Friday's Hunt (on Saturday)

I'm trying to get back into the blogging groove but I don't always have the right topic at hand, so today I'm doing Friday's Hunt, a day late.  Hopefully the hostess of Friday's Hunt won't mind!

The objective of Friday's Hunt is to find the 3 things on the list, and blog about them.  This week's list of 3 things was:
1. Starts with I
2. Week's Favorite
3. Something Blue

For number 1, I was a bit stumped, because I couldn't think of things starting with I that were interesting to talk about.  I did find the letter "I" though, and that was in the form of my spinning wheel bobbin, partially full of spun yarn.  Do you see the capital I?  The ends of the bobbin form the top and bottom bars, while the yarn being spun is along the long bar of the I.

Today, for the first time since I have lived in New Brunswick, I went to a spinning event!  It was great for me to get out and be with some other spinners.  I used to really enjoy my Iowa spinning guild, and the fun Friday nights we would have spinning and chatting about our lives.  I really miss that group tremendously, and also the enjoyment it brought to my life.  It has been really difficult for me to fit in to New Brunswick, and the city of Moncton in particular, although I often find it difficult to fit in, so it's not surprising.  

Four years ago, I went to a Maritime Spinners Retreat as a yarn and fibre vendor, and remarkably, somebody from that long-ago weekend remembered me, and added me to an invitation for an event today.  From 12:30 to 4:30, a group of local spinners, knitters, crocheters and rug hookers met for fun and fibre festivities.  I really enjoyed myself.  Even more remarkably, a few people at today's event remembered me from that weekend, four years ago, and even remembered my name.  I wish I had the ability to remember people's names like that!  Hopefully there will be more opportunities for me to participate in spinning days with this group, although this is the first time they've had this kind of get-together.

Today I spun some green Blue-faced Leicester fibre from my stash in the "Terrarium" colourway.  

I also spun the fawn-coloured fibre you see in the "Letter I" picture.  That is some lovely 100% llama roving from Eden Hills Farm.  Specifically, it's Llenny the Llama!  I was so excited to be spinning this fibre because Teresa sent it to me as a sample for an assessment, since it's the first time she ever had her llama's fibre processed, and she's not a spinner (yet), so she wanted someone to give her an opinion on it.   It is extremely soft and has a long staple length, since Llenny had not been sheared in quite some time.  The mill that processed the fibre did a great job on cleaning it and there is a little bit of hay in the fibre, but not much, which is what I would expect for a roving that hasn't been through any acid baths or other harsh commercial processes.  Those processes remove every speck of hay, but also take some of the 'life' out of the fibre.  The colour is very even and there are very few lumps or second cuts in the roving.  The fibre is even and consistent and spins up beautifully.  I expect that it won't be long before you can purchase some Llenny roving for yourself if Teresa decides to add it to her farm market offerings.  Here are a couple of close-up shots of the single ply I have spun so far.  I plan to ply it into a 2 or 3-ply yarn afterwards and do a test knit with it.  Thank you so much for sending me the sample, Teresa!

The second item on the list is Week's Favourite.  That was tricky for me because this was a busy week.  I spent Wednesday through Friday in Halifax visiting my parents while also accommodating work meetings.  I hadn't seen them since Christmas, so it was really great to visit and spend some time catching up.  I do wish I lived closer to them, because now it's a 3-hour drive, but it's still better than the 33-hour drive when I lived in Iowa.  However, I didn't take any pictures there, so I couldn't use that for my blog post.  When I returned home to Moncton though, I was surprised by a special gift that Marc had bought for me while I was away.  The newest flock member!

Although this little sheep doesn't have a name yet, he certainly brought a big smile to my face and made me especially happy to be home.  That was one of my favourite moments of the week.  

The last item on the list is "something blue."  Today, after a busy day of spinning, it was good to come home and relax for a little while with a glass of Pinot Grigio.  I had it in my favourite blue wine glass.  I bought these glasses many years ago at either Pier 1 Imports or Wicker Emporium - I can't remember which.  I love the deep blue colour of the glass and always enjoy using them, even when it's not for wine!

I put the glass next to our glass rooster, who also has some blue "feathers" on him.  He's a handsome guy and he doesn't steal any of my wine.  Today's wine is "20 Bees" Pinot Grigio, which is an Ontario wine made from 100% Ontario-grown grapes.  I like the little man riding on the back of the bee on the label.  And note, he's wearing blue pants.  

