Soup's On

So it's cold out. Not freezing cold, just yay! time to wear a hat and scarf in the morning cold. Remember those slippers that took me forever to knit? Well I'm loving them now. Worth. Every. Stitch. And cold weather means soup in our house. Lots of soup. I would eat soup every day but the wild things probably wouldn't go for that, so for now, I'm trying to limit it to once a week. Ok, maybe twice a week.

I love all soups but recently I've really been into beans. I think I had a bean-phobia before because I really haven't cooked with them much beyond warming up black beans for burritos. But between my "eat less meat" thing and my "make healthier food" thing and my "crap, let's lower the grocery budget again" thing, well, beans are making a stand in our house. And boys howdy, I didn't know what I was missing. Beans are good! No, really! Beans are GREAT! WHo knew (ok, everyone else knew)

I've been filling up our weekly menu with bean meals. White bean and chicken enchiladas, homemade falafel, beans and rice and our favorite - white bean and sausage soup. Or if you want to get fancy, cassoulet.

Now I am neither french nor any kind of trained chef so when I say this is cassoulet, I'm using the term loosely. I read a bunch of recipes, mixed them all up and then cranked out this soup with what we basically had in the pantry and freezer. But it was a winner for us. Will even went back for seconds. Usually he patiently eats his bowl and then fixes himself a sandwich, soup just isn't enough food for him I guess.

But this is more stew-y than soupy. It's yummy and filling and easy, although it does need a little time to simmer away. I've been making it at lunch for the evenings dinner but I've also noticed that it's even better the next day so I think it would make a great night before kind of meal.

1/2 yellow onion, diced
2 T soup mix *
3/4 cup sliced carrots
3/4 carton chicken stock
2 cans of navy beans
4 chicken apple sausages, sliced 1/2 in thick
salt to taste

Sweat the onions in a teeny bit of oil until they are golden and slightly translucent, add the soup mix and sweat a few minutes more. Dump in the rest of the ingredients, give it a stir, pop the lid on and let it simmer on low for three hours. Add a little more stock before serving if you want a thinner soup. Serve with sour cream and minced parsley.

*Soup Mix - this is a homemade bouillon of sorts that I made in August which I LOVE and will make a ton more of next summer. Actually, I probably make more later in the winter because it's fantastic. The basic recipe came form my favorite canning book but I adjusted the ingredients to utilize what was coming out of the garden at the time.

2 cups carrots, finely chopped
2 cups parsnips, finely chopped
4 garlic cloves
1 cup of parsley

Whiz this in a food processor (or crappy mini chopper if that's what you've got, don't feel bad, me too) until you have teeny tiny pieces. Weigh the veggies and add 1/4 the weight in kosher salt. Stir well and spoon into jars. The salt preserves the veggies. You only need a tablespoon or two to start off pretty much any soup, stew, casserole, really anything you might add bouillon too.

What's you're favorite cold weather meal? Any good bean recipes?

One Thing

This weekend we did something that we haven't done in ages. We didn't work on the house. NOT ONE BIT. I honestly can't remember the last time we were here for the weekend and didn't do a single bit of painting, scraping, nailing, sanding, something. And it was kind of lovely. Not that I could go too many weekends without it. I think renovation is my vice. But it was nice to have a break.
While we didn't work on things renovationy, I did keep busy switching out everyone's summer and winter wardrobes. I get a weird sort of satisfaction from this. I love rediscovering clothes I'd forgotten about. Scarves and hats and furry boots and corduroy shirts that have been packed up under our bed all summer long. I pulled out all of Evie's tights and little wool skirts and Briton's down vests and sweaters (I didn't do Will's closet, he's in charge of that one) and took a huge amount of stuff to Goodwill, plus packed up a bag of clothes to give to Briton's school and a bag of clothes to pass on to a friends daughter who is a little smaller than Evie. It felt good. The closets and drawers are clean and close easily and we're a little more prepared for these cold mornings.

