So much good food

We've had a fabulous Thanksgiving.  O and E came over (they've been isolating for several weeks), and we have stuffed ourselves silly with food.  In fact, the stuffing is still ongoing - hubby just made apple cinnamon rolls for brunch that taste oh-so-yummy.

We made a lot of food - turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, rutabagas, sweet potatos, green bean casserole and gravy.  Our turkey turned out perfect.  It's a 19 lb bird, so there's lots of leftovers for sandwiches and soup.

The chef hard at work.

Hubby made almost everything -- my only job was the gravy. 

A pretty table.

For dessert we had pumpkin pie, apple pie, and a cheesecake that O made.

Simple, delicious all-from-scratch pumpkin pie.

O and E will be leaving today, stocked with leftovers and clean laundry.  Even though we couldn't join our extended families for the holiday, we've still had a wonderful time.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Kelly and I wish you a peaceful and relaxing day.

It has begun!

The first seed catalog has arrived!  Cry 'Havoc!', and let slip the dogs of garden planning!

Mastering gardening

Last winter I started my journey to becoming a University of Minnesota Master Gardener.  It sounds more grandiose than it actually is.  Basically, Master Gardeners have to go through a series of training courses, serve volunteer time and pay a fee (of course) and then are 'certified' by the U of MN.  To earn the certification, I have to contribute 50 hours of volunteer time this year.  It's been a bit of a challenge to earn those hours in 2020, but through social media, zoom, and online opportunities I've come quite far.

Indeed, far enough to be just one hour shy of my 50 hours!  So, I'm using this post to reach my goal.  I thought I'd come up with a list of things that I know now about gardening, things I wish I had known when I started.  Tips and tricks for the novice-yet-enthusiastic gardener.  Lessons learned over the past 20+ years of digging in the dirt, mainly focused on vegetables.  Keep in mind these are MY lessons and they may not be true for everyone.  So, here goes.

My favorite gardening book.

1. Raised beds are great.  Easier to plant, weed, fertilize, water.  And easier for tall people with bad knees to work in.  Place the beds far enough away from each other that you can get a lawnmower between them.  Or put gravel or wood chips in between.
   
2. You'll need fences to keep critters away.  6' woven wire fence for deer, 3' chicken wire for rabbits. 
   
3. If you want to grow brassicas, you'll need Bt spray to keep the cabbage worms away.
4. Drip hoses are too expensive and too much of a hassle to work with.  And they don't work well in raised beds.
   
5. It's taken me twenty years to learn this, but raspberries just aren't worth it.  They take up too much space, take too much work, and give too little results.  Same thing with blueberries.  If you need a berry fix, go with strawberries.
   
6. Clay soil is a bugger to work in.  Spend the cash early on and add a bunch of compost.  
   
7. Weed control is a pain in the butt.  Start out with weed-free soil if at all possible, and use mulch whenever you can.  Buy several bales of straw each year for this purpose.
8. Don't bother growing eggplants or swiss chard.  Yes, they're beautiful but you'll never eat them.
9. Don't grow beefsteak tomatoes - each plant only grows 3-4 tomatoes at a time.  My preference is 4-6 ounce fruits, great for canning or freezing.  And for broiling - my favorite way to eat tomatoes.
10. Fertilize!  It makes a difference!  Start a compost pile if you can.
    
11. Pole beans will produce a lot more than bush beans.  Cattle panels, bent in half and erected like an A-frame over a garden bed work great as a trellis.
12. Plant flowers!  They are beautiful.  Food is necessary, but so is beauty.  Bread and roses.
    
13. Don't plant tomatoes or potatoes too close together.  You need lots of air circulation between plants to prevent fungal diseases.  Three tomato cages for each 4x8 raised bed at most.  You can plant shorter stuff, like radishes or chamomile between the cages.
14. Not all hybrids are bad.  Use open pollinated varieties for seed saving, but consider productive hybrids for others.
15. Lettuce is easy to grow!  And tasty!  Plant more lettuce!
    
