A soft evening

If there's one prevailing weather condition we have in our area, it's fog. Mist. Vapor. Haze. Whatever you want to call it, it's here except in the summer when it's too warm.

This fog can be treacherous in the winter, when it freezes and forms a micro-layer of ice on everything. We have a friend whose vehicle slid off the road in such conditions, and he has a permanently injured back from the accident.

And yet, in its softer moods, the fog can be beautiful. The other evening, as Don and I took Darcy for his walk, the mist ebbed and flowed around us. There was just a hint of pastel color in the western sky. Sometimes the fog completely enveloped us, then it would drain away. Every minute, the landscaped seemed to change.

In fact, it could change almost second by second. It was like the fog was a living, breathing thing, and we were right there in the midst of it.

It was one of those walks where even when we had our backs to the western sky, we kept turning around to watch the changing conditions.

A soft evening indeed.

Happy birthday, Dick Van Dyke!

The venerable Dick Van Dyke turns 100 years old today!

Love him or hate him, you have to admit the guy had talent as a singer, dancer, and comedian. Here's a dance scene from "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang":

Or how about this hilarious clip from "The Carol Burnett Show":

Happy birthday, Mr. Van Dyke.

Thanksgiving, two weeks after the fact

I never got around to posting pictures of our modest Thanksgiving. Here it is, two weeks after the fact, and a reader was asking about it, so here goes.

The menu this year was simple: Turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, scalloped potatoes, green beans, wild rice stuffing, bread stuffing, biscuits, and dinner rolls.

Naturally much of this spread is made the day before. Here I'm working on "half-time spoon rolls." Letting the dough rise:

Second rising:

Baked and brushed with melted butter:

Bread stuffing starts with a loaf of fresh bread. Other ingredients: Homegrown sage, homemade turkey stock, homegrown onion, homemade butter. I'm sensing a theme here, aren't you?

The bread stuffing is for Don and Older Daughter. Oddly it's while making bread stuffing each year when I piercingly miss Younger Daughter the most. She used to love snitching uncooked bread stuffing.

Older Daughter doesn't like onions, but Don does, so I always divide the pan.

My particular indulgence (which no one else likes) is wild rice stuffing. It's my once-a-year treat.

Since I had so much homemade butter, I slathered it on the turkey before baking.

Thanksgiving wouldn't be complete without a dog that just "happens" to park itself in the middle of the kitchen floor. Y'know, in case something falls.

After the turkey went into the oven, we had a chance to talk with Younger Daughter at her European duty station. It was late in the evening for her, and she had already had a "Friendsgiving" celebration earlier in the day.

Turkey, finished.

Older Daughter likes to make fancy folds in the napkins while setting the table.

At last we all sat down for our feast.

A few days after Thanksgiving, I finally got around to canning turkey stock. I had frozen random chicken and turkey carcasses for the last two or three years, so I pulled them all out of the freezer and chucked them in my biggest stock pot. I let them simmer all night long.

I added a splash of apple cider vinegar to help draw the nutrients out of the bones. By morning, it was a rick broth indeed.

I started straining the broth by putting everything through a colander over another stock pot.

Lots of meat bits left on the bone, so I separated some for Mr. Darcy.

Believe me, I went through those scraps with a fine-tooth comb. I didn't want him swallowing any bone shards.

I wasn't sure how many jars I'd need, so I washed a lot. My canner holds 18 pints at a time, so I washed not quite double that.

I started filling canning jars with hot turkey stock...

...but then realized there was just a bit too much fat in the stock. Instead, I put the stock outside to chill overnight to let the fat rise to the surface. The next morning, I skimmed it off.

Filling the jars.

First batch out of the canner. I always pressure-can my turkey stock for 75 minutes (pints), the same as I would for meat. That's because, even though the stock is liquid, there are lots of tiny meat bits in it. I don't want to take chances.

Second batch.

Beautiful golden stock, enough to last us a couple of years at least.

I hope everyone's Thanksgiving was equally blessed.

Tomato disasters and successes

If you recall, we harvested two beds – upwards of 130 pounds – of a type of meaty paste tomato called Federle.

Because the vast majority of these tomatoes were green when we harvested them just ahead of the first frost, I layered them in boxes with a banana on each layer to provide ethylene gas. This would allow them to ripen. We set these boxes on a layer of plastic (to protect the carpet) and wrapped them in mosquito netting (to keep the fruit flies out).

However I got busy during the interim while they were ripening. Among much else, I took that fast trip south to see my parents and Younger Daughter. By the time I got around to cracking open the boxes, well ... let's just say many of the tomatoes had progressed beyond ripe into rotten. Grrrr.

The top layers were in great shape.

But the farther down I went, the worse it got.

I was so mad at myself for wasting so many tomatoes. In the end, the best I could do was pluck out the tomatoes that were still usable, and put them in a tub.

As for the rest ... well, we had to use towels and tubs and other emergency procedures to get those soaked and falling-apart boxes out of the house and into the yard. I was VERY glad I had put down plastic beneath the boxes to protect the carpet, which emerged unscathed.

I spent days beating myself up for this debacle. So many tomatoes, wasted!

The rotten tomatoes went into the waste pile.

I turned my attention back to the usable tomatoes. Because so many of them had been covered in mushy tomato slime, I actually washed them all.

After washing them, I re-packed the tomatoes back into the tub, but lined it with towels to absorb moisture.

Then I had to fetch down my food strainer from where it had been stored in the barn. I haven't used the strainer in a long time – certainly not since we moved – so it was predictably filthy. I gave it a good washing.

Also – knowing I would need it – I washed a large bucket.

Then I set up the food strainer.

Part of this set-up included putting a towel on the floor beneath. I learned from experience this is critical.

Straining tomatoes is messy work.

But there's no finer way to make a beautiful purée. Here the tomatoes are in the hopper...

...and here is the resulting purée.

Periodically I dumped the container of purée into the large bucket.

By the time all the tomatoes were processed, the kitchen was a mess. Such is life.

The next step was to bag up and freeze the purée.

I filled five gallon bags with purée, though the actual volume was probably more like four gallons.

I laid the bags of purée flat in the chest freezer until they froze, and then I stacked them more neatly.

After all was said and done, my apron was a disaster. I am brutally hard on aprons.

I laid the apron flat and sprayed it thoroughly with stain remover, then washed it, which helped a lot.

The next step in the tomato journey will be to make tomato sauce out of the purée, something I usually do in January or February. This consists of putting the purée in a large pot nested double-boiler-style into a larger pot, and cooking it down into sauce (the process usually takes about three days per batch). After it's thick enough for my satisfaction, I'll can it up.

So that's a summary of my tomato disasters and successes. Let's hope I'm a little more attentive to our unripe tomatoes next year.