Lemon Chicken Enchiladas (with modifications)

Oh dear.  I cannot believe it has been over a year since I last wrote a blog post.  I suppose that's a good indication that it has been a busy year, and indeed it has.  Sometimes I think about writing and I decide that I haven't got anything to write about.  Now, as I sit here typing, I am thinking of about 100 things I could probably write about, but haven't.  I'm not even sure why today seemed to be the day that I should write a post, but it is.

Perhaps one reason I thought I'd write a post is because I decided to try a recipe posted by a friend of mine from Iowa.  I try to keep up with her blog even though I don't have a lot of time for blog reading these days.  In part, that's because she always has cute goat pictures, and I can't resist a cute goat!  I wanted to show how well this recipe turned out, even though I took it for a walk that was a bit off the beaten path.  So, although I should probably write about a lot of other things, today I'm writing about supper.

Over on the Eden Hills blog, you can see the original recipe that I used as the basis for tonight's creation - Lemon Chicken Enchiladas.  I learned that the recipe made 5 large enchiladas, and I wanted to make either 6 or 8, depending on how many I could fit in the pan, so I thought I should add some extra ingredients to it.

The original recipe starts with sautéeing 1/2 a cup of onion and 1/2 a cup of peppers.  The peppers were crazy expensive in the grocery store (like everything here in Canada these days, due to the poor Canadian dollar value when it comes to US imports).  So, instead I sautéed 2 small sweet onions with about 1.5 cups of diced frozen butternut squash and about a cup of frozen chopped kale.  The amounts are approximate - use your own judgment based on how many you want to make, and what vegetables you prefer!


I then added about half a can of black beans, and about 2 cups of chopped cooked broccoli.  I'm always looking for ways to add more vegetables to our diet, so this seemed like a recipe that would allow for lots of modification.


I love the freezer bags of chopped kale - I can easily add some to casseroles, soups, stir-fry dishes, and other types of recipes without any trouble.  It also means I don't end up with sad, wilted looking fresh kale in my fridge because I forget it's there or I don't have time to wash, de-rib, and chop it all. Frozen veggies are a life saver some days!  I used the PC Blue Menu black beans (available in Canada) and the broccoli was from Costco - frozen in the microwave baggies.


After the veggie and bean mix was thoroughly heated, I added 1 tub of PC Blue Menu low fat ricotta (available in Canada).  Use whatever brand you have available.
 

The original recipe called for 2 sliced chicken breasts, but boneless chicken thighs were on sale this week, so I used those instead.  I sauteed them in a bit of EVOO and then chopped them into bite-sized pieces.  If you prefer, use a chicken substitute, or any other meat or protein source you enjoy!


When the chicken was cooked, I deglazed the pan with the soy sauce and lemon juice called for in the original recipe.  That recipe called for 3 tablespoons of each, but I used 6, for good measure!  It made a nice rich sauce.


I added the deglazing sauce and chopped chicken to the veggie mix, and then began the process of making the enchiladas.


Each one was made by scooping a couple of large spoonfuls of the mixture into a large size whole wheat tortilla (Casa Mendoza brand), and rolling it up.  I managed to get 6 of them into a 9 x 13" glass pan.  As you can see, I had quite a lot of the filling mixture left over.  I'll probably make some more later this week, or maybe do something else with the filling mixture.  For now, it's in the fridge. I covered the enchiladas with a jar of Classico Tomato and Basil pasta sauce.  The original recipe has a lovely separate recipe for the enchilada sauce, but I was a bit pressed for time, so using the Classico sauce helped me get these done quickly.  One could add any number of spices to the sauce, as recommended in the original recipe.  I tend to like things fairly mild, so I didn't add any chili or other hot spices to the mix.  It would have been easy to add some straight into the jar of sauce and shake it up before pouring onto the enchiladas.



After that, I covered the top with grated 3-cheddar blend.  At this point, I re-checked the original recipe and saw that I was supposed to bake them before adding the cheese.  Oops.  I put foil over the top before putting them in the oven so the cheese wouldn't burn.  I also sprinkled on some ground mixed Italian herbs before popping it in the oven.


It came out looking like this!


This dish baked for about 45 minutes at 375F, and then I took the dish out and let it stand for about 10 minutes before trying to extricate the enchiladas from the pan.  This worked relatively well, although it certainly helps if you have a long spatula or other utensil for sliding under the length of the tortilla before transferring it to the plate.


