A Study of an Agate

Hey there! These are some pictures of an agate I found when we went to Lake Superior!! Oh joy, oh rapture, oh Nature divine!! I was so excited to find this stone! It is tiny, folks, about the size of the tip of my pinky, but it's really an agate and it's really beautiful. And it's all mine...

The agate is the state gem of Minnesota, did you know that?

Lake Superior Water

Hey peeps! Here is what we had for a dinner over the past few days, somewhere in there...

Pineapple Vegan Chili*

2 cans kidney beans, undrained (7)
1 20 oz can crushed pineapple, undrained (5)
1 tomato/1/2 can diced tomatoes
1/4 C TVP (1)
1-2 ancho chiles/1 t ancho chile powder
2 T oil (8)
1 onion
1 clove garlic
1 small sweet pepper
1 T chocolate chips
1 t cinnamon
1 t cumin

In small bowl of food processor, process onion, sweet pepper and garlic until coarsely chopped.
Remove to a large soup pot and saute in oil.
Add spices, tomato, TVP, ancho chiles and mix well.
Add pineapple, tomatoes and TVP.
Bring to a boil, stir, then lower heat and simmer, covered, until TVP is tender. Simmer uncovered until thick. Stir in chocolate chips and salt/add soy sauce to taste.
Makes approximately 5 C @ 22 points = 4 points per cup

This was a very, very good chili. I've been wanting to make it for a long time and finally got to it. D. likes pineapple, so I thought it might be a hit (it was). I also added cinnamon, ancho chile and chocolate because I've seen other recipes using sweet combined with ancho chiles and thought it sounded good. Mmmm. And it was.

*man, I just love the internet, because I swear I've had this floating around in my 'to make' pile of recipes forever and yet, there it is.
Here is a skillet of cornbread, our favorite cornbread, Grandma's Cornbread Made Vegan. Interestingly enough, I used chickpea flour for 3/4ths of the cup of flour and it was fine. It is so fun to make cornbread in a cast iron skillet, I don't know why, but it is. I really need to get some of those little cast iron molds that look like corn. Ha, like I need any more one use items in my kitchen. Okay, the cast iron skillet works fine.
Whee! I made granola! It was fun. I got it from Scholastic Parent & Child magazine.
Annabel's Homemade Granola

2 C quick oats
1/2 C sliced almonds
1/4 C sweetened coconut flakes
1/4 t salt
1/4 C brown sugar, packed
2 T canola oil
1/4 C maple syrup (actually I used 1/8 C maple syrup and 1/8 C sorghum 'cause that's what we had)
1/2 C craisins

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
Oil a baking sheet.
In a large bowl, mix the oats, almonds, coconut, salt and brown sugar.
In a small bowl, whisk together the maple syrup/sorghum and oil.
Pour syrup over oats mixture and mix well.
Spread out onto baking sheet and bake in the center of the over for 40-45m, stirring every 10m.
Transfer to a bowl, stir in the craisins and let cool.

V. good. Pretty cheap, no? Easy, yes? Also fun, all that stirring, hyper-ly opening and shutting the oven, watching it get browner and browner. It got really brown, I think that was from the sorghum. You should get some sorghum syrup, it's cool.
And here is another rockin' soup made in the crockpot.
Three turnips, a carrot or two, a cup of cranberry beans, some vegetable broth powder, water water water and boom! you've got soup. Oh, also, oil, salt and yes, a little sugar. Served with defrosted Easy Vegan Wheat Bread which is my new favorite wheat bread. Why did it taste better to me after it was frozen?!?

So, the granola was made it preparation for our last camping trip. Yes! One. more. trip...
We are going up to The Porcupine Mountains only one of my faaavorite places to go AND we'll be right on Lake Superior!!! EEEeeee! I can't wait. Now, if only all this packing and food prep would just take care of itself... oh, and also the long drive... but it will be so worth it. I'm super excited.

This time, we have to pack light, because we're actually hiking in and so no cooler for us!! I went to the coop and bought lots of Fantastic foods felafel and whatnot. I'll let you know how it all goes...

Today I have to prep chickpea pizza, moong dal, red lentil curry and then we'll be mostly done. Gack, dried reconstituted hummus? How will I survive?

Food For Camping

Suppers;
Fantastic burger mix mixed with Minute rice on buns
Angel hair pasta with Dragonfly's Bulk Dry Uncheese
Dried felafel with Moong Dal and rice
Red Lentil Curry with Roti

Lunches;
hummus
chickpea pizzas
pea, lentil and corn chowder soups
oat bars

Breakfasts;
oat bars
granola
oatmeal

Hope that's enough... oh, and plus a bijillion snacks for the kids. And water. That will have to be filtered out of Lake Superior. Mmmm, Lake Superior water.

