Found by the side of the road I

I confess, I love to collect things that show promise, i.e., possibilities for repurposing. This item was once a post on our neighbors' bed frame that they put out for the semiannual brush and bulky trash pickup a few years ago. I snagged it and put it at the center of a circular flower bed that has since become a vegetable garden.

It had a dark wood stained and varnished finish then, which the weather eliminated fairly efficiently. It was easy to stand it up in the garden as there was a hole in the bottom, so I sunk a piece of rebar into the ground and then put the post onto it.
     For its later incarnation I didn't sand it or anything; I just used the same techniques to stand it up in a bucket of dirt (using cans to keep it upright and balanced) and painted it with a coat of primer. Hardly high-tech, but it worked.








(That's a kitty litter bucket. They come in very handy for many uses.)

When the primer was dry, I began adding color. I used four colors: gold, turquoise, purple, and red, so I just started with gold and counted the sections, painting all the gold first, then all the purple, turquoise, and finally the red.

 The latex paint came in sample jars from Home Depot, much more paint for less money than buying the craft acrylic at Michael's or JoAnn, and you can have them mix up exactly the color you want for $2.99. I got good coverage with one coat on the first three colors (the purple is much more purple than the pictures show), but the red, not so much, as you can see in the picture below. I eventually wound up putting on 3 coats of red (this picture shows it with only one). Now all that remains is to give it a couple of coats of clear polyurethane, as it's going back outside, sort of, either as a doorpost to the shade house http://morning-glory-garden.blogspot.com/search/label/shade%20house or somewhere in the front entry http://morning-glory-garden.blogspot.com/search/label/ferns. In either case, it won't be subjected to the harsher elements as much as it was in the garden, but it will need more protection than just paint can offer.

One of the things I like best about projects like this is that I didn't buy ANYTHING; every part of it was either found (yep, by the side of the road) or left over from previous projects, like the primer, paints, and polyurethane.  I've got a companion project to go with it that also fits in the "found or leftover" category, but haven't begun work on that one yet. Stay tuned!

hooks and needles

I'm nearly done with a big knitting project/birthday present for Joe, but it won't be finished by tomorrow, which is his birthday. It's okay, though. He understands and knows he'll have it within the next two or three days, and then I'll post photos, etc. In the meantime, I took a few hours off to crochet this little hat for our little friend Rory, shown here with her mama.

It's an owl, and there's no real pattern; I was just winging it (I don't mind if you groan at the pun). I'd read the dimensions (circumference and depth) for a hat for a 2-year-old and tried to match those; it's double crochet in the round, with the earflaps added when the rest was done, then the eyes and beak crocheted and appliqued on, and finally single crochet in turquoise (to match her new jacket) around the bottom edge, with braids attached to each earflap.
     As you can see, Rory and her mama were both pretty happy with it. Sheep are Rory's favorite animals, and I'd found a cute pattern for a sheep hat, white with black ears, but it just wasn't coming out right so I unraveled it and used the yarn for this one instead.

Fruits of the Season

I love this time of year! Beginning in October, the food is wonderful, and I enjoy the holidays so much, partly because of certain foods that are not available in their freshest, most natural form the rest of the year. These are three of my favorites, and it's only coincidental that they all begin with the letter "P" (though that's kind of interesting, I guess).

 Persimmons, pomegranates, and pumpkins, oh my! There are two kinds of persimmons, Fuyu and Hachiya, and while both are delicious, they're quite different. The Fuyus, like the ones in this picture, look like squatty tomatoes, and can be eaten while they're still firm, though a deeper color indicates a deeper, sweeter flavor. Hachiyas have pointy bottoms and you must let them get quite soft (at which point you can cut them in half and scoop the flesh out of the peel with a spoon) or else they're very astringent - you've never really puckered up till you've tried to eat an unripe Hachiya! The color will change and cracks will begin to develop in the skin - just be patient enough to wait that long. Fuyus can also get pretty soft and keep getting sweeter and more delicious but you don't have to wait before eating them. The pumpkins in this picture go by different names in different countries, Muscat (or Musquée) de Provence in France, Calabaza Castiliana in Spain and Mexico. They're as decorative as they are delicious, for any of the many things you can make with ordinary pumpkin.

 We have a pomegranate plant and I thought we'd get a good crop this year at last. I sprayed them with insecticidal soap to keep the pomegranate bugs off, but then I became less vigilant and suddenly the bugs were attacking! By then the fruits were ripe, so I picked them and determined I'd caught them just in time - no harm done. The easiest way to separate out the seeds with their juicy, sweet, jewel-like surrounding is to quarter the fruit and then drop the sections in a large bowlful of water, where you can pull the seeds away from the membrane. The seeds will sink, the peels and membranes will float, and you can just skim off what you don't want and throw it in the compost.

