Apple Hash.

I finally got around to my resolution for cooking a historical recipe, although it's from a book I own, not one of the historical cooking channels.  So I have to catch up on two months of cooking from the YouTube channels.

This is a fairly simple recipe from 1711:

I followed it pretty much as written:

Apple peeled and cut crosswise, core removed.
I ate the peels and the top and bottom bits while cooking.

Butter melting in a pan, and whole wheat flour.

Apples, dipped in whole wheat flour, frying in melted butter.

Carefully turned, browning on the other side.

 Some of the butter and flour bits burned slightly between batches.  It didn't affect the taste, but might be visually unappealing.  I did add butter between the batches and a tiny bit after the flips.

Then I wiped out the pan and used the same one to make the sauce:

Butter and sugar and rosemary for the sauce.
About a tablespoon each of butter and sugar.

Pear wine added - about two or three tablespoons.
Also a couple good pinches of dried rosemary.

I don't currently have fresh rosemary, so made do with dried.  Quantities are guesswork, of course.  Then I simmered on a low flame to reduce the sauce, which made it a rather caramelly.

Pouring over the sauce, which was reduced to
about half its original volume.

And I realized after sampling that I had forgotten to sprinkle on some cinnamon before tasting, although I had it waiting by the stove.

Opinion?  Very buttery, not too sweet.  The wine and the rosemary cut the sweetness of the sauce nicely.  I didn't particularly miss the cinnamon, although I may try this again once I have live rosemary to see how it would be different.  I had a mild apple, and would like to see how something sharper stands up to the frying and sauce.

I did notice that butter leached into the dish, probably from the frying stage:

I didn't sop it up, but if you have bread handy it might not be bad.  All of the sauce was eaten with the apple slices, which were soft but not mushy.  Something of a comfort food or chilly rainy day dish, and today happens to be dreary and rainy.

This is the frontpiece of the book from which comes the receipt:

Quite light on recipes, and heavy on Remedies.  Range is 12th to 18th Centuries.

Started a Shawl.

After finishing my grandmother's blanket, I wasn't sure what to do.  In a weekly fiber group meeting somebody mentioned the Reyna Shawl pattern, which she was knitting using yarn donated to the local senior center as part of a fundraiser.  The pattern seemed easy, which I needed as a change from the blanket.

While looking for yarn I found several balls of Berroco "Topaz", which is discontinued, and decided to use two of them for this shawl.  So I cast on, and typically of a top-down, it's been moving quickly.  I'm into the second ball at this point.

I have continued working on the mitered squares scarf I am making from Red Heart Super Saver in "Peru Stripes", which may be out of production.  A pity, because I like the colours and pattern:

My plan is to stop this portion after the sixth square, since that will be about forty inches long.  I will pick up and work in the other direction, doing either five or six squares, and I might use the remaining yarn to make a matching hat.

I suppose I could make money selling discontinued yarn online, but I don't feel the need to put the energy into that right now.  And I don't mind using it, especially if I like the colours.

While doing another round of unpacking and organizing during a rainy yesterday I found a couple other WIP/UFOs, including a simple scarf I'd cast on during the North Texas Irish Festival and apparently forgot in my luggage during the chaos of March and early April.  I am going to keep it to work on during my trip to Texas in early May, when we have our quarterly department in-person meeting.  I plan to go a bit early and see a few plays.

Today the weather was better, and I went out geocaching.  I am definitely not going to win, and at this point I doubt I will find all of the caches.  I did find two of the ones for "BINGO" and took a few pretty photographs of creatures I saw.  None of these are caches.  😊

  

   

I had an amusing phonecall earlier this week.  Somebody called from Connecticut, and since I don't have all the people I know in my phone, I answered.  The caller said she wanted to talk to me about my condo, and I cheerfully informed her that I'd sold it last month and she needs to speak to the new owner.  I was much amused - apparently the public records are not updated that quickly.  And I received considerably more than the last cold-caller offered.

