Category Archives: Food

2022, books, Food, Uncategorized

Hello, Old Friend

40 Comments

Earlier this week, before the blizzard hit, UPS delivered an Amazon order. In the past week, we have had mail and other deliveries only once because of the storms. I got 20 pairs of new socks (Kyrill is a thief who has stolen and chewed lots of my socks) and a two volume set of Julia Child’s Mastering The Art Of French Cooking. It is the third set of these books I have owned.

The first set was the original 1961 version. I got those in the early 1970’s when I was in Middle School. I remember pouring over those books with fascination and wonder. I loved watching her on PBS. I tried several recipes with great success and a fair number of flops. Julia had this weird way of measuring flour in the first edition, instructing her readers to sift flour directly into the measuring cups. By the 1983 soft cover version that I acquired shortly after acquiring Husband, you scooped and leveled your flour, since flour no longer needed such sifting.

A couple of weeks ago, Husband expressed great frustration with the condition of the books. We mainly use Julia for a reference, but also have some favorite recipes. Pages have been loose for years, and some are missing, and the books are held together with rubber bands. I found a very reasonably priced boxed set of the hardcover 40th Anniversary edition published in 2001. Getting the boxed set was so fun, like welcoming an old friend home.

What books would you replace if you could? What are your favorite memories of Julia? Ever had a pet that stole things?

2022, Family, Food, Gatherings, holidays, home, Kids, Travel, Uncategorized

Your Order, Please

63 Comments

Our daughter is flying home next Thursday for a week of rest and relaxation. It has been a big year for her, getting her independent clinical social work license and starting a private practice. She is very excited to be home and her phone calls are becoming more frequent.

One of her joys visiting home is choosing the menus for our meals. She wants Turkey Chipotle Chowder and homemade cinnamon rolls. We have settled on Horseradish Encrusted Beef Tenderloin garlic mashed potatoes, cheesy baked asparagus, and apple hand pies for Christmas Day. Sometime during her week here she wants Croque Madame Casserole.

We love to cook for her, and it will be good to have her home. She will lie on the sofa and knit an afghan for us as our Christmas present. She also wants to play cribbage with her father. She doesn’t want anything from us this Christmas except a quiet and good food.

How are you planning to spend the holidays? What would you like to eat ? How were your visits home when you were in your 20’s?

2022, animals, Farming Update, Food, holidays, Music

Random Thoughts

108 Comments

Today’s Farm report comes from Ben.

It’s December. Not too much farm stuff this week, and I have some random thoughts.

I saw SEVEN ducks fly over to their breakfast! Everybody but the poufy and the two big black ones. Rosie and Guildy, the regular mallards, and the two that I always assumed were too fat to fly. (Is it OK to call a duck fat?) But they all flew from the pond to the corn. Yay ducks!

It was down in the single digits the other night and I had to turn on the wellhouse heater again. I sure don’t remember having to do that in November or early December before.

I got the rear blade mounted on the tractor and got to use it after the 3” of snow we got on Tuesday. As usual with the first snow and the not solidly frozen ground, I ripped up some sod. Oops. Well, the chickens like the dirt. Gonna be rough mowing next summer, but that’s next summers problem.

We did get the driveway markers in and snow fence up last Saturday. That Saturday after Thanksgiving has traditionally been a nice weather day and we’ve done snow fence for several years on that day. It was a little windy, but it wasn’t too cold, and as long as we worked with the wind, the fence stayed up by itself and it went OK. It helps that the posts are still there one year to the next. Last year my shoulder had just started to hurt, leading to the surgery in February, so I wasn’t much help with the snowfence last year. We put up 400’ in about 1.5 hours this year. Next year I’m hoping to install some permanent wood posts for the ends of the sections. It’s on my list of next summer’s jobs.

Every night I give the dogs some ‘Milkbone’ dog treats. Allie has to get one first. Humphrey will not take a treat first; he’ll only take one after Allie gets hers. I don’t think it’s altruism, I’m not sure if he’s that suspicious? He won’t take pills or eat anything without sniffing it first. And Bailey. She’ll leave the treats sit all night. And when I open the garage door the next morning, she grabs a treat and heads off to bury it in the snow. She’s so weird. They’re all so weird.  

I’ve started baking Amish Friendship bread again. Just did my second batch of 6. I should be able to get one more batch in before the knee, then I’ll stall it for a bit. I’ve got a list of things that needed to be done before my knee replacement. (8 days and counting! I’m excited and scared and cautiously optimistic!) There were some big things like getting fieldwork done, and machinery put away, getting the snow fence up, and putting the rear blade

on the tractor were the last two items. But then I started adding minor things, just so I could enjoy crossing them off. I’ve added things like ‘Put up Christmas tree’ and ‘Show Kelly the well house heater’ and ‘move the piano’. We’re making progress on the list!

Music this week: I’ve been listening to the Modern Big Band channel. And on the car radio I heard Nina Simmone singing ‘Sinnerman’.

CAN THE FOODS ON YOUR PLATE TOUCH EACH OTHER? DO YOU EAT ONE THING AT A TIME OR EAT A BITE OF EVERTHING?

