Or two FOs and a WIP.

First, a couple of finished dish/wash cloths. Nothing exciting, but they are likely to be Xmas presents.

And a work in progress… This is the Irish Hiking Scarf  from Hello Yarn. Also a Christmans present.

What do you do when you are given an over abundance of free food from a wonderful local farmer’s market? You make biscuits of course!

Step 1: cut the squashes in half and remove the seeds. Rinse the seeds and put them aside to roast later.

Step 2: place squash on a baking sheet and rub edges with extra virgin olive oil. Bake at 375* for about 45 minutes or until the flesh is tender and scoopable.

Step 3: Scoop out the flesh into a big bowl. Discard the hard outer shells.

Step 4: puree the squash with a stick blender (I don’t have a food processor) until all of the chunks are gone.

Step 5: make biscuit dough. I used this recipe, replacing squash puree for the mashed potatoes. I could have used more flour and added some herbs. Fresh sage would have been especially nice.

Step 6: make biscuits. I just did drop biscuits. Easy!

Step 7: Bake!

The biscuits turned out very moist. I served them with a ham and mulit-bean soup (also from the farmer’s market). Perfect fall dinner!

The remaining 4 cups or so of squash puree got put into zip lock bags and stuck in the freezer. I’m hoping to make cream cheese cupcakes soon.

Last weekend I went and harvested blue elderberries. Lots and lots of elderberries. Too many really. But I’ve never done this before and had no idea how much they would yield. My friend, Monte did most of the picking for me.

It was fun to be outside, chatting, working.

The picking was the easy part. Cleaning all those berries took forever, but it went quickly once I got the hang of it.

Whew! That’s a LOT of berries. That middle dish is a 9 X 13 casserole. 24 cups worth of berries went into the freezer. Another 18 cups or so (7 trays worth) went into the dehydrator… The rest? Some will be jam, but I made elderberry vinegar first. This took 3 days total.

First you wash the berries and mash them, trying not to make too much of a huge mess out of your kitchen.  Then you pour the vinegar over them.

Then you cover this with a cheesecloth. Your house will smell like vinegar. You have been warned. Let the vinegar/elderberry mixture stand for 24-36 hours (I did this on successive nights). Line a sieve with cheesecloth and allow the fruit to drain for 24 hours.

I loosely covered the berries with the ends of the cheesecloth to keep the fruit flies down. You aren’t supposed to press on the berries because it can make your vinegar cloudy.

Finally! The last steps. You add the sugar and bring the mixutre to a boil.

Simmer for 15 minutes, then allow the liquid to cool before bottling up in clean jars.

Store in a cool, dark place. Use like you would use raspberry vinegar. I’m imagining spring greens drizzled with elderberry vinegar and topped with candied nuts and chevre… Nom!

Last weekend I met a friend over at our property in eastern Washington to harvest blue elderberries and rose hips. More on the berries later.

Here’s the rose hip haul:

And hear they are all cleaned up. We got about 10 cups worth of hips. The jelly recipe called for 8 cups so I’m letting the rest of the hips dry for teas.

I made jelly using this recipe: Rose Hip Jelly

This was my first attempt at jelly making so it was a bit of an adventure. I skipped putting the butter in.

First you boil the hips

When they were softened, I took my stick blender to them (I don’t have a food processor). This might have been overkill.

Then I set the mashed hips to drain on cheesecloth.

Here’s where I think I took a slightly wrong turn. The hips weren’t draining, too thick, so I poured boiling water over them to get out all the juices. I squeezed the cheesecloth too. This worked, but I forgot to measure the liquid when I was done. Oops!

Boil the liquid and add sugar and pectin

Then skim off the foam

And into the jars it went.

Processed in a boiling water bath

And we have jelly… or not.

Pretty isn’t it?

Only… It didn’t look like the jelly had set up. I had jar after jar of rose hip syrup! Yummy, but not what I was going after. I knew that jelly could be re-processed, so I did a bit of googling… And found this recipe for fixing jams and jellys.

Ahhh… I think there’s part of the problem! There’s no lemon juice in the original recipe. No acid. So the jelly has now been reprocessed (except for 4 jars – those can just be syrup) and it looks thicker. Now it’s a waiting game. It can take weeks for jelly to fully set up. I’m so impatient!!

Oh well. At least it is kind of pretty. I like all the colors. Today is the first day of fall – all that orange/green wasn’t intentionally a theme, but I like it.

On the left: carrot and cucumber slices, Green Goddess dressing. Teriyaki chicken thigh, mung bean sprouts.

On the right (snack/breakfast): white peach, grapes, grape gummy candy, cheese stick, boiled egg, tomatoes from my neighbor’s garden

I decided, after picking an abnoxious amount of blackberries and having been gifted an entire tree’s worth of pears, that I would like to learn hot to make jam this year. My friend, Sarah, promised to teach me. Yes, I know. Jam making is not difficult. But it is more fun with company. Guess what everyone is getting for Christmas?

First up – Blueberry! I think we were a little short on berries, so Sarah tossed in some of her hand-picked wild ones. YUM!

Next – Blackberry!

Then Sarah loaned me her canning kit so I could do pear jam yesterday. I really wanted to do a pear-amaretto jam, but I couldn’t find a recipe and I’m not brave enough to start experimenting yet…

Had to go buy more jars, sugar and pectin, but I think I did alright. Just plain pear. How do I get the chunks to not float?

And the final result… Almost 3 dozen jars of jam. Anyone want some jam?!

I told hubby last night that I’d like to learn how to do pickles next. Specifically green beans. Really spicy ones to stick in a bloody mary. Mmmm…

I had intended to have a much nicer selection of foods for my bento by the beginning of this week. I’m not sure what happened. Too much jam making prolly.

This is mainly leftovers from two different dinners. In the upper left: bok choy and porcini mushroom stir fry, tomato from my neighbor’s garden and a few steamed green beans. There is green goddess dressing in the little yellow cup for the veggies.

In the upper right: Polynesian Pork on rice. I had to pull some rice out of the freezer because we ate all the leftovers.

The large section has sliced carrots and cucumbers, pickled mushrooms, a boiled egg and grapes.

We went out to dinner for my birthday yesterday, but I have dinner leftovers anyway. Just the salmon is from last night. The rice and broccoli are from two nights ago. Tomato from my neighbor’s garden and some Swiss chard sauteed with miso (recipe calls for mustard greens – we’ll see how this tastes). Not too exciting, but it will work… I so need to go grocery shopping!

I finally managed to make a bento yesterday. It has been a long time and my lunches lately have been less than exciting.  This bento, as usual, is mostly dinner leftovers.

In the top compartment: salad, cherry tomatoes from my neighbor’s garden, cheese stick and Green Goddess dressing.

On the left: canned pears, cottage cheese topped with ginger pear butter (not great).

On the right: peas and diced honey-mustard pork.

Despite all of the cooking I have been doing lately, I have managed to finish a few small knitting projects.

A couple of hats:

Hurricane Hat (Ravelry link) – the yarn is hand dyed and recycled by me!

Jacques Cousteau Hat (Ravelry link). This is a gift for my friend Jeff, but hubby is modeling it for me.


A few Dishcloths. I think these will end up being Christmas presents, paired with some hand made (not by me) soaps.

Double Bump

Unique Basketweave

And last but not least… My Ishbel!