Resolution Realization:  I skipped the monthly recipe from a historical YouTube series or cookbook in March, in part because of moving and also because my refrigerator died.  Now that Tasting History's cookbook has arrived, and my kitchen is coming together, I should be able to catch up.  At least I'll get one done in April - maybe strawberry jam, because those are in season and I keep overbuying at the farmer's market.

Finished two things.

I finished the anthology I was reading, begun around March 1st.  I was interested not just because I enjoy Agatha Christie books, but because I was familiar with derivative works - movies and plays - of two of the titles.  In the anthology, Five Complete Hercule Poirot Novels, there are these five novels:

• Thirteen at Dinner
• ABC Murders
• Murder on the Orient Express
• Cards on the Table
• Death on the Nile

Of course there have been numerous films made of Murder on the Orient Express, and I have seen a couple.  Death on the Nile was the first play in which I was involved after moving to Texas, and as I read the novel I kept working out which characters were combined to streamline a cast.

Cast photo - I was Stage Manager.  "15" is not the year, it's the 15th photo in the set of the
production photos.  Yes, the title of the play is different from that of the novel.

I also finished the blanket I was making for my grandmother.

It is based upon the pattern for the Roundabout Mandala Afghan, but I only had four cakes of Lion Brand Mandala Sparkle (colourway: 'Hercules') and also wanted to make something smaller since my grandmother is tiny and she will use this mostly when sitting in her chair.  So instead of the second set of corners and the outer border, I repeated the inner border two more times, then added a round of scallops on the outside to make it look more finished.

My grandmother has pneumonia, so instead of waiting to take it to her on a surprise birthday visit (Shhhhh!) I may send it now, as a Get Well gift.  And I hope that she does get well.

(Virtually) Fly Me To The.........

This weekend's adventure involved a virtual trip to the moon hosted by a knitting designer and teacher, with classes by other knitting designers and teachers on topics such as:

• How to Wrap The Moon in Green Cheese: An Intro to Shawl Design
• Aliens Like to Knit Too!  Patterning with Beads (featuring an alien face design)
• Knitting a Moonscape:  Craters and Dunes (two classes)
• It's Not Rocket Science:  Math for Knitters
• Have Some Tang:  Out Of This World Stitch Patterns
• Countdown Sequence:  Three Knitted Shawls
• Moon Pie Magic:  Stitches to Accentuate Striping Yarn

Interestingly, we had an actual rocket scientist from JPL attending the weekend as one of the students.

We also had two cooking sessions: Preparing pizza dough on Friday night, letting it rest in the refrigerator until the next day (which improves the flavour), then using it to make pizza or crescent-moon-shaped calzones.  This is mine:

A slight blow-through of cheese in a vent.

Filling was onions, summer squash, and zucchini, sautéed in olive oil with some herbs, and shredded mozzarella cheese.  I sprinkled some on top and should have added it partway through the baking so it wouldn't be as toasty.  And I'd been a bit stressed trying to figure out how to bake it because I haven't yet unearthed a baking sheet, although I do have a couple Pyrex® baking pans unpacked.  Then my mind wandered to pizza stones and I remember unpacking a Pampered Chef® stone pan that I'd purchased during a friend's party thinking it might be a useful thing someday.  I pulled it out of the box (yes, never used), gave it a quick wash, put it into the oven while it preheated, and it was a perfect solution.

The final result was quite tasty and I have dough in the freezer to use later this week.  After we got the dough started on Friday we had a special lecture from Sky and Telescope's contributing editor Bob King, who told us "The Amazing Things You Never Knew About the Nearest Alien World".  OK, some of us knew at least some of what he discussed, but it was fascinating to listen to him, and if we'd had time another half-hour would definitely have been welcome.

