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Sunday, May 24, 2020

Memorial Day

Happy Memorial Day dear friends!  Can you believe that we have already reached the end of May?  It seems that you wait for spring to arrive and it feels like it will never get here, then one day, ta-da! it's Spring!

Tomorrow is Memorial Day here in the States and I want to take this opportunity to thank all who are serving or have served.  On Memorial Day, my thoughts always go to my father, who served in World War II.  He never talked of his time in the war except to jokingly recall of the incident when his ship was torpedoed and he volunteered to don diving equipment and go down in the deep ocean waters to weld a make-do repair back on.  He always joked that he was the only one too stupid (his words, not mine) to know any better.  It wasn't until after he died that I discovered all the heroic things he did in the war.  Lately, I've been pondering what he would think of all the goings-on that have been happening lately.  I have a feeling I'd be bailing him out of jail a lot. Ha!  Makes me sort of glad that he's not here to see what a mess we've made of of the freedoms he fought so valiantly to defend.  But mostly, I think of all the things I'd like to share with him.  I know he'd love our little cottage and would be thrilled to be able to go fishing with Ran.  Whenever he visited I was always sure to bake him something special.  He could eat half  of one of my pies in one sitting!  I learned to bake at an early age and one of my duties was to bake goodies for his lunch pail. So in his honor, I made a strawberry-rhubarb pie.
Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie

1 C. sugar
1/4 C. flour
3/4 tsp. nutmeg
3 eggs, beaten
2 C. strawberries, sliced
2. C. rhubarb, diced
1 9" pie shell 
Streusel:
1/2 C. flour
1/4 C. sugar
1/3 C. butter, softened

Combine first four ingredients.  Fold in the strawberries and rhubarb. Put into the pie shell.
Combine the streusel ingredients until crumbly.  Sprinkle over top.
Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes then turn down the oven to 350 degrees and bake an additional 40 minutes. 

This year everyone decided that the like rhubarb, so I'm making sure to can some up.  

How to Can Rhubarb

Wash stalks and cut into 1/2" pieces. removing any strings or tough pieces (young springtime stalks are the best) In a large pot add 1/2 C sugar for every quart of rhubarb.  Let stand covered, until juice appears. Heat gently to boiling.  Immediately pack into hot jars. leaving a 1/2 inch headspace.  Remove air bubbles.  Wipe rims and adjust lids. Process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes for pints or quarts

We are also beginning to harvest the first of our asparagus.  Here's a quick recipe for a simple  little casserole:

Asparagus Casserole

1 1.2 lb. fresh asparagus, boiled until tender
1/4 C. butter
1C. cracker crumbs (we like our homemade ones made from cauliflower flour)
1/2 C. toasted almonds (optional but good)
1 can cream of mushroom soup (or 1C, of the white sauce, I write frequently about)
4 rashers bacon, fried and crumbled

Combine butter and cracker crumbs.  Pat half into a 8 inch buttered pan. Combine almonds, asparagus, and the soup. Pour over the cracker crust.  Sprinkle the remaining crumbs on top, then sprinkle the bacon over that.  Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until hot and bubbly.

Gardening

Memorial Day weekend is when we plant our garden.  It's slow going this year because the back  plots are very wet.  We are hoping and praying that the potatoes that we planted earlier in the season are not rotting in the ground. Such is the trials of a gardener!  That's why it's important to reserve some of your canned goods for the next season, you just never know when a crop will fail.  It looks like our poor peach tree didn't survive the winter.  It was such a dependable little tree, it certainly lived up to its name "Reliance",  it's going to be sad to cut it down.  I'm glad I  canned so many peach preserves last year!  