2022, animals, Family, Food, holidays, Nature, Uncategorized

Tasty Eats

59 Comments

We celebrated an early Christmas with our son and his family over Thanksgiving. I was quite excited to get a new cookbook from them, The Nordic Cookbook by Magnus Nilsson. We have his Nordic Baking Book, which has hundreds of wonderful recipes. The book I just received has 700 recipes from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and Finland. Some recipes are pretty traditional ones for meatballs and stews. I am happy to report, though, that if I ever run across Pilot Whale in the store, I shall know how to cook it. It may be a while before I am brave enough to cook with seal entrails or roast a Puffin.

It is interesting to see the different versions that different Nordic countries have for the same dish. There are slight variations on seasonings and ways of cooking things like meatballs, sausages, and meatloaf, for example. I think that we will have a fun time exploring this new cookbook. There are some things I will never cook with, like, blood, for instance. There are plenty enough other recipes that will be far more tasty.

What are some of your favorite cookbooks? What are some of the oddest things you ever cooked and/or ate?

2022, Food, Gatherings, holidays, home, Seasons

Cookie Storm

17 Comments

I’m sure you’ll be shocked to hear that I’ve overdone.  Again.

I have rules about things around the holidays.   All self-imposed, so my own fault.

  1. No holiday music or movies until after dinner on Thanksgiving (YA always turns on the holiday station right as we leave from our Thanksgiving feast.)
  2. No holiday baking until the Friday after Thanksgiving.
  3. Tree purchased on Black Friday and put up some time that day.
  4. My best friend and her husband (and sometimes their kids & spouses) come to help decorate the tree, almost always the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
  5. Cookies and hot chocolate are served at Tree Trimming. Normally I make 5-6 kinds of cookies over the weekend for this gathering and then do the rest of the holiday cookies in the following few days.

These rules formed a perfect storm this year as my friend from Nashville arrived last night as well to babysit the house and the dog while YA and I take a trip.  I decided that I needed to get all the cookies baked before Tree Trimming.  I also had to get the house cleaned up.  AND, the front porch was coming down the final stretch.

3 days, 15 kinds of cookies, tree, lights, tree trimming, house clean enough for company AND the front porch is done.  I feel like I’ve been through the proverbial wringer and every muscle in my body has hired a hit man.  There is even a blister where the dough scoop hits my middle finger and I woke up during the night with pain in my hand and had to take an ibuprofen!  So I’m thinking that I have overdone it.  Just a bit.

(Anna’s M & M, White Chocolate Madadamia, Lemon Snowflakes, Peanut Blossoms, Frosted Sugar, Malted Milk, Cream Cheese Spritz, Peanut Butter Bon Bons, Vanilla Crescents, Pecan Meltaways, Speculaas, Soft Ginger, 2 kinds of fudge).  Yes I know this is only 14 – the 15th debuted it’s way right into the trash.

When was the last time you over-did?

2022, Family, Food, Gatherings, holidays, home, Uncategorized

What a Deal!

53 Comments

Husband’s son Mario has come to Winona for a 10-day visit, and brought the whole famdamily! It’s a complicated, blended family with 3 girls: 20 years old, 17, 13; and a 2½-year-old boy and his 3-month-old brother. Their mom is a dream.

Happily, they are staying just around the corner from us, at the home of Mario’s mom. (She bought this house in 2021, having no idea at first that her former boyfriend would be sharing the back yard fence.) What serendipity! We just walked over there this evening with our contribution of salad and fixings, played with a little kid, held a baby, ate, talked with teenagers in front of a (real) fireplace, helped clean up, made plans for tomorrow, and walked back home. I met more of their relatives, and there will be an even bigger crowd for the big Thanksgiving blowout on Friday. If needed, we can “overflow” over to our house, which holds about six.  : )

I was a little nervous about so many of them coming for so long, and of course this is just the first day.   But we’ll all be fine – there can be an easy flow back and forth. Who set this up??

When do you eat your Thanksgiving meal?

2022, Family, Food, Gatherings, holidays, Seasons, Uncategorized

Well, I’ll Be Stuffed!

22 Comments

It’s time for the annual CarbFest.  We always spend Thanksgiving with close friends and I am always asked to bring the vegetarian stuffing and a dessert.   A friend asked me to send her my recipe for the stuffing and as I typed it out I realized that I have probably never followed the recipe to the letter even once.

In fact, this year, I’m thinking of adding some cornbread  to the sourdough as the base of the stuffing.  And I have to go get craisins today because I always used them instead of the dark raisins.  I’ve also never used fresh parsley – not once in 20+ years.

I’m thinking I should probably have told this to my friend.  What if she makes the recipe as written and doesn’t like it and then wonders about my sanity??

Do you have a recipe that you always alter?

2022, Business, Family, Food, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Sweet Conundrum

40 Comments

My father loved buttermilk.  Unfortunately my mother did not.  This meant that my father didn’t get buttermilk very often because my mother just didn’t purchase many things that she didn’t like, even if someone else did.  She was in charge of the kitchen, the shopping and the cooking and there just wasn’t room in her cart for things she wasn’t going to consume.  Fish, liver, brussel sprouts, mushrooms – none of these ever saw the inside of our fridge.