But, during our crazy weeks of renovation and cleaning up and painting and all the things that we've been trying to get to this fall, I kept thinking "what I really want to do is spend a whole Saturday doing nothing." And by nothing I mean nothing but cozy, relaxing things. When the weather gets cool I have the strongest urge to curl up on the couch and read and knit and watch movies and not leave the house except for a nice long walk up in the hills. It's a hard thing for me to do, much as I'd love to. I think I have duel personalities sometimes, or maybe dueling personalities. I love to just be lazy, except I love to be super busy. I need to be both at different times, but the lazy is definitely the harder of the two for me. So this week that's what I want to do. Be lazy. Have a lazy Saturday. Or Sunday. I'm not picky. I'd take both but I've just been informed that we need to clean out and reattach our gutters this weekend so somehow I think that's a bit too much to expect. That's OK, one will do. (Half a day would do but I'm not going to advertise that!)

What about you? What One Thing do you want to do (or not do as the case may be) this week?

One Thing
A new Monday habit. Share the one thing that you want to do this week, just for you. Click to enter below and link back to your blog so we can see all the fun things you do!
So, what will you be up to this week?

Projects, Projects, Everywhere

Sometimes I get into a creative funk. I can't seem to get really interested in much of anything craftwise. Because I write about crafts for a living (well, a part of a living at least) I still do crafts, and take pictures of them, and write articles about them, but I'm not always super excited about them. It comes and goes, and I suppose that is the way of any profession, sometimes you're gung ho, sometimes you'd rather be lounging on the couch watching National Geographic Documentaries on Netflix. Ok, maybe not everyone would rather do that, I'm strange like that, always have been.
For the past few weeks I've been in that kind of funk. Not really surprising with all we've been through. But it frustrates me none the less when I just can't seem to get into a project. I've been knitting all the while but I felt like I needed more creativity, and none was coming. This week something changed, I'm not really sure what, maybe I just really like the projects I dreamed up to write about this week, or maybe it's the fact that I had good feedback from editors or maybe I'm just getting my mojo back, but my brain is suddenly buzzing with projects that I want to do.
As a result, there are little piles of crafty type things all over. On my desk, on Will's desk, in a basket on our couch, on the dining room table (though those always end up floating around since we use the dining room table to eat too much for them to linger there). Felt bird ornaments, wool scrap pumpkins, funky, half painted stacking dolls, a partially assemble snow man kit (which means, of course, that there will be no snow this year, now that I'll be ready for it, right?) A little embroidery, a new, quick, knitting project, the beginnings of a stenciled wall (FYI, there is a reason they make stencil paint, because craft paint doesn't work so well, live and learn) It makes me a little giddy, I almost want to rub my hands together with glee and laugh a wee bit evilly. Just because.
I haven't so far, found a trigger to get me out of those funks. I jest keep plugging along until the vibe returns. But I wish I had a better way out, because I'm much happier when my workbasket is full and I'm more interested in my projects than in the latest theories about Stonehenge (although, that's always pretty interesting too, I can't help it, it's the wanna be anthropologist in me). What do you do when writer's block of the crafty mind hits? Any tricks for getting back in your groove?

Garden Clean Out Chutney

I've had it on my list to make chutney all summer long but somehow it always got pushed aside by jellies, jams and sauces, not to mention everyday cooking. But finally, finally, I got around to it yesterday and now I have two lovely jars sitting in our pantry waiting to be eaten up throughout the winter.

I haven't always been a chutney person. When I was doing my student teaching, my mentor teacher gave me a jar of kumquat chutney for Christmas. It looked beautiful, but I had no clue what to do with it, particularly on our ramen noodles for dinner budget. It sat in our fridge for ages, eventually getting stirred into some kind of stew I believe, before it went bad. What a waste. But hey, I was young and clueless.

