Last day of the Advent Calendar

 The last day has double doors, very dramatic

And it opens to the best tree ever, for the Snowshoe Hare and Santa Tomte to admire

And here's the whole season of Advent for us to see at once

Thank you all for following this, it's been fun opening a door each day.  And thank you Heather C., for giving me one of the best ways I've ever had of navigating the season which is a difficult one for me, with something to look forward to each day. You're a star, dear HGD.

And here's the stage set for the apple crumble Christmas dessert, along with the almond crescents. This is the setup for the apples, crumble topping yet to come.

Tomorrow, if I remember, I'll post a picture of the result before we dive into it.

Meanwhile merry Christmas if you celebrate it, TGIF if you celebrate other days. 

And, a la Tiny Tim, the Dickens one, not the pop one with Miss Vicky, God bless us every one! Trala. 

Marigold left us today, very quietly, comfort food later

Marigold left us this morning early, peaceful.  The vet's office was very considerate, vet herself in special purple scrubs, not usual color for her, and the table was set up with a pink blanket.  All very respectful and kind to both of us.  

And I found that while I was with her, they burned a candle outside in the reception area, with a notice explaining a euthanasia was happening, and for everyone to keep their voices down. It was a very good touch.  Vet left me for as long as I wanted with her after she died, after covering her body and leaving her head for me to pet.  Couldn't talk, but I did thank Marigold for all those years of sterling loyalty.

I do think rescued animals know what we did for them, and never fail to thank us.  So I was glad to be able to give her a peaceful easy death when she was ready. 

Hard day.  Next door neighbor gave me a hug when we met as I got home, and put away the carrier for me on the high shelf in the storage area I can't reach.

Next order of business, comfort food.  

Apple crumble, with oatmeal topping.  Seen here with the cook's privileged first slice already dealt with. I don't use a recipe for this any more, other than to check the oven temp. Plenty of spices, cinnamon, nutmeg, sumac in the fruit, fruit macerated then the fruit into the baking dish, liquid reduced in small pan, and poured back over.  Topping of molasses mixed with white sugar, melted butter stirred with oatmeal and oatmeal ground to flour.

This is a kind of all purpose food.  Good as dessert, good, since it's oatmeal and fruit, as breakfast, too. Keeps up a person's strength.

January bits and bobs

Today would have been my dad's birthday. He was born in 1895, yes, hard to believe, I know.  Long gone now, but I always remember him particularly on his birthday.

Snow recently, then the wind and the temps changed its shapes.  Here's a longish view of the patio

and then if you zero in, you see accidental snow art

preacher and congregation?  dictator and rally?  duck and ducklings?  more ideas?

then the last of the Granny Smith apples bought for the chutney went to make a very good apple crumble.  

 
I don't use brown sugar for this, never buy it, in fact, just add in molasses to the mixture. The flavor is better than just from brown sugar, when you mix molasses with white.

And one of the advantages of a frosty upper atmosphere is the evening sky, many colors, some of which are not detected by the camera. 

This is the time of year for sundogs, too, so I'm looking out for them. Witchhazel, too.  It flowers in January and I'm often on the lookout for it.  There was a wonderful stand of it at the local college before Sandy swept away all the plantings of the area it was in.  But we have one here, too, near the bus stop. So I swipe a couple of twigs to bring home and observe.

And I kept my New Year's resolution, and brought home a little bunch of flowers for the house.  Yellow, carnation-like, not sure of their name. Sent out my January mailbag today, too.  I stuck address slips on them, not because I want to guilt people into writing back, but because a couple of people have been puzzled about who was writing, and took a while to realize it was me, so I thought it would be better to let you know, rather than recognize my drunken spider hand and eventually decipher it in order to see who it is!

I knitted another pink pussyhat, this one for home consumption, on the day of the march.  You'll see.

Before and After. Martha's arrangements somewhat more organized

So acting on the urgent need for midwinter fruit, I remembered that I had frozen and stored farm apples in the chest freezer next door, courtesy of good friend, since my own freezer was jammed.  So I moseyed off to retrieve them.  

And remembered that since the freezer is in his outdoor storage closet, he stacks a lot of items on top of it.  Since my wrist is not yet up to moving heavy items, I had to catch him home and get his help, given willingly, to remove all the stuff so I could lift the lid and get into my apples.

The stuff involved auto parts and tools, gardening equipment, picnic items, a pogo stick (!) and various electrical gizmos. And I did get in and find the desired apples.

So home again, here's my favorite dish waiting to be filled. 