Serve 'em up!

Heyo!
Here is a yummy spaghetti with beanballs type of thing with HOMEMADE SAUCE!!
You take a bunch of tomatoes, blanch them, skin them, dump out the seeds into a fine mesh strainer propped over a bowl, mash the seeds and pulp against the mesh until it's mostly pressed through, toss a few chunks of tomato flesh in there, then boil it in a pot with fresh basil and oregano and some oil and salt and onions and garlic and BOOM! sauce.
The beanballs were kidney beans, tvp, 1/4 c vital wheat gluten, some HP sauce, some soy sauce, some onion soup mix, maybe some cumin? all mixed up and then fried in the aebleskiver and then dumped in the sauce. Sorry no real recipes folks, but geez, it was the weekend. A girl's gotta live a little, you know? It was real good.
Here are the wunnerful jelly doughnut cupcakes from Veganomicon. Do make these. I made the rest of the sumac juice/extract into jam- hooray! and used that in the 'cakes. Deelightful!
Here is a Fail Proof Dahl which I believe I found in a thread on the ppk forums (couldn't find that exact thread, though I did note the author of said recipe!)- thank you chickpea fleet! It was good! I served it with veganyumyum's roti which was recommended and again, v. good.

1 1/2 C moong dal
3 C water
1 t Trader Joe's ginger paste
1 t turmeric
1 clove garlic, minced
2 T olive oil
tidge chili garlic sauce
2 T mustard seeds
1 T cumin seeds
1 T coriander seeds
1 t salt

Rinse dal, add to water with ginger and turmeric, bring to a boil. Skim off foam, lower heat and simmer 'til tender.
In a large soup pot, saute garlic and seeds until seeds start to pop. Add salt and chili garlic sauce.
Lower heat and add lentils.
Blend some in blender, add water if needed.
Serve with fresh coriander leaves and roti.
Makes a lot (maybe 6 C), roughly 6 points a cup.
Roti.
And finally, a soup I made which was very nice- I'll call it potato groundnut soup!

3 large potatoes (I used Viking purple potatoes- woo!)
2 T peanut oil
2 large shallots
1 sweet pepper
1 t cumin
1 t coriander
pinch nutmeg
tidge chili garlic sauce
1 t salt
pepper to taste
1/4 C creamy peanut butter

Scrub 'em, chop 'em and boil up your potatoes.
Process shallots and sweet pepper until coarsely chopped.
Saute in oil in a large soup pot.
Mix in spices, salt, pepper and chili garlic sauce.
Mix in peanut butter.
Dump potatoes, water and all, into pot and mix well.
Blend in blender.
Serve it up, yum!

Reading "Absurdistan", v. weird.

Yummeh.

CSA veg!!! Turnips! Aren't they pretty? And you can eat the greens, too. I feel like this may become a slow cooker soup with the cranberry beans...
Beautiful carrots...
Some heirloom tomatoes and zebra stripe tomatoes. We also got dill, cilantro, peppers, eggplant, garlic, shallots (whoops, forgot to take pics of those, they were huge!), lettuce, white potatoes, and radishes.

Yesterday was our work day at the farm! It was so nice to be out there and the weather couldn't have been more perfect. Boy, fall is just beginning, the fields were golden, a few trees are turning, the growing season is slowing down... oh, summer, how I miss you!! But it's all good. This weekend should be perfect.
We got to see the horses in action at the farm, how cool is that?!? Zephyr and Queen were all harnessed up when we got there, and they turned the potato rows so that we could find the potatoes. It was very cool to see them working and they were very intelligent, well-trained creatures. So sorry I did not get a picture. Really, though, it's the first time I've seen horses in action like that, and I was so impressed (city kid!).
Probably the last of the squash I cooked up for supper last night.
Gallo Pinto, round two! Using up more of the cilantro!
The bulghur and cabbage casserole I made for our CSA workday potluck.

Bulgur and Cabbage Casserole

1 small head of cabbage, finely chopped
2 C water
1/2 C bulgur, reconstitued in 1 C boiling water
1/4 C olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 T paprika
1 t caraway seeds
1 t salt
1/2 t pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Finely chop cabbage in food processor using the disk with the holes in it.
Saute onion, add spices and seasonings, bulgur and cabbage. Mix well. Add water. Pour into oven safe casserole and bake 30m, covered, 10m uncovered.

A nice side.

And finally, Garbanzo Bean Paprikash with Dumplings. This was yummeh! I sort of mixed two recipes together, Paprikash with Dumplings, Tofu Paprikash and a dumpling recipe from another recipe.

