The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Winter Has Arrived!

We got a couple of inches of light, powdery snow overnight. 

So pretty….

 

Self Portrait With Spotty Window

I wasn’t going to post this.

Then I thought maybe I’d wash the window and reshoot and post that.

But nah.

This is real life.

I only clean the windows above my sink every few days. 

I’m sure you’ll understand.

A Few Pictures

“These are my boxes, do you hear me?  MY boxes.  Please don’t put them in the fire!”

Camera Issues

There’s some annoying issue going on with my camera.  At first I thought it was a battery issue, but it’s still continuing.  So now I’m thinking it’s some other issue, and since I am not a camera repair pro, I think I need to have a professional look at it.

Trout Egg Pictures

A couple of weeks ago Bill and Alex went fishing and brought home a couple of trout.  One of them was female and full of eggs.

We saved them, and what I should have done was spend some quality time online looking up recipes for curing them, so I could make us some fresh caviar.

But I didn’t.  And I basically ruined them.

But before I did that, I took pictures….

Fall Back Frost

I got up when my clock read 7:08 and didn’t realize I’d forgotten to set my clock back until I powered up my computer and the time display begged to differ.

Ah well.  I’ve had enough sleep this past week that I don’t really care about missing my extra hour.  And as this is the first morning I’ve woken up and not felt achy or sick or nauseous, I’m happy to spend that extra hour awake and feeling like me again.

The frost outside helped, too.  So pretty…. 

October Wonderland

Snow?  How could there be snow?  It’s 62 degrees outside!

And has been for weeks….

Little Cat Feet

They were just there, practically begging to be photographed.

Jamestown, RI

Some pictures from this morning.

October in the Garden

A tomatillo husk.

Bill’s been closing down parts of our gardens in preparation for the colder weather.  He’s harvested the last tomatillos, the last peppers, the last eggplants…

Lemon

   

A Picture of Sliced Red (Purple) Onion

That’s it.

That’s all I’ve got at the moment. 

But aren’t the slices pretty?

Here’s a post from three years ago with more red onion pictures.

September’s Banner

I just put up a new banner for this month. 

Finally.

It went through several incarnations, but I knew I wanted to include images of yesterday’s harvest.

September is a big transition month, I think, garden-wise.  Lots of harvesting, lots of clearing out and preparing for the winter and the following spring.

One Morning

Bill and I were walking around the yard with our coffee, inspecting the plants and admiring the hard-working bees.  Bill was slightly ahead of me (because I was looking for things to take pictures of) and so he saw this first:

Cicada

This little guy (or gal) was on the railing the other day.  Just hanging out.

I took a bunch of pictures.

Of course.

Dragonfly

On my arm.

Bill and I were looking at a tomato plant in the front yard yesterday when this gorgeous little creature landed on my arm. 

I froze in place, hoping it would stay a while, and sent Bill into the house to get my camera.  Actually, what I said was “RUN IN THE HOUSE AND GET MY CAMERA!”  I can be rather bossy.  But only when the situation warrants. 

Close Ups in the Garden

For a change, I decided to use the 10x macro lens this morning.  I also used an “auto enhance” feature in my photo editing software.  I told myself I’d just hit the “auto enhance” button and whatever the software decided, that’s what I would post.  So here we go. 

I was going to tell you what everything is…but I changed my mind.  Any guesses?

Morning Light

These are pickling cucumber plants at the back of one of our raised beds. 

They were dazzling the other morning.

In a Flower Mood

Bill and I just took our morning perambulation around the gardens, and I brought my camera.  Maybe it’s because of this morning’s earlier brief post, but I felt like taking pictures of any flowers currently in bloom, both on vegetable plants and on plain ol’ flowering plants.

I also took a few shots of other things…dew drops…assorted bug life (and death)…bird poop.  But mostly flowers.

No more words now…just the pictures….

Giants Bowling in the Sky

Within minutes after I took this picture this afternoon, a HUGE crack of thunder interrupted the quiet bringing-in of the groceries for a moment.

