100 Random Things About Me

When I logged in to my blogging Dashboard, I saw that the Zucchini Muffins post made one hundred posts. So, as I've seen other bloggers do to honor the occasion, I've done this post. Enjoy, or ignore, your choice:

1. My first "real" job was working for Burger King
2. I've sold dictionaries door-to-door – I was one of the company's top 100 salespeople that summer and made enough, working straight commission, to pay for my next 9 months of school
3. I've lived in Colorado, Michigan (1 summer), Iowa (1 summer) and Nevada
4. I'm the oldest of five – two brothers, two sisters
5. I love to travel – anywhere, any time, even just going for a drive
6. I’ve climbed Mt Kilimanjaro, as my 50th birthday present to myself
7. I've hiked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu
8. My first time in an airplane was flying from Los Angeles to Hawaii, when I was nine years old. Looking down, at blue and clouds, I thought we were so high up it was like looking up towards the sky – until we went over a ship and I realized the blue was water
9. I can read music, both bass and treble clef - I took accordion lessons when I was eight years old
10. I still have two accordions, and I still play (not in public – only for my own amusement)
11. I can also play the harmonica – just straight notes – but wish I could bend notes and play the blues
12. I earned my B.S. degree, in Human Ecology, on the 25-year plan – pulling together the credits from four different institutions of higher education
13. I lived above 10,000 feet for 10 years – I feel better at high altitudes
14. I donate blood – more than six gallons, a pint at a time, to date
15. My maternal grandmother taught me to embroider
16. My mom taught me to sew
17. My first college roommate taught me to crochet
18. I taught myself to knit (still working on that)
19. I'm a certified open-water scuba diver
20. My favorite author is Robert Heinlein – ever since reading "Have Spacesuit, Will Travel" as a fifth grader
21. Kim Basinger is my "famous birthday twin"
22. I got my motorcycle license when I was 19
23. I've owned motorcycles since I was 21
24. I have a scar on my left knee, from the four stitches needed when I dropped my first bike – I picked the bike up, got it home, and then drove myself to the hospital
25. I don't care for liver, lamb, or lima beans
26. I've eaten guinea pig in Peru – looks like road-kill, tastes like chicken dark meat
27. And tried the goat in a Masaii warrior camp in Africa (didn't like that at all – I spit it out without swallowing. I liked the shredded goat in barbecue sauce - at least, I think it was goat - at a Filipino party)
28. I love hot springs – my favorite is the Tabacon Resort in Costa Rica: an entire hot river, flowing from the base of an active volcano, diverted into various pools and waterfalls, with beautiful paths winding through the jungle landscaping
29. I'm nearsighted – I remember getting glasses in fifth grade and how amazing it was when I could see individual leaves on the trees
30. I now wear mono-vision contacts – my left lens is for distance, my right lens is for reading
31. I won a Gold Key in the national Scholastic Art Contest in high school for a pencil drawing
32. I've worked as a free-lance sign painter, doing free-hand lettering before they came out with the computer graphics design programs – my specialty was writing backwards on the inside of glass windows
33. I used to work as a construction laborer – working both highway and high-rise jobs
34. I was a certified Traffic Control Supervisor for Colorado state highway jobs
35. I have no fear of heights (but have no desire to jump from them, either – I'll probably never skydive or bungee jump. I’m more the "stand at the edge, lean over, and spit" type)
36. I think of my gardening and landscaping as the slowest art form
37. My favorite color is dark hunter green
38. I'm missing four premolar teeth (one each side, top and bottom, just behind the canine teeth) - pulled as a teenager before getting braces. I used to think someone in the future would someday find my skull and think I was some kind of missing link
39. Novocain works on me, but slowly. I hated the dentist that pulled the above teeth because I wasn’t numb when he pulled them. He just put sunglasses and headphones on me, told me to hold onto the arms of the chair, and pulled the teeth anyway (I threatened to bite him if my mom ever took me back there – she didn't). I got numb later, at home. I've finally figured out that if I need dental work, to go in and get the shots, then wait at least another hour
40. I wrecked my first car on an icy winter road when I slid sideways over a fifty-foot cliff. The car rolled and was totaled – I got a bruise on my right thigh from the steering wheel. They had to lower a rope so I could climb back up through the waist-deep snow
41. I have photos of me with every car I've owned, when the odometer turned over back to zero
42. My favorite artists are Maxfield Parrish and M.C. Escher
43. I prefer to sit cross-legged with my feet up under me, and will often kick off my shoes and do so whenever I can manage it (I do try to act "normal" in restaurants and during job interviews though)
44. Visual spatial relationships come easy to me (examples: I'm really good at packing all the camping gear into my compact car's trunk, or putting together a pleasing layout for a newsletter)
45. I hate any percentage of polyester in sheets – it makes them feel like plastic. Only 100% cotton for me
46. I won't drink diet soft drinks – I can't stand the metallic aftertaste of artificial sweeteners
47. I like the taste of club soda
48. My favorite television show is Doctor Who (ever since the Tom Baker days, which we could only see occasionally on our PBS station)
49. If I ever get a personalized license plate, I want it to say TARDIS
50. My favorite rock band is Queen. Freddy Mercury had such an amazing voice. I never saw them live
51. The first live rock concert I saw was the Moody Blues, when I had just turned 16
52. I learned to drive in a car with a standard transmission
53. I still prefer manually going through the gears when driving – all our current vehicles have standard transmissions
54. I've never owned a cell phone
55. I love my IPod – it’s completely filled with my favorite rock albums. I set it on shuffle while out walking with the dog
56. I've always had "mobile music" devices, with earplugs - starting with a transistor radio, then a little portable cassette player, CD players, and now the IPod
57. Cross-country skiing is great with music – I had never really gotten into the right rhythm until I started skiing with my earphones on
58. I don't wear music downhill skiing
59. I learned to ski downhill when I was 15, and still get out a couple of times each year (although I now find it harder to get up if I fall)
60. I used to work in a restaurant at the top of a ski run. My commute included riding the lift up in the morning, then skiing down a 1½ mile intermediate run after work each day. I'd do it without thinking, easy – just like other people would ride an escalator
61. I was a "ski bum" for years. For one of my annual passes, I talked them into letting me get my picture taken wearing big black Groucho nose-n-mustache glasses. A lot of the lift checkers never even noticed, but when they did, they loved it
62. I love animals
63. I have, however, been bitten hard enough to draw blood by a rabbit, a hamster, a pony, and two dogs (the hamster died the next day – mom took the dead hamster to the vet to make sure it didn’t have rabies or distemper – just crotchety old age, I guess)
64. I also got a two-inch "hickey" on my arm, playing with a 5' stingray while diving near Stingray City in the Cayman Islands
65. I've petted, swum with, and dove with wild dolphins. Though they look like fish, I find it interesting that they're warm to the touch and when they make that eek-eek-eek noise it comes from their blowhole, not their mouth
66. I've stroked a wild moray eel, half-out of its cave while the dive master was holding some food for it just out of reach. They feel soft, like firm jello, and a bit slimy. That was in Bora Bora, French Polynesia, and the dive master would only speak French to me (I don’t speak French) but it wasn’t an issue once we were under water
67. Long as we’re talking sea creatures, I’ve also carried a 4' reef shark around, cradled under my arm, while snorkeling. The dive master had made a pet of it – it would come up, swim up under your arm and just lie there, along for the ride
68. If I ever get the chance, I want to ride a camel and an elephant
69. I'm fascinated by the ruins of ancient civilizations – I think initially sparked by reading an article, as a child, in National Geographic about excavating Pompeii
70. Egypt, Italy and Greece are high on my list of places I want to visit (and New Zealand)
71. I'm right-handed, but prefer using a computer mouse with my left hand
72. I played fast-pitch softball for 10 years as a child, usually at shortstop
73. As a waitress, I've waited on a few famous people: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris, Red Skelton, Mary Tyler Moore, Randy Quaid, and Sally Fields come to mind
74. Jack Nicholson once came over to our table in a Mexican restaurant in Leadville Colorado, drunk as a skunk, and sat down to tell us all about the rafting trip he'd taken that day – another round of margaritas, please
75. I speak Spanish well-enough to be able to function by myself in a Spanish-speaking country
76. Working with numbers – math, budgets, accounting, bookkeeping – comes easy for me
77. I would rather read than watch television
78. I read the newspaper regularly, and like to read any English ones I can find when I’m in a foreign country
79. My mom read to me so much when I was a toddler that I memorized my favorite books. I'd sit and recite them, turning the pages at the right place and people thought I was reading as a three-year old. I wasn't – I learned to read in first grade, along with everybody else
80. My birthday is in December. My parents had the option for me to start Kindergarten early and be one of the youngest in the class or wait another year. They waited, so I'd only be two grades ahead of my sister. As a result, I was a head taller than most of my schoolmates all through elementary school
81. School was always easy for me – so easy that I'd finish the assignment, then turn around and talk to the other kids. So I was usually seated up front, next to the teacher's desk, to keep me from bothering the other children while they were still trying to do their work. I think this is why no one noticed I needed glasses until fifth grade
82. My early elementary schooling was in combination classes - first & second for first grade; second & third for second grade. When I finished my assignment, I'd do the other grade's too. I was always being given "extra credit" assignments to do by myself. I loved it, especially when it was something to read
83. I like dark chocolate, especially Dove dark chocolate
84. I dip my grilled cheese sandwiches in ketchup
85. I've never colored my hair
86. I prefer my toilet paper to roll off the top, away from the wall
87. I keep the toilet lid closed. This habit started when my Afghan hound used to drink from the toilet, dunking his long ears in the process, and then dripping them across the seat
88. My Afghan hound's name was Omar. He was a pound hound I raised from a half-grown puppy. He’s been gone 10 years now. I held him when I had to have him put to sleep, then went out to my car, sat there, and cried. It was a hard thing to do, but I felt it was also the right way to do it
89. I dread the thought that I might someday have to make that type of decision about a person
90. I have long straight hair, and I’ll play with it and twist it when I'm bored or thinking about something
91. I don't wear rings – not even a wedding ring (if my now-husband wanted to spend a lot of money on me, I asked that he buy me a motorcycle instead. He did. He doesn't wear a ring either)
92. I rarely wear necklaces either
93. I do wear earrings. I have one hole pierced in each ear. If dear husband wants to give me jewelry, he buys real gemstone earrings (he’s been well-trained)
94. He says I proposed to him. After we'd been dating for over a year, I was out in my garden working and he came over to visit. I said something like, "Where do you see our relationship going – are we getting married, or what?" He said, "Ok. When?" I just stood there open-mouthed, looking at him. "Well,” he repeated, “When?" "How about October, after I’ve harvested the garden," I finally said. "I don’t want to move until then."
95. We eloped. I didn't want to deal with all my relatives showing up. We were married by the Justice of the Peace outside the courthouse in Virginia City, Nevada (that courthouse is one of the few where the statue of Justice does not wear a blindfold), with my sister and my roommate at the time standing up for us
96. The Justice of the Peace was on vacation on the date we originally picked. We already had our work vacation time arranged for our honeymoon, so we went on our honeymoon and then got married when we got back a week later
97. My honeymoon was a camping trip – through Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, over to the Pacific at Morro Bay, and up through Big Sur
98. We agreed before we were married that neither of us wanted children
99. I don't really like babies much. I like other people's children after they're potty-trained and can talk
100. I love my life – I wouldn't change a thing!