While Ran is busy putting in the vegetable garden, I've been busy getting the flowerbeds weeded.  Sometimes I regret the folly of planting so many flowers.  If I had to do it all over again, I think I'd just plant huge banks of tiger lilies, but oh well! I have the flowers now, so weeding will just be part of my life until, I'm too old to do it. On the other hand, one of the most enjoyable garden tasks is planning  the urns plantings.  This year I found some unusual plants called "toothache plant".  Some might think that are rather ugly ducklings but they reminded me of the flowers in crewel embroidery.
And you can see from this picture, I love my crewel embroidery!
Sorry about the dark picture, it's just a foggy, pussy-willow-gray kind of a day today.

Finding Time

After a very long winter,  it seems that springtime arrives and so do so many chores.  It's easy for all those little things that need to be done fall by the wayside. I've found that if you make a list and just make an effort to cross three of them off each day, things don't pile up.  For me one of the "chores" this week was to defrost and can all the bacon that was in the freezer.  Canning bacon is one of those "guerilla " methods of canning that isn't "Ball Blue Book approved", but something I've been doing for years, so I won't explain how to do it.  When I pulled all the bacon out, I told Ran that now we had room for all the fish he will catch, "so get out there and catch some".  It was less than an hour later that our neighbor, Ed, dropped off several pounds of frozen cod that came from his sister's restaurant. She has been closed down because of you-know-what and needed to get rid of stuff before it goes bad.  The Lord works in mysterious ways! He also gave us several dozen eggs.  What a blessing to have nice neighbors!

I also use the checking-off-the- list method for cleaning up the pantry.  Each week I take five ingredients that are unusual (why did I buy that?) and are reaching their expiration date and challenge myself to use them up.  It results in some strange meals sometimes, but we also discover a lot of new and fun flavors.  Keeps things interesting. Since I had just purchased a couple dozen eggs before Ed gave us several more, I tried pickling them this week.  The guys love them!  Who knew?

This is also the time of the year that we take our remaining onions and dehydrate them.  We never waste anything and I hate buying onions.  We use this dried onions from May until September, when we harvest our next crop.  I also fill in with chives, Egyptian Walking onions,  and spring's green onions.  We also dried all our  remaining garlic and ground it into garlic powder.  What a smelly undertaking that is!

Well, I guess I've rambled on here long enough.  I hope that you all have a lovely weekend ahead and  again, thank you veterans and those serving presently.  So that's it for another week at the old Zempel boarding house!

Hugs
Jane



22 comments:

  1. Happy Memorial day to you dear Jane!
    Summer has come to GA this week with temps in upper 80s. I wish we could grow rhubarb here and groceries rarely carry it but I grab it if I see it! Would 4 rashers of bacon translate to 4 pieces?
    Our garden is doing well and I have spent much time this week in yard work after we returned from a 4 day camping trip.
    Have a wonderful day. DH is working a full day at the hospital and so it goes for us!

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    1. Thank you, Angela! Yes rashers are strips or pieces of bacon, I guess it would amount to somewhat less than 1/4 lb. But you can use as much or as little as you like. Sounds like it's getting warm down your way already. Camping sounds fun, haven't done it ages. Good to hear from you again! Have a lovely holiday!

      Hugs

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  2. Happy Memorial Day, Jane! Just a quiet day here with my husband and son. Nothing is open or going on here yet. We are supposedly going to start opening up tomorrow here in NY State. I love crewelwork, but it is hard to find. My mother gave me her living room drapes that are crewelwork, when she and my dad moved to a condo last year and I have a crewelwork pillow from them also.

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    1. How nice Mary! Crewelwork is hard to find and so expensive. You have a treasure. Our grand re-opening has been pushed back to mid-June here in Michigan, but for some reason the little shops defied the "laws" and were open. Usually on Memorial Day weekend our little village is brimming with people, but this year there's about a third of the people here. Not going to be good for the store owners since the were hanging on by a thread before this all happened. Shall be interesting to observe how this all pans out. Glad you got to spend a quiet day with your husband and son. Happy Memorial Day!

