Social Media Wizard and a Big Announcement

Picture: Hint, it has to do with the Big Announcement!

I will never be a social media wizard, but hilariously that is kind of my job at the moment.

I am back again at Willowbank and about a week and a half in...and I am writing essentially this blog for them. So all things school-y you can check out there: blog.willowbank.ca  I've done a couple of posts already and will be doing one a week for the remainder of the school year.

This is not the funniest part...as part of this role I am also updating the Willowbank Facebook and Twitter accounts. This totally cracks me up, as I rarely check my own Facebook and swore I'd never use Twitter...but somehow as the unofficial and slightly anonymous persona of Willowbank I'm totally all over it! I've even figured out (with some serious coaching) what a hashtag is, you know, this: #. Y'all thought it was a number symbol...well its also got a secret twitter existence...just like me.

With all that being said, I'm thinking that this blog will more be about the things I've blogged about during the summer or, if you will, domestic bliss. Since the garden is just about done (though we are still cranking out huge amounts of greens! Woot, if you love collards!) I'll probably be posting up some recipes -- just made Red and Jalapeno Jelly for Christmas presents. If you're lucky you'll taste the magic come December. But more likely I'll be posting about some of the DIY we'll be doing for our Wedding. That's right folks, you heard it first here (actually if you are reading this, you are probably my family and already knew this), Tim and I are going to host our big shindig next July!

Most people cannot fathom why after 5 years of engagement and 7(or 8 - it's hard to recall) years of living together we would even need to get married. But it is an important step for us, and really we've just been waiting until we could afford to throw a big party and have everyone we want at the wedding (and (who am I kidding) get everyone drunk!).

Since waiting on doing anything until we could afford to do it is not really getting us anywhere, we decided we may as well just do it now! With lots, and I mean lots, of help from our families and friends we are planning a super fun, super low-key wedding that has all the things we value in it: a meaningful expression of our love before God (get ready for a full mass dudes), followed by a wicked night that will be our first offering of hospitality as a married couple, to our friends and family (this equates to a home made buffet for 260 guests in a barn - but its a pretty barn with lots of room for dancing!)

So get ready for a big party and maybe check in here over the next few months to see where we are at with the planning and DIY!

P.S. Potatoes....and the perfect plate

I know I already posted today...but I got home and got down to digging out my potatoes. Last week I pulled out a plant and all that was on it was a tiny little 1/2 inch potato. So let's just say I wasn't holding my breath on my potato crop turning out. Imagine my surprise, when I went to go and dig through the potato bed and came up with a whole big bowl of potatoes. Sooo exciting!!! Look!!!

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Here they are drying on the table. Not bad for a tiny little 2 x 3' bed of potatoes.  (Sorry the picture is terrible, it's nighttime and I had to take it with a flash.)

Before I took the above photo I boiled up a bunch of them, and tossed them with butter and parsley for a delicious addition to dinner. Check out the perfect plate below!

Perfect plate in my world - everything is from my garden! Steamed carrots, braised collard greens,  fried zucchini and potatoes with parsley! It was not only a healthy and local (as local as you can get) meal, it was delicious too!

I know most people don't get this excited about potatoes, but like I said in my earlier post, I'm strange and this is just another example of why.

Harvest Retrospective and Link Love

Photo from: http://www.simplebites.net/taken-with-tomatoes/

       The end of summer is upon us. I've had to wear a sweater in the mornings quite a few times over the past week. The cooler nights are luxurious, I've been loving curling up underneath 2(!!) blankets for warmth - I'm strange, I know.

       Sadly though, this means all of my gardening is beginning to wrap up - my freezer is filled to bursting and there is still more bounty to reap. But the garden is looking a little less full without the snow pea vines snaggling up the 5 ft trellis and the corn stalks beginning to dry out (I'm planning to use them as fall decorations once they are dried up completely). The tomatoes are pretty much at their end - though there are tonnes of green tomatoes on them, the nights have been too cool to ripen them, though I'm still holding out for a bit of a late summer heat wave (mostly because I've already done a batch of vintage Green Tomato Chili Sauce - and don't know what I'll actually do with another batch). Luckily I planted a lot of very hardy greens that will continue into the cooler season and flourish, including Kale, Swiss Chard, Collards and Brussel Sprouts.