Zucchini Muffins

Now is the time of year when my stored vegetables make up the bulk of our fresh eating options. Over time, and by experimenting, I've learned which items need to be used sooner than others. Some of the big zucchini, the last of last summer's crop, are now starting to soften down in the cellar, so I've been going through at least one of them per week. When using a big stored zucchini, I'll split it length-wise and scrape out the fibrous seed cavity just like a winter squash, leaving only the edible green skin and flesh. I can then cut half-moon slices for soup or a stir-fry, or shred it using the big holes on a box grater to make fritters or muffins. After much tweaking and experimenting, I finally have a zucchini muffin recipe we both really like. The key was using dry milk instead of adding any more liquid to the zucchini mixture.

Zucchini Muffins (makes 12 muffins)

Mix together:
2 cups shredded zucchini
1 egg
2 tablespoons applesauce (or oil)
¾ cup sugar
⅓ cup dry milk powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ teaspoon lemon extract

Mix together, then stir in, just until all is moistened
(Grandma wisdom: stirring only 17 times):
1½ cups whole wheat flour
1½ teaspoons baking soda (sift out any lumps)
2 teaspoons cinnamon

Then stir in (Grandma again: stirring only 3 more times):
⅓ cup raisins, with enough chopped nuts to make it ½ cup

Divide between 12 sprayed or greased muffin cups. Bake at 375º
20 minutes.

A New Apron

An organization I belong to decided to have a booth at a crafts fair as a fundraiser. They asked the members to make and donate things to sell, so I made some insulated teapot cozies. I had the insulation padding, so just needed to go through my fabric stash and put together some nice coordinating bits of cotton. I don't have pictures of any of the ones I made to sell, but in the process I found a yard of a flowered print with colors I just love. How convenient! My old apron had just ripped, worn through too thin to even patch, so I had been thinking I should make myself a new one. Re-discovering that green/pink/maroon print in my stash was wonderful timing!

This time, I wanted to make a reversible apron - one side for cooking, one side for baking. The dark green flower side would hide gravy and tomato sauce spatters. Now I just needed a lighter colored fabric for the flour side. I have an old duvet cover (is that redundant?) I don't use anymore. The bottom side of that is a little diagonal pink ribbon/green flower print on white - that would be perfect! Time for a little re-purposing then. Now for a pattern. I don't like aprons that hang on my neck. I prefer ones that go over my shoulders. I've made a pattern from an old bib-type granny apron I like, so I was ready to sew.

So I've been busy sewing. First the fundraiser tea cozies, to get them ready in time for the crafts fair. Then, when I cut out the new apron pieces from the dark green flower fabric, I had just enough left over to make myself a new teapot cozy too - the one at the top of this post. With a bit of solid dark green for pocket trim and waist ties (and the cozy lining), I have a brand new, double-sided reversible apron just in time for cooking Thanksgiving dinner. And I got all the sewing finished just in time too. I had to put away my sewing machine and table in order to change that room over into guest room status. My mom flew in from Colorado yesterday, and my sister and her family will be here from California in a couple more days. The more, the merrier!

Storing Summer Vegetables into Fall

I don't really like canning all that much. For some things, it's the best way to preserve the harvest. But I have to balance that with what we'll actually eat. Aries doesn't like anything with vinegar, so I'm the only one that will eat pickles of any kind. Both of us prefer honey on our toast (and we barter our eggs with a beekeeper), so only occasionally will I make a batch of jam (strawberry or peach). Tomatoes, now, we eat a lot of, so those I can in various configurations (see previous posts on canning for those recipes). And I use applesauce instead of oil in a lot of my baking recipes, so canning a batch or two of applesauce is also an annual undertaking.

I don't freeze too much either. We only have the freezer part of our refrigerator, so space is an issue. Besides, I don't really like having my winter food supply dependent on a constant source of electricity - winter storms have been known to knock out power here for hours. Fruit, I dehydrate if I get a bumper crop, and also experiment with making hard ciders and perry. For the most part, we eat fresh vegetables when they're in season, and go for low-maintenance storage and cold-season crops to stretch our fresh foods options.

We do have a cellar. I open it up when nights start getting colder (but not below freezing) and then close it up during the warmer fall days to drop the temperature inside. Right now, the temperature down there is in the middle 50's. That's the perfect temperature for keeping some summer vegetables, at least into December. Refrigerators are too cold to keep summer vegetables into fall, but you might be able to do what I do with an unheated closet, enclosing an outside stairwell into your basement, or even under the bed in a closed-off guest room. I always let the last few zucchini grow pretty big - they'll keep almost as well as some winter squashes. Cellar-ripened slicing tomatoes are always on my Thanksgiving table, and usually Christmas too. Eggplant will keep until New Year's, if we don't eat them all first. I let them get full-sized but still firm, cut the stem close and break off the pointy parts of the caps (you don't want to damage the actual fruit part), and then wrap each tightly in plastic wrap. This year I tried growing lemon cucumbers, and just ate the last of them - they kept just piled in a big lightly-covered bowl. If I'd grown more, I think they would have made it to my Thanksgiving table as well.

Gift Goodies, and An Award

A lovely box just arrived in the mail. I was a lucky winner of a Chex Mix Spa Basket, awarded to me by Nancy M. over at Southern Blessings, courtesy of MyBlogSpark.com, a General Mills marketing site. Besides a box of their very yummy new whole grain, caramel and chocolate snack bars, there were some self-pampering items: a loofah sponge, fingernail brush, hand massager, buffing spa towel, candles, and lotion that smells good enough to eat (cat not included). Scaly dry winter skin, begone! Thanks, Nancy!

And while I'm thanking Nancy, I also have to thank her for the Proximity Award. It's an international award, about people connecting all over the world. It says, in Portuguese, "This blog invests and believes in the PROXIMITY!" How wonderfully sweet, especially since I'm also a contributor to an international cooperative blog, The Simple Green Frugal Co-op (quite the mouthful - I didn't name it - but the name really does say it all). The award is supposed to be passed on, but I told Nancy I really don't like picking favorites when it comes to passing on these type of things. She said that was ok - that I didn't have to do it, but she wanted me to be acknowledged. Thank you. But now that I think of it, I really would like to acknowledge my fellow bloggers in the Co-op:

Bel - Belinda Moore
Eilleen - Consumption Rebellion
FT - Notes from the Frugal Trenches
Heather - Beauty that Moves
Julie - Towards Sustainability
Marc - Garden Desk
Melinda - 1 Green Generation
Paul - A Posse Ad Esse
and the one that started it all:
Rhonda Jean - Down to Earth
All very deserving of an award acknowledging The Proximity, the nearness in space, time, and relationships, of us all.

Cornbread

Fall is here, the nights are frosty, and that means dinner is often a hot soup and bread. Soup makes a great meal. I've got a lot of favorite soup recipes, but sometimes I'll just throw something together from leftovers. Last night, I had some white beans I'd pressure-cooked a couple of nights before. Chop some leeks and kale from the garden, carrots and garlic from storage, and add a couple of glops of cooked-down tomato puree (the last of the paste tomatoes, that I didn't feel like canning so have just kept a big tupper-ful in the refrigerator), and I soon had a wonderful soup simmering on the stove (I also stirred a spoonful of basil pesto into each bowl when I dished it up). Now, for some kind of bread . . .

I buy most of my grains and flours from the bulk bins in a local supermarket. It's more economical and saves on packaging waste. In my kitchen, from years spent working in restaurants and bars, I've amassed quite a few gallon glass jars for storage (during my ski-bum days in Colorado, I worked in a restaurant on top of the mountain; occasionally skiing down after work with an empty jar in my backpack - being especially careful not to fall). Whenever I'm in a thrift store, I like to browse the kitchen area, and have picked up various measuring cups to keep in the jars as scoops. The scoops are distributed according to what will be the most useful - half-cups in the flours and oats, quarter-cup in the sugar, third-cup in the dry milk, one-cups in the rice and couscous. It makes it easy and quick whenever I want to bake something - one scoop of this, two of that.

Cornbread sounded good. By the time the kale and carrots would be done, the bread would be coming out of the oven. Here's the basic recipe, with the adaptations I made this time:

Cornbread one 8x8" pan, 10" cast iron skillet, or 12 muffins

1 cup cornmeal (I prefer yellow)
1 cup flour (I used half whole-wheat & half whole-wheat pastry flour)
1/4 cup sugar (the Colorado relatives use 1/2 cup, but I don't like my cornbread that sweet)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup oil (I used applesauce instead)
1 egg
1 cup milk (I used buttermilk)

Grease pan well, or use non-stick spray (for skillet-sizzled cornbread, see note below). Mix dry ingredients in bowl. Mix wet ingredients together in large measuring cup. Add wet to dry, stirring just until combined (optional: I'll often then stir in ½ cup something extra - maybe cheddar cheese, or frozen corn, or chopped chiles, but not this time). Pour into prepared pan, leveling top surface. Bake 400º 20 minutes (muffins take only about 16 minutes).

Split pieces of leftover cornbread make a good toaster-oven pizza, or it can be cut into cubes and left out to dry, then stored in a jar or bag, and used for making stuffing/dressing some other night.

Note: After being gifted The Cornbread Gospels, by Crescent Dragonwagon (a great book - a couple hundred corn-based recipes, meal menus, plus trivia, background, and wonderful tales by a gifted storyteller), I now prefer baking my cornbread in my cast-iron skillet. Preheat oven 375º, and prepare batter. Melt a tablespoon of butter in skillet on stove top until it sizzles, swirling it around to coat bottom and sides. Pour the batter into the skillet, cook another minute on top of the stove, and then bake 20 minutes.

A Late Halloween Treat

Aries works in Facilities Maintenance for a big South Lake Tahoe casino. Last year, he was up on the roof doing some repairs and had to remove a couple of big 15" plastic owls someone had put up there years ago to deter pigeons. The boss told him to toss them out, so, of course he brought them home for our garden. The paint has weathered, and the plastic eyes are scratched and faded, but they have that distinctive horned owl silhouette. They don't really work very well on the wild birds, but the chickens give them a wide berth, especially right after I've moved them to a new location. I use them more like garden art pieces. One, I've had perched on top of a bean teepee framework since September.

Lately, in the evenings, Aries has been cleaning up the garden and gathering the leaves as they fall, adding to our compost pile between the chicken pen and the garden. Yesterday, it was almost dark as I walked down to the chicken coop to close it up for the night. I've been letting the chickens out in the afternoons to roam about our entire fenced-in lot, so their gate was propped open too.

As I walked down there, I could see that Aries had moved that plastic owl to the gate post of the chicken pen. "Oh, I'm sure the chickens appreciate that," I was thinking as I walked down there. Then, it swiveled its head and looked at me! I stopped dead in my tracks, then looked over at the bean teepee still standing in the empty garden. The plastic owl was still there. I went back up to the house, making Aries follow me back out. He thought I was trying to fool him with the plastic owl too. When we got a bit too close, the very real, great horned owl took off across the field to the south. Owls fly so quietly - none of that flappy flappy stuff - just stretch out their wings and silently glide away. Spooky!

Soroptimists

The past week has been a bit crazy around here. I'm a member of Soroptimists. That's an international non-profit service organization, with a membership of professional women, dedicated to improving the lives of women and children, locally and around the world. My local club chartered more than 50 years ago. There might even be a Soroptimists Club in your town. I love being a member. My club is a wonderful source of female camaraderie, both for just having fun and in working together to help our community.

Here in Carson City, we provide thousands of dollars in scholarships annually to local high school girls, and to women heads-of-household working towards a degree. That money is pretty much covered by endowment funds willed to us from past members. But we also have other programs we sponsor, as well as giving to charitable organizations here in town. That means fundraising, in an economy where money is getting tighter and the need getting greater.

Our biggest Program is helping uninsured women get breast cancer early-detection screenings. In the five years we've run this program, we've paid for over 800 mammograms and ultrasounds, plus 11 biopsies. We hold an annual golf tournament fundraiser for that, usually in early October (nasty weather this year meant less for that program too). We run the Backpack Attack - filling new back-to-school backpacks with school and hygiene supplies for children in need. That program is donation-funded, and lots of volunteer hours by club members. Our Easter Shoe Program, the Legal Fund for domestic violence victims, putting together little surprises for the house-bound Meals on Wheels recipients, and more - it makes me feel good to be a part of all that we do.

But there is still so much need here, so we needed to come up with more fundraising ideas (keeping in mind that many of our members are working full-time, raising their families, and still devoting time and effort to the club). I came up with selling sleeve garters during the Nevada Day celebration the end of October. They'd fit right in - they're old-west oriented, would appeal to both men and women, and would be a reasonably priced ($5) souvenir. The Parade theme this year was Hollywood in Nevada, so we thought silver with black lace would be a good fit. I was in charge of putting it all together - finding a source for the garters, getting the necessary vendor permits, doing early publicity releases, pre-sale distribution, and lining up the club members to get out there and sell them. Unfortunately, the weather Nevada Day was cold, rainy, windy, and quite miserable. That meant less crowds out and about, and our sales were way below projections (and the economy worsening by the minute didn't help either).

I still think this can be a really great part of future Nevada Day celebrations, changing colors to fit the theme each year. I envision all the Sheriff's Deputies, parade officials, local dignitaries, and bystanders sporting a garter on Nevada Day in a visible show of support for what the Soroptimists do in this town. But right now, I'm a bit downhearted - we ended up losing money on this, and I feel responsible.

When You Get Free Apples, Make Applesauce

I didn't get much of a fruit crop this year. Just about every time something else came into bloom last Spring, we'd get another freeze. That happens more often than not, but about every three to four years we squeak by and end up with bumper crops of everything. Just not this year for my trees. However, I do know of a big old apple tree, over in the part of town built in the 1860's, on the lawn of a lawyer's office. It had a beautiful bunch of apples this year, and no one ever seems to want them. So, just before the hard freeze, Aries and I took the ladder over and picked a bushel box full (free is good - and I did take a bucketful into the office to share too).

I went through and separated out any that had blemishes - to eat now and to make a batch of applesauce (and a pie too - Aries does love apple pie). I don't know what kind of apples they are (no one else does, either), so I don't know if they'll keep very well, but I put the really nice ones down in the cellar and will keep an eye on them. If they do store well, I might try rooting a cutting (oh, I'll probably try it anyway - I don't know if it's the micro-climate where it's growing or if it is just perfectly adapted to the area, but it did set a nice crop when my trees didn't). The apples look a bit like Jonathans.

Applesauce is probably the easiest thing there is to make and can. All you need is a paring knife, a pot to cook them in, and a potato masher (apple juice, jars, and boiling water bath optional). I sat down in front of the TV to watch a movie, cut the apples into quarters, cored and peeled them and put the chunks into a pot of water with some lemon juice added. When I was ready to cook them, I drained out the water and added apple juice to cover the bottom of the pot maybe an inch. I think cooking them with juice instead of water makes for a better end product. I use a flame-tamer under the pot, and cook them with the lid on until soft. It's more steaming than boiling them. In the meantime, I get my boiling water bath heating up, sterilizing jars and rings (half-pints fit our needs best). When the apples are soft, I just mash them up with the potato masher, fill the jars to ¼", seal, and process 10 minutes after the water starts to boil again.

Enchilada Sauce (pressure canned)

Another annual tomato processing project around here is canning a batch of enchilada sauce. I grow and dry my own peppers (and the onions, garlic, and thyme), but if you have some extra tomatoes and a pressure canner/cooker it might be worth your while to shop for the dried chiles. Most of our grocery stores here have a Hispanic foods section, with a pegboard display of herbs, spices, and dried chiles in cellophane packets. I always check there for herbs - prices are a lot better than buying the little jars in the spice aisle (then just transfer them to the recycled glass jars of my spice rack). In my supermarket, more than enough dried chiles for this recipe were less than $3.

The big chiles are usually labeled California or New Mexico chiles. They're the pretty shiny chiles most often hung up as a decoration (if you're using ones from a decorative string, make sure they haven't been varnished or treated with any kind of preservative coating. If you use them from the bottom, you can keep the string looking nice, if just a bit shorter). Chipotle is really a generic term meaning any smoked chile. Jalapeños are the ones most commonly preserved this way, so here chipotle usually means a smoked jalapeño. But the cellophane packets are marketed to Spanish-speakers, so the smoked chiles you want for this recipe will more likely be labeled Morita (or maybe Tipico). They'll look like little wrinkled reddish-brown cigar butts.

Enchilada Sauce (8 pints)

2 onions + 3 bulbs garlic, drizzled with olive oil (no need to peel, just make sure root end is clean). Wrap in foil packet, roast 45 minutes at 375º.

8 dried California + 24 Chipotle chiles. Rinse with cool water, remove stems, cover with boiling water and soak 45 minutes. Drain before proceeding.

4 pounds tomatoes, cored and halved

Add veggies above to 6 quarts water with 8 sprigs thyme (about 3 tablespoons dried) and 4 teaspoons non-iodized salt. Simmer 45 minutes.

Discard half the cooking water (about 3 quarts - I ladle it out, pouring it through a wire sieve into a measuring bowl). Puree the veggies (I just run it all through my blender - I don't have a food mill, but that would probably work too) and press through wire sieve along with remaining cooking water. Discard the dry pulp remaining in the sieve. Fill sterilized pint jars to ½" headspace. Seal, pressure-can 50 minutes at 7-10 pounds pressure (depending on what type of pressure regulator you have). Let canner return to zero pressure on its own before opening.

Making Enchiladas
One pint of the sauce above makes a 9x13" pan of 12 enchiladas. This sauce is hot, a concentrate, and needs to be stretched and mellowed. Traditional recipes use cream (8 ounces sour or whipping), or you can use a can of evaporated milk, but I usually whisk one can of condensed cream of mushroom soup into the pint of sauce. Prepare approximately 2 cups of filling (beef, or shrimp & crab, or pork, or leftover turkey, or sauteed onion & mushroom with tofu, or eggs & potatoes, or whatever else you think might be good. I'm going to experiment with diced eggplant - don't tell Aries) binding it together with a bit of sauce. Soften corn tortillas according to package directions. Divide filling equally, roll up in the tortillas, and place in baking pan seam-side down. Pour sauce mixture over all, smooshing them down with your spatula to completely cover and soak edges of the tortillas. Top with shredded cheddar (optional - and I also sprinkle with chopped black olives). Bake uncovered 400º 20 minutes or until bubbling. Comer, beber, y reir (Eat, drink and laugh)!

My Pepper Pantry

In my garden every year, one 50' soaker hose bed is the "Fruiting Bed". This includes my tomatoes, eggplants, peppers and chiles - all started from seed inside in early Spring and set out as plants in June. I always try to have 5-6 bell pepper plants, 5-6 big roasting-type chile plants, a jalapeño or two to use fresh, and then 2-3 plants of a different hot pepper each year. This year, I had a couple of Cayenne pepper plants, and one Habanero. Last year, I grew Ancho chiles; year before that, Paprika.

The fully ripe hot peppers, I hang up to dry. A length of peppers sewn together for drying is called a ristra, the Spanish word for string. Using a big needle threaded with a doubled length of heavy-duty carpet thread, I make a big knot in the end then thread through the thickest part of the stem just above each fruit, pushing each one down to the end and turning them different directions. I make a hanging loop in the top end, wrap a little label with type of pepper and the year around the string, and hang them up. The wall between my kitchen and living room has a big cutout area. Aries took a big dowel, slid a bunch of "S" hooks on it, and attached it to the top of the cutout for me to hang my ristras (that's corn up there too). They're both decorative and tasty.

A lot of the dried chiles I grind into powders to use in cooking. I have a coffee grinder that I use only for grinding spices (when I'm finished grinding something, I clean it by grinding some rice into powder, then dumping it out - that absorbs any flavors and oils, and keeps my chili from tasting like curry). When I need some chile powder, I'll take down a ristra, rinse the chiles to remove any dust, and hang it outside to make sure they're completely dry again before grinding. I'll break the chiles apart (wearing gloves), remove stems, the pithy inside ribs and the seeds (saving some for when I want to grow that variety again), and grind just the red skin. I re-use yeast jars to store the different powders - they have a rubber rim inside the lid that seals tight, and the dark glass keeps the flavor and color from fading.

Next year, it will be time to plant extra Jalapeño pepper plants. These short thick peppers are too fleshy to hang and dry - they tend to rot instead. However, they can be preserved by drying in a smoker - then they're called Chipotle peppers. Chipotles, either ground or a whole one removed before serving, add a wonderful smoky heat to winter's bean crockpots or soups. I have half a jar of powder, a few whole ones, and just used the rest making a batch of enchilada sauce (I'll put that canning recipe in a separate post).

Monitor Pass

Aries is on vacation for two weeks. He always takes vacation time in October, ever since our honeymoon (it was our 19th anniversary, earlier this month). We usually get a hard freeze by mid-October, so he helps clean up the garden for the season, makes compost, and does all the household maintenance chores before winter sets in - clean the chimney, roof and gutter repairs, vehicle maintenance, drain the irrigation system, lots of little honey-do's. But we also make time for little daytrip outings too. Autumn is such a nice time of year here. The nights are chilly, but the days quite often are blue skies and moderate temperatures.

A couple of days ago, we decided to take a drive over Monitor Pass. We headed south out of town, crossing the California state line in the Carson Valley, through the little hamlet of Woodfords, and continued south through the tiny town of Markleeville. We continued south along the east fork of the Carson River, where the cottonwoods and willows were just starting to turn to gold. We left the river and turned east, climbing up over Monitor Pass.

Monitor Pass is one of the higher passes in the area, at 8,300 feet, and usually closed November to April by snow. On top is a big grove of aspen trees, that can be stunning this time of year. We turned off the paved road and drove up into the aspen grove. Unfortunately, a dry winter last year, and an early snow this year, left the colors dulled and some of the leaves already down. But it was a nice day to get out, let the dog run, and wander about the grove, crunching over the snow still lingering in the shady spots.

Basque sheepherders have been scratching and carving the smooth white bark of aspen trees in the West since the 1860's. Many of the carvings are names and dates - an "I was here" marking. Some are a bit more artistic - perhaps the shape or face of a loved one back home. Still others are even more graphic about what was on these lonely shepherds' minds - some to the point of being considered pornography. I'll only post some of the more G-rated ones here.




After a while, we get back in the truck and start down the eastern side of the Pass. As the road switchbacks down, the change in vegetation, from the evergreen forests of the Sierra to the piñon pines and chaparral of the Great Basin, is obvious. The Great Basin is the high-desert between the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains. This vast area isn't flat - it's wrinkled and rippled, like the inside part of a sheet of corrugated cardboard, range after mountain range alternating with little valleys across all of Nevada and most of Utah. It's called a Basin because none of the water flowing here ever reaches an ocean - the snow melts into rivers that either just disappear into the sand, or flow into lakes, like the Great Salt Lake, and are lost to evaporation. At the bottom of the pass, we turn north, crossing the state line back into Nevada at Topaz Lake, and a 45-minute drive back home. (The two photos directly above almost fit together as a panorama - the dark hill in the middle distance on the extreme right of the lower photo is the same one on the left side of the upper photo; the snow-covered peaks, right side of the upper photo are the Sierra Nevada range in California, the ones in the lower photo are looking east across two smaller Nevada ranges.)

Hot Sauce Recipes

Aries is on vacation for two weeks so he's around the house, getting in my way, and helping out. It was nice today, so he was out in the garden, cleaning up everything that froze, shredding it, cleaning out the chicken coop, and mixing it all together to start our compost for next year. I spent most of the day in the kitchen. I had enough paste tomatoes ripe to make a batch of tomato sauce, so I got the tomatoes started cooking down. Then, once I had the water heating for sterilizing jars, I figured I might as well do something with the hot peppers.

I'm just about out of the Jalapeño Hot Sauce I made in 2006, but I didn't get very many jalapeño peppers this year. What few I had, I just sliced and froze. This is the recipe I usually make every couple of years:

Jalapeño Hot Sauce (makes 20 oz.)

1 t vegetable oil
20 fresh Jalapeño peppers, sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
½ C minced onion
¾ t non-iodized salt
2 C water
½ C sugar (optional)
1 C white vinegar

Over high heat, in glass, enameled or stainless steel pan, sauté oil, peppers, garlic, onion, and salt for 4 minutes. Add water and sugar, and simmer 20 minutes, stirring often. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature.

Transfer mixture to food processor or blender and puree until smooth. With machine running, slowly add vinegar. Pour into sterilized jars or bottles with tight-fitting lids. This sauce will keep for months when stored in the refrigerator.

I save and reuse little glass bottles, especially the ones that have an inside shaker/dribbler-type cap, like sesame oil or wine vinegar. Using jalapeños makes a reasonably mild green sauce.

But with no jalapeños, I decided to experiment with cayenne peppers. The cayennes that were red ripe on the plants at harvest time I'd hung up to dry. The rest of them, I'd dumped into a bowl on the counter for a couple of weeks. Quite a few of them ripened up red too, so I substituted 15 big red meaty cayenne peppers for the jalapeños in the recipe above. Since they're hotter, and a lot of peppers' heat is in the inside ribs and seeds, I de-ribbed and seeded them (wearing latex surgical gloves - very important to wear gloves when working with hot peppers!). I'm thinking it should turn out like Tabasco sauce. It's on the left in the photo.

I also got a few Habanero peppers this year. Only a couple were orange ripe at harvest, but left in a bowl on the counter, almost all turned orange eventually. Some of those, I strung up to dry, and a few more I de-ribbed, seeded, and froze. With the rest, I thought I'd try an experimental adaptation of the jalapeño recipe, combined with the memory of a Habanero hot sauce I bought when I was in Belize. That's it in the middle, making for a very nice hot sauce rainbow.

Harvesting Carrots and Potatoes

The temps went down to 19 here for a couple of nights, so I'm so glad I'd gotten the carrots and potatoes dug up the day before (both can be damaged by freezing temperatures). I got a good crop of carrots, by shading the seeds with an old sheet at planting time. It really helped germination in our dry climate by keeping the seed bed moist. By sitting out there later and thinning the carrot patch, I have enough nice big roots to store in the cellar until next summer. After digging, I clipped the tops to less than an inch (longer, they'll shrivel the root; too close and the top of the carrot will start to rot). I put an inch of straw into the bottom of a couple of 3.5-gallon buckets, filled both with the unwashed carrots, put lids on to keep moisture in, and put them down in the cellar. A few that had cracked, and a few that were too tiny to store I brought in to eat now.

I'm still experimenting with potato growing methods. This year, I planted my seed potatoes, saved from the year before, about six inches deep and then piled straw 15" deep over the top inside a wire cage. So now, evaluating the results of my experiment: the Yukon Golds (right bin) did really well, with big potatoes both on top of the dirt and underneath the surface; the Russets (left bin) I got were nice, but the yield wasn't as good as last year's. The straw did keep them from greening up, but some of the plants didn't make it up through the straw. We still had to do quite a bit of digging and sifting through the dirt to make sure we got most of them, too. The goal is lots of nice-sized potatoes, easily harvested without missing any. So, next year, I think I'll try planting only a inch or two deep (potatoes make new potatoes only above the seed potato), use the wire and sticks cage again, and add the same amount of straw over the top but only a couple of inches at a time.

The Yukons I left in their bin, the Russets filled a 5-gallon bucket. They're all in the cellar now too - lids on both since I also have fruit down there. The ethylene gas that the apples and grapes put out can cause the potatoes to sprout in storage (some old-timers say to not store fruit and potatoes together), but since it's the only space I have, the lid barriers work well enough.

We also found something interesting in the straw, inside the cage near the edge - an abandoned clutch of quail eggs. I wonder why she laid that many and then left them. Maybe something happened to her - the cat isn't allowed in the garden (I hiss and run him off whenever I see him even nearby, and besides, he doesn't kill his catches anyway), but we do have hawks and owls living nearby. Oh well, there's certainly no shortage of quail around here - I think they're why I haven't gotten a decent lettuce crop for years.

The Simple Green Frugal Co-op Blog

I've been asked to join a simple-life co-operative blog writers group. People all over the world are worried about the state of the world today. Not only our global economy, but issues related to peak oil, climate change, chemicals in our food, ethics, and greed have grabbed the attention of those seeking change and a different way of life. Lots of people are looking for help, ideas, lessons, and encouragement in their quest to live a more meaningful and simplified lifestyle. Here, I write about my little piece of ground, and the things I've learned over my lifetime. Now I'll also be sharing that information and experience in a bigger forum, a couple of times a month. Like-minded, concerned bloggers, from varying age groups, lifestyles, and countries, will be adding their efforts too, in one big reference blog. It's called The Simple Green Frugal Co-op Blog - and the name really says it all. There's a link on my sidebar, or you can check it out here.

Crock-Stored Sauerkraut

It was a blustery cold day, with a dusting of snow just before nightfall. I'm soooo glad everything from the garden is snug inside (except for the kales, broccoli, and leeks, anyway - and with temps expected down to 20ºF tonight I covered the broccoli and kale, just to be on the safe side). It was the perfect morning to warm up the kitchen water-bath canning a batch of tomatoes.

Then, this afternoon, it was time to deal with the rest of the cabbages. I had three big heads and one smaller head of cabbage split when I didn't get them root-pruned soon enough. Towards the end of the growing season, cabbage can take up water so fast it can literally burst the head apart. This can sometimes be prevented by driving a shovel into the dirt next to the stem and then half-pulling the plant out of the ground - thus severing half of the roots and slowing the growth down. I caught three big heads and one smaller one soon enough, and got some nice firm heads to store. Not wanting them to freeze, day before yesterday I pulled them up by the roots, pulled off the loose outer leaves (making for some very happy chickens!), and they're now down in the cellar, upside-down, roots and all, in a bin stuffed with straw.

Split cabbage heads don't store very well, but I really don't mind. One big one that was in pretty good shape I've kept in the refrigerator to use now. The other three are now packed into my glass crock, destined to be sauerkraut. When trimmed and shredded, those three yielded five pounds of slaw. I mixed the shreds with three tablespoons of kosher salt, then packed it all into the crock and kept mashing and packing it all down until enough brine had risen to completely submerge the cabbage. I mixed two quarts of water with another 3 tablespoons salt, and poured that brine into a gallon zip-lock freezer bag, squeezing out all the air and sealing it up tight. Laying the bag over the cabbage prevents air from reaching the cabbage and keeps it submerged (using brine instead of plain water means a possible leak won't water down the fermenting cabbage). If air reaches the cabbage, it can spoil the whole batch - the fermentation process needs to be anaerobic. To keep everything clean, I sealed the crock with a piece of plastic wrap before adding the lid. Now it's ready to go into the cellar to ferment. I love having a glass crock - I like being able to see the cabbage change to sauerkraut, and can also see if any spoilage occurs (a pink color is bad in any fermented product - whether it be kraut or yoghurt). Letting it ferment in the cool cellar slows the process way down (usually taking at least 8 weeks), but the kraut will be wonderfully crisp and crunchy. It will make some nice winter meals, and as long as I'm careful to not contaminate the contents when dishing out a bit, it will stay good down there until Spring (or it's gone, whichever comes first).

Green Tomato Piccalilli

Piccalilli is a green tomato sweet relish. My dad's side of the family is from Texas, and you can't eat black-eyed peas and cornbread without a glop of piccalilli on top. It's also really good in tuna salad, or any other place you'd use pickle relish. A pint jar usually lasts me about a year (opened jars have enough sugar and vinegar to store well refrigerated), and my nearby siblings will beg a jar now and then, so this is something I'll make every 4-5 years.

Piccalilli (8-9 pints)
Grind (or chop in a food processor) 8 pounds green tomatoes (optional: and 1 small jar pimento peppers). Add 4 pounds brown sugar, then simmer 3 hours.

Then add:
1 quart vinegar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon mace
Boil 15 minutes more, then pour into hot sterilized jars and seal. (That's all there is to Mom's recipe, but I put the hot jars into a boiling water bath for 10 minutes just to make sure they seal)

What to Do With Green Tomatoes

Forecasted low for tomorrow night is 25 last I looked, so I was out in the garden again today trying to pick/dig/store most everything that a hard freeze will harm. One of my local readers emailed, asking what to do with all her green tomatoes (a very likely occurrence around here - forget growing Brandywine or Beefsteaks; we're lucky to get vine-ripened Early Girls). I picked just about all my tomatoes five days ago. I break away all the stems as I pick them, as those can puncture the other tomatoes, leaving holes and bruises that will rot instead of ripen. I leave the hard, little green ones, with an almost frosty white look to them - they won't ripen and aren't big enough to do much else with (don't really care to pickle them). But any green tomato close to full size, especially with darker green shadowing on the top part, is easy to ripen indoors.

The paste tomatoes I want to ripen quickly, so I can get them processed and out of my way. Some say to pull up entire plants and hang them upside down (say, in the garage) to ripen green tomatoes. That's too messy. When the tomatoes get ripe, they'll fall and splatter. And forget the old-timers advice to wrap each green tomato in newspaper - too time-consuming and too hard to see when they're ripe. The best way I've found is to spread out an old shower curtain or other piece of plastic, then spread the green and orangy ones out in one layer. Then, cover them all with a couple layers of newspapers. This traps the ethylene gas, same way the old-timers' wrapping method did, but it's so much easier to just lift the paper to pull out the ripe ones. Top photo shows my paste tomatoes five days ago, on the table that just fits over my guest room bed. Lower photo shows them today, after five days under the newspapers. The red ones, I'll can whole in a day or so; the orange ones will be ready for a batch of sauce in a few more days, and the ones green now will be ready for second batch of sauce not long after that. Within two weeks, I've got my sewing/crafting table back, and a full pantry!

