into oblivion without my having accomplished much at all. It's possible it could be because of all the experimenting I've been doing in photoshop. It might also have something to do with how much time I've been putting into looking up all the job listings for my area even though there's really only one of them I actually want. I've done all I can for that one job and now I just have to wait and see if I get sifted to the bottom of the pile or if I get put in a brand new optimistic pile. Time to let go of it and see what happens.

There is a heavy distraction factor at work in the universe where there is so much to do, and most of it is stuff I actually want to do, that I don't even know where to look first. A strange miracle occurred yesterday that all my crafting/quilting friends will recognize as wonderful... my fairy Godmother (whose name is Joni) dropped off about ten or so boxes of fabric. FABRIC. Fashion fabric, quilting fabric, crafting fabric, old fabric, new fabric, and patterns too. I hit the fabric jack pot and it has made me believe that I must have some redeeming qualities because no one dumps that kind of treasure on the completely undeserving!

THANK YOU JONI!!!!

I haven't even gone through it yet. I want to. I want to do it right now. But I also need to finish building my garden beds. I also need to clean my kitchen and make food. In addition to that, I need to make cheese. I could have put the cheese making off for another week except that there was a sale on some local milk by the gallon and so I bought two gallons. We don't drink much milk around here so either I make cheese or I waste five dollars. I can make the cheese tomorrow. But dang...so much to do! Good God! I just realized I have a marathon of laundry to do too. It's almost enough to make me want to adopt a naked lifestyle.

I know I saw some thirties reproduction fabrics in there. There's a baby quilt top that Joni made but never finished which is so exciting! There are some patterns and buttons and some really amazing wool as well.

I'll bet some of you out there are dying for pictures so you can live vicariously through me. I think I should: clean the kitchen, start cooking but as soon as everything is going I need to sit down on the steps in the Williamson ghetto and start sorting through the riches. With a beer.

Are you all having a good Friday? Anyone making Challa bread or fish?

The Homestead Inventory
The winter's coming, is farm girl Mathilda* ready?

One not-naked urban homesteader wrapped in a newly "finished" quilt top.

A more practical view of the quilt top.

One newly stocked pantry. It is very unfortunate that a cat who was a guest in our house decided that the concrete floor in this pantry was much more luxurious to pee on than her litter box. It's not near the food, don't worry. It takes the glamor of my pantry down a notch or two but hopefully with some Mrs. Meyer's cleaner I will be able to muscle out the unsavory odor.

Here is what you will find on these shelves:

36 quarts vanilla pears
26 quarts diced tomatoes
12.5 quarts stewed tomatoes
16.5 quarts tomato sauce
21 pints 2-bean marinated salad
21 pints salsa
9.5 quarts peaches
6.5 pints apple sauce
9 pints marinated green bean salad
10.5 pints blueberry sauce
6 pints silvanberry sauce
9 pints piccalilli
15 pints dilly beans
8 pints bread and butter pickles
12 quarts dill pickles
11 quarts dill pickles from homegrown cucumbers
10 pints jardiniere
8 pints pickled eggplant
14.5 pints pickled beets
11 half pints peach peach preserves
10 half pints blueberry jam
6 half pints silvanberry jam
7 half pints blackberry jam (this is from last year)
3 half pints sour cherry jam

From the freezer:

9 packages soup
20 packages ratatouille
3 packages tomato sauce
8 packages grilled eggplant
10 packages grilled hot peppers
7 packages oven roasted tomatoes
4 packages green beans
4 packages zucchini
5 packages zucchini fritters
28 packages pesto

Is it enough? Will we be forced to eat the pile of rotting wood we're cultivating in the back yard? Would we fail the frontier house test? (Duh, of course we would, we keep a television in our fire place)

You know what I love about Philip? He has an amazing ability to keep his priorities in order. I also love his enthusiasm for all the activities I get into such as food preserving and this whole eating local challenge thing. I have been doing all the research so far on where we will find our sustenance and our comforts.

Then the night before last he comes rushing into our bedroom where I was watching old episodes of ER and says he's been looking for a local source for whiskey!! (The exclamation points are his, not mine.) He happens to love whiskey, not a treat he gets to enjoy very often due to the somewhat hefty nature of the price tag. Can you believe that? How fabulous is this state we live in that he can buy locally made whiskey?