Both Marc and I really enjoyed them and it will make 3 meals for us, since we had plenty by having 1 enchilada each for supper.  There are 5 veggies in this recipe (kale, broccoli, squash, onion and tomato) as well as lots of protein from the chicken and black beans, not to mention the cheese, and we had our starch from the whole wheat tortilla, so I felt it was a well balanced meal.  I would definitely do this again and would vary the meat and veggies to suit what I have on hand.  I have to admit that the lemon flavour wasn't particularly noticeable, but that's probably because I used a wider range of ingredients than the original recipe, so it diluted the flavour of the lemon.  Give it a whirl!

Post Holiday Putterings, and a Wee Tiny Little Bit of News

Hello dear reader, and apologies (as usual) for the lengthy absence.  I had a very busy summer and fall in 2014, and then the 4th quarter dropped off rather dramatically in terms of work, but I had many projects and plans to putter about with, and I seem to have been non-stop busy.  I'm trying to be a bit more organized with my time in the new year, and perhaps that will allow me to blog more often.  I do miss it, and I have some former readers who say they miss reading the blog, so I'll try to keep things more up to date.

The holiday season presented some opportunity for crafty bits and pieces to spring forth from my hands, especially since I didn't have a great deal of work in the last quarter for my writing business.  As a result, I made a variety of gifts for friends and family.  Here are some highlights:

The "Flock of Geese" cowl that I made for my father is a free pattern on Ravelry found here, and I really enjoyed working on it.  I've improved my knitting of cables over the past year and really like the way that they spring forth from the needles.  I did this cowl in an Elann brand highland wool and Donegal tweed blend.  My Dad says it keeps his neck warm, and that was the goal!

I made quite a few ornaments for my Mum to hang on the tree.  Included in that group were an English Robin (crochet), a mushroom (crochet), a "partridge" (crochet), a pear (knit), and a snowflake (crochet).  I was relatively pleased with all of them and so was she, which was the intent!

I finally finished the Calm Waters Cowl and gave it to my mother, since she wears a lot of blue-green colours and I thought this would be ideal for her while walking the dog.  I finished it off with some pewter buttons in a Celtic scrollwork design.

I also made Marc a hat, which is great for him to use while snowblowing the driveway or participating in other outdoor activities.

For myself, I've been working on the "Sea Dragon Shawl" which is not yet finished, but progressing slowly.  I really like the pattern and I'm hoping to have it finished before winter is over!

So, these are the things that kept me busy in the months preceding Christmas.

Work is slowly starting to pick up again, and I'm hopeful that 2015 will be another busy year for my small business.  In part, because I hope to finish the renovations on the Nova Scotia farm this year so that it can be put on the market.  But also, in part, because I need to pay for my upcoming....

WEDDING!!!!

Squeeeeeeeeeeeeee!  Yes, Marc proposed on Boxing Day and we are hoping to be married in September of 2015.  So there you have it, my tiny little bit of news.  It will be a very tiny little wedding, but rest assured, the love is anything BUT tiny!

A bit of this and that

Gosh, it's been ages and ages since I posted, and I apologize to any readers who still check in from time to time.  I think about blogging on occasion and then I feel a bit overwhelmed and think "where do I start?" and just keep putting it off.  I think it's time for a bit of an update though, so I'll just chat about a few things from the last 6-8 months, and do a random round-up of thoughts.

The Farm:  It's still the pit of despair.  That said, there have been some improvements.  A new roof went on the place last fall, and it doesn't leak any more!  Hooray!  It's a nice forest green colour.

Some more minor projects have continued inside. The stairs were re-routed after my mother took a terrible tumble on them, in order to make them wider and more safe.  A hand rail was also installed.

In the process, a jelly cupboard was installed, or one could call it a pantry area.  It is a good use of space and my Dad made excellent shelving for it.

This summer I will be proceeding with the kitchen renovation, finally, only 3 years after it was supposed to happen.  Did you sense me rolling my eyes during that sentence?  If not, surely you can now!  The overall plan with the farm is to keep improving it until it's actually worth putting on the market, and then to sell it.  It's too isolated, too inconvenient to get to, too much land for my needs, and full of bad memories.

In the long, horrible winter that we had this year, there was an issue with burst pipes, and then an issue with blocked drains.  The basement was flooded for months, sometimes over a foot of water, and the source and drainage issues were not easily dealt with.  In addition, despite repeated attempts, it is difficult to get tradespeople to come out to my location - even when they make appointments, they often don't show up. My carpenter is the glowing exception to this rule, and I am thankful for that.  He does great work.  Anyway, the whole house ended up smelling not unlike a swamp (because it sort of contained one) and was really quite awful to live in.  I was spending more and more time with Marc in Moncton, and also more time on the road with my work.  Eventually, it became clear that something had to change, and so Marc and I decided that I would move to Moncton to live with him, which has been a great move and a source of much happiness.  We purchased a second-hand truck earlier this spring, which has proven very useful so far - I missed my old Iowa pick-up!