When Briton was about two I fell in love with Indian food. Hard. I'd had curries before, but mostly of the homemade and basic variety. It wasn't until we were living in Dublin, where curry take-out is the norm and fantastic Indian food can be found cheap in almost every neighborhood center that I really discovered it, and chutney.

And then our supper club had a burger extravaganza and one of the offerings was a lamb burger with goats cheese, good mustard and sweet-savory chutney (try it! you'll never look at a burger the same again!) and I finally got what all the chutney lovin was all about.

It's a good thing I finally got around to making some then, eh? I'm calling this Garden Clean Out Chutney because most of what's in it was what was left when I ripped out everything from three of our four beds. But I could also call it Pantry Clean Out Chutney, because it also has some strange-o things that I pulled out of the back of our shelves (chili spiced mango from Trader Joe's anyone?) After reading a bunch of recipes though I think you can use pretty much any combination of fruits, veggies and spices that you have hanging around, but here is what I made:


Garden Clean Out Chutney

4 cups diced green tomatoes
1 cup diced green apples
1/2 cup raisins
1 small jalapeno, finely chopped
1/2 cup chopped dried chili spiced mango ( you could just dried fruit, but then you want to add chili powder to taste)
2 cups apple cider vinegar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp ground ginger
1 T salt

Mix all ingredients in a heavy bottomed pan. Simmer on medium until everything has muddled down and reduced by about a third. Pour into sterilized jars (this makes about 2 pint jars, I used 1 pint jar and one of my tab top jars because I needed an excuse to get down my Wide Mouth Jar Rubber Box and have a laugh) and process as you would with jam.

Blue House. Red Door

It's amazing what happens when you bring in the professionals. Bam, it's done. Just like that.
We'd done as much as we could safely reach. Ok, correction, we'd done the first coat on everything we could safely reach and the second coat on everything we could easily reach. But there came a point where getting any higher on that ladder just seemed a little too crazy for two people who aren't super fond of heights. So in came the real painters. Yesterday. And they left today. Finished.

If only all our project could go that fast!

Actually, where would the fun be in that, right? But it was nice to drive off to swim team this evening and leave behind this
Instead of this
I love my blue house.

On to the Next

What's that phrase, no rest for the wicked? I must be crazy bad then because even as the dust settles from the chaos from the last month, my fingers are itching to tackle just one more project. No I promise, then I'll take a break. Ok I wont. But that's what I tell myself, and Will, and the kids. After this one, we'll take a break. After I fix up the kids closet, I'll rest. (HAHAHA!)
This project has been on my radar for a while now but we've been so engrossed in other things that I haven't gotten very far. But now that the house is (mostly) painted and while we decide what we are doing siding wise with the mudroom (could take months) I'm going to get moving on this. Because here's the thing.

When I was a girl I had probably the most fantastic bedroom possible. No, it wasn't one of those frilly, decked out rooms. In fact, the furniture wasn't fancy, well made, well loved, but no canopy beds or jeweled mirrors. The decorations were pretty basic, I chose wallpaper with my mom and after that my parents pretty much let me run with whatever. It was the room itself that was so great, and most specifically, the closets. Yes, closets. Plural. I had two closets as a kid. I know, you're jealous. I'm jealous.

But it gets better. One of the closets was HUGE. I mean gigantic. It was as long as a normal bedroom and about a third the width. It was so big it had it's own window. Along one side were enough bookshelves to satisfy even my book obsession and a long hanging bar where I was supposed to hang my clothes (but didn't, it was so much easier to leave them on the floor) The other side was lined with deep, over sized drawers, big enough that even at seven or eight I could fit inside one with all of my dress up clothes and still close the thing. I'd like to say that closet was wasted on me back then and that I would appreciate it more now, but I don't think that's really true. I loved that closet back then. I could spread out my games into it, shove all the stuff I was supposed to be putting away in it and, best of all, when it was just too freaking cold to go outside (it was Northern Idaho, so that happened frequently) I would put one of our old green nylon sleeping bags at the entrance to the closet and run at it from the other side of the room, hopping on as I reached the bag and sliding wildly all the way down to the end where a pile my pillows kept me from getting a concussion whacking against the wall.