I did not get to take all the classes 'live' due to work on Friday and going to see "Porgy and Bess" today, but they were recorded and I will catch up later.  The opera was a phenomenal production, amazing singers and staging, and there was a special callout for the lighting designer whose work really enhanced the scenes.

This week we shouldn't have torrential rains, so I hope to get out and catch up a bit on the geocaching challenges.

[Of course, I borrowed the title of this post from 'The Chairman'.  And the pizza option made me think of a song by one of his friends.  Did you think similarly?]

Reviewing the year.

Facebook reminded me that on April 10, 2022, I posted this on my feed:

Little did I know at the time what adventures the year ahead would contain.

I knew of one: Starting a new job on April 11th.  I hadn't told many people, partly because I am a private person and don't like answering the same question fifty-zillion times, and partly because the last time I did so, it didn't work out as well as I'd hoped.  I ended up being rehired by the company I left, to their delight, and that was a good ride until it wasn't.  That's when I decided to again look for a new job - with the full support of my boss, who'd long been telling me I was underappreciated and we both knew I was underutilized - and this time, I landed in a very different situation.  Some of the people had known me in the past, some knew me currently, and all were very happy that I was considering coming aboard.

On my one-year anniversary today, I received a thank-you certificate from the CEO of my new company.  I'm sure they are auto-generated, but it's a nice touch to receive it.  And coincidentally a colleague, one of the ones who'd left the old place also, and had recommended that they hire me at the new one, told me in a call this morning that he continues to be glad that they made an offer to me and that I accepted it.  It's nice to be appreciated, and such a change from the last 'new job'.

Then my uncle, for whom I was POA and trustee, died on the last day of May 2022.  And I had to communicate with family, and wrap up everything related to his trust and estate, and that is not-quite but nearly done.

Late summer I accidentally bought a house, and began the process of moving.  I am still not settled; two Saturdays ago my mattress arrived so I could start sleeping at the house, but I had a code for the Dallas Opera's livestream that night and it ended too late  to go to my house, according to my mother.  So I planned to finish the move on Sunday, but the weather was very nice, and my father wanted to do gardening.  Needless to say, I am the assistant gardener which means Dad points and I get dirty. 😄

Thus I wasn't able to get much unpacked and organized that weekend, although I did some things.  On Tuesday I cooked my real first meal in my new kitchen, which doesn't look like much, but in a disarranged kitchen, it was a pleasant accomplishment:

Spaghetti with asparagus and chicken poached with garlic
and olive oil.  Not fancy, but fresh and yummy.

Then Wednesday started Passover, so I went to my parents' house and made matzoh ball soup:

We had a nice mini-Seder that ended with a dance party to "Pharaoh, Pharaoh".

Thursday was the last nice day for a while, so I went in the morning to geocache a bit before work hours began; there's a local group that has a monthlong event, and you can do it as fast or slowly as you like.  Points are awarded for being first to find some special items, and to guess answers to clues, and so on.  Given that I am not retired nor competitive, I am doing it as I have time with my only goal to find all the caches.  Some of the caches are just an item of which you take a picture to prove you were there; others have SWAG that you can swap.  I decided to try for a couple of these and now possess these items:

Then the weekend became cold and RAINY, as in POURING rain.  A good time to do indoor things such as have a local handyperson come to help me put together three large furniture items, so I can put away clothing.  He is part of a group from the Veterans Club that does small chores for people as a way of fundraising for the charitable works the club performs.

So that was an accomplishment.  And the eggs and muffins.  And our weekly soufflé:

Mom made the spinach-and-raisins side dish.
The daisy is the one I added to their basket as I left my house.

Tonight I start an online class on "World Wisdom Literature" through the University of Chicago's Graham School for Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies.  Homework that doesn't involve yarn or fiber or beads = yikes!

The Bunny Surprise

This morning I posted one of my favourite images for this time of year and mentioned that I don't have one that includes Ramadan, for years like this one where it overlaps also.  A friend provided this:

It would be better to have a Muslim symbol on the
hat of the third one, but I don't have skills to add it.