Garbanzo Paprikash with Dumplings

2 T oil
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
2 T paprika
2 T sugar
1/4 C nutritional yeast
1/4 C ketchup
1 t salt
1 can garbanzos, undrained

dumplings;

2 C flour
2 t baking powder
1 t salt
4 T Earth Balance (1/2 stick)
1/4 - 1/2 C soymilk/water
1 1/2 t celery seed powder

For the garbanzos and sauce,
saute onions and garlic, add all ingredients up to garbanzos, mix well, add garbanzos, mix well, bring to a boil and lower heat and simmer.

For the dumplings

Bring a large pot of water to boil.
Sift the dry ingredients, mix well. Cut in the Earth Balance until mixture resembles meal, slowly add soymilk, should make a fairly dry dough. Roll out into a snake and cut into smaller pieces (I like big dumplings, so I get about 16). Pour into boiling water and cover, lower heat and cook at a low boil for 10m. Remove with slotted spoon, add to garbanzos and sauce and gently mix. Serve right away.

notes;
I may try experimenting with adding more baking powder.
The celery seed powder was a good addition (even if it did turn the dumplings green!).
The sauce is richer with the ketchup and nutritional yeast.

All of a sudden my book ("The Doomsday Book") got super exciting. Everything happened at once. I could barely put it down last night. Woo! Death! Disease! Near Escapes! Can't wait to see how it turns out...

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

What We Had For Dinner Last Night

Chickpea Patties

2 T olive oil
1 small onion, diced fine
1 clove garlic, minced
1 carrot, shredded
1 can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
2 T tahini
1 T parsley
1/3 C chickpea flour
1/2 t baking soda
1 t salt

Shred carrot, set aside.
Saute onions until onions are translucent. Add garlic, cumin, salt and carrot and saute 2m.
Scrape onion mixture into large bowl of food processor, add chickpeas, tahini and parsley and process until it sticks together. Remove to bowl and mix in flour and baking soda well.
Heat up your aebleskiver with a few drops of oil in each divot, and fry them up. Makes approximately four 7 aebleskiver batches- 26. 1 point each.
Conversely, flour your hands and make 4 patties, fry in 1 T oil 2m one side, then two minutes the other side.

These were yummy! And I got to use my aebleskiver pan! It's really fun! Small food is fun!
No, really, I was pleased. Usually any 'patties' I make are kind of weird. Hopefully this marks a new page for me in patty making! Also, I made these up earlier and then fried them right before dinner, so they had a long rest in the refrigerator. Perhaps that made a difference.

Still reading "The Doomsday Book", still good.

It builds the tension.

What We Had For Dinner Last Night

Curried Butternut Squash and Wild Rice Soup based off of this recipe

1 2 1/2 lb butternut squash, seeded, peeled and cubed
1 C wild rice
3 C water
2 T onion soup mix
1/2 C orange juice
2 T maple syrup
2 T Earth Balance margarine
1 med onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 T curry powder
1/2 t salt

In a medium sized saucepan, bring the three cups water and 1 C wild rice to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 45 minutes.
While rice is simmering, peel, seed and chop up your butternut squash. If you're feeling really ambitious/thrifty, bake up those seeds for a snack.
In a large, heavy bottomed pot, place the squash and just cover with water. Bring to a boil and then lower heat, simmering for up to 15m, until squash is tender. Place squash into blender using a slotted spoon, then pour in water from pot (carefully!) and blend.
In the now empty large pot, saute your onions and garlic in the margarine. Add onion soup mix, salt and curry powder and mix well. Pour in orange juice and maple syrup. Pour in the squash mixture and mix well.
Mix in the wild rice and allow the flavors to meld a little (haha, 'meld'. or just serve it right up, I say!).

Yumm! This was a great, hearty soup, so healthy I felt eating it! The maple syrup adds just the right amount of sweetness. It went really well with the Easy Vegan Wheat Bread I made Sunday (that bread has molasses and is a little sweet).

Still reading "The Doomsday Book". Apparently there really was a Domesday Book- in the book, the main character calls her journal a 'domesday book'. So good so far. Pacing is a little slow, but it builds the tension.

So many things to do today... must get going.

Tomato Jam!

Well, I was quite the busy beaver this weekend! It was just so nice to be home, you know, and not, say, traveling...
I read up on Cranberry Beans and found out more about them!! Aren't they beautiful? It was fun to eat fresh beans cooked up so nicely. I guess they are often used in Italian cooking and the US is a primary exporter of them to Italy!

Friday I knew D. was going to be getting home late and I didn't want to be in the kitchen at the end of the day, so I made Summer Squash and Bean Soup loosely based off of this recipe...

