Beth in Minnie

Oh, goodness! I have gotten so neglectful when it comes to posting the fun stuff that has been going on over the last month. Luckily, Beth wrote up a great summary of her visit here a few weekends ago. It was so much fun to spend time with her, the Wagner family and Joey. Here are links to her posts (part 1 and part 2) about her time here. You might recognize these photos, too. I didn't take any of my own, so I borrowed hers.

Dinner was potluck style, which this group of friends does REALLY well. There were so many delicious things to chose from.

Thanks for a great visit, Beth!

P.S. I wrote this post a few days in advance of it going live and in the meantime, Jerri posted some great photos and tidbits about the visit on her blog. So, now I can add links to her posts, too. They can be found: here, here and here. I really have to get over to that quaking bog. It sounds excellent!

Happy Pumpkin Day!

For some people, this time of year is exciting because of halloween. For me, it is exciting because of all of the pumpkin related things there are to eat. This past week I went on a bit of a pumpkin bender. I started by cleaning and baking 2 pumpkins.

Then I scooped out the innards and mashed them all up.

At this point I had a ton of fresh pumpkin that could be used in any recipe that calls for canned pumpkin. I used it throughout the week and made the following:

Pumpkin Cake with Brown Butter Frosting

This cake was phenomenal. I highly recommend it. In the process of making the frosting, I learned how flavorful browned butter is. So, if you make this recipe, don't skip the frosting!

Pumpkin Hummus (modified from this recipe)

this recipe yields a lot of hummus (around 6 cups)

This pumpkin hummus was my contribution to a work potluck party. It won the Best Side Dish award! The proportions in the recipe below don't yield a blatantly pumpkin-y flavor, so I bet you could tweak the recipe to make it more obviously pumpkin, if you wanted to.

• 
  

• Ingredients:
• 2 cans (15 oz) of chickpeas
• 2 cups pumpkin puree
• 1/3 cup of lemon juice
• 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/2 cup tahini
• 3 cloves garlic, crushed
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon cayenne
• a handful of chopped fresh parsley

salt to taste

Directions:

1. Drain chickpeas, reserving liquid
2. Place chickpeas and half of reserve liquid in a large capacity food processor
3. Puree until mostly smooth
4. Add in pumpkin, lemon juice, olive oil, tahini, garlic and spices
5. Puree until smooth, adding more reserve liquid if necessary
6. Add in parsley and salt
7. Puree to blend
8. Adjust spices to taste

Curried Pumpkin Seeds

Of course, when you cook a pumpkin, you can't let those seeds go to waste. I was in the mood to try something a little funkier than the usual salt and pepper variety and the link above definitely had some unique options.

And, after all of that, I still have some pumpkin left! I froze some in quantities appropriate for pumpkin tea bread and/or pumpkin pancakes (a.k.a pumpcakes). I also reserved a 1/2 cup in the fridge for making Pumpkin Biscuits with Orange Honey Butter. Oh, goodness! When going to grab the link for that recipe, I came across her next post that references recipes for Pumpkin Muffins and Pumpkin Pie Pudding. So much pumpkin goodness! I guess this means the pumpkins in my root cellar will be finding a delicious fate this winter.

Northfield, MN

About a month ago, downtown Northfield experienced record-high flood waters when the Cannon River overflowed its banks. Missy and I had wanted to take a day trip there before the flood happened, but the flood pushed our plans back a little. When we found out the stores were back open, we made a date to visit the town.

We went yesterday and spent the whole day there looking at all of the inspiring and beautiful stores held within the small downtown area. We also happened to be there while the farmers'/art market was being held. There were only a few vendors left this late in the season, but they were really friendly and Missy and I both found a few things we liked. I got to talk canning and preserving with Luigi and Missy got to talk embroidery with Nick.

One of the main draws for us to go to Northfield was a store called Digs. It is a combo store with carefully selected fabric, a smattering of yarn, new and vintage notions and inspiring selection of books, gifts and crafty items. I enjoyed being in the store and especially loved the fun displays.

We ended up catching a bite to eat from Hogan Brothers because their fresh-baked bread could be sniffed all up and down the main street area and we couldn't resist the allure.

One of the best things about the selection of shops was that they were a good mix of ready to buy art and crafts and options for buying supplies for creating your own. I was especially impressed with the bead store. They had a great selection and an amazing class list. While we browsed the shop, they were holding a class on Kumihimo braiding that I would have loved to be taking. I will surely be going back there to take a class in the future.

And, towards the end of our time there, I found a "one of a kind" reclaimed wood bench that had to come home with me. I'm planning on doing a little work to it and cleaning it up, but will keep the basic rough, worn wood look of it.

I may not have been able to make it to Rhinebeck this year, but I am finding other fun ways to get my fill of creative input. Thanks for the great company, Missy!

Commence Fermentation

On Sunday, I sought to make my German ancestors proud. I spent the afternoon slicing and slicing and slicing until I had enough cabbage to fill a dozen quart jars. All of this slicing was necessary because I am attempting to make homemade sauerkraut. It is truly amazing how dense a head of cabbage is! It only took 2.5 heads of cabbage to pack the jars full.

I followed a recipe from a book that was passed down to me from my mom, cabbage from my dad's garden, my love of sauerkraut from Grandma and inspiration from my Uncle Bill's foray into kraut making. The book has multiple recipes and methods for making sauerkraut. Since we weren't in possession of a suitable large vessel, I opted to try the version in canning jars. Another bonus to this method is that it'll be easier to hot water bath process them after they finish fermenting.

The recipe calls for a teaspoon of salt and a half teaspoon of honey in each crammed full quart jar of cabbage. (The raspberries are just for snacking.)

Then, boiling water is poured over the cabbage until the jar is full.

After you make sure you have enough water in the jar, you seal them up and put them somewhere to age. I opted to put mine in a plastic storage box because I was warned that they might "spit" liquid out during the fermentation process. In order to guarantee the right temperature, we decided to age the kraut in the root cellar.

It'll be at least 6 weeks before I know if it is edible. I'll let you know how it turns out. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that our house doesn't end up smelling like a rancid dumpster.

Brittany's Baby Booties

These little baby booties were finished just in time to give them to the expectant mother before she left for her maternity leave. I bound off at 10:30 the night before and took these pictures outside of my work in the morning!

The pattern is Christine's Stay-On Baby Booties (ravelry link here). I knit them out of a partial skein of Martha's Vineyard/Hudson Valley Fiber Farm (now called Juniper Moon Farm) sock yarn and crocheted the ties out of a bit of ultra alpaca. Link to my project on Ravelry here.

From what I can tell, they will definitely stay-on as advertised and will hopefully stretch enough to keep their little one's feet warm all through the coming winter.

The pattern was fun to knit with a little bit of knitting flat, in the round, picking up stitches, knitting, purling, short rows, k2togs, yarnovers...these little booties were action packed!