 I did make a slight error in the amount of butter for the topping for my apple crumble, Martha recipe, and found I had no oats for it either, having made them all into flour. And I added in walnut flour, great with apples.

So I soldiered on anyway, and it turned out well enough that when we had afternoon tea in the middle of sorting the studio, a lot of it vanished, son playing an active role in this activity to restore his strength.   

The reason it turned out well was that the apples had such flavor, frozen same day as picked, wonderful apples last year, so I could have missed out on more ingredients and still had something good to eat.

And then it was empty again...

Speaking of missing out and being careful not to, note the button on my blog up there about Grow Your Blog 2015.  I'll be posting a special post on that day and invite you to come in, comment, and be in the running for a little giveaway.  

Haven't decided what it will be yet, since I work in many media, but it will be an original artwork by me of some kind.  I'll pick randomly from comments in mid February, date to be announced on  Grow Your Blog Day.  And I'll be glad to visit your blogs, too, if you have them. 

No need to have a blog to enter and comment, though, all readers are eligible.  Last year I discovered some wonderful blogs I hadn't come across before, through this blog party, so I invite you to do the same.  The Fearless Leader of this event is Vicki at Two Bags Full, and if you click on the button, you'll find yourself at her blog.

And, following on the great suggestion at Comptonia, one of the blogs I found last year and have become a devoted follower of, nemmind the grammar, please let me know if any weirdness happens when you comment in here.  Sometimes Blogger installs a function the blog writer is unaware of and I really appreciate a heads-up.  

I do have comment moderation installed, and I'm very quick to read and publish your comments.  But I don't use those awful guess the word and type it in things. If that appears, please tell me and I'll remove it.  

And I do allow anonymous comments, but please do what a number of wise commenters do and insert your name into the body your post so we know who it is!  I'd rather strip out spam than miss the comments of readers who don't happen to have any of the online IDs called for.

Zucchini Sticks Bake for a cold windy day

Today was a good time to make a baked item, warming the house as well as the food, still with the bitter high winds and low temps, so it was a zucchini stick bake.

Sauteed shallots, along with some clipped dried kombu, that's a seaweed type of vegetable, with fresh ground allspice, turmeric, pinch of kosher salt, till all nicely browned, then added in a batch of zucchini sticks from the freezer (nuked them a couple of minutes first).

While this was going on, I beat up an egg with a few ounces of one per cent milk and a few chunks of sharp cheddar.

At 385F  I baked this, the veggies in a glass dish, the egg mix poured over, for about 20 minutes.  Two meals for me. 

Dessert was the last of the apple crumble with a topping of yogurt cheese, eaten too fast for pix, sorry!

Apple Jam, with the assistance of Dolliver Dreads and her little friend

Having a farmshare, only two more weeks to go, twenty six weeks of great produce, definitely pushes you to new levels of vegetable and fruit prep and eating.  The apple crop this year is amazing, at least three different varieties, all huge and perfect fruit, literally handpicked.  The farm family are proud of their new bit of equipment allowing their picker to get the fruit a bit faster, but it's still one individual working up in the trees.

So, all the squash being roasted, stirfried, made into soup, made into bread, baked, made into french fries, that was the squash scene.  And a ton of green vegetables, which will make great stir fries and soup and bread eventually. And the apples have been: applesauce, apple salad tossed with a bit of mayonnaise, no need to get all carried away,  various forms of crumble, and now I made apple jam. Not jelly, jam.

Caramel apple jam,to be exact, with the assistance of Dreads Dolliver and her little friend, who wouldn't tell me her name.  The pix are still firmly stuck in my camera, and you should have heard their screams of rage, after all their work, slaving over a hot jam pot, before they flounced off back to their shelf, but I hope to reveal the pix and their hard work when a new camera comes into my life soon...

Meanwhile, this week's apple share made exactly six cups of cubed apple, just what the recipe ordered, and we'll see how it goes. Very sweet, I'm guessing, judging from all the brown sugar. And it used up the last of this year's pectin supply.  So I hope it works.

Other experiments: I made yogurt cheese from my homemade yogurt and it's really good.  I got about a cup of whey off it, so that's in the freezer for next time I make a squash/sweet potato/pumpkin soup, whichever happens first.

I tried out the cheese, just a bit spread on, on top of a helping of crumble from the freezer.  I must say that time and freezing improved that anonymous crumble considerably.  The y. cheese was good on top, cut the sweetness.

So that's your low tech blogger sighing and sadly waving goodbye to my loyal old Coolpix cameras, faithful to the end, not their fault their software got old and unsupported.  Don't we all....