16. Starting seed indoors will scratch that gardening itch before outdoor work can begin in spring.  I love digging in the dirt and seeing green things grow while there's still snow on the ground.  Looking at seed catalogs in December is like looking through the JCPenney Christmas catalog when you were a kid.
17. When you start seeds indoors, use good seed-starting soil mix.  Don't use potting soil!  I like Burpee's seed-starting mix, or using coconut coir.  Also, fluorescent grow bulbs come in different types, suitable for different plants.  Do some research.
18. Learn about saving seeds -- it's a lot of fun!

Whew!

My favorite seed saving book.

Final thought - don't forget farmers' markets.  For those hard-to-grow, space-sucking plants like melons, sweet corn and winter squash, plan to pick those up at the farmers market throughout the summer.  We need to keep our local farmers in business too!

Iron Dragons

Back in 2000 Hubby purchased a copy of the Iron Dragon computer game released by Eden Studios.  We enjoyed playing the board game, so he thought we would like the computer game.  And we do!  It's a great little game, one that I still play today.  

The size of the game is only 14 MB - small enough to be burned onto a CD back before thumb drives were a thing. The game has run on every version of Windows that we've owned since then. which is something most old games don't do.

Screen shot from Iron Dragon

Unfortunately Eden Studios no longer exists, and I don't think you can get a copy of Iron Dragon anymore.  Which makes me extra glad I still have mine.  So if you're looking for your own copy, you may be out of luck.  However, like I said it's a small game and easy to copy ...

Games people play

We're a game-playing family.  Always have been. Board games, card games, video games, role playing games, dice games, we love them all.  And play them all, even (especially) during the pandemic.  Once a week we play Terraria online with O in Mankato and my nephew J.  On weekends we play Civilization online with Hubby's brother and father.  Hubby and the boys even play the 'I've lost the game' game (google it if you're confused), which I refuse to do.  To quote War Games, the only winning move is not to play.  Spoiler alert!

 

For the last umpteen years our family has spent the day after Thanksgiving with Hubby's family, snacking on bacon-wrapped everything and playing board games.  Our favorites include Settlers of Catan, Risk, Empire Builder, Ticket to Ride, Sequence, and many others.

Hubby's bro, sis-in-laws, and us playing Catan in 2015.

This year we will continue this tradition at home, using our vast collection of board games we've collected over the years.  We probably have over a hundred of them, from the 1950s Diplomacy to modern Apples to Apples.  And we have multiple decks of playing cards for our rambunctious games of multiple solitaire.  Multiple solitaire has been a staple in my family for decades.

Xmas 2008.  My mom, nieces, brother, younger sister.

When my parents were still alive, and I was still living near St. Paul, my younger sister and I would spend several evenings a week playing cards with Mom and Dad.  We'd play three different games -- 500, Hearts, and Liverpool.  Those were lovely times.  We'd play at the large oak table in their kitchen, laughing and teasing and guilting Dad into making us milkshakes.  

And this Thanksgiving my family will sit around that same oak table in my kitchen, laughing and teasing and playing games with each other.

Rainbow eggs

My hens can lay a rainbow.  Anyone remember that song?  Well, not the chicken version, but the original - 'Sing a Rainbow.'  It's a song for kids -- a fine song, but nothing special.  However, it is a massive ear worm.  Get it stuck in your head and it'll be there for hours.  You're welcome.

That song was on a record called 'Junior Hits' that my family had.  This was in the 1970's, before audio tapes and CDs came onto the scene.  It was a fantastic record, well-loved by my older siblings and I.  It featured a variety of fun kid songs, including 'Jake the Peg,' 'The Court of King Caractacus,' and 'Tie Me Kangaroo Down' by Rolf Harris.  It also had a song my mom loved called 'Two Little Boys.'  It made her cry every time she heard it.

Anyway, my hens can indeed lay a rainbow.  Different breeds of hens will lay different colored eggs.  The green egg on the far left is laid by my Ameracauna hens.  The white by my California whites, the middle browns by any number of hens (I can't tell what breeds exactly), and the dark brown by my welsummers.  

My new hens, the ones I bought as day-old chicks this spring, have started laying (finally).  They lay smaller eggs, called pullet eggs, for the first few months.  Sometimes there will be color splotches (see egg #5 above) on the shells too.  That's totally normal.  I just love the variety, the rainbow of colors.

