Soup a la Julienne

This is a vegetable soup which is quick to make up and surprisingly delicious.   It could easily be served with fried snippets, or bread triangles fried in a bit of butter to make a lovely lunch meal.  I make this for my own lunch during the winter when there are no leftovers handy.  Sometimes I also add a little leftover meat, which of course makes it a little more filling. 

 Sadly, I've only been able to find the recipe book, The Dominion Home Cookbook, 1868, published in Toronto, on microfiche, which really is a more difficult format to work with. Still it's a tasty, simple recipe.

Soup al la Julienne or Vegetable Soup - The Dominion Home Cookbook 1868 (Toronto)

Soup al la Julienne or Vegetable.  Cut various kinds of vegetables in pieces, celery, carrots, turnips, onions &c., and having put two ounces of butter in the bottom of a stew-lan, put the vegetables on the top of the butter, together with any others that may be in season.  Stew or fry them over a slow fire, keeping them stirred, and adding a little of the stock occasionally; soak small pieces of crust or bread in the remainder of the broth or stock, and when the vegetables are nearly stewed, add them and warm them up together.

5 cups chopped veggies -  carrots, onions, celery, turnip, mushrooms, leeks or whatever you have on hand.   If you are also using softer veggies, add them a little later so they don't over cook.

1 litre broth or stock, 

water

bread crumbs, or some crust pieces if you want the soup thickened.

1/4 cup butter. (half that will do fine if you want a less rich soup)

Method

Put butter in a stew or soup pot.  Start it melting.  Add the chopped veggies and stir periodically until they are almost cooked.   Add the broth, a bit of water to thin the soup out a bit or add volume (1/2 cup - to 2 cups).  Add any more delicate veggies at this time : peas, beans, cabbage, etc.  

Heat up and simmer until the vegetables are tender and the soup is heated through.  Add soaked bread bits if you want it thicker.

Inadvertently Monochromatic Photos

Recently it's felt both busy and so slow!  We've had snow squalls and storms arriving early this year.  We've had Alberta Clippers coming in off the lakes one right after  another, making miserable driving conditions as well as some unseasonably cold weather!  I missed one of my guilds  holiday gathering due to miserable weather,  track bare to snow covered roads and a crazy amount of snow in my driveway.   The other club travelled down to Port Rowan to visit a member's studio and have lunch at a local restaurant.   The day was sunny and lovely when we left.  It had clouded over and had started changing when we left the studio for the restaurant.   It was snowing when we left, with freezing drizzle.   I didn't get a photo of the harbour when we left, but you couldn't see the end of the boat houses or the end of the pier due to the weather.  Lunch had okay food but great company and the drive home wasn't too horrible.  I wasn't driving though, so that was helpful.

I cast on a pair of mittens.  Usually my mittens are fairly utilitarian, plain knit with anything fancier being in the yarns that I use.   Sometimes I dye some fancy yarn, blend fancier fibres or blend rolags on the blending board to make unique colour blends.   This time I decided to try cabled mittens.   I actually used a pattern to make sure I knew how to set the cables into the mitts so they were on the top of the hand.  I also tried a new finishing technique for the ends of the mitts, which I think I may try a few more times.  They still need blocking, but they worked out well.  I didn't like the pattern's placement or size of the thumb, so I did rip the first one back to the cuff and used a simple peasant thumb.  It doesn't look quite as clean as the other one, but I'll dig up another pattern and give it another try.   It's always good to have other techniques to use.

I also cleaned up and tried another knitting machine.  It is a LK100, a chunky gauge plastic machine.   I had to change the sponge bar.   That's the bit of foam that holds the needles in place and is a pretty easy, although fussy fix on this machine.  The fussiest part was re-inserting the needles.  I had to wipe off some gunky stuff and clean up some needles too.   It assembled easily.   I tried it out a few times and decided I wasn't up to the learning curve at this time.   I have a Bond Ultimate Sweater machine.  It's a very basic, manual machine with a fairly big learning curve, and it's a bit noisy.  This machine is a slightly fancier, less versatile version of the Bond.   The plus side is that there are extra base pieces, that can be attached to make a frankensteined knitting bed that is really long.  That would be great for afghans or baby blankets.   Anyway, it didn't take long before I'd packed it all up in its box and set up the SK151 again.   