The Business:  Things have been very busy for the past year or so with my business.  I have had increasing amounts of work as a subcontractor for a number of clients and am enjoying keeping busy with lots of different projects.  Most of my work continues to be focused on ISO 9001 quality management, as well as HSE (health, safety and environment) program development and implementation.  I have also done quite a bit of instructional design work.  I still have a hand in the intellectual property world and wrote a full patent application earlier this year - the first one since leaving my former job in Iowa.  It was good to use those skills again.  I continue to seek new opportunities and clients but I am fairly busy already so I can't take on much in the way of new work at the moment.

The Critters:  Obviously, with the move to Moncton and the regular work travel, it became clear that I had to do something with the critters for a time.  I managed to find a wonderful home for the angora rabbits at Feathers and Fiber Microfarm in Bridgewater, NS.  They show angora rabbits and are well versed in angora rabbit care.  The sheep and goats were a bit more difficult to part with, but I managed to find excellent long-term boarding situations for them.  This allows Marc and I to proceed with our plan of working on the farm with the plan of selling it, and then finding our own place which will be a smaller farm with a fence in place where I can re-unite the gang of five.  I still have the chickens and they are kept in the big barn where I visit them regularly to refill the large feeders and waterers.  They are doing fine with minimal intervention in their feathered lives, and are producing lots of eggs for me.  Twilight, my ewe, had a lamb this spring, as a result of a tryst with a Blue-faced Leicester ram on her boarding farm.  I can't wait to meet the lamb, Wika! Caramel is also pregnant and due in July.  I really miss Lucky Nickel and Fezzik but they are in good hands and I hope to visit them soon as well.  So for now, I just have Jet and Izzy with me at Marc's.  As you can see, Jet feels right at home.

The Man:  All is well with Marc and we are enjoying our life together.  This June marks our first year together and what a wonderful ride it has been.  Marc starts a new job on Monday as Parts Manager of the local VW dealership.  I am very pleased and excited for him - his former workplace was neither a positive environment nor a rewarding one.  This will be a great new challenge for him, and an opportunity for growth in his career.  Our dogs have come to be more tolerant of each other....and our cats not so much.  We went for our first motorcycle ride of 2014 this week - a tour along the Bay of Fundy coastline.  The scenery was stunning despite the cold winds, and we really enjoyed the time out.  I continue to feel incredibly blessed to have found Marc, and to be loved by him each and every day.  Here we are way back in February on Valentines Day making silly heart shapes with our hands and having a good laugh about it.

The Hobbies:  As a result of the increased pace of work, increased travel time and the enjoyment of time spent with Marc, I haven't had much time for spinning, sewing, or other crafty pursuits.  I did recently finish a bouclé mohair shawl which took me months to complete, simply because the only time I ever worked on it was when Marc and I went to estate auctions.  It was simple, mindless knitting that I could do while listening to the auctioneer and keeping an eye out for items of interest.  I'm very pleased with how it turned out.  I also did a little bit of spinning just this past week, and am pleased with the thick-and-thin yarn skeins I completed.

So there you have it, that's a little bit of life, lately.  I really should try to post more often, but sometimes the muse isn't there, and my attention is often being pulled in too many other directions.  Rest assured, I'm still carrying on!

Roasted Tomato Paste

One thing I've really missed since I moved away from Iowa is the delight of vegetable gardening in the summer.  The first summer here, I had no garden because I only moved into the house in June, and it was too late, and there was far too much to be done inside.  The second summer here was the dreadful summer of working at the blueberry factory and floundering in the pit of despair, so the tomatoes didn't do very well then either.  This year, finally, I had enough tomatoes to make roasted tomato paste.  Gardening here in Nova Scotia is a short-season affair, so growing tomatoes is a bit challenging compared to what I had become used to in Iowa.  If I had a greenhouse, it would be much easier, but still, I managed to get a decent yield this year - at least enough to make a pan of roasted sauce.  I was used to making say 30-40 pans of sauce in Iowa, but that's the benefit of a warmer, longer summer!  If I'm lucky and the frost doesn't hit for another week or so, I might get 1 or 2 more pans done.

Here's what I do to make my roasted tomato sauce (which is closer to a paste, really).

Select a good assortment of tomatoes and wash.