       I've also gained a lot of insight into what I'll plant next year and what I will definitely leave out. Bear with me, this post is for my own good - hopefully I'll reread it before I get carried away planting exotic vegetables next year. I'm somewhat on the fence on carrots and corn; the carrots have been delicious but they take so long to get to a good size and are so cheap at the grocery store; the corn turned out sweet and delicious, but also very small, with about two good feeds coming from one 25 ft row of corn - they were easy to grow though, but also are very cheap at the grocery store. 
      
        I will not plant Rapini and Bok Choy again - they bolted as soon as the first heat wave hit. I will not do cucumbers again - it was too hot, and they got too big and hard too quickly- I just couldn't seem to get them while they were little and delicious. The eggplants didn't do very well either - I've gotten maybe 2 or 3 feeds from 8 plants - not a good investment.
        I'll definitely grow more greens next year, we've been eating them on a daily basis and I've been able to stock up the freezer with a tonne of greens which I hope will last, but realistically-with the amount of greens we eat - will run out by Christmas. I'll also branch out from cherry tomatoes and go to romas - and lots of them - so we can make sauce. I'm also going to start onions and garlic this fall, because I definitely would have used them if I had them but missed the boat on that this past year.
       
         Enough of that - hopefull the above post will keep me in line when spring rolls around and I start getting garden fever. With all the freezing and canning I've been doing we haven't really been all that exciting this August. Hence the lack of posts...again. We went to our friends wedding mid-August, which was at Willowbank and was thus incredibly beautiful, really capitalizing on the historic ambiance. Other than that we've been pretty boring.  Here are some links to my favourite things these days.

--Awesome NY times article: "That's Not Trash,That's Dinner"  on using all the parts of a plant - I totally want to make the peach leaf apertif they link to on David Lebovitz's blog.

--Two words: Aunt Peaches!!!!! Love her.

--Denim rag rugs. I'm in the process of making one right now. I'll post about it when I'm done. I want to make one like Martha's here, too.

--I'm starting to nest again. Loving these DIY sites: michelemademe, craftgossip, papernstitchblog, and  ohcrafts.

--I've lost quite a few pounds by running (I posted a link on that before) but I've also been alternating between Tracy Anderson workouts (the one thing I'll thank Gwyneth Paltrow for) also I just do workouts of hers I find on youtube and isometric workouts for extra strength training.

-- Roasted Cherry Tomatoes - I dare you to make these and not become addicted!

Hope that your harvest is as good as mine! Enjoy those extra blankets!

Mid-Summer Abundance

Despite, or perhaps because of, the great heat wave and dry spell the Niagara area has been experiencing, my garden's bounty has begun in earnest.

I've been collecting little odd bits here and there, a few basil leaves to make pesto, a bit of kale to add to potato salad. But the last couple of weeks things have really begun to produce. We had friends over for dinner the other night, and though I didn't get to offer them any tomatoes yet, we did have cucumber salad, fried baby zucchini and a killer Swiss-Chard Tart ( stole the recipe from Laura Calder).

The mulberries! You can't pick them by hand or else they will burst. So I laid out a vinyl tablecloth (a tarp would work too!)  under the tree, shook the branches and watched as all the fully ripe berries fell. It was easy, and I love that I've got a harvest of something for free!

It all kind of started with the discovery last week that we had a Mulberry tree in the front yard. I googled all kinds of Mulberry recipes and had decided to just make them into another liqueur. Then I finished gathering them all up and wouldn't you know it, they are just about the most delicious berry I have ever tasted. Needless to say, they did not get turned into alcohol and are tucked away in the freezer so that I can grab a handful of them to make frozen yogurt or throw in a smoothie or on oatmeal.

Layered out to get frozen. Once frozen I threw them into a baggie and now I can grab them as I please.   Leaving them frozen means that if I want frozen yogurt, I grab the frozen berries add them to a cup of greek yogurt and blend with my immersion blender. Instant delicious!

This week the tomatoes are beginning to ripen, and they are delicious. I was worried that all this heat and no rain would make them super tough, but they are sweet and juicy and delicious! ( I threw the cup or so I collected tonight into my Pesto Quinoa Salad with Tomatoes, Olives and Cucumber...mmm...yum.) And I've had to begin checking on the zucchinis everyday now, as I had a couple that got so big they had to be shredded for winter consumption ~ hopefully in the form of chocolate zucchini cake!