The SK151 is also a chunky machine.  It's also manual, however it's a metal bed machine and more complex knitting carriage.  This means it's quieter and a bit easier to use.  Also because I'd played around making a bunch of hats with various yarns, I also have some of that learning curve mastered.   I do believe that my Circular Sock Machine, albeit antique, had a much smaller and easier learning curve that this flat bed.   So with the 151 set up, I put on another hat, but this time to try cables.   The hat is a little smaller than I wanted and took a fair bit more time than I'd anticipated, but I learned a lot.  I was getting faster at the end.  It's also my own pattern, which made me really happy.

My next project is a really simple sweater.  I should probably make a small sweater for a child or baby, but I have no little ones to knit for.  I cast on a learning sweater for me.   I got to the shoulder with minimal issues.  I managed to drop a few stitches , caught them all on stitch markers and took a break.  I read a machine knitting forum while I had my tea, and I normally don't find basic questions silly or dumb, but really, there were a few of them, and the questions that I view as common sense and intuitive made me feel pretty confident about my few skills.  I fixed the errant stitches and finished up, totally realising where I made my mistake in the first place.   So I have the back of a sweater done and am just writing out the instructions for the sleeves and front  so I can hopefully finish it up in a few days.

I also finished plying the last of the fleece that A gave me last spring.   I have probably about 2000 - 2200 yards of 2 ply yarn waiting for me to decide what to knit with it.   I think it will be a sweater for me, but will I dye it or use it in its natural colour?   Also, I haven't quite found a pattern for it yet.  Once I decide on those things, I'll get tit started.  That will be a good winter project.

The Weaver's Fall sale was quite successful.  I was happy with selling 5 scarves, maybe more since for some reason I didn't get back my inventory sheet and I only had one copy.  Most of the scarves were acrylic blends, acrylic or cotton blends and they get a bit of a bad rap in the guild as most of the members like fancy weaves or expensive fibres.   Since I don't have that budget, I've been weaving with what I can afford, and it certainly paid off in this economy as I sold the most in the guild!  Go me!

I can't wait for the days to start getting longer.   The dull days, combined with few sunlight hours is quite wearing.  In order to weave or knit, machine or by hand, I've got extra lights on during the day as well as lights on plants, despite them being in the big windows.   Maybe spring will be as early as our winter started!

Stupid weather, and meh stuff in life.

We had great seats for a mediocre concert!

 We went to a concert the other night.   I was looking forward to seeing the 2 artists because they don't travel very often anymore.  While they aren't pumping out the hits any longer, George Canyon and Aaron Prichett have a long history in Canadian Country Music.  It was a charity benefit concert, which is the first thing which should have tipped me off that maybe it wasn't like a regular concert.  Then too it was to be a mix of holiday and their hit songs.   Meh, is the best review I can give.   There were few actual songs of any kind in comparison to the anecdotes, stories, humour, call outs , so many call outs to family, friends, the stage hands, the charity guy, the guy who just joined them.   All this took time from actual music which is really what I wanted to see.    The show consisted of two 45 minute sets.  The second set sadly had fewer songs than the first set, by a noticeable amount. The charity sales pitch rambled and was all over the place and too long.   I think if they'd had someone help edit and fine tune the stories and the charity sales pitch, it wouldn't have dragged nearly so much and they could have gotten both a more effective use of them, and more music in. I will say that the few songs that George Canyon sang, showed that his voice is a smooth and strong as ever. I'd have loved to hear more of him singing.

The weather had been stupid on Friday.  It actually started snowing on Thursday and just never stopped.  We were lucky with our timing for leaving for the concert, which was a bit over an hour drive away.  We caught a break in the weather and had taken the major  highway, so it was well plowed and salted.  There was only one snow squall which affected us, and not for long.  That made it a much nicer trip despite the squall warnings and lake effect snow.  We decided not to drive home in snow squalls in the dark.  The hotel we chose turned out to be a suite with a full kitchen and separate bedroom.  The only odd thing was that it was a converted 1881 building, and our inside room had no windows, although 2 skylights.  It was reasonably priced too, 

Another meh project is the newest scarves on the loom.  I put two on because I had just enough yarn, if I dressed the loom correctly.  It's a DK yarn weight and I put it on the rigid heddle loom, so it's in between heddle sizes.   I'm a bit worried that the sett is a little too loose, but we'll see once it's off the loom.  The main issue I have is that it's pastel and the pale blue and ecru on the white just seem to look grungy to me.  I much prefer weaving and working with brighter colours.   Hopefully it will look better once it's finished.   The yellow reed hook was a gift from my friend E.   She cut them out of plastic and shared them.  It's a nice size, comfortable to hold and works beautifully on my loom.