It's entirely possible that the local junk is really disgusting, but he'll have to report to me on that one because the smell of all whiskey makes my stomach want to crawl up my throat and find out what fresh air is like. I know it can't have a peaty essence seeing as we have no peat here. My mom was wondering if anyone around here produces vodka. Sure enough, Philip found a vodka that is made in Portland. It fills me with pride that when the chips are getting weird, my man will always find festive beverages to imbibe before they actually go down.

Today as I was running my errands I saw a man in an official vehicle with a hair-do I really wanted to talk to him about. I thought as I passed him: Dude! I hate your pony tail so much it's making my brain hurt! I wonder if someone else felt the same way about mine?

Has anyone else been baking bread? I haven't baked any bread since the dog hair fiasco last year. Reading about wheat has made me itchy for some home made loaves. This weather also makes me wish bread was baking in my oven. I just hope I can make a decent loaf in my electric oven.

Time to go make food. Or curl up in a blanket and read. Oh yeah...with something festive in a cup. That reminds me, if anyone has any fantastic tried and true recipes for mustard or liqueurs, please share.





*not my real name.

Quilting In The Wee Hours

These are the first beets I've gotten from my garden in six years! And not for want of trying either. There's something about this area that has worked magic for me. All the things I had trouble growing in Santa Rosa are exuberant here: sunflowers (I know, don't they grow EVERYWHERE?!), Cosmos (ditto!), beets, and blueberries (they take a lot of nurturing to prosper in Sonoma). Those are my first zucchinis too.

Would you look at that? Oh lordy lou, were they delicious too! Although the six bushes I planted last year didn't flower this year (these berries came from the five new ones I planted) they are growing new branches and filling out. So next year perhaps I'll get a lot more fruit.

Writing instructions for sewing patterns is not as easy as you'd think. I've been using them since I was a kid but when I need to describe something on paper I can't seem to conjure up a way of describing the actions so that the reader can form an accurate mental picture. So I tried photographing the steps and now I see how come the instructions usually use illustrations. Although, I suppose I could get better pictures if I wasn't taking them myself. This is all exponentially more difficult when you're doing it all in triple digit heat. I think I drank ten pints of water yesterday.

At around ten pm I finally sat down to relax and watch some episodes of Little House On The Prairie. It was still insufferable hot and sticky inside the house so I had every door and window open to let in the somewhat pleasant breeze going on outside. My back door doesn't have a screen so lots of flies get in, which is annoying. But when it's that hot- who cares?

I went to get my bag of quilting supplies to finally start hand stitching my first full size quilt (which I haven't got all planned out, by the way. No, please don't have a heart attack Aunt Lin! I have no idea what I'm doing with it. Just stitching rectangles together...) and I noticed a whole lot of movement on my ugly-ass dining room light. That's not something you want to see. There were probably a hundred hopping bugs all clinging to the light and occasionally dropping to the floor. You know those bugs that live in lawns? The ones that hop like they have springs for feet? That's what they were.

Gross.

So I turned out the light and shut the door and figured I'd deal with it in the morning. A few minutes later I went to the kitchen to get another beer and stepped on a thousand hopping bugs which were lounging around all over my kitchen floor. So I started sweeping them up, but you know what? These buggers hop, so keeping them on a dustpan is a nightmare. This is all at one in the morning not too long after Chick threw up on the bed, by the way. These guys have never invaded my house before, what the hell happened? Why were they swarming my house like locusts on a field of corn?

Ah, good times, eh?

Oh yeah, did I mention the heat rash on my neck? No? That's because I'm stoic and strong and I don't care if my entire body is covered in stinging rashes, I still won't complain. You won't find me whining on and on about how uncomfortable it is to sweat in skin creases I didn't know I had or to look like a leper. That's because I'm a positive person who makes the best of everything. I'm just not into complaining about how I can get burnt with just two minutes of exposure to the sun while wearing sunscreen. That's not my way. Instead I'll just smile and not tell you that I'm sweating like a pig* and it isn't even twelve yet. Cause I'm just good that way.


*For you smart asses out there, I happen to be aware that pigs don't sweat.