When I was a little girl my grandmother always bought a few pomegranates around Christmas time and we just ate the seeds as a special treat. Since then, of course, all kinds of delicious pomegranate products have appeared on the market; juice is just the beginning. I still prefer them in their most natural state, though. The salad above was especially yummy, just mixed baby greens, wedges of peeled persimmon, and pomegranate seeds, with a white balsamic vinaigrette (http://morning-glory-garden.blogspot.com/search/label/salad%20dressing). In fact, I think I'll make another one just like it for Christmas Eve dinner!

A Sort of an Ode to Chairs

Every object has a story, I guess, even if it's just in its early chapters, even, I suppose, if its story so far is only of being manufactured and then shipped and sold in a big-box store. I know I often value things not so much for how they look or how much they cost, but for the stories behind them and the memories those stories evoke. Sometimes those stories go back quite a while, sometimes, as with this first chair, the part of the story I know, because it's the part I'm in, is just beginning.

On Friday Joe and I visited a shop we'd never been to before, Betty Blue's Junk Shop, on Plumer, south of Broadway, http://www.bettybluesjunkshop.com/, tucked away next an auto painting shop. It's lovely, to those of us who delight in finding a second-hand store with interesting items at good prices, with a friendly owner, and Betty Blue's has all those things. We found this little rocker for just $40, and it's not even a fixer-upper! It doesn't need a thing besides maybe a little furniture polish - oh, and I'll probably be moved to create a suitably retro seat cushion at some point. Bare wood's a bit hard on the bottom.

I love chairs (you've probably guessed that), and the oak rocker above is one of the first I loved, even though when I first saw it, it was painted a sort of vomit-grayish-beige. It's been in the family for 93 years, ever since my grandparents bought it from Sears Roebuck so my paternal great-grandmother would have a chair in which to rock my grandparents' first child, my Aunt Dorthe, who's still doing well all these years later, living on her own in Kalispell, Montana. That regrettable color, which someone painted it in the 1960s, stripped off easily, which was a great relief 20 years ago when the chair was passed on to me.

This Morris chair isn't a family heirloom, though I guess it's on its way to becoming one. I wonder sometimes what will happen to the furniture we've loved if our kids don't feel the same way about it. Well, this chair's story is an example of what might happen. Many years ago, I worked as a receptionist for our small-town family doctor. One of his patients was a very old woman who lived with a paid companion in a 3-story house filled with wonderful old furniture. When she died, her son came from wherever he lived to arrange her funeral and to decide what to do with her property. He came by the office and told Mac's nurse and me that, because we'd all been so good to his mother, he wanted to do something for us, so before he called in the dealers he let us come to the house to pick out whatever we wanted at rock-bottom prices. I paid $35 dollars for this chair and just $5 for a small oak cabinet. A year or two later a local antiques dealer (noted for cheating the people he bought from) offered me $365 for it, but obviously I didn't take it. I have no idea what it's worth, but it would have to be an awful lot to persuade me to part with it - I can't imagine selling it.

 

This little rocker is obviously still in need of a serious makeover. Joe wants to at least attempt to strip the paint off to see what's underneath - if we don't like what we find, we can always paint it a different color, and of course, either way it will get a new seat cover. I was driving down Grant Road when I spotted this chair outside a secondhand furniture store (of which there are many on Grant Road). I noticed the color first - hard to miss that green - but it was the lines of the chair that really captured me. I pulled in and quickly talked the owner down from $50 to $35. Maybe he would have gone lower, but I guess I'll never know.

This red chair is one of the most comfortable I've ever sat in, even without a cushion. And the price was definitely right - someone had set it out on the curb for the semi-annual brush-and-bulky trash pickup (that's where the little table next to it came from as well). I decided not to do anything to the metal frame, which has been painted more than once - most recently black, but turquoise and red show through where the black has chipped.  It has, as Joe says, patina. The wood had been painted barn red and so I just repainted that and I love it. The little table was white, more or less, and it just got a coat of turquoise spray paint.  Now that the weather's cooled off (they're predicting a high of 85 today), the little shade house/ramada is a wonderful place to relax, especially in this newly repainted chair.

And now one last chair, that I think must have been my mother's or her sister's, since it was far from new when I got it. I sat in it with my dolls as a little girl, and my own little girl sat in sometimes, though we also got her a much sturdier wooden rocker. Today this little chair is battered by time and no one sits in it now except Berthe Antoinette, who doesn't weigh much and who can be trusted not to play roughly. I suppose I should have it repaired, but for some reason I don't want to see it changed. Maybe I'll look into that, though. Someday.