The weather has been stupid the past few days, with snowfall warnings, lots of snow and horrid roads.   A few days before though, I looked out the window and saw this pretty sunset.  The sky had a lot more purple in it, over the orange and pink, but this is close.   I snapped a photo from the window because I worried that the sunset would be gone by the time I got outside.  I was right on that and happy I'd taken a quick snapshot before I tried to race outside.   It had faded quickly.

I'm working on making a sweater on a knitting machine.  I've made a bunch of hats which are great projects to learn the basics.  A sweater has a lot more steps and techniques, so we'll see how it turns out.  I picked up some less expensive yarn to learn with so I wouldn't waste or wear out the handspun yarn I've been spinning since the summer.     I've over 1800 yards spun so far, more or less, so that should hopefully be enough for a sweater.  Spinning yarn for a project can take a while, so I'd rather learn on commercial yarn.  Hopefully I'll have a wearable project out of this experiment, even if it is just some sort of man-made fibre.   I also finished a pair of cabled wool mittens which I'm pretty happy with, just no photo yet.  I just sewed in the last ends of the second mitten a few minutes ago, so a good end to the day.

Daily Life

The new hens seemed to be settling in with the old chooks.     After two weeks in the barn, so they'd know where home was, I let the girls out to free range on a nice day.  I had to think about that though because white hens are much easier to see, so a bit of an easy target for predators.   We'd had snow and it melted, so I was hopeful all would be well.   Unfortunately when I went to tuck them in to the barn in the evening, one of the leghorns was missing!  I looked all over the yard and I couldn't find her.  With sadness, I locked up the barn and decided to keep them inside for the foreseeable future, to keep the other leghorn safe.    Luckily, the next afternoon, the missing hen was fussing close to the barn.  Even more so on the lucky front, she was really hungry and I was able to lure her into the barn with a scoop of food and moving it a short distance at a time to get her into safety.   She's in the barn now, and doing fine after whatever adventure she had.  We've only had a missing hen return after being gone for an evening once before, so it was a happy occasion.  

We had snow squalls in the forecast, with lake effect snow expected to be close to 50 cm.  I figured it was time to put the rest of the garden to bed for the winter.   In the spring I'd purchased 2 bales of straw and left them out all summer to hopefully start rotting.  One way or the other I'd be able to use them for mulch in the fall, but rotting straw already starts the composting process.   I had cleaned out all of one bed and most of the other.   I also planted 46 cloves of hard necked garlic.  It will be interesting to see how many garlic plants actually germinate.  It starts to grow early which always makes me happy.

 I opened the one straw bale and the inside was nicely starting to compost, so I used the straw to put a 6 inch layer of star over both garden beds to let the straw work over the winter.   Also, because every spring, I find a nest in the straw from some unknown animal, I wanted to set up the space in case they needed it this winter too.   Both raised beds are set nicely for the winter.  I left the two kale plants in because they are still growing, will last over the winter and give us fresh greens early in the spring, until they go to seed.

Thankfully, we didn't get 50 cm of snow.  Also, the weather warmed up a bit, and what snow we did have, melted quickly.   I peered out the window one afternoon and the sunset was amazing.   I didn't catch the colours properly because I knew in the time it would take to run outside, I'd miss it, so I took the photo from my window.   The sky was blue, purple, orange and that bottom bit was a glorious pink.    Between the numerous cloudy skies and dusk coming at 4:30ish,  I often miss the rare pretty sunsets just due to timing. 

 I'm totally not impressed with it being dark by 5:35pm!  With the fewer daylight hours, and keeping the chooks inside, the older girls aren't laying eggs right now.  They need about 16 hours of daylight to encourage them to lay.   I could put a light in the barn, but I just deal with fewer eggs rather than do that.   The new leghorns, being young are giving us eggs which is nice.   They are tiny pullet eggs though which makes for some interesting guessing at how many pullet eggs equal a normal sized egg.  Today's eggs were marginally bigger, maybe almost a commercial small size!  Yay for that!