Today's bounty. From the left: Collard greens, kale, massive zucchini, snowpeas, basil, cucumbers, jalapenos (and one large red chilli) and the first of the tomatoes.

I was also able to pick a large bowl full of snowpeas - the vines are taller than me now and full of peas. The cukes are coming along steadily, I can eat at least 2 of them a day now (and by "can" I mean I have to eat 2 a day just to keep up with them.) I also picked about 10 jalapenos off the bushes and they are HOT!! like super HOT! My fingers are still burning! I cut them all up and froze them, so I can crack open a bag of them whenever I need jalapenos. I've also had to start paring down all the greens I planted. Both the collard greens and the kale got wrangled down to size today, blanched and frozen.

Thankfully, my mom got me a FoodSaver for Christmas and though I didn't open it until last week, it is now getting put through its paces.

And this is what I ended up with! Go Foodsaver Go!

I spent the evening (4 hours!!) blanching and chopping and grating (with the food processor, thank goodness!) and foodsaver-ing. But now I feel incredibly good about having begun to store the excesses of summer for the winter when I'll be craving all those fresh from the garden veggies.

Next up, Tim and I will be making pickles. I'm not sure he's aware he'll be helping yet, but considering his only concern has been being able to make crunchy pickles, he's got to help out. Although I might have to send him out of the room when I start boiling vinegar (he hates the smell!).

Ch...ch...ch...cherry bomb!!!

Can you tell what this post will be about?

With that obscure reference to The Runaways, you probably think this post will be about music. And while I am still rocking out to 70s and 80s records (cuz our record player now works!!!) this is actually going to be a post about making Cherry Liqueur.

Note the cherry juice everywhere! I tried to protect the kettle in the background with a dishcloth...didn't work so well.

Thanks to the high high temperatures and low low amounts of rain we've been getting the cherries are ready and ripe and delicious and sweet in the Niagara region. And thankfully I live in the heart of it and so can just walk up the concession and a basket of cherries. Or if my mom is here, we'll drive up the concession and buy two, like we did this Sunday past.  With the plethora of cherries, I started to look up recipes to use them in (of course I've also gorged on them - ripe and raw- as it were.) Everything was some sort of sugary baked good, not really what I'm in the mood for in the middle of the summer of deadly heat. So, I thought I'd make sugary alcohol, because I'm sure I'll be in the mood to have sugar in the middle of the winter when the alcohol will be ready.

Cherries and sugar and vodka...not really any more complicated than that.

I also just happened to be reading a book called Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris (she wrote Chocolat as well) about the German occupation of France during World War II that had a recipe for Cherry Liqueur in it.  And after reading the following, I couldn't not make it:

The secret is to leave the stones in. Layer cherries and sugar one on the other in a widemouthed glass jar, covering each layer gradually with clear spirit (kirsch is best, but you can use vodka or even Armagnac) up to half the jar’s capacity. Top up with spirit and wait. Every month, turn the jar carefully to release any accumulated sugar. In three years’ time the spirit has bled the cherries white, itself stained deep red now, penetrating even to the stone and the tiny almond inside it,becoming pungent, evocative, a scent of autumn past. Serve in tiny liqueur glasses, with a spoon to scoop out the cherry, and leave it in the mouth until the macerated fruit dissolves under the tongue. Pierce the stone with the point of a tooth to release the liqueur trapped inside and leave it for a long time in the mouth, playing it with the tip of the tongue, rolling it under, over, like a single prayer bead. Try to remember the time of its ripening, that summer, that hot autumn, the time the well ran dry, the time we had the wasps’ nests, time past, lost, found again in the hard place at the heart of the fruit… 

So I spent all of last night pitting cherries (which is a juicy job!) and making liqueur that will hopefully be delicious in a couple of years...and if not, at least it will have been a helpful patience builder for me.

Cherry stained fingertips!

After reading a couple of recipes, I did change it up a bit from recipe in the book. I have to say that I am not patient enough to wait 3 years, so I pitted the cherries (thus opening up the cherries to the alcohol and hopefully speeding up the process a bit). I did break open the pits and remove the intensely almond flavoured seed inside, to include in the batches - to hopefully create a layering of flavours. 