Julia raced into the house, a fearful look on her face.

“I’m scared!” she announced.

Tendrils

Just took our morning walk around the gardens.

As you know, if you’ve read my blog a while, I love tendrils.  They fascinate me.  Little curling, grasping bits of green reaching out, looking for something solid to hang onto so the plant (in this case, pickling cucumber) can climb higher.

So I took a bunch of pictures.

Raindrops on Vegetables and Cheese Making Plans

I took these Saturday morning.

I’m posting them now just so you have something pretty to peruse, and to let you know I’m going to be making mozzarella from goats’ milk today.

Now That We’re Back Home

We took a walk around the garden this morning.  Haven’t done that in over a week, and we wanted to see how things were doing.

When a Bee Lies Sleeping…

…in the blossoms of your hydrangea….

We were walking around the yard this morning, inspecting the fields, so to speak, and I saw this pollen-laden bumble bee.

She (she?  he?) was just resting there.  Not dead – I saw a leg move.  I’m guessing she was still a bit damp from the overnight dew. 

Whatever the reason, she stayed put while I got as close as I could with the camera.

I figure once the sun warms and dries her, she’ll be on her way.

For now, thank you, bee, for letting me photograph you.

Garden Pictures

Regularly scheduled posting will resume shortly.  (The rest of the bacon-related posts.)

For now…a few shots I took the other morning, during the whole overnight smoked pork butt and other food-making extravaganza.

Becoming Frogs

This is the oldest one.

We’ve concluded that because he/she has pretty much lost the tail entirely and looks most like a teeny tiny real frog.

Isn’t it cute???

Garden Pictures

Years ago I used to watch CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt.  (He wasn’t at my house watching it – he was the host.)  I loved the show for its varied stories – long pieces, compared to sound bites on news programs.  The show was always interesting, informative, sometimes fun, sometimes sad.  There were reviews, done by that guy whose name I can’t think of at the moment – I loved his way with words, though…and then, for the last few minutes of the program, there was silence.

Well, an absence of human voices, which is about the same thing, in my opinion.

The camera would pan across a vast prairie, for instance, and all you would hear would be the rush of the wind…distant birds…the ssshhhhhhhhhh of leaves.  Such a lovely, peaceful way to close a program.

I don’t have audio, so there are no sounds of nature for you…but here are some pictures from my gardens…and I’ll shut up now, too.

6.10.2011 at 5:51 pm

Pretty ominous, huh?

Today was cloudy on and off, but these clouds didn’t seem interested in leaving.

Bill and Alex were playing catch and Julia might have been in the pool. 

A few minutes after I took this, enormous fat raindrops fell quickly and only for a short time. 

And that was the end of it.

Viewing Our Land

Those (above) are blossoms on one of our potato plants.  I’m very excited about our potatoes this year – several varieties and they’re growing well.

I’m posting the pictures I took this morning as Bill and I walked around the yard and looked at what’s growing.  We do this on weekend mornings right now, and once school lets out, it will become part of our nearly-daily morning routine.

Dr. Egon Spengler is My Favorite

“I collect spores, molds and fungus.”

Love that line.

In that picture?  Our sink-side compost container.  It’s the holding pen for coffee grounds and onion skins and root ends of broccoli rabe and egg shells and squeezed lime rinds, cooked rice that was stuck to the bottom of the pot and didn’t make it into the bowl.  That sort of thing.  We also pour in water from when we’ve rinsed off salad greens or cleaned dried chicken poop off of eggs before cracking them.

It’s kind of a treasure chest.

Back in the Cheese of Things

Oh, earthy goats’ milk, how I love thee!

I started a batch of chèvre last night.

Finally.

Here’s how it looked this morning when it was time to drain the whey off and hang the curds…

Spring Flowers

A quick look at some of the flowers blooming right about now…

Spring Snapshots

Such a gorgeous day yesterday!

A day to get some important projects done…

A day to do some baking (more on that in the next few days)…

And a day to take pictures of all the growing things in and around the yard…

Seedlings and Condensation

This first shot is my favorite. 