      Hugs
      Jane

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  3. Happy Memorial Day! And how wonderful to all the men/women who served our country...so that we may be free. Your photos are so nice...a lot of yellow...love your yellow door! What a good color...sets off your house. hugs, Andrea

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    1. Hope you had a nice Memorial Day, Andrea. A long time ago I used to live near a gray stone house with a yellow door and I always thought it was so pretty, so now that I have a gray house of my own, I'd thought I'd go for it. I'd like to plant some climbing yellow roses in the front, but haven't been able to locate any that are for our zone yet. But I will some day!

      Hugs
      Jane

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  4. What a happy post! I so enjoyed hearing about all that you accomplish in your lovely home Jane.
    I agree with you....my dad was in the military also and I wonder what his thoughts would be concerning our world today. Politics was a frequent discussion among adult family members when I was small. One other thing I think about is how my precious Grandma would process these days and choose to live in them. I try to think like her and maintain a quiet dignified response to life as she always did, but I never seem to be as gentle and controlled in my response to all that goes on as Grandma was.

    So often I wish I could spend just one whole day with her again. There is so much I needed to learn from her but didn't realize at the time.

    Have a wonderful day.....I'd love to share a piece of that pie with you! Yum!

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    1. And I'd love to share it with you! More and more I wish I could talk to those that passed and garner any wisdom they have to share. Your grandmother sounds like a wonderful woman. Hope you have a lovely week!

      Hugs
      Jane

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    2. Hi Jane.....just a little note to say hello....hope all is peaceful in your corner of the world

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    3. Thank you! I hope you will have a wonderful holiday! We're having quite a heatwave here and our days are spent watering our garden. Ha! I guess I should post something one of these days.

      Hugs
      Jane

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  5. Hello Jane, I like your crewel work curtains and chairs too, I’m guessing you thrifted them? They look perfect for your home.
    I know you Northeners can keep onions a long time but it’s amazing to me, they won’t last in Oklahoma anywhere near that long.
    I like your idea of using up older oddball ingredients, I opened some stirfry sauce last week that was a good surprise and I know there are some sun dried tomatoes that need used too.

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    1. Hi Rhonda! I found the fabric for the curtains at an antique shop for a few dollars. There's barely enough for curtains but I made it work by making the tabs extra long. The fabric on the chair came from Ebay and it was a steal at something like $5/yard. Crewel fabric can run in the excess of $50 a yard.

      The trick to making onions last is to grow the old-fashioned hard yellow onions. Make sure to cut off any flowers while they are growing, you want the stalks to remain pliable. A week or two before you pick them bend the stalks over and let them dry completely out until the are brown. Once we pick the onions we lay them on a tarp for a few days to make sure they are good and dry, then we put them on screens in our garage for about a week. After that we pit them in special produce bags and store them in the garage, which is the coolest place until the temps. get below freezing, then we bring them into our unheated enclosed porch where the temps are cold but doesn't freeze. Our unheated enclosed porch acts like a giant walk-in refrigerator for us from November until April. Of course, you wouldn't have that "luxury" in Oklahoma, Ha!

      I have some really oddball ingredients this week, getting indigestion just thinking about them!

      Hugs
      Jane

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  6. Hope you had a great Memorial day. Your rhubarb and strawberry pie looks delish.

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    1. Thanks Christine! It was pretty quiet here without the traditional celebration, but a lovely bagpiper came out and played at the veteran's memorial, so I was glad to see that someone, somehow, found a way to memorialize them. Strawberry-rhubarb pie is one of my favorites. Tastes like spring. Hope your Memorial day was nice also!

      Hugs
      Jane

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  7. Dear Jane,

    Happy Memorial Day to you! I cracked up when you said you thought you'd be bailing your dad out of jail lots during these times... We still haven't been given any clear indications of when we'll be reopening. I can tell that everyone is relaxing a bit more, but there's no PLAN. Sigh.