Keeping busy

 I've been doodling around with this year's Xmas cards.  I actually tried to start them in October, so I'd have the choice of putting them into the mail early. We are having rotating Postal Strikes right now, which could end up being another full fledged strike by December.    It's  really odd because it's hardly noticeable because we get so little letter mail anyway these days.  There are ads and flyers but those go into the recycling bin generally before we even look at them.   It also feels odd because I used to be a prolific letter writer with several penpals.  I enjoyed that a lot.

I've decided that I should probably invest in some better water colour paper.   My current paper was all I could find locally and it was fine for several years.  This year however, I'm finding out its limitations and issues.   One technique I was trying really didn't work well and it was a paper issue more than a me issue!   I remembered I had a few sheets of handmade paper that I'd gotten at a paper making class at an SCA event a couple of years ago.   I hadn't used it because I wasn't sure my skills were up to using handmade paper.   The year after I'd made the paper, the instructor did a demo on how to size it with gelatine, so paints and ink wouldn't soak in.  So this evening, I mixed up a batch of gelatine and painted it on the paper.   I seem to remember the person demonstrating this using fairly longish strokes.  I had to use gentle, short strokes on the paper.   I did up 3 sheets and have it sitting between felt sheets.   If I had something heavy to sit on it, I'd weight it, but there is nothing handy right now, so my fingers are crossed and hoping for the best.  Some instructions suggested it could be 2 or 3 days before the sized paper is ready to use!  

I broke down and bought new shoes the other day.   Shopping for clothes is not one of my favourite things, but sometimes needs must.  Anyway, I do like them, but managed to leave them on the floor, nicely out of the way.  I woke up to the little obnoxious cat of my husband's biting at them.   I rescued them and wiped off the cat spit.  I woke up quickly enough that there wasn't much of kitty tooth marks on them, so that is good.   Still not my favourite way to wake up when Kevin the cat is getting into trouble making activities. 

I've almost got the small raised bed cleaned out.   I went at it today because they are calling for snow in a few days. I got enough done that it will be easier to deal with in the spring.  Now just to grab 5 cloves of garlic and finish off the row that I had decided I didn't need to finish.   Hindsight being what it is, I can't believe I made that decision.  That half row won't be used for anything else, so if I don't pop the garlic in, it will be wasted space.  That would give me just under 50 heads of garlic for next year if the crop is successful.

The last bit of autumnal colour.  Taken before we had a storm with much more wind than rain.   The leaves were flying around  making for an interesting visual.   I'm so really not ready for winter to come waltzing in early as they've forecast, or not. Either way, I'd be happy with a late winter.   The long range winter forecast says an early and harsh start to the winter in this area, and then possibly a slightly milder end to the winter, with high risk of freezing rain possibilities.  Somehow that doesn't seem much better to me.  Being on the edge of the snowball means we sometimes get hammered with snow. :(

A cold and frosty morning and new chooks!

It wasn't quite 8 am when I had to head out the other day.  This was the view from my driveway.   The sun was just rising and there was frost on the grass and all the fields.    It was very pretty but just a tad cold out side.   I still had my coat in the car from the springtime, as I sometimes just toss on a sweater or hoodie when I'm running about to the shops.  I keep spare mittens, a toque and a jacket in the car just in case there is car trouble during the in between seasons.  This summer though, I just tossed the jacket in the back instead of bringing it inside, so it was where I left it instead of where I needed it that morning, rather than inside so I could wear it!

My hubby has been bragging about how nice his seat and steering wheel warmers on on his new car.  I sent him this photo of my steering wheel warmer.  Interestingly enough, the mitten photo was taken just seconds after this one, having backed out, parked in the driveway and pulled out my phone.  The sunrise had already faded due to the rising sun.   

 Yes, that is frost on the edge of the windshield.  I had to scrape the windows, which wasn't fun.   I may have had mittens and a toque in the car, but I had moved my ice scraper into the garage in the spring and had to run into the garage to try to find it.   I couldn't find it quickly though, so I had to run inside and grab the tiny hand ice scraper that I used to process flax and sometimes nettle (although a dull butter knife works best for nettle).  We went out today and bought me a brand new snow bush/ice scraper tool since the old one has gone walk about!  It will certainly get a lot of use one way or the other this winter.