Here are the other two.

Drive By Shot

Up the road a bit from our condo in NH there was this brown barn.  The roof was frosted with a layer of icy snow, and on one side you could see that the warmth of the sun had caused the snow to melt ever so slightly.  Just enough, in fact, for the sheet of snow to slide down around a foot or so.

But instead of the snow breaking and falling to the ground, this whole roof-side portion of snow stayed intact and simply curled down off the edge of the roof.

I kept meaning to take a picture, but I was always either the one driving, or we were on the other side of the road and I couldn’t get a clear shot. 

But one day I was actually thinking about it before we got to the barn.  Bill was driving, and we were heading from Black Mountain back to the condo.

I got one shot.  The one above.  It’s not entirely in focus, but you can get the idea. 

Snow Day

Here’s the view earlier this morning from my kitchen window.  It’s still snowing.  Supposed to snow pretty much all day.

It’s Not a Cookbook, But It’s Got Recipes

I made a calendar.  It’s got 12 recipes and 25 pictures. 

Here it is:

It was hard to pick which recipes to use.  In some cases, I had to reject some because I didn’t have really good images to upload and, since I’m so last minute about things, I didn’t have time to make the recipe again and take new pictures. 

All of the recipes came from this website.  Some were sentimental, some were just yummy, and I tried to set them up seasonally, at least according to my little corner of the world.

Anyway, that’s been my labor of love and sleeplessness recently.

Hope you like it.  Or know someone else who would.

Morning Frost

Sorry for the lack of food posts recently.  I’ve been sick, and wrapped up in making my kids’ costumes, staggering through the most recent 5K (see last full post for costumes and staggering), and then moving around like Frankenstein’s monster because of all the resulting soreness and stiffness in my underused muscles.

Yesterday, election day, was a day off from school for my kids and my husband.  After he went to vote, Bill bundled up the kids – really bundled up, it was cold and windy – and took them fishing for trout.  They brought two thermoses of hot cocoa, and the kids had fun climbing around on the rocks.  They caught nothing, and Bill got tired of the cold sooner than the kids did (for a change), so they didn’t really stay out all that long.

But to back up a bit…after they all left in the truck with their tackle box and poles and thermoses of cocoa, I bundled up, started up my ipod, and walked.  First – over to the elementary school to vote.  I scooted past the campaign volunteers with their signs and ducked into the gym (or “all-purpose room” which was WARM, took my time voting just to soak up the warmth, and then hit the road.

I didn’t run at all, but I walked probably about a mile and a half, wincing with every step.  Ow ow ow.  But – I did it.  And today, interestingly, I don’t feel as sore or stiff.

Oh – and to back up further…on Monday, I registered for another 5K.  It’s the “Downtown Jingle 5K” – another new 5K in Providence.  Same route, I think, as the Monster Mini Dash. 

There’s some humor in the fact that I was hobbling around in pain and still felt it absolutely imperative that I register for the Jingle 5K. Some form of insanity, I think.

So that’s the reason for my walk yesterday.  I did two minutes better in this 5K than in the one in September, and I think that got my competitive  juices flowing.  (Although, given the fact that I’ve been sick for days, those juices might just be a sinus infection.)  If I did two whole minutes better without even trying…maybe I could do even better if I tried harder.  Wow!  What a novel idea! 

So my goal, this time, is to…well…do better.  Not very specific, I know, but in my thoughts, “better” might mean running the whole 3.1 miles, or at least running more of them than I did in this last race.  And I know that to accomplish this, I need to run more.  I need to build up endurance and muscles. 

Simple stuff, but so hard at the same time.  Not the actual exercising.  That’s actually not difficult.

It’s that whole “finding the time” thing that I still struggle with.

I’ll let you know how that goes.

 

Yesterday, after my walk, I went shopping for ingredients so I could make ALL FOUR of this month’s French Fridays with Dorie recipes.  And I made them.  All.  Yesterday.  For dinner and dessert.