Cracked open cherry pit with the little nugget of almondy-goodness in the middle. There were cherry pits flying all over the room until I got pit-cracking down to an art. I ended up using wire-cutters~the pliers ended up just squishing everything.

But like the passage from the book I did layer the cherries (plus about 8 cherry pit seeds per jar) with sugar, probably about 3/4 of a cup per jar and then topped up each layer with vodka, until I had two jars that were 3/4 full of cherries and sugar and then I just topped it up the rest of the way. Then I labelled them both with their official open dates!

Notice, I am a little short on patience. One is to be opened this New Year's (I figure that they will be an interesting addition to the champagne). And I'll wait a full year and a half before cracking the second one.

And now I can't wait for New Year's!

Trending...In My World Anyway

(Image from Honestly WTF)

Just a little list of things I'm loving right now and that are inspiring me thus far this summer.

Old-school embroidery thread friendship bracelets to help fill up your arm of bangles, as seen here.

The green-ness right before it thunderstorms (there has been a lot of that happening around here lately)...like this and this. (Plus that last one has an awesome house that makes me want to move to Sweden.)

This running podcast that has helped me learn to love running, or at least allows me to suffer through it.

Our record player which is finally working after we figured out that it was the speakers. Records just sound sooo much better.

This gorgeous penthouse in Paris....look at those beams! And another French gem.

This Hummingbird Celebration cake, that I want to make and eat right now...by myself. Mmmm... coconut.

This great super simple grecian maxi dress that I happen to have made recently, as a bonus it can be worn in a ridiculous number of ways, like this.

Hope you are having a fun and inspiring summer so far!

Gardening and Thoreau (by way of Gaspereau)

With Tim in London for the triplets birthday this weekend I had little to distract me - so I put on my gloves and rolled up my sleeves and got down to weeding and doing some other gardening tasks.  I am happy to say that all of the things that I planted from seed directly into the garden are doing exceedingly well.

My scarlet runner beans (in the front) are growing like gangbusters! I'm hoping the corn in behind can keep up since the beans are supposed to use the corn as a support.

In fact the snow peas are doing so well that I had to scrounge about for the materials to make an impromptu trellis, as they are already putting out their little feelers.

The snow pea trellis, a.k.a. the Spider's Web. I didn't want to have to buy a trellis system so I scrounged around the yard for dead branches, stuck them in the ground and kitchen twined it up good! It's not pretty but its free and soon enough it will be covered in the snow peas so it will grow into a beautiful thing.

 I also thinned everything out in order to give seedlings more room to grow into big hearty plants - this was exciting for me, as it meant I got to have wilted baby rapini and swiss chard with garlic for lunch....mmmm mmmmm good.  It was delicious but its probably because I grew them myself.

There is just something so satisfying about the results of ones own labour - can you tell I've been rereading Thoreau's Walden. I was reminded how much I love the book by a recent lecturer at Willowbank Andrew Steeves- one of the partners in the small publishing company Gaspereau Press (in the news semi-recently because of The Sentimentalists).

He came to speak about the traditional methods that Gaspereau Press uses in the very modern world of publishing - yet the lecture had very little to do with the use of older technology and much more to do with taking great care in what you do. In Andrew Steeves case that means understanding the needs of the book that you are publishing - from the cover art or lack of it, to the font style, to the sewn binding, so that you create something that conveys the message of the book and will survive to do so for the next century or so. It is really about being respectful and responsible about what you create - which if you've read any novels recently, has not usually been the purview of the huge publishing corporations out there.

Steeves just mentioned Walden in passing within the lecture but it got me to thinking about the book again and how much I liked it when I first read it. I also figured that if I read it again now, it would help to put the summer in perspective i.e. the growing of our own food and saving as much money as we can.  When it comes down to it, I don't think I could give up as much as Thoreau did when he was living on Walden pond (although I don't think that's his point - since he repeatedly pleads for people to live authentically - the lives that they want to live and not the lives their families or society dictates.)  BUT I do think that I can do with much less than many people do and I think I've got my priorities straight when it comes to stuff. That's not to say that we don't have a lot of stuff (much more of it is Tim's than mine!!) but it doesn't drive our lives in anyway and there isn't much that I couldn't part with if and when we move into a smaller place.

On that note, here's a picture of one of the gorgeous peonies that are just beginning to wain from too much rain and wind in the front yard. They were gorgeous while they lasted.