I decided to make some surprises for my parents, which is easier now that I live close and don't have to sneak in their kitchen.  However, my kitchen is not fully put together and I wasn't sure I could accomplish anything.  Then some colleagues and I were talking on Friday about weekend plans, and one said he'd be with family with an egg hunt and so on.  The conversation wandered to dyeing eggs (some of us not having had plastic ones in childhood) and one mentioned the wire egg dippers.  The others assured him they are still included in the Paas® packages.

So we wandered down the website and I noticed one option uses foam to dye the eggs.  I mentioned that I've seen the same sort of thing done with shaving cream, found a link to instructions, and it also mentioned using frozen whipped topping.  This might be more food-safe than shaving cream.

And it gave me an idea.

A quick stop at the local grocery scored the last set of multicolour liquid dyes (I debated getting a set of gel dyes instead, or just making one-colour eggs, but decided on multi, and didn't want to deal with diluting the gels) and a small carton of generic frozen whipped topping.  I put the topping into the refrigerator to thaw overnight.  Then I followed the basic instructions as follows:

Whipped topping spread in a dish - about half the carton.

The dyes I was able to buy.

 

You drop the dye onto the whipped topping, and swirl it with a toothpick or something similar.  I was rather orderly in my dropping because I worried about the colours blending too much if I dropped randomly.  They blended enough as I rolled the eggs in the coloured whipped topping:

Rolling a boiled egg in the dyed topping -
yes, I made sure to wear a glove.

After this, I put the eggs on a plate and left them for about a half-hour.  The instructions you find vary with how much time to leave them, and I got distracted a bit, so this is definitely the high end of waiting.  I had enough of the dyed topping for another half-dozen eggs but I'd only boiled six.

After the time I rinsed them off, using another glove to hold them.  It was tricky to photograph one-handed so I didn't.  I do have comparison plates of the eggs before and after:

  

I should have put a cloth or paper on the plate with the rinsed eggs, because they rolled and didn't stay in precisely the same places on the plate.  I was a bit concerned because the first one came out very pastel, but the others are fairly bright.  The green doesn't appear very much, even though it was quite prominent in the topping.  As you can see, what the whipped topping shows is not what appears on the egg, so it was fun to see how they ended up looking.

I also, although my kitchen isn't quite set up and I couldn't find all the ingredients (I know I need to buy a couple), made some carrot muffins this morning.  I wrapped up two and put them into a fruit box with the eggs (four are on the bottom so you cannot see them) and a note for my parents:

As I left my house I added a daisy from a plant in front.  I put it on the table on their front porch, right in front of one of the kitchen windows, with the note to the window.  I am sure to hear about it when they are up and moving.

I've done some other cooking, mostly simple things due to time and not having the kitchen comfortably established, which I may post about separately.  I'm making progress on unpacking and getting things in useful configurations.  With the help of a member of the local Veterans Club, who do small chores to raise money for their projects, the three biggest furniture items were put together and installed, so now my clothes can be put away and organized.  I purchased some organizer things for the kitchen, and that will be much of today's project once the clothes are put away.

No fooling, this happened.

In the background of my life for the last several months, I've been working on this:

Yes, I moved.  From Connecticut, where I've lived for a dozen years, down south to be nearer family.  Once travel became possible, and I could visit family, it became apparent that my parents have been slowing more quickly than a year or so in the past.  As the least-hampered child, it was logical for me to move closer to them, and also to my grandmother, who continues on although fading and frailer.

So I started to make plans, intending to find an apartment for a year so I could get my bearings differently from when I stay with family.  However, those plans, as Robert Burns would say, 'gang a-gley'.  First, I somewhat accidentally bought a house not far from my parents.