Again with the insanity.

First I made the dessert, then the main course, and then the two sides.  (Main and sides needed vastly different oven temperatures – something I neglected to make note of when I was planning my marathon.)

Everything turned out the way it was supposed to, though the dessert wasn’t as pretty as I’d hoped – totally my fault and nothing to do with the recipe itself.  And it tasted good, which is the most important thing anyway.

Likes/dislikes will be discussed when I write up those four posts, but I will say that I wasn’t surprised at all with who liked this and who didn’t like that.  No – wait – I’m wrong.  There was one surprise.  But you’ll have to wait to hear about it.

I know.  I’m so mean.

This morning when my husband headed out the door to go to work, we were surprised to see frost all over the car and the truck.  Heavy frost that had to be scraped.  (It’s dark when he leaves the house, so we hadn’t noticed the frost earlier, while sitting in our chairs drinking coffee and checking on the election results and grumbling about still feeling run down.)

After he’d gone, and the sun rose higher, I was in the kitchen reheating coffee when I noticed the spoon out on our deck railing.  The spoon in the first picture of this post, I mean.

I love frosty pictures.  So I got my camera and went outside to snap a few.  The spoon.  The welding gloves Bill uses when he’s playing with fire (or grilling, whatever you call it), dill, kale, and the peas we thought we might have time to grow.  As you can see, we’ve got a few blossoms, but I’m not sure they’ll bear fruit. 

Though it’s supposed to warm up a smidge this week, so who knows?

And with that, I’m done for now.  I’ve got some other non-food and non-computer projects I’d like to work on today.

See you tomorrow!

Mr. Nosy

I was trying to take pictures of some things I’ve made for my Etsy store.  The light was bright, but filtered through the gauze curtains. 

Things were going just fine, until…

Early Morning Baking

I’m not always great at organizing my time.  If I’m working on a post, for instance, I feel like I should be dusting a bookcase or vacuuming in the basement.  And when I’m cleaning out the pantry, I feel a definite pull from unfinished Etsy projects.

This Month's Banner and Some Cole Slaw

In case anyone else was wondering, this month's banner?  It's a small head of red cabbage.  We had harvested the last two on Sunday, and on Tuesday I finally figured I'd make something with them.  So I trimmed off the roots (yes, Alex carried them in with extra leaves and roots intact, along with an armful of tomatoes) and the outer leaves, and then got sidetracked by the patterns of the leaves...

Kitchen Snapshots from a Rainy Sunday

Bill and I spent most of yesterday in the kitchen, working on various food projects, some for eating that day, others for packing away for future meals.  We used to spend entire weekends just cooking, way back when.  During this summer so much of our time has been consumed by the whole house-painting project that yesterday, we both agreed after dinner, was like a vacation.

Here’s a look at what we were doing…

Red Noodle Bean Blossom

Dill

By the Water

We spent yesterday afternoon at a friend's house.  He has a nearly-five-year-old daughter, and she and Julia played so well together that I didn't even get pictures of them - they were always somewhere else, busy with little girl things.

The house is near the water, and as soon as we arrived, Bill went out to dig some clams.

Morning Light

A few irises this morning...

Morning Storm Approaching

Short Attention Span Bakery

 

Morning Pictures

The juncos were waiting for me this morning.  I could hear them chirping in the dark.

Searching For Seals

Maybe a month ago Bill mentioned to the kids that at some point we should see if we could spot any Harbor seals on the rocks in the bay.  Around this time of year, they show up in Narragansett Bay, and you can even go on Seal Watch trips out of Newport. 

But we didn't want to spend money or go out on a boat.  We just thought it would be fun to pick a few likely spots and head out on our own.  So earlier this week we decided that Saturday morning would be a good time to go - nothing else was planned other than maybe some more baking - and so this morning, after I dropped a bunch of boxes of cookies off at the post office, we dressed warmly (though not warmly enough - I really need warmer gloves...and new boots) and headed for Jamestown.