Several of my student workers came over today for a holiday cookie decorating party and dinner.
Note the location of the dog....
Clockwise from the left back are Mariah, Elisa, Zach, Celia and Elise.
Saturday I made 2 more batches of cookies, a vanilla sugar cookie made with cream cheese, which was supposed to make it easier to roll out, and a batch of gingerbread cookies. Both are new recipes I am testing.
I've invited my student workers over for a holiday cookie decorating party Sunday afternoon. Tonight I made up a batch of Dan's favorite cookie, Italian cookies, so-called because as a kid, his family was good friends with an Italian family, the Barbarossas. This is Mrs. Barbarossa’s recipe for Christmas Cookies. It makes a HUGE batch….
We had our first real snow of the season overnight, enough for the town's crack road crews to be out sanding, and for Dan's district to call for a 2-hour delayed start to school.
I had a driveway moment the other night, listening to Arthur Douglas Stover being interviewed on Maine Public Radio, talking about his new book.
Thanksgiving is the butter holiday, Christmas is the ornament holiday. I really love the holidays... lots of good food, parties, time with friends, days off from work, and at Christmas, presents and ornaments. What could be better?
"What did you get?"
Fisher, our bone-headed Golden Retriever, was skunked again Wednesday night, fortunately with only a light shower of scent. Yes, you may recall that he was skunked fairly recently this past summer, too. I guess we are lucky because Dan had JUST come in from the backyard after putting the chickens to bed, so he must have narrowly missed crossing paths with Pepe le Pew.
The Pumpkin-Pecan Pie with Whiskey Butter Sauce, from Epicurious, was a Thanksgiving Day hit. It richly deserves every single 4-fork rating it has received. I'm not crazy about Pumpkin Pie, nor about Pecan Pie, but this pie was fabulous --succulent, light, flavorful, warm with spices and pecan, yet not cloying. The Whiskey Butter Sauce lent a sophisticated air, a definite step up even from freshly whipped cream. I think it would be equally delicious with rum.
8:15 and the cooking palette is clear, ready for the days' cooking projects to begin. Holly and I
have already been out to collect the eggs and are ready to start on our 14 lb. turkey.
Stuffing. The turkey is rubbed with butter and seasoned with salt and pepper before going in the oven. Extra stuffing goes into my fabulous yellow Pyrex refrigerator dish, a gift from Dan's mom.
early. We spring into overdrive.
and I work on the pies, I make the gravy.
Holly and Dave arrived this afternoon for the holiday. It is great to see them both, they haven't been up to Maine in a while. We celebrated their arrival with a spicy Mexican meal, Chile Cheddar Pumpkins Souffles and Smoky Tortilla Soup with Shrimp.Heat oil in heavy large pot over medium heat. Add onion, carrot, celery, garlic, cumin, and oregano. Sauté until vegetables are crisp-tender, about 10 minutes. Add chicken broth, pinto beans, crushed tomatoes and chipotle chilies; bring to simmer. Reduce heat, cover and simmer 30 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Add shrimp and cook until opaque in center, stirring occasionally, about 3 minutes. Stir in chopped fresh cilantro. Serve soup, garnishing with avocado. Pass lime wedges and tortilla chips separately.
In an earlier post, I listed the proposed menu for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. Wow, I had a giant brain cramp when I wrote that, forgetting that I had been saving treats from our garden, namely carrots & delicata squash, for the holiday. We'll also include some of the veggies we froze, swiss chard and green beans, to round out things, and will scratch the Roasted Squash with Chile Vinaigrette, we'll try that recipe later with some locally grown squash.
Now that we've put the garden to bed, its time to crank up the oven, and one of my favorite things to bake is bread. I saw a recipe recently in the New York Times that intrigued me: No Knead Bread. (Any by the way, the Times has had some really interesting pre-Thanksgiving holiday articles. See the Heaven in A Pie Pan article.)
Fortunately for us humans, the holidays are looming, and I'm enjoying planning for Thanksgiving and our holiday cookie baking extravaganza, when my student workers will join Dan and I for lunch and an afternoon of holiday cookie decorating. 
We had the maple tree cabled just in time. For the second weekend in a row, we had rain and strong gusty winds, with a power outage lasting several hours. All over town there's evidence of downed limbs and trees, but our beloved maple is still intact.
I'm a native Mainer, and have lived most of my life in Maine, outside of my college years. What's more, I have lived in several distinct regions of the state --Western Maine, Moosehead, Aroostook County, Central Maine, and now in the Mid-Coast area. The minute I left Maine, I began to miss it, and only after leaving did I really realize what a wonderful place it is, and how lucky I had been to grow up here. The Maine I love, however, is changing, and not every change is for the better.
I've written before about our lovely backyard Sugar Maple. I suspect the tree is as old as the house (1881) or close to it. I spreads across the center of the backyard, shading the large deck and providing lots of leaves to gather and compost for leaf mold. It is one of the features about the house and lot Dan and I both fell in love with when we first saw the house.
was dead and rotting. Although I loved the habitat it provided for the woodpeckers, we were afraid the rot would spread and damage the rest of the tree.
able supporting the two main trunks is barely visible now with few remaining leaves; in the summer it will be all but invisible.
