Winter preparations, just in time

Saturday we had a cold and very windy day, brr. In light of predictions for a big nor'easter on Monday, we bustled about putting clear plastic over the draftiest windows, and I roasted yet another turkey because I am craving some turkey sandwiches and a pot of turkey soup . Turkey with cranberry sauce, and hot open-faced turkey sandwiches with gravy now await.

This morning the weather service has forecasted even more snow all day on Monday, with accumulations of 2-4 inches Sunday night, and 8-12 more inches on Monday. Today, we need to finish as many more outdoor chores as we can. I started by filling all the birdfeeders this morning, but there's a lot more--
repair the broken barn window
put the lawn mower and riding mowers away
finish putting cardboard down under the flowering crab tree
pick up the cardboard that blew around the yard yesterday
get some more straw for the chickens
and do a final patrol to put overlooked items away, etc

Yikes! time to get moving!

What was lost is now found: Double Chocolate Pound Cake

I was beginning to panic --my chocolate pound cake recipe had gone astray. It was based on one of my mother's recipes, but I'd made several changes to it, tweaking it here and there to better accommodate my taste and including new techniques I've learned along the way. It would take me many tries to recreate my changes, even if I could find the cake recipe again.

And then Holly called and said she'd found a pad of paper. She laughed, saying she knew it was mine because it contained many lists. She didn't realize the cake recipe was in the middle of the lists. I was so very glad to lay my hands on this recipe again!

Double Chocolate Pound Cake
1 ¾ c flour
1 t baking soda
1 t salt
1 ½ sticks butter, divided
1 ¾ c light brown sugar
1 T vanilla
5 eggs
¾ c cocoa
6 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped
¾ boiling water
1 c sour cream

Pre-heat oven to 350º F Grease bundt pan with a mix of 1 T each of melted butter and baking cocoa, blended into a paste. Heat ¾ c water to a boil. Add cocoa and stir together. Add ½ stick of butter and chocolate and stir until melted. Allow to cool slightly, then stir in sour cream. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour baking soda and salt. Beat 1 stick butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, about four minutes. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Add flour and chocolate mixture alternately. Bake until just pulling away from the pan, about 60 minutes.

This is a very adaptable cake. For Holly's wedding, I used organic dark chocolate with orange, added the zest of a large, organic orange, and made an orange sauce from the juice of the orange to use as a glaze. It was a terrific combination of chocolate and orange. I had hoped to make candied orange peel for a garnish, but ran out of time. This summer for Dan's and Michelle's silver birthday celebration, I flavored the cake with cherry liquer and made a cherry glaze for the top. I am so glad Holly found the recipe!

Working the list

Whew, what a day.... Yesterday was overcast and cold, thus we devoted ourselves primarily to housekeeping. We embarked on the great laundry challenge, earning a bronze in speed folding, and finally cleared up the backlog of laundry enough to make room for the seed starting cart. I love this cart, it's perfect for the task, and, more importantly, it was free. Yes, Dan found the cart in the Shop n' Save trash pile, and rescued it from the scrap metal factory. Soon it will be full of translucent plastic bins with seedling pots. I meant to start tomatoes this weekend, but we cheated and added a new project to the list. (And of course, I still need to make some paper pots with the potmaker-- what else is new.)

A guy we know in town is building a straw bale house, and had a big beautiful pile of organic wheat straw tailings. So, to make a long story short, we now have 8 pickup truckloads of gorgeous chopped straw. It is currently piled on the freestanding deck, until the ground firms up enough to get it back to the vegetable garden. We put some straw on the perennial beds in front, but we will use most of it on the vegetable garden, once the soil warms up enough and we finish turning the soil with the broadfork. I did turn a short row today, but I'd been hard at it since 7 am and ran out of steam.

I love the broadfork. It is fairly easy to use and silent... no noisy smelly rototiller to scare the birds away. I hope we don't get too much rain this week, and that we have good dry sunny weather next weekend so I can get the garden turned and the peas planted. Plant your peas by tax day, eat peas for the 4th of July.... let's see if we can manage peas for Independence Day this year.

Here's an old picture of Dan with the broadfork in the garden.