Field and Fen: butternut squash soup

Showing posts with label butternut squash soup. Show all posts

Thursday, January 19, 2023

Puzzles, soup, rain

Today I had nothing scheduled, luckily, because it's been drenching down all day.

Good day for soup. So I organized butternut squash, diced potatoes, red lentils snd barley.

Here's the pre microwaved squash, insides ready to add to soup rinds for the stock bag, seeds for the squirrels.

Kosher salt, Old Bay, turmeric, garlic, onions

Barley simmering back there while the potatoes and squash cook.

Then everything blended, drop of lemon juice and pinch more salt, after which the barley goes in to cook more.

And there's lunch, very filling, enough for six more meals.

The jigsaw puzzle is coming along, and I like how the muted and dark edges are ready to explode into flowers any minute, see the illustration in the middle.

I like to assemble small areas then find where they go, modular fashion, one of my favorite approaches to making.

About containers: I used the barley partly because when I made the custard dessert the other day, I finished up the cornstarch, leaving me with a very nice container.

I'd noticed the barley in a bag in the freezer, and hadn't used it because I kept forgetting it was there.

In a container, relabeled, on the counter, it quickly got used. Same with the lentils. They can sit ages in the fridge but as soon as I pour them into a container on the counter, I use them.

I never actually buy containers, since there are so many coming in with other products in them. Once empty, fine!

In between all this great excitement, i finished glove one and started glove two.

I've been continuing the massive This Golden Fleece, and she's a terrific researcher. She solved a mystery for me, from one of Barbara Pym's books, A Few Green Leaves.

This is where the vicar goes on endlessly trying to establish if any locals had been "buried in woollen" meaning a wool shroud, in past times.

He's completely unsuccessful, locals all thinking he's a bit lacking, but they like him anyway. Turns out that there was a law passed in the seventeenth century mandating this. It was a way of supporting the wool trade, cornerstone of the economy. It was abolished after a century, largely because ignored, and hard to enforce anyway.

But it would have been a very good dating mechanism for his local history studies if he'd ever managed to find any evidence in church registers or other documents.

So my current reading threw light on what had seemed an obscure fancy of a Pym character. That probably makes Pym a pretty good historian herself, unless maybe it was drawn from a real life clerical acquaintance.

There's no end to her depth! Or my interest in following these niche ideas.

Happy evening everyone, and here's a puzzle for Friday, which is likely to be when you're reading.

And bear with me if your subtle clues fly over my head!

Friday, November 11, 2022

Islamic art, and procrastination

Yesterday's walk was beautiful, before the remains of the latest storm get here with wind and rain today.

And soup happened, because I may feel like it in the next couple of days. Butternut squash, carrot, tofu, creamed , with turmeric and nutmeg, using veg stock and whey from yogurt cheese making

While I was thinking ahead, I set up a Health Bar (mental health) kit to use nearer Christmas. It's now in the freezer, measured out, butter, sugar, chocolate chips. Recipe now in the Big Three Ring Binder. I must go through that and toss any recipes I don't use.

And here's leaving you with Islamic art for your spirits.

And if you feel tired just reading all this, fear not, we've got the answer

I have a couple of favorite byways on that map, being capable of doing several other tasks in avoiding one I don't feel up to.

Happy day everyone, Kherson is free of Russian invaders as of now. Keep hope alive in our own lives, too

Saturday, August 27, 2022

Finger loop braiding, more soup shared

I should have known I'd get involved with yet another fiberart skill. This one's finger loop braiding, great way to create lacing and bands for various uses. You pass long loops back and forward, cat's cradle style, to create strips.

I found it on Sally Pointer, but she was doing a braid of multiple loops, bowes as they called them in medieval times, way above my pay grade. So I searched for a beginner one, five loops, and found good old Morgan Donner had made a video.

This one has a tutorial from a medieval manuscript. And you see a team of friends making a fairly advanced version.

But before I start making loops and attaching my loops to a doorknob for tension while I learn how to braid, I thought I would get that upcycled denim vest done.

Still attaching the lining, here to an armhole

The combo of soft old denim and silk is great to stitch, making stitches vanish into the weave. It's working nicely. One more armhole, and the hem, and it will finally be done. Also I need to clear the decks for sock yarn incoming from Joanne, on its way.

Meanwhile the Misfits butternut squash is now soup. Along with a homemade stock, carrots and red lentils, chickpeas added at the end. I now have choices of soups in the freezer, for when I just can't be bothered to cook.

Sprig of flowering thyme, half a wholewheat pita.

Butternut Boy, even as I was ladling this out, was already on the deck making short work of the seeds and rinds.

Dragging them about and leaving a mess for me to clear up. What else are humans for, anyway?

Happy day everyone, knit on, braid on, cook on, read on, stay cool if that applies, here it does.

Sunday, June 26, 2022

Art does not imitate life. Art anticipates life.

Jeanette Winterson

I'm reading this, gripped by her intensity and the honed-steel intelligence behind every word.

It's hard to read for long because she keeps stopping me dead with the total accuracy of her observations. Like the one I used here as a title.