Argh.  The worm has indeed burrowed into my brain.  They say the best way to get a song unstuck is to listen to it through to its end.  We'll see if it works.

Messy business

The smaller bowl is full of clean seed.

Cleaning zinnia seed is a messy business.  But it's a labor of love, knowing that these seeds will bring lovely flowers next year.  I've got a box full of dried flower heads, and whenever I have a few minutes between kitchen tasks, I sit down and winnow.  If anyone wants some zinnia seed, let me know!

Thanksgiving now and then

Gah.  We've just picked up our other car from Maday Motors.  During a routine oil change they discovered we needed new tires, brake pads and calipers.  We just got done writing them a check for repairs to O's car.  Apparently Mr. Maday wants to buy his wife a new yacht for Christmas.  

I hope the kids are happy with tomato soup and cheese sandwiches for Thanksgiving.  Just kidding.

Recipe courtesy of my brother-in-law.

Normally we would have Thanksgiving at my older sister's house in Wisconsin.  This year, obviously, we are having a home-bound holiday.  I've already bought our turkey from Ferndale Farms, and I've gotten permission to make green bean casserole for the first time in ages!  Hubby hates green bean casserole, but I like it.  We'll have stuffing, gravy, rutabagas, and sweet potatoes.  Maybe mashed potatoes.  With pumpkin pie for dessert, and possibly a banana cream pie too - we'll see how ambitious we are.

Mom with her devious dominoes face.

The trick will be timing everything to be ready at the same time.  My mother always said that was the difficult part - making sure everything was prepped and cooked and served together.  She would start several days ahead of time, thawing the turkey and making pie dough.  The day before she would peel potatoes and rutabagas, bake pies, mix the stuffing and spend a good hour 'fighting with the turkey' (her words), picking out the pin feathers and washing out the cavity.   

My mother's handwriting was notorious.

Thursday morning she'd stuff the turkey and put it into the oven, and make all of the sides -- potatoes, rutabagas, corn and Waldorf salad.  And when Thursday evening finally arrived we'd gather together at a table covered with bowls and platters of amazing food.

Christmas dinner, circa 2002.

This is our first year doing Thanksgiving on our own.  Hopefully we'll make my mother proud.  Even if we burn the turkey and spill the stuffing, as long as we're together and enjoying our time with each other, she would be happy.

Wild Rice Time Loop

Another food related post - sorry about that.  It comes with the territory, I'm afraid.  Last night I decided to make a large batch of wild rice soup.  Enough for dinner, and enough for freezing.  

When I was young my Mom enjoyed shopping at Byerly's, a fancy grocery store in St. Paul.  She didn't go often, since it was kinda spendy and a bit of a drive.  Byerly's had a restaurant inside the store where we ate sometimes.  I would usually get their infamous wild rice soup, and would ask Mom to buy a few frozen packages to eat at home.

At some point I found a copycat recipe online which comes very close to the original.  Sometimes I substitute chicken for the ham.  This time I was fortunate to have some wild rice harvested by the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe.  I had been given the rice as a gracious gift from a group of indigenous students visiting the park a few years ago.  

I love wild rice.  I always try to use rice harvested from lakes in Minnesota and Wisconsin - it's better tasting and has better nutrients than cultivated and farmed 'wild' rice.  Wild rice is extremely important to the history and culture of the Ojibwe people.

The recipe above, as you can see, calls for '2 cups wild rice, cooked'.  The comma is important - it implies that the measurement should be made before cooking.  I wanted to double the recipe, so I poured four cups of wild rice into a pot of boiling water. 

And got way more than I expected.  I should have looked online for the original recipe, which shows that two cups of cooked wild rice are needed.  

I need to make a note on my recipe, so I don't make the mistake again.  Actually, I should have made a note on the recipe after the LAST time I made it, so I wouldn't have made the mistake THIS time.  

Wild Rice Time Loop - If I go back in time to change the recipe last time, I wouldn't cook too much rice this time, which means I wouldn't need to go back in time to change the recipe, which means I would cook too much rice this time, which means I would need to go back in time to change the recipe so I wouldn't cook too much rice, which means ...