Chop roughly and put the tomatoes into a glass roasting pan - I generally use an 8 x 13" pan.  I drizzle olive oil over them and then add some Italian seasonings.  Some people add onions, garlic, or other herbs.  Be creative - do as you like!

I set the oven to 400 F and put the pan on the middle rack for about 2 hours, turning the tomatoes with a spoon now and then, until the liquid is considerably reduced.  Here's how they looked when they came out today.  Keep an eye on them - you don't want the top layer browning too heavily because it will give a burnt, acrid taste to the paste.

After they are out of the oven, I let them cool for a while.

I have a stainless steel manual food mill.  This was very handy when I was making a lot of tomato paste, and is great for other vegetable purees and fruit purees.

I had an electric food mill for a while but it was cantankerous and inefficient - I much prefer this manual one. Mine has 3 different sizes of metal plates for the bottom that allow different sizes of particles to pass through. I use the one with the smallest holes for tomatoes because I don't really want lots of seeds.

If you don't have a food mill, you could crush the tomatoes with a potato masher or forks, and then use a medium-mesh strainer to achieve the same end product.

I place the food mill over a bowl and pour in the tomato mixture.

After some elbow grease has been applied, the remainder in the food mill is just skins and seeds (which the chickens will get as a snack in the morning!)

The resulting tomato sauce can be further reduced if you wish to make it even thicker, or it can be frozen immediately.  This stuff is wonderful - it is the pure essence of ripe tomato, concentrated and thickened into a dose of summer.

I freeze it in freezer bags because it makes for very efficient storage.  Squeeze the air out of the bag when it is laid flat, so that the paste is almost at the top.  Lay flat in the freezer to freeze, and then once frozen, the bag can be placed on its side or end in a "library" of bags.  I used to make paste with red, orange, yellow, and mixes of tomatoes, so I always had many colours of paste to choose from.

It's great in winter for lasagna or other pasta dishes, soups, stews, and almost any recipe where tomato sauce or paste is used.  Give it a try if you have a lot of tomatoes on hand!

I think a bear was there!

This morning on the way down the driveway for Jet's walk, I noticed that a tree limb was hanging at a strange angle.  It definitely wasn't like that yesterday.  You can see it in roughly the middle of this picture, hanging out from the right side of the drive.


As I got closer, I could see it was quite definitely broken, and that it was a reasonably large branch in terms of the diameter.  I figured the goats had been up to mischief as usual.

Then I noticed, when I came closer, that the vegetation to one side was really squashed down.  It appeared to me to be more squashed than I would expect to see from a few goat hooves, or even a goat that had decided to lay down for a while and ruminate.  It's a little hard to tell from this picture, but the area that is squashed is about a 3 foot diameter patch.

Then I noticed that on the other side of the branch that was broken, there was another completely squashed area where something large had crushed all the vegetation.

Here you can see where the branch was broken from the main stem - it's not an easy break for a small animal to make.

Black bears live in this area and they're preparing for hibernation at this time of year.  They eat a lot of berries.  This tree has berries on it - I think they are service berries or choke cherries - I'm not entirely sure. There were still berries on the broken branch though, so if it was a bear, it wasn't terribly efficient.

Overall, I'm not sure if there was a bear, there, or not.  I tried to look for any hair or evidence of bear fur (or droppings) but there was nothing I could find.  No goat droppings either!  I thought I detected a very faint musky smell, but that could have been my overactive imagination.  Still, something definitely did break the branch and cause a lot of vegetation damage in the immediate area.  The other clue was that Jet was really very excited about sniffing that area.  He could definitely smell the visitor!

I guess I'll be keeping an eye out for large mammals on our walks!

In the meantime, signs of fall are beginning to show.  I love the colour of the Virginia Creeper vine, even if it is a nuisance plant!  There is still plenty of lovely green grazing for the goats and sheep though.  I hope the hard frosts are still a long way off!

UPDATE!
On our afternoon walk, Jet and I went across to the open pasture over the road.  We found definite evidence of bear!  This, my dear readers, is bear poop!  I put a small apple on it for scale.  You can see all the berry seeds in it.  That's no small animal leaving evidence, that's a full "power dump" from a big ol' bear!

Jet did a lot of sniffing over there too.  He definitely is on the bear trail!  I was just enjoying the lovely blue skies and gentle breezes.

We also found a destroyed paper wasp nest.  Quite possibly a bear would do that.

I believe this is some kind of Viburnum species, and I suspect the bear likes these berries too.   They provide a lovely splash of colour in the sea of green.

There are also a few last apples hanging on.  I think the bear will be feasting around here for a while!