So my father would often order buttermilk when we ate out.  This got troublesome occasionally.  At Perkins in particular, he always asked for buttermilk and was always told they didn’t have it.  He would immediately point out the buttermilk pancakes on the menu and ask for buttermilk again.  It didn’t matter that every single time the waitstaff explained that the pancake mix already had the buttermilk in it, he just couldn’t understand how you could have buttermilk pancakes but not have buttermilk. 

I was thinking about this a few days ago.  I had a morning appointment up in Robbinsdale and the doctor agreed to an 8 a.m. time slot even though the office didn’t normally start taking appointments until 8:30.  To thank her, I stopped at a bakery/coffee shop up the street from the office to pick up coffee for both of us (and a doughnut for myself, who are we kidding).  It was quiet in the bakery; I was the only customer.  From where I was standing, I couldn’t see the cream/sugar nook so I asked the guy behind the counter.  He pointed out a table in a corner but then said “but we don’t have sugar”. 

I was sure I had heard him wrong so I said “you don’t have sugar?”.  Nope, they had sweetners, but no sugar.  I started to suggest that you can’t have 20 kinds of doughnuts and pastries along with cookies and cakes and not have sugar but then I remembered my dad always haranguing waitstaff about buttermilk and I decided to zip my lip.  But five days later, I’m still wondering about it.  No sugar in a bakery?

Any little mysteries bugging you this week?

2022, Art, Automotive, Fantasy, Food, Mysteries, Seasons, Travel

All Aboard

56 Comments

Yesterday Bill mentioned the disappointment that Botticelli’s Venus isn’t shown to it’s best advantage in its home in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.  I know someone who was disappointed at seeing the David by Michelangelo in that same city; she thought that many fewer people should be allowed into the gallery at any given time so that it is quiet while you are observing the statue.  I also know several folks who were underwhelmed by Stonehenge; they feel it is too close to the highway (technically the highway is too close to Stonehenge) and there is a chain link fence along the road that runs up to it.  And of course I did have a client once who just didn’t love Paris the way he thought he should. He couldn’t explain it at all and felt a little sheepish about it.

One of the days I was visiting Pat in Nashville, we drove down to Chattanooga for a day.  After we’d gone all through the huge aquarium there, I told Pat I wanted to see the Chattanooga Choo Choo.  After all – why not.  I’m guessing if it took me 66 years to get to Chattanooga the first time, I probably won’t get another chance!

We turned on the GPS… we were only about 3 miles away but it was downtown traffic so we wanted to be sure.  A left turn took us to the back of a hotel where there were some older trains but there wasn’t an entrance so we turned back.  A right turn after the hotel was the same… train cars but no entrance.  The front of the hotel has mostly pay parking and there was no signage whatsoever for the CCC.  We finally parked in a questionable spot and I called the hotel itself.  The gal who answered the phone said you had to go through the hotel lobby to get there.  Hmmmm.  We left the car in our questionable space and traipsed into the hotel.  It became clear immediately that this hotel had been the train station at one point but these days it is in sad shape and most of the retail spots in the big open atrium are dark.

If you walk all the way through, you do indeed come out to the train yard and the CCC is right there but that’s about all there is to say.  Not clean, not spiffed up, no signage, no speakers playing the famous song.  No little café serving coffee with cute names and no gift shop with magnet and postcards.  All the other train cars in the yard are in very sad shape; a few look like there might be some refurbishing going on, but I wouldn’t bet any money on when it will actually be finished.  As long as we were there, Pat snapped a photo of me in front of the engine, proof that we had actually found it!  Truly, the model of the CCC in the hotel lobby was more impressive than the actual train itself.

Luckily since we hadn’t thought about looking for the CCC until that morning, neither of us had any great expectations so it wasn’t nearly as disappointing as it could have been.  I think it’s the big build up in our expectations that causes most of our disappointments – at least it is for me.

What would you call a coffee drink at the Chattanooga Choo Choo Coffee Shop?

2022, Art, Family, Food, holidays, Mysteries

World Kindness Day

22 Comments

Yesterday was World Kindness Day.

YA and I celebrated (although I’m not sure she even know it was Kindness Day) by heading off to the Botticelli and Renaissance Florence exhibit at the Minneapolis Art Institute.  It was a nice exhibit; not as much Botticelli as I would have liked, but I suppose the Uffizi in Florence didn’t want to completely empty out their galleries for us!  YA wanted to see this one

(unfortunately it stayed behind in Florence).  She did talk me into buying a magnet of it for the refrigerator though!

Afterwards we went to Hola Arepa for brunch.  I had the Fried Egg Breakfast – the Arepa version of huevos rancheros with two great sauces and yuca fries.  It was really scrumptious but made even better when half way through, YA suggested that she pay for our meal.  I accepted so quickly that she laughed.  NEVER before has she volunteered to pay for a meal in a restaurant for us. 

I’m putting it down to World Kindness Day although I’m not sure YA was in the know!

Any kindnesses to report?