What to do with a bunch of extra wild rice?  Tonight I used some to make a big batch of chicken wild rice salad.  

Unfortunately, I discovered after making it that neither G nor B like chicken salad.  Sigh.  Looks like Hubby and I will be eating wild rice, in soup and salad form, for awhile.  Which is just fine.

Or, I could go back in time to this afternoon to give myself the extra wild rice salad so that I wouldn't have to make it, which means that I wouldn't make it, which means that I wouldn't have extra to bring back in time, which means ...

Nanaimo bars

I'm not normally a 'bar' person.  I'm not sure why.  My mother rarely made bars, preferring to bake cakes or pies whenever a dessert was called for.  But Hubby is making a quick Mankato run to bring some documents to O (plus an old Xmas present we found while cleaning our closet - ha!) this afternoon, so I decided to bake something to share.

This is my go-to cookie cookbook.  I've made several recipes from it, and haven't been disappointed yet.

I chose this recipe for Nanaimo bars.  It seemed quick and easy, and we had all the ingredients on-hand.

It came out fairly well.  It doesn't look exactly like the photo, however -- my top is rougher than theirs, thanks to the coconut.  I did get distracted at the end of baking and left it in the oven a few minutes too long, so it's browner than it should be.  But overall it tastes good, and that's what matters.

Stuffed and unstuffed

Yorkshire pudding

My mother made Yorkshire pudding regularly, whenever she served beef or pork roasts.  She didn't use the traditional roasting pan as a cooking vessel, however -- she poured the fat and batter into muffin tins and baked them as individual servings.

The never-ending battle in our house revolved around what to call them.  Mom insisted they were Yorkshire puddings, whereas we kids insisted they were popovers.  Every time a bowl of these delights came to the table, the play fight would begin anew.  Mom and Dad would eat the puddings with gravy, and we kids ate the popovers with butter.

Whatever you call them, and however you eat them, they are delicious.  And relatively easy to make, with or without a roast.  I've made them a few times for my own family, and the kids love them.  I need to make them more often.

Mighty huntress

So innocent, so quiet, so deceptively calm.  Ready to pounce at a moment's notice, to attack with lightning speed, to charge into battle versus a rodent foe.

Or, to have a bath.

House pics

Another snowy day.  We were forecast for half an inch, but we got 2-3 inches.  

The front yard.

The assessor visited this morning, taking all of ten minutes to wander around before bidding a cheerful goodbye.  I thought I would take advantage of the relative tidiness to grab a few photos of our house.

The kitchen.  The last of the fall apples in totes on the table.

The living room.  Computer desks against the far wall.

The living room again.

The sun room.  Piles of face masks on the piano.

I post these pics not only to show the house to those who have not seen it, but also to capture a moment in time.  I'm using this blog as a diary of goings-ons, memories and thoughts, something to enjoy in the present but also in the future.  Personally, I love looking at old photos of my childhood home.  My parents built the same house in three different locations, so it's essentially the same home.  

My dad, younger sister, and Patch.  Circa 1979.

I love nostalgia.  The 1970s house I grew up in was a wealth of funk and groove.  Wood paneled walls, brick fireplace, shag carpet, console TV in the family room.  Vinyl yellow spin chairs, avocado appliances, checkered linoleum and mushroom-shaped canisters in the kitchen.  Scandinavian modern furniture and scary Murano glass clowns in the living room. 

Valuable but terrifying.

Old photos jog my fading memory and bring a smile to my face.  So that's what I'm doing here, making a place that I, my family and loved ones can come for a visit and smile.

Another favorite book

 Where the previous post's title came from:

Internet photo.

Another one of my faves from childhood.  And yes, I still have my copy.  I'm a hoarder, remember?  I just couldn't be bothered going downstairs to take a photo of it.  Far easier to steal someone else's photo.  I'm lazy, remember?

We've been cleaning the house all day today.  The assessor is coming tomorrow to value our home for our mortgage refinancing.  We've been a little lax on the whole tidiness thing for the past few months.  No one comes over, so why bother?  We promised the boys we'd get Pizza Ranch (or as we call it, the Ranch of Za) for dinner tomorrow if they helped.  Which they did.  And now we are all dusty and bleachy and achey and tired and ready for bed. 

