urban earth mother

I haven't planted any squash this year (although some sort of marrow or melon is growing in the compost heap) but I saw some squash blossoms at the farmers' market on Tuesday and thought I'd give them a whirl. We have found that in the summer we consume less milk, but have not actually cut back on our milk order. This has been leaving us with a lot of extra milk at the end of the week and I've been trying to find ways to use it. Last week I made yogurt 1 and a few weeks ago I did a fresh cheese with herbs.The cheese was really yummy and easy so I opted to try that again and make stuffed squash blossoms. I do not have pictures of the cheese-making process, but it was quite easy. Gather random herbs from the garden (I used oregano, basil and sage) Chop said herbs Put milk and herbs into a pot and bring to a boil. Add 1 cup buttermilk (I make it from powder) Add 1/4 cup vinegar - the curds will separate almost instantly. Drain curds in cheesecloth. Ad...

The spread We hosted the breakfast for our neighbourhood for Boston Shines (a big clean-up) this morning. One neighbour brought two HUGE boxes of doughnuts, one made two coffee cakes and I provided the savouries. I was asked, after posting some pictures on Facebook, for the recipes, so here we go with them.     Ready to get hotted up Breakfast Toad-in-the-Hole Sauté sliced mushrooms in butter  with a little pepper until browned. Remove from pan. Cook sliced small tomatoes in same pan (add more fat as needed), browning both sides. Remove from pan. In same pan cook bacon (I did the facon in this pan but it could be back bacon). Remove and crumble. Cook link sausages (4) in the pan until browned. Cut into thirds, remove. In a blender, whiz up three large eggs. Add 2/3 cup of flour and some salt. Deglaze the cooking pan with milk. Add the milk to the egg/flour. Add enough milk to make the mixture the thickness of heavy cream. Heat oven to 400F Add fat ...

It's time to start the garden! Sunflowers sprouting This year we started  some herbs and flowers inside. We, that is to say the Child and I, have planed lots of sunflowers. Round two is peaking up here in the kitchen. Round one has already gone outside to the big patch of contaminated dirt that formerly had a willow tree. The tree came down twice in two separate storms so we though it best to chop it up rather tan wait for it to get really big and come down on top of the shed.  We would really like to plan something nice like a blueberry bush there but after having the soil tested, we know we can't grow any food there until the soil has been  cleaned. Enter the sunflowers. She's two, it's time to put her to work Apparently, sunflowers are very good at removing containments from the soil.And as long as you don't then eat the seeds or put the plants into your compost, they are an effective and quite cheap way of cleaning up decades of crap that has buil...

I finished it last week and she's worn it twice now.  It is VERY warm! She probably doesn't need the liner in her jacket with it.  But it should be good for cool spring days and,  as you can see, there's room to grow.

I managed to score some beautiful llama/alpaca yarn at the winter farmers market a few weeks ago. I only bought two skeins and that seemed enough for a sweater for the sprog. I'm making it a bit long do she should be able to wear it next autumn and winter as well, provided she stays tall and skinny (clearly she didn't get that from me). I'll post when I finish and she's wearing it.

slightly crappy webcam photo I've decided I'm just not cut out for scarves. Not that I don't have a variety of very nice ones, it's just that they don't seem to entirely work in the cold weather. Both scarves and neck gators seem to have the fatal flaw of leaving bits of skin exposed either above or below and letting the wind whip right through. Enter: The Dickie. I admit, I got the idea of knitting dickies from watching Big Bang Theory with Howard's ever-present neck accessory, but it seemed like it might be quite practical. I whipped out one on some random circular needles with some yarn I had in my office (what, you don't have yarn in your office?) and after wearing it once I was sold. Dickie #2 (pictured) I made for Spouse. I used two stash yarns at the neck, switching just to the blue for the tails. This one has a particularly long front so that it can be tucked in to a wide variety of necklines. The double bulk at the top is exceptionally warm ...