With the apples left over from our apple tasting party, I decided to make chutney. There's nothing better on a cold February day than a grilled cheese and chutney sandwich, with dilly beans on the side --yum.
It was another beautiful fall day today, although a cold one after a hard frost last night. We continue to ready the vegetable garden for winter, today pulling the tomato plants and the last of the lettuce and greens. The chickens were very busy, on red alert for worms as we pulled the plants out of the ground. They've done a great job of cleaning up, although I feel bad about the vast number of worms they are eating. (And WHY won't they eat slugs! We've got boatloads of slugs, they'd never go hungry!)
currently the pH is 6.5, and blueberries need a pH of 4.5 to 5.0 for best performance. The completed hedge will be 4'x25' and hold 16 highbush blueberry plants. We currently have 7 in place, 2 each of Patriot and Blueray, and 3 unknown varities that came with the house.
the bed. Today we mulched with a thick layer of cardboard, and put some sandy soil (left from an earlier project) atop the cardboard to weight it down. I'll add a thick layer of mulch hay and some Fertrell organic fertilizer soon --we hope to pick up some mulch hay Sunday morning.Black Oxford Apple Winter. Unknown parentage. Paris, Oxford County, ME, about 1790. This outstanding apple, a favorite long ago around much of Maine, has been making a huge comeback in the last 20 years. Our best seller. Medium-sized round fruit, deep purple with a blackish bloom. From a distance you might think you’d discovered a huge plum tree. A 200-year-old Black Oxford tree still grows in Hallowell, and still bears large crops. Excellent pies, superb late cider. Leave the skins on for a delightful pink sauce. Best eating late December to March. They seem to get sweeter and sweeter as the months go by. Good cooking until early summer. Some insect and disease resistance. Becoming less rare every year! Blooms late. Z4-5. ME Grown.
As we were eating breakfast this morning, Dan asked, "Did you turn the heat on?"
and seeped through the bathroom floorboards and drywall ceiling of the dining room below.
Today was a gorgeous fall day, with clear skies, no wind to speak of, and mild temperatures after a cold night. We went yard saleing in Brunswick this morning, hoping to come home with one of two bandsaws advertised in the yard sale classifieds, but alas, the saws were sold before we arrived. I did find some baguette pans, and we found a nice 6 lb. sledgehammer which will be very useful.
I was hoping to find some holly bushes for the gap between the arborvitae and the lilac hedges. We saw some Blue Princess and Blue Prince holly bushes, but they just didn't speak to me. Then I saw three Castle Spire female hollies, covered with berries. Where the Blue Princess spread to 6-8 feet wide, 8-10 feet high, and had glossy dark blue- green leaves, the Castle Spire holly is narrower, only 3-4 ft wide, and up to 10 feet high, with shiny dark green leaves.
another male holly. As we set them in place, we decided we need two more, a male and a fourth female, to fill out the hedge and form a nice backdrop for the garden bed we have planned in front of them. We planted the hollies and the hydrangea after lunch, amending the soil with compost and some Holly Tone fertilizer, watering them well, and mulching with a thick layer of cardboard. We will wrap each plant in floating row cover fabric to protect them from the wind,
cover the cardboard with hay and compost, and by spring, the grass will be dead, the worms abundant, and I hope, our new plants will be very happy. And I'm happy too, after all, when your best friend is named Holly, you certainly should have her in your yard!
We had our first hard frost last night. When I came downstairs this morning, and checked the thermometer on the barn, it read 35˚F, brrr. The leaves were coated with rime, and on the squash, already beginning to droop. I hope we can still harvest the 2-3 remaining baby squashes for dinner tonight.
that little chore as well this weekend.
Saturday, we began the process of putting the vegetable garden to bed. We have yet to have a frost, but we've had two pretty cold nights, cold enough to nip some of the leaves of the tomato, bean and squash plants. We picked a heap of beans a few weeks ago, freezing some and putting up two batches of dilly beans, one of my favorites. After Friday night's brush with frost, it was time to pick the remaining beans, dig the potatoes, and harvest any other remaining vegetables.
e longer, but was in the way of the alternate door of Henbogle coop. It was gorgeous, one of the garden successes this year. We grew the Rainbow Lights variety, and it really is beautiful, with a nice, mild flavor.
any bug that came to light. I had all I could do to avoid digging up a chicken.
some, but not many, sigh. We harvested enough for 4-5 meals. It was just too wet for them to thrive, although the tops looked good. Our new garden plan will include lots of clay-breaking soil amendments this fall, and raised beds in an attempt to keep the feet dry of our vegetables.
We picked a huge basketfull, and if the plants don't get hit again with a frost, we may get more still. We had a huge feast Saturday night, with scallops from the freezer (to make room), beans and freshly dug potatoes. MMMMMMM!