    We've finally hit a warm and dry spell, so I am making hay while the sun shines and getting the garden in. It helps that this year hubby is working from home and can till when I need it, rather than me having to wait until he comes home at the end of each day. (It's a beast and I usually just get him to do whichever beds I am planning to plant for the day, as our clay soil bakes into huge clods otherwise.) So, I've got the onion sets in ...red, yellow, and Spanish..., 3 types of potatoes, the salad stuff, beets, and carrots. I'm hoping to get in a bed of peas tomorrow, and maybe swiss chard. Supposed to be very hot with high humidity, so we'll see when I peter out.

    Your strawberry rhubarb pie sounds delicious; thanks for the recipe! I love a pie with a streusel topping. Does the canned rhubarb end up as sauce, or does it retain it's shape? I've only frozen it, but not canned it.

    Funny about the pickled eggs...my husband loves them, too. I just put them in the leftover brine when we finish a jar of pickles. Us girls can take them or leave them, but he just loves them!

    Well, I'd better go make dinner. The house is going to get a lick and a promise this week as I concentrate on garden. Last year was so wet I got everything in MONTHS late...I have written down that I finally got the onions in on July 26! So I am not wasting this run of good weather...don't want another repeat of last year's sorry harvest! I love your posts!

    xx Jen in NS

    Your yard and house look absolutely beautiful, as usual! I love your crewel curtains. There is a museum close by that has crewel curtains in the library that the last owner did herself, and they are absolutely stunning.

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    1. Hi Jen! My dad was known for send off letters to congressmen that perhaps were not politically correct in this day in age. And he was passionate about helping the veterans, so I think perhaps the secret service would have been regular callers.

      We are slowly getting our garden in. It has been almost 90 degrees the last few days! We went directly from winter to summer. And you know what> We're still complaining about the weather. Ha! Except now, it's too hot. Do ever think God just looks down upon us and shrugs His shoulders? We humans are very fickle!

      The rhubarb retains its shape and the nice thing is that it's tender. You can drain off the liquid and use it for muffins and such or thicken the liquid with cornstarch to make a pie filling.

      Those curtains sound lovely. There was an article years ago in Victoria magazine about a woman that embroidered some crewel curtains using the seasons for inspiration. I always dreamt of doing that, but it's taken several years to complete one pillow, so I'm thinking it's not going to happen in this lifetime. Ha! Happy planting!

      Hugs
      Jane

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    2. Oh, good about the canned rhubarb. I have most of my garden in, now, so hopefully I can get to doing something with the rhubarb!

      xx Jen

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    3. We planted the last of our plants today too, Jen! Looks like everything is doing well. In spite of eating more rhubarb than ever, I', hungry for more rhubarb-strawberry pie. I think I'll can a few more jars of pie filling this week. Have a happy!

      Hugs
      Jane

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  8. Welcome back, Jane!!! Just popping in to look at some old entries and was so delighted to see you're back. Can't wait to read all your recent posts.

    Blessings,
    Leslie in Ohio

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    1. Hello Leslie! Hope all is going well for you and yours!

      Hugs
      Jane

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  9. Happy 4th of July to you and your family, Jane! I bet you are very busy harvesting all sorts of goodies from your garden. We are getting some ourselves...I think I will be able to get my first batch of frozen swiss chard done today. My main project for today is to get a couple of napkins embroidered to go in an anniversary parcel on Monday, so I hope the sun comes out, soon to make the work easier to see! Ha, ha. The weather has been very hot, here. Did things warm up there after your cool, wet spring?

    Best wishes,

    Jen in NS

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    1. Thanks Jen! Yep, it's hot here too! Our days are spent watering and watering. No rain in sight for weeks either. I hope the forecasters are wrong. Such strange weather this year. We've harvested broccoli, peas, spinach, cabbage and lettuce, and let's not forget rhubarb, so far. Got some nice tomatoes coming. The deer are determined to eat my beans as quickly as they can grow. Good thing I canned so many last year. Today the village is having a big parade, it's nice to have something "normal" gain. Thanks for stopping by and have a lovely weekend!

      Hugs
      Jane

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