The green Early Girls I want to ripen slowly, so I can have fresh slicing tomatoes as long as possible. I've got them on a tray down in the cooler cellar. It's about 50 degrees down there now - cooler than in the house, but not as cold as the refrigerator. Refrigerating fresh whole tomatoes wipes out just about all the taste, so I never do that, but the cellar is cool enough to let them ripen slowly. I can eat fresh tomatoes until early December. Maybe your house has a cooler closet, or a spot under the bed that would work for you.

Of course, you can always make Fried Green Tomatoes (firm red ones will work too). Slice tomatoes, 1/2" thick, and dredge them in flour with a bit of salt and sugar added. Brown the slices in a bit of butter or oil until crisp (to be authentically Southern about it, you'd use bacon grease), turning them only once. Keep cooked slices warm in a dish in a warm oven. When all the tomatoes are cooked, gradually pour some milk into the frying pan, stirring constantly to make "gravy". Add salt and pepper to taste, and pour over the cooked tomatoes. Serve right away, before the tomatoes get soggy.

Sierra Leaf Update

Sweet husband did a little motorcycle outing today. Since I have quite a few searchers turn up my blog looking for Sierra Nevada leaf-change information, I thought I'd give a quick report on the status of our fall season. Weather the past few days has left the tops of the peaks and the ski runs on the Nevada side of Heavenly Valley with a dusting of fresh snow. Aspen on top of Monitor Pass, one of the highest, on Hwy 89 above Topaz Lake, are in full color. The trees in Hope Valley, on Hwy 88 south of Lake Tahoe, have just started to change from green to gold. They should be in full glory in another week or two. The Tahoe Basin shouldn't be far behind. Closer to home, the Virginia Creeper is halfway to red, the Honey Locusts halfway to gold, and everything else still green.

Putting By the Grape Harvest

No freeze yet - it only went down to 35. The harvest continues, just not quite so frantically. I have a red seedless Reliance grapevine, about 18 years old now. It's the one fruit I can almost always count on, blooming late enough to miss most Spring frosts. It's planted on the east side of the dog run/chicken brood pen (I also have a green Himrod, that never produces much at all but shades the west side of the dog run, and a very young Golden Muscat just getting started on the east side of the deck). The Reliance is shaped into a four-arm Kniffen, with two branches running south and two north. By pruning it back each year to just those four arms, the new growth gets plenty of sunlight each year, and it's easy to net the whole thing from the birds. I've got one long piece of netting that will stretch all the way up and over, clothes-pinned underneath to the chain link fence, and more than long enough to go around the corners. I use an old broom to lift the netting on and off, and wind it around an old Christmas wrapping paper cardboard tube for storage year-to-year.

I now get probably 40-50 pounds of grapes each year. Some I freeze to use like blueberries in muffins, smoothies, and cereal (I love frozen grapes, with their little casing of ice milk, in my cereal bowl). Some we eat fresh out-of-hand. Fresh grapes will keep into December, laid out in unwashed bunches one layer deep on newspaper-lined trays in the cellar. Some I give to the neighbor kids. And the rest I dehydrate into raisins.

I used to dry my raisins out in the sun on the deck, moving the laden screens inside every night. But when an elderly neighbor across the street decided to get rid of everything and move to India, she gave me her old dehydrator (it's harvest-gold color - at least 30 years old), plus the paperback book that went with it; Food Drying at Home by Bee Beyer. It's a really nice dehydrator, the size of a big microwave, with eight rectangular screens, a fan (a bit noisy), and an adjustable temperature control. I still use the sun for dehydrating summer produce, but it's so much easier to do the grapes in October inside. So today, I watched a couple of movies on TV and de-stemmed enough grapes for a full load.

A Peck o' Peppers

Our first freeze is predicted for Sunday night, and we've had intermittent rain sprinkles the past couple of days (the guineas must have felt something in the wind - they didn't fly out of the chicken pen today, instead staying in, close to cover, and bossing the chickens all day). If we get a dry cold snap in September, I'll usually cover the fruiting bed crops - buying myself a couple more weeks time. I've got a bunch of old draperies that work well - heavy enough to stay put if it's windy and big enough to wrap around and drape over support cages and all. But by October, I'm ready to bring it all in, especially if it's going to be wet (I really don't like wrestling with half-frozen sodden draperies the next morning).

So the past few days I've started getting the tender crops in. This is what my kitchen counter looked like this morning - a variety of peppers to process. I have mostly open-pollinated (not hybrid) crops, so I put the biggest, ripest, prettiest-colored couple of each type aside to save the seeds. By this afternoon, I had most of the bell peppers cut into 3/4" chunks, the jalapenos in slices, and both into the freezer (no need to blanch peppers). I did save quite a few bells for a couple more batches of gazpacho, since I've got enough Early Girl tomatoes and cucumbers still out there. The chiles, red bells, and banana peppers I roasted, now cooling in bags in the refrigerator, ready to peel. The red cayennes I strung into a ristra, using a big needle threaded with a doubled length of carpet thread, and hung up to dry. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with the green cayennes and habaneros just yet. I have a recipe for jalapeno green sauce I think I'm going to adapt, and maybe do another adaptation with oranges and the habaneros. More on that later.

Vintage-Look Clothespin Bag

When I was in Colorado in May, Mom gave me some vintage pattern transfer sheets. No envelopes or other identifying names - just the big newsprint sheets with various projects on each - so I'm not sure where they're from. They look a bit like the Aunt Martha patterns still available today, but I've never seen any Aunt Martha ones like these. Anyway, I loved the one for a clothespin apron, with the image of a happy little clothespeg jumping on a bar of soap.

Years ago, I bought a cheap clothespin bag at the grocery store. The bag was a rough, paper-like material. It finally started to fall apart recently, so I jumped at the chance to use that old pattern. I cut a piece out of the edge of an old cotton sheet, too thin and worn in the middle to use on the bed anymore. The pattern suggested all different colors for the embroidery, but I was going for more of a vintage look so did the whole thing in red (a bit more about redwork here). I took the old bag apart so I could reuse the metal hanger part and the plastic strapping that holds the top open. I sewed up the new bag, complete with inside liner in the same cotton. I used some decorative stitching to hold the strapping in place, and punched in a couple of eyelets for the hanger part. I didn't realize how rough the old bag was, until I noticed how nice it was reaching into the new bag made out of lovely soft cotton.

I'll let you in on my favorite "secret" source for redwork and other outline embroidery patterns: children's coloring books. You can find just about anything, from Disney characters to Christmas scenes to fairy tales, sized just right for pillows or quilt squares. For anyone wanting to embroider their own happy little clothespeg, TipNut has the same transfer pattern as a scanned pdf on her site, along with links to lots more clothespin bag ideas. In fact, her entire site is a wealth of tips, patterns, and tutorials. Check it out!