You've heard the joke about "I don't want to go to garage sales because I don't need a garage"?  My mother heard of an estate sale and suggested I go with her to look at a couple of items that hadn't sold, including a lovely cabinet sewing machine with all sorts of accessories and threads and so forth.  And of course the house was going up for sale as well, and long story short, I ended up buying it.  (Also the sewing machine.)  I tell people that I am walking distance to my parents' house, but they are not walking distance to mine.  😉😇😊

I didn't move immediately, in part because of winter, and in part because I wanted to make some changes to the house.  The garage was unfinished, just taped drywall, so I had it finished and painted, and added a floor (over the cement slab) and cabinets.  I changed out most of the lighting fixtures which were builder grade and mostly ugly.  Especially important was to get rid of the low-dangling chandelier in the dining area, to open up the space more, since the house is open-plan and mostly one big room with bedrooms attached.  I found some cool, mid-century, space-inspired fixtures that float near the ceiling and give huge light and freed up all kinds of space.

It was funny that these sorts of things were left, as the home has other upgrades such as a patio shade that works electrically, and sunports in the main spaces.  I am going to have to get used to those giving light and realizing I've not left a ceiling light burning.

I wanted to tell certain persons personally that I am moving, so didn't let too many people know.  A few figured it out when I started donating furniture, and large quantities of household items.  Others remained surprised until the end.

I'd hoped to have more time to tell people, but apparently the "location, location, location" mantra works and even though I sold my home "as-is" because the refrigerator died just before I listed, I had offers over the list price within two days and entered a contract in four.  The closing was a month later so it was a mad time of packing and getting rid of things and I had a trip already planned to visit my parents (conveniently I could go a couple days early when showings started to be requested) and then the North Texas Irish Fest.  I came back and packed madly again, then the movers, then it was cleanup and clear-out.  I had to get a handyman in to do a door repair which had been botched by my Realtor®'s handyman, and tell the neighbor who had been renting half my garage to move his car, and getting a removals company to take the remaining furniture and repurpose it to other homes.  Some of the kitchen items went to Journey Home, which was very glad to receive them.

I also made this difficult decision:

My car - "The Ruby Slipper" as my grandparents named her - had an issue that was going to be expensive to repair, and would cause her to fail an emissions test.  Since the repair would be a minimum of twice the KBB value, and her registration was still valid, I decided to donate her to the local PBS/NPR station through a charity donations system.  Yes, I would have gotten a few hundred to sell her outright, or possibly as a trade-in, but I enjoy the programming and figured this was easier for me.

I had rental cars on my last days in Connecticut, and although I asked for the cheaper sedans, both times I was given an SUV.  While driving was tricky (I'm not used to such a behemoth) it was very handy to have them as I offloaded household and other items all over town.  Both the Free Center (which conveniently had a community swap on one of the weekends) and Bici Co. received deliveries, as did some wonderful friends who tolerated getting all kinds of kitchen and food items.  One of the couple is a sometimes baker with whom I've exchanged baked goods, and the spouse has contributed beverage mixes, and they are lovely people.  I said I want to see what the baker does with some fancy items.

I've been unwinding the rest of my life.  Both my congregation and the yoga studio continue to have online options that I will continue to use, at least for the foreseeable future.  I will no longer be on-site active in our lay leaders group, but have offered to write the monthly drash if somebody else will read it.  I am letting my museum memberships lapse and I will be joining museums here, and likely a makerspace, but first I'll take time to unpack, and settle, and get bookshelves built.  The kitchen is completely different from my old one and that will take adjusting, especially as the counters seem taller and the cabinets are definitely more difficult to reach.  I do have a pantry and am working out how to organize it most usefully to me.

And so a new adventure begins.  As my current email .sig file says:

"We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, 

so as to have the life that is waiting for us."

E. M. Forster, English novelist (1 Jan 1879 - 7 Jun 1970)

PS:  A surprise was in my mailbox today - friends sent a "we'll miss you" note and a housewarming gift:

I am sharing the cookies with my family.