So that was closet one, but as I said, there was another closet. A teeny, under the eaves closet that was the real gem for me. It was my castle, my tree house, my ocean cave and my cottage in the woods. I spent hours in there, not caring that it wasn't really even a finished space. The insulation poked out in places, the floor was plywood (probably put down by my dad so that I didn't fall through the ceiling below) and a single bare bulb hung from the ceiling. I loved it. My little yellow kitchen was kept in there along with my most precious treasures. Rocks and feathers and a freeze dried turtle that my parents thought was gross but that I loved. A raccoon skin, a cat skull, a giant set of letter stamps that I made my own newspapers and stained most of my clothes with. My favorite dolls and favorite books. I once almost burnt down our house in there when I hung strawberry shortcakes dress over the bulb so that it could be my "darkroom" where I developed pictures in the cracked sink of my play kitchen. It was my space. All mine.
I want my kids to have that. When we moved in, Briton and Evie choose to share a room and have a playroom. And when Will and I started working from home they lost the playroom so that we could have an office. They haven't minded at all. In fact, they seem to prefer having their toys in their room where they can sneak them at night and play when they are supposed to be asleep. But they don't have a space that is just theirs, no grown-ups allowed.
Their closet is tiny and under the eaves much like mine, and when we moved in it was one of the first places that they hung out. In there all by themselves with a lantern and a bucket of toys. I've been planning to make it a real "space" for them for a while, have gone so far as to move out all the clothes and junk and put in the play kitchen and a few other things. But that's about it. Briton and I have decided that it should be a house. A house inside a house. So that is next on the ticket. Because I want them to look back and remember that they had that magical, special place where they could play and dream and laugh. All kids need that.

I'm thinking they need a little faux window and a braided rug and a cookoo clock. I'm obsessed with the cookoo clock idea for some reason but haven't found one yet (well, not one I'm willing to put in the closet for the kids to mess with). They have the kitchen and a little rocking chair and Evie has her doll high chair. There isn't much room for more but some small things could be squeezed in. I want to do something fun with the back wall, something red. Maybe stencils? Maybe wallpaper? Probably not wallpaper actually since my budget is ZERO, but something. And they need a light. Because it's dark in there. But any ideas would be much appreciated. What do you think?

One Thing

Well howdy! The house tour is done (yay!) the upper parts of the house (the bits where we were too scared to get to on a ladder) are being painted by a professional, the car is back and the stomach flu is gone (fingers crossed) It's a good kind of day. In fact, it's a day to start digging out Halloween decorations.

With all that we've had going on the past month, I hadn't really woken up to the fact that it's OCTOBER. Which means that my second favorite holiday is coming up fast. Time to get the pumpkin party invites out to the neighbors, sew up some costumes (Briton is debating between a character from Harry Potter and Frankenstien at the moment, Evie has already decided on being a tutu wearing ladybug - who knows) and woo-hoo, get the Halloween decorations out of the basement.

One of the best parts of being a craft writer is that I get to make things like Halloween decorations for work. Of course, the flip side is that I was making most of them in August, so I have to dredge up what I did, what I wanted to do but didn't get to and what I have from last year to get my Halloween spirit on. But since I do so love Halloween I'm going to drag my brain away from Christmas and New Years (which is what I'm working on now) and shift back into spooky time.

So this week my one thing is to get my house Halloweened up. This little project is already out because it was my favorite craft in the past few months, so fun and so simple.... which is how all the best project are, really.

What are YOU up to this week? Anything fun?


One Thing
A new Monday habit. Share the one thing that you want to do this week, just for you. Click to enter below and link back to your blog so we can see all the fun things you do!
So, what will you be up to this week?