But it will feel nice tomorrow morning waking up to a clean house. 

The us, the mice and the cats

You need to know that on Sunday I bought mouse toys for our cats.  You've seen the kind - the ones that look very much like mice.  With fur and eyes and long tails.  In our house we call them shmousies, in honor of the cat from the Mutts comics.  And just that afteroon I had given two shmousies to Daniel and Freya to play with.  Which they did, until they lost the toys under the bookcase.  

That's important to remember.

See?  Very realistic looking.

 

So I was sitting in my bed, watching Amazon on my iPad at around midnight on Sunday night.  Boys were in bed, hubby was in the living room.  I was watching the diligent detectives on Midsomer Murders when I heard a rowling sound from Freya as she entered the bedroom.  Rowling sounds from our cats usually mean they are carrying a toy in their mouth.  I'm not sure why they rowl.  Are they presenting their 'kill' to us for reward?  Or do they think we are their kittens who need feeding?

Anyway, Freya came in to the bedroom rowling.  Curious, I stood up and walked over to her.  I saw she had a grey mouse toy in her mouth, and I smiled and said to her, "you've found your lost shmousie!"  And she rowled again, and dropped the toy on the floor.

And it moved.

I'm not sure how many nanoseconds it took my brain to realize it wasn't a toy, but it was that many nanoseconds too long.  We haven't had a mouse in our house for years, so I certainly wasn't expecting one that night.

After realizing it was indeed a LIVE mouse, I froze and scanned the room for something to capture it with.  Like a bucket, or a cup I could place over the top of it.  The mouse, realizing it was free, took its chance and scurried under the dresser.  Freya dashed after it, but the space was too tight for her.  I called for my husband in the other room.  "Sweety?"  "Yes?"  "Mouse!"  "Mouse?"  "Yes, mouse!"  "What do you mean mouse?"  "There's a mouse in the bedroom!!"  Both G and B heard the exchange and left their beds to investigate.

I thought it might be a vole because of its dark color, but the tail was too long.

The boys and two of our cats were recruited to help catch the mouse.  At one point we lost track of it, after moving the dresser away from the wall and not seeing anything.  I thought briefly about going through the clothes in the laundry basket (right next to the dresser) to look for it.  But Daniel was the hero of the night and found it again behind my work bag.  Long story short, the mouse was eventually cornered and caught.  And released outside into the brushpile in the backyard.

My husband sings the 'Born Free' song when he releases mice.

Since then the cats have caught (and killed) three more mice, and we've put out a dozen traps.  It's this time of year when mice are looking for a warm spot to ride out the winter.  I'm tempted to put tiny 'No Vacancy' signs outside around our foundation.  Or perhaps use the hobo mouse code?

Outdoor whitery

I took these photos at 4:30 this afternoon.  The skies were already starting to darken.  In Minnesota our days get pretty short in the winter.  At our home on December 21 the sun will rise at 7:50 am and set at 4:41 pm, giving us just 8 hours and 51 minutes of daylight.  And 15 hours 9 minutes of darkness.

The backyard, facing south.

Now it is 6 pm and the skies are completely black.  The wind is blowing and the snow is still falling.  Hubby is making supper and G and B have finished homework and are playing with friends on the computers.  I am resting in the family room, blogging (obviously) from the comfort of the recliner.  Freya and Daniel are asleep on my bed, Kelly is asleep on the rug next to me, and Corey is taking a leisurely bath across the room.

The side yard, facing east.

After supper we will all go online and play our weekly game of Terraria with O through Steam.  We'll use Discord to chat with each other, and we'll try to come up with a strategy to defeat the Old One's Army.  Last week we tried thrice to kill all those goblins, kobolds, ogres, and wyverns, and failed miserably each time.  Wish us better luck tonight.

Indoor greenery

Sunday's photo of aloe plants, hoya, and Xmas cactus.

It's been sleeting and snowing for a few hours now.  The temperature is hovering just below freezing.  (For comparison, Sunday's high was 72.)  There are scattered splotches of white in the grass, but no accumulation yet - the ground is still too warm.  I don't think we'll get more than a few inches in total.  Yet underneath the snow may be a layer of ice, especially on the roads.  We had an appointment at Mayo in Rochester today, but I've rescheduled it for December.  Driving through sleet and snow on icy roads is not fun. 