We didn't want any new chooks this year.   Honestly, we have 5 older girls and they still lay enough eggs to keep us well stocked and allow a few for co-workers.  Not as many as we used to have, but more than enough for us.   However,  I was chatting at the feed store and we were discussing how they had a chook delivery just a couple of days earlier and a few people hadn't replied to their phone messages, for their chooks, but still wanted them.  They were able to arrange a delivery of ready to lay hens the next day and not only the red sex link layers, but they had a few leg horns available.  I ordered 2 leg horns.  They lay white eggs.   When I do Pysanky (Ukranian Easter Eggs), I have to spend a lot of time and aggravation looking for large white eggs, without date stamps on them.  One year I ended up finding duck eggs.   They were mixed colours, blue, green and white, but they were telling me that their spring duck eggs come from young ducks and that's why they were still small.   Hopefully these girls will thrive and I'll have my own decent white eggs for this spring.   They're already laying little tiny pullet eggs which look so small against the giant brown eggs.

More inkle, a garden treat and some seasonal colour

 

I started a new pick up pattern.   Actually, I started one before this, but cut it off the loom.  I'd used 2/8 cotton for the background and 4/8 for the pattern threads.  It was pink and burgundy and looked very pretty in the 11 thread pattern. However, with the fineness of the threads and the dull daylight hours we've been having, it became way too fussy for me.  There were too many mistakes, and way too much unweaving.   Eventually I cut it off and re-threaded in something that is easier to see.

This is a 7 thread pattern, so easier to begin with.  However the blue and white pattern area gives a lot of contrast and when I'm weaving at night, it's much easier.   The pattern turned out to be a 6 step repeat either forwards or backwards, making it even more fun once I realised that.  It was pretty easy to memorize.

The big issue is that I didn't double my pattern threads.  It's fine and looks okay.  There isn't quite the full coverage nor the slightly raised texture.  This is a flat band.   My recommendation is to not try to warp your inkle loom while watching the Blue Jays come back to even the playoff  series.  I did a bit of unweaving last night too from not paying quite enough attention to my weaving.

The poor chooks have been inside for the past few days due to my being busy.  It's just safer to leave them protected, despite them being not quite so happy. about it.  Soon enough we'll have snow and they'll not want to go out anyway, so as long as the weather is nice enough, I let them free range.    This morning, I let them out and as I was walking by the tomato plant which I'd not yet pulled from its planter,  I saw a flash of yellow.  There were 4 ripe yellow tomatoes, of which 2 were just slightly soft, so I gave them to the chooks for a treat.   The other 2 I brought in, plus 2 of several remaining green tomatoes, which will hopefully ripen inside.  There were another 4 or 5 green ones, but they were just so very tiny.  This was a nice surprise.

I made blueberry jam at Westfield yesterday.  I wish I'd taken a photo though, but I didn't.  I brought my own, very dry wood to start up the stove, which worked a treat.  It hardly smoked at all.  Often, because this year's wood has been green and unseasoned, we've had huge smoke issues when starting up the stove.   It was very windy, but weirdly warm and then we had a lot of rain.  While the stove was burning hot enough to boil, the jam wasn't boiling as the breeze was cooling down the jam from the top of the pot.   In the end though, it turns out that even if the jam just barely boiled, if you cook it long enough it still reduces down, the pectin sets and you get jam despite everything.   I'd popped in a batch of scones into the oven before I started the jam, so we had something to test the jam with.

The drive yesterday was so pretty.   This past week the leaves, really started to change colours.   Lot of oranges around here with some patches of red.  Along my route yesterday, the area has tons of red maple and red oaks, which were all in their full blazing glory.  The colours were spectacular.  On the way home though, because there was still a bit of drizzle and because of the rains, the colours were enhanced.  It was truly a glorious sight.    This little leaf met when I got out of my car at home.

The photo below is what I saw hanging over my usual Westfield parking spot.   It wasn't noticeable when the tree was fully leafed out!   Luckily I'd never noticed the wasps at all this summer, nor in the fall.  Yesterday they were still quiet, so all was good.  I didn't move my car either.  Just left it there because I figured if they hadn't bothered me all summer, they weren't likely to do so yesterday either.