Friday Muffins

It's been a long week at work. Even though we only work Monday through Thursday, those four days were intense. The good news is that the weather seems to be cooling off, down into the 80s and maybe even the 70s today, though there will probably be a few more days in the 90s before month's end.  Anyway, we needed a treat today so I made muffins, banana bran muffins, to be precise, and here they are, along with a couple of tiny Halloween table topper quilts I made a few years ago and the gorgeous mums one of my students brought me last week. I just love October!

The recipe is from an old issue of Eating Well, one of my favorite food magazines. The recipes I've tried have all been tasty, pretty easy, and healthy. I really should re-subscribe, I suppose. The recipe as the magazine gives it is at: http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/banana_bran_muffins.html. Here's how I made them, which includes a few minor alterations:

Banana-Bran Muffins - makes 1 dozen 
2 large eggs
2/3 cup packed light brown sugar
1 cup mashed ripe bananas, (2 medium)
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup unprocessed oat bran 
1/4 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 3/4 cup whole-wheat flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 400°F. Coat 12 muffin cups with cooking spray.
     Beat eggs and brown sugar in a medium bowl until smooth. Mix in bananas, buttermilk, bran, oil and vanilla.
     Stir together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt in a large bowl. Make a well in the dry ingredients; add the wet ingredients and stir/fold gently with a rubber spatula until just combined. Never overbeat muffins; it makes them tough and gives them pointy heads. (I think it probably does the same thing to children.) Stir in the walnuts. Scoop the batter into the prepared muffin cups (they’ll be quite full). 
     Bake the muffins until the tops are golden brown and spring back when touched lightly, 15 to 25 minutes (it was 18 minutes in my oven). Let cool in the pan for 5 minutes. Loosen edges and turn muffins out onto a wire rack to cool slightly before serving.

Nutrition Per serving : 196 Calories; 6 g Fat; 1 g Sat; 3 g Mono; 36 mg Cholesterol; 32 g Carbohydrates; 5 g Protein; 4 g Fiber; 182 mg Sodium; 167 mg Potassium, 6 WW points

The original recipe calls for a mixture of all-purpose and whole wheat flours, along with wheat bran, but I only had whole wheat flour and oat bran on hand, so I used those. It also gives 1/2 cup chocolate chips as an optional ingredient, but I decided against that and added more walnuts. If you go to the website you'll see the walnuts are sprinkled over the top rather than stirred in, as I did it. They look prettier that way but I like a bit of walnut in every bite. I just ate my first muffin, still warm from the oven, and it was very good, not overly sweet, though I imagine that, like traditional banana bread, they'll mellow with standing and taste richer and sweeter tomorrow.

     I don't know why I haven't been baking lately. I've gone back to Weight Watchers and am fairly happy with my slow but steady (sometimes stalled) progress, so that's one reason, but I looked at my favorite breakfast cookbook, Mollie Katzen's Sunlight Café, and I'd figured out the points for the muffin recipes and they're within the safe range, most with a point less than these. Oh well, it's fall now, more or less, so that may be why I'm back in the baking and soup-making mood - and I intend to enjoy it.

Friday Soup

Although the temperatures are still in the high 80s here and will continue to creep into the 90s for a little while yet, it feels like autumn, and that makes me want soups and stews. A couple of days ago I made an old favorite recipe that I found several years ago in Mark Bittman's "Minimalist" column in the New York Times. I'm pretty sure it was the first of his recipes that I tried; now I have two of his big cookbooks: How to Cook Everything and The Best Recipes in the World.  This fish soup is so fast, so easy, so good, so healthy, that it's a great choice for a quick, satisfying after-work dinner, especially if you happen to have cooked rice on hand and put a half-cup in the bottom of the bowl before ladling in the soup. (Joe usually makes a pot of brown rice on Sunday so we have it for lunches to take to work or quick dinners after work - with beans or curries or stir-fries and then leftovers the next day for lunch - or even for breakfast, heated in the microwave and eaten like oatmeal.)

West Lake Fish Soup - serves 4, takes half an hour

2 T. peanut or canola oil

1/2 cup peeled and chopped shallots or onion

6 cups chicken or other stock

3 T. soy sauce (I use low-sodium)

1 tsp. (at least) ground pepper

1 cup peas, thawed if frozen (I've also used snow peas when I have them)

3/8 to 1 pound plain white fish, roughly chopped (I used 1/2 pound of pollock here, 

        which is often quite inexpensive frozen)

2 T. cornstarch

2 egg whites, lightly beaten (or 1 egg, or 1/4 liquid egg substitute, which is made from egg whites)

1 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves (or any tender green, but cilantro is best)

Put oil in saucepan large enough to hold all ingredients and turn heat to medium. Add shallots or onion and cook till golden brown, adjusting heat so they don't burn.