I bought the cactus and hoya in the photo above from Traverse des Sioux Garden Center in St. Peter this spring.  Years ago I had a hoya that originated from my days working at COMPAS in Landmark Center in St. Paul.  When I first started working there in 1990 the executive director was Molly LaBerge, a sweet white-haired old lady somewhat out of her element.  I once remarked how much I liked the plant on her window ledge, and she promptly cut off a stem, stuck it in some water and gave it to me.

Landmark Center - yes, I worked in a castle.

I kept that hoya alive through my years at COMPAS, working there while attending the U of MN.  At that time I was pursuing an English Education degree.  I kept it alive when I transferred to Colorado State University in Fort Collins to get my degree in Natural Resources.  I kept it going when we moved back to St. Paul so I could attend graduate school, and it survived the first few years of living in our little yellow house in Ortonville when I started working at Big Stone Lake State Park.

So when I saw the tiny hoya plants at the nursery, I knew I needed one.  I'm looking forward to seeing it flower, and I plan to take cuttings when the stems are long enough, increasing my little houseplant community.  I hope I can keep this one alive as long as the last.  I'm not as good with houseplants as I am with garden plants.  The fact that our cats love chewing on stems and leaves doesn't help either.

Photo from Garden Lovers Club.

Views

The corn harvest is 99.9% complete.  Fields are black and bare.  Some farmers have spent the last few days of nice weather tilling fields, applying fertilizer or drilling drain tile.  Tomorrow we're forecast for 3-5 inches of wet snow.  I won't get into my complete and utter hatred of drain tile in this post - that subject would take up a blog all on its own. 

The view from the edge of our property.

We live on 3.5 acres about two miles south of town.  Close enough to town for convenience, but far enough away for a little seclusion.  We have the best of both worlds.  The only snag is that we have two close neighbors.  About 25 years ago the farmer who owned the neighboring farmstead split out two small plots for his sons to build houses on.  One of those sons moved away, and sold the house to another family.  We bought it from them. The farmer father has passed away, but another son is living in the original farmhouse.

Our close neighbors are fairly decent, all things considered.  They are friendly, keep a clean yard (certainly cleaner than ours), and have helped us with a few small projects when asked.  I share garden surplus and eggs with them occasionally.  The neighbors do tend to yell a lot - not swearing angry yelling, but rather 'yelling to impart information from one person to another a short distance away' yelling.  Hollering might be a better word.  Maybe this is normal for farm families - I'm not sure. 

The backyard.

I do hate the neighbor's dog, though.  This is unusual for me, since in general I love animals.  This dog is the exception.  As I mentioned before, it kills chickens.  It comes over and craps in our yard regularly.  It jumps up on you when it gets excited.  Worst of all, the bloody thing barks.  For hours at a time.  Nonstop.  Whenever the neighbors leave home and let their dog stay outside, it barks until they return.  Whenever I go outside, it barks at me.  Whenever someone drives up the driveway, it barks at their car.  Yeah, I really hate that dog.

I do enjoy living in the country.  I enjoy having fruit trees, a large garden, dark skies at night, and a bunch of chickens.  I wish we had some nature nearby, however.  We are completely surrounded by farm fields.  Not an acre of prairie or natural woodland as far as the eye can see.  That's pretty typical for most of southern MN.  Less than 1% of MN original tall grass prairies remains today - the rest has been paved over or plowed under.

The view down the driveway.

Screw Disneyland.  If I won the lottery, I'd buy up acres and acres of farmland and convert it all back to prairie.  And wetlands.  Lots of wetlands.  I'd rip out the drain tile wherever I could.  I'd build ponds and marshes and swamps and sloughs.  I'd plant grasses and sedges and rushes and wildflowers.  And after that, I'd figure out a way to get insects and animals to live there.  Don't ask me how, but throw enough money at a problem and it figures itself out, right?  Maybe?

Detritus from the combines.

Not that I'm going to win the lottery anytime soon.  I'm just not that lucky.  And it's hard to win when you don't buy any tickets.