She knows writing -- Oranges are not the only fruit, Why be happy when you can be normal, she's that Jeanette Winterson. And much more, dead-on brilliant, writing.

Here she's writing essays on art, starting with her own self-education in the visual arts, in which she honestly acknowledges being a beginner. But what a beginner!

And her grasp of the history of art and literature is dazzling. Easy to follow but very much in-depth in its observations.

She reminds us that art and music we accept now in the canon was originally groundbreaking and caused ructions. Not because the makers wanted ructions. They were just doing their job.

We know the first French impressionists' exhibits were physically threatened, critics hated and condemned them, screamed names at the artists.

She doesn't mention the opening performance of The Rite of Spring, but it literally broke down into a riot. People get very upset at new stuff, you might say.

Also at pictures that aren't a representation of something familiar, or tunes you can't sing to. Yet that's the job of art, not to confirm what we already know but to open new connections and possibilities. It's not about creating documentaries.

Every writer, any kind of artist with their own vision, in other words, doing their job, not just copying what's familiar, of any stature, even one as humble as your blog writer, has encountered ridicule, all the way to scorn and furious opposition and who do you think you are.

Today's Twitter pile-ons are just the modern version. It's okay, it's a feature, not a bug. You don't need to bother about outside negative criticism, because you can supply plenty of self criticism any time.

And artists are quite quick enough to jump on one another anyway, witness the parade of artists, Matisse, Braque etc who piled on Gertrude Stein because they claimed her Autobiography of Alice B Toklas was not factually correct about them!

Failing to see the whole thing's a put on! And that literature can play fast and loose with shapes and concepts. Just like painting..oh. A good bit of sexism there, too, I'm guessing.

Just read Winterson. She gets it. She's not angry, just explanatory, and very readable.

And please share your opinions if you have read her. I now own the Alice B Toklas on my Kindle at an amazing level of cheapitude. About time I read it.

Chop wood, carry water. Today was also about making a big pot of soup, which doesn't heat up the kitchen.

Butternut squash, red lentils, carrots, the last couple of potatoes from last week, home made stock, milk added at the end.

That day I spent sleeping also involved doing laundry and baking a batch of bread, seen here, the bread, that is. Wholewheat, white and oatmeal.

I'm now set with a week's worth of soup and bread and fruit. I think I'll survive.

Still prey to nerves about the upcoming paperwork for the surgery, despite checking out yogic approaches to calm via the vagus nerve.

I'm usually more stressed out about the location, finding it, and the administrivia, than the surgery. I have excellent doctors. My own clerical/technical skills maybe not so much.

Since I have a complete set of vax and boosters, I don't need a Covid test before surgery. Just send a picture of the certificate. Still don't have the eyedrop Rx. I'll check again tomorrow. I'll be getting a packet of info in a a couple of days to tell me all the procedure again that we went through on the phone.

This has completely overtaken the osteoporosis concerns about which I'm seeing a rheumatologist next week. This is shaping up to be the Summer of the Doctors.

Well, Winterson and soup kept me happily occupied today, so there's that. Art and good food.

Graphite sticks, sharpie, colored pencils, watercolor crayons.

Still we rise.

Happy day everyone!

Monday, May 2, 2022

Herb gardening, soup, first world problem

Yesterday I did a brief burst of gardening. Nowadays that's about all I can manage. I don't hurt, but I get too tired to finish what I planned. Anyway I decided, finally, after thinking about it for several years, to move the thyme plant from the front walkway to the patio.

I originally planted it out front so neighbors could pick it as needed, but quickly found the landscapers were determined to cut it down completely. One time they came around with chainsaws and hacked off ten years' growth.

So I figured now, before they strike again, to dig it up. It's now an old woody shrub, still making wonderful leaves. This was pretty strenuous, since the pachysandra had got in there to tie it down. I needed to dig up and pot it.

However, I managed it, and that open space where the gate used to be is now a herb area.

Reading from top left, thyme, honesty in strawberry pot, not an herb but I grow it for the seedpods, lemon balm, sage, empty looking pot planted with potatoes, chives and dandelion invaded by lemon balm, Thai basil, then you're back to the thyme.

I moved out the Thai basil from the kitchen, put the potato containers there, the pot of chives and dandelions, and soon the curry leaf plant will join them. The sage and lemon thyme have been there for years.

This year I may start some new rosemary, the old one having given up after many years.

Last night obligingly it rained, first in ages, just right.

And there's always soup, here butternut squash, sweet potato, carrot. Garlic scapes growing wildly in the background, handy for all kinds of meals.

The Sock Ministry marches on.

One more pair and I'll mail off this month's package, then I might take a week off and sew. I'd like to finish the lined vest.

And first world problems we always have with us. One of those pinch and turn bottle caps.

No amount of pinching and turning would open it. Nor a knife run around the base to loosen it, lift it over those internal pegs the cap has to clear. Nor pliers applied where your fingers are supposed to go. Finally breaking in with a big screwdriver was required.

Turns out the internal pegs are much longer than usual , and sharp, probably a mfg malfunction. Anyway the mouthwash is now available to remedy the cursing that happened in the process of opening it.