Crockpot Cranberry Bean and Yellow Squash Soup

1 C cranberry beans, fresh
4 C water
3 8" yellow squash, chopped
1 small carrot, sliced into rounds
2 T olive oil
1 T Earth Balance margarine
1 T soy sauce
1/2 Walla walla onion, diced fine
1 clove garlic, minced
1 t Italian seasoning, crushed between fingers
1/2 t yellow prepared mustard
1/2 t onion powder
1/2 t sugar
1/4 t garlic powder
1/4 t thyme, crushed between fingers
1/4 t parsley, crushed between fingers
1/4 t celery powder
1/8 t rosemary, crushed between fingers
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper to taste

Place everything in the crockpot in the morning, set it on high and let it go. Add water throughout if neccessary.

Look how the beans turned pink!! This was the best way to make the beans, I think, because they turned out so soft and lovely. I was particularly pleased with this soup because I didn't use prepackaged vegetable broth!

Oooooh, and Saturday morning I made aebleskiver! Vegan aebleskiver, people!! Aghlaghlaghl... (that's the sound of me, drooling). Yo, this was so good. Get your hands on an aebleskiver pan and make these puppies up!! Ah gah-roun-tee you will have a new family tradition on your hands!!

Vegan Aebleskiver

1 1/4 C flour
1 T baking powder
2 T sugar
1/2 t salt

1 C soymilk + 1 t apple cider vinegar
2 T canola oil
1 t vanilla

1 T Earth Balance margarine, softened
4 T jam, divided
1t water
2 T powdered sugar

Pour out your soymilk and add 1 t apple cider vinegar to 'sour' it (vegan equivalent of buttermilk).

Sift your dry ingredients into a large bowl. Add the soymilk mixture, canola oil and vanilla and mix until just moistened. DO NOT OVERMIX. Let sit for 10m or so. Stir it again and let sit.

Heat up your aebleskiver pan real hot. Add tiny bits of butter to each 'hole' and then fill halfway with the dough. Add a bit of jam and push it into the dough. Top with a little dough to cover jam. Check for doneness by sticking a toothpick along the edge between the pan and the dough. If brown, use 2 toothpicks to flip the aebleskiver over. Maybe some dough will ooze out, or even some jam. It's okay. That powdered sugar at the end? Covers a multitude of errors.

Allow the other side to cook and carefully remove to a plate to await it's happy brothers and sisters. Repeat this last step 6 more times and then make a couple more batches.

Sift some powdered sugar over the top and drizzle with some jam mixed with a little water to make a syrup.

Makes roughly 21 aebleskiver.



For Saturday lunch, I made Gallo Pinto. I'd made the black beans from dried last week and then the rice that day. It was arguably the best black beans and rice dish I've had. Usually I find black beans and rice to be bland, but this was not. Perhaps it was all the spices... haha. Oh, and I'm sure I destroyed some food rule by using HP sauce, but, c'mon! it was good! (I promise to use Salsa Lizano next time if you send me some!!).

Gallo Pinto

2 T canola oil
1 med onion, chopped fine
1 clove garlic, minced
3 C cooked rice (1 C uncooked)
2 C black beans/1 can black beans, undrained
1 t cumin
1 t coriander
1/2 ginger
2-3 T HP sauce
1 t salt
pepper to taste
1 bunch fresh cilantro, stemmed and chopped

Saute onion, garlic. Add HP sauce, spices, mix well. Add cilantro and beans, mix well. Add rice, mix well and serve.

Notes;
To cook the rice, you can saute it with the onion, garlic, a sweet pepper and some cilantro and the spices, then add 2 C broth and bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer 20-35m until the rice is done.


Here we have Saturday's supper. Above, Crash Hot Potatoes made with purple potatoes (they turned out dry! wah! maybe I didn't use enough olive oil). And below, cranberry beans with kale. Soooo good!!
Finally, Sunday I got a bee in my bonnet to make Tomato Jam. I doubled the recipe and !still! got 1 pint. Used one of the hot red peppers from our salsa pack from the CSA and got some juice under my fingernails, everytime I gripped something last night, the skin under my nails burned!! So I was kind of worried- would it be Hot Jam instead of Tomato Jam? Oh, no- it was good.


Above you see it on the stove and below you see the final product. So. seriously. good.
Tomato Jam

3 pounds tomatoes
2 C sugar
4 T sumac juice
1 T Trader Joe's ginger paste
2 t ground cumin
1/4 t cardamom
1/4 t nutmeg
1/4 t cloves
2 t salt
1 small red pepper stemmed, seeded and minced

Put it all in a heavy bottomed big pot, bring to a boil, stir for a while and then reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally until it's jam* (you should be able to see the bottom of the pot when you