Add all but 1/4 cup of the stock and turn heat to medium high. When contents begin to steam, add soy sauce, pepper, peas, and fish, and cook at a gentle simmer (adjust heat as necessary), stirring occasionally, until peas are tender and fish is falling apart, 5 to 10 minutes. In a small bowl, mix 1/4 cup stock with cornstarch.

Drizzle egg whites into saucepan, stirring constantly. Stir in cornstarch mixture. When soup thickens, stir in cilantro. Taste and add more pepper or soy sauce if you like. Serve immediately.

     If you don't like the idea of fish soup - and I know some folks don't, though this doesn't taste at all "fishy" in the disagreeable way some people object to, you can use chopped shrimp or leftover chicken or tofu. The basic recipe will be good with any of them.

In a Pickle

These are the Asian pears we picked at Apple Annie's on Thursday (see my previous post). No, I'm not making pickles of them! They're just so lovely and delicious that I wanted to put up another photo of them. And now that I've done that, let me tell you what I did yesterday.

     As I've mentioned before, we gave up on our squash this summer - the yield didn't begin to justify the work (or the water bill). However, one of the local markets, El Super on South 6th Avenue just south of I-10, has great produce specials on Wednesdays; this week they had Mexican gray squash, which as you can see are interchangeable with zucchini (the peel isn't quite as dark but the flavor is, I think, superior - and I speak as a lover of zucchini) for 3 pounds for $1.

 One thing I love to make from zucchini is relish; it's always better any sweet pickle relish you can buy in a jar.  This recipe comes from the Better Homes and Gardens "Canning" book/magazine I've cited before. Go back a few posts to see a picture of the cover; it's still on the newsstands at the checkout counters in some markets here. I doubled the recipe to make 5 pints instead of 5 half-pints; it might get us through the winter. This is the recipe exactly as it appears in the magazine.

Zucchini Relish
5 cups finely chopped zucchini (5 small)
1 1/2 cups finely chopped onions (3 medium)
3/4 cup finely chopped green sweet pepper (1 medium)
3/4 cup finely chopped red sweet pepper (1 medium)
1/4 cup pickling salt (I used Morton's Kosher salt - never use iodized salt for pickling)
Cold water
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups white vinegar
1/4 cup water
1 tsp. celery seeds
1 tsp. ground turmeric
1/2 tsp. mustard seeds
1 or 2 drops green food coloring (optional)

1. In an extra-large non-metal bowl, combine zucchini, onions, and sweet peppers. Sprinkle with salt, toss gently to coat. Add enough cold water to cover vegetables. Cover and allow to stand at room temperature for 3 hours.

2. Transfer vegetable mixture to a large colander set in the sink. Rinse with cold water; drain.
3. In an 8- to 10-quart stainless steel, enamel, or nonstick heavy pot, combine sugar, vinegar, the 1/4 cup water, celery seeds, turmeric, and mustard seeds. Bring to boiling, stirring until sugar dissolves; reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, for 3 minutes. Add drained vegetable mixture and, if desired, green food coloring. Return to boiling; reduce heat. Simmer, uncovered, 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

4. Ladle hot relish into sterilized half-pint (or pint, if you double the recipe as I did) canning jars, leaving a 1/2" headspace. Wipe jar rims; adjust lids.
5. Process filled jars in a boiling water canner for 10 minutes (start timing when the water returns to a boil). Remove jars from canner; cool on wire racks. Makes 5 half-pints.

*Note: I chopped the zucchini and peppers by hand for this relish because I like the look of the neat little squares. It took a little more time than using the food processor, but I'm happier with the result. (I did chop the onion in the food processor.) Here's the 1/4 cup or so that was left after filling all the jars,

 and here's one of the jars. I think it's just lovely. Of course, if you've followed my canning adventures, you know  I tend to think anything that's put up in a jar like this is just lovely! The turmeric gives it that wonderful golden glow, as well as terrific flavor.

 Relish isn't all I made yesterday. Joe loves bread and butter pickles, and zucchini make amazing bread and butter pickles. Again, I think they're much better than those you can buy. I'm going to give you that recipe too, but first a note - well, almost a rant - on ingredients.
     First off, I'm never quite sure what recipe writers mean by small, medium, large, etc. The relish recipe says 5 small zucchini chopped will yield 5 cups. Okay, maybe, but you'd better measure to be sure, especially if you want to fill the designated number of jars.
     But 3 medium onions to get 1 1/2 cups finely chopped onions? Really? The next picture shows the 1.4+ cups thinly sliced onion I used in the bread and butter pickles. (I'm giving you the recipe as it's in the book; I increased it to get 7 pints instead of 5, because a canning kettle holds 7 jars so it makes sense to me to go ahead and can 7 jars. We like the stuff. We'll eat it or maybe give some away at Christmas.)

 So, my point is, again, measure! I don't know where the BH&G cooks found their puny onions, but I got well over 1 1/2 cups thinly sliced onion from just 1/2 of a large white onion! (The candle helps to dissipate the onion fumes so you don't weep so much - some onions are so strong I've thought I might go blind!)
     Many Mexican cooks prefer white onions over the usual yellow or brown ones, and El Super also had them on special, 5 pounds for a dollar on Wednesday, Miercoles de Frutas. (El Super also has Jueves de Carnes, meat specials on Thursday only. They have all the usual stuff plus cuts you're unlikely to find at Fry's or Safeway, and the meat section is so clean you could probably eat raw meat off the floor, if you were so inclined!) El Super also has specials on produce and meats, etc. that run all week.
     Now here's the second part of my diatribe on ingredients, particularly spices. Everything you see below except the cayenne, which is just there for illustration purposes, went into yesterday's pickling projects. I had to go to the market for celery seed and I would have bought yellow mustard seed too, but it was ridiculously expensive and I already had brown mustard seed at home (it's in the jar with the gold lid, next to the cayenne). Less than an ounce of McCormick celery seed cost $4.69 at our neighborhood Albertson's, though I could have paid more if I'd bought Spice Islands or one of the other brands. Mustard seed was the same price, give or take a dime, so you can see why I didn't buy any.

There are much better and often more interesting places to buy spices and herbs. Even in Albertsons and other mainstream groceries, there's usually a Hispanic section where they are sold in cellophane packets, like the cinnamon on the far left (89¢ at Food City) or the cayenne on the right (69¢ at Albertsons). The big 8-ounce jar of Turmeric was $1.99 at the 17th Street Market here in Tucson, which carries Indo-European spices, etc., as well as Rani Indian spices and seasonings. The Rani brown mustard seeds were $1.69 for 3.5 ounces, compared to nearly $5 for less than an ounce of McCormick! Not everything comes in the cellophane packets but more does than you might think, and if you run out of, say, ginger, keep the jar and refill it from the packet. I also like to shop at LeeLee, a huge Asian supermarket in NW Tucson (at Orange Grove and La Cholla) that carries all kinds of spices, etc. (and much, much more), including the Rani line and I think the Indo-European line as well, but if you don't have access to such stores, at least look in the Hispanic section before shelling out the big bucks for tiny quantities.

      Okay, now back to pickles. This is the recipe as published, to make 5 pints of:

Bread and Butter Zucchini Pickles

3 1/2 pounds medium zucchini

1 cup thinly sliced, halved onion (1 large)

3 Tbsp. pickling salt

Crushed ice (I don't have an ice crusher; I think the cubes worked fine)

2 cups cider vinegar

1 1/2 cups sugar
1 Tbsp. mustard seeds
1 tsp. celery seeds
1/2 tsp. whole black peppercorns
1/2 tsp. ground turmeric

1. Wash zucchini. Slice off the stem and blossom ends. Cut zucchini crosswise into 1/4" thick slices. Measure 12 cups zucchini slices.
2. In an extra-large nonmetal bowl, combine the 12 cups zucchini slices and 1 cup onion slices. Sprinkle with salt; toss gently to coat. Top with 2 inches of crushed ice. Weight down mixture with a heavy plate. Allow to stand at room temperature for 2 hours.
3. Remove any remaining ice from zucchini mixture. Transfer mixture to a colander set in a sink and drain. (Note: it doesn't say to rinse! I didn't, and the pickles were perfect.)
4. In a 5- to 6- quart stainless steel, enamel, or nonstick heavy pot, combine vinegar, sugar, mustard seeds, celery seeds, turmeric, and peppercorns. Bring to boiling, stirring until sugar dissolves. Add zucchini mixture. Return to boiling, stirring frequently; reduce heat. Simmer, uncovered, for 5 minutes.

5. Ladle hot mixture into hot, sterilized pint canning jars, leaving 1/2" headspace. Wipe jar rims; adjust lids.
6. Process filled jars in a boiling water bath canner for 10 minutes (start timing when water returns to boiling). Remove jars from canner; cool on rack.

They will look like this:

While I was finishing the bread and butter pickles, Joe made a run to the store and came back with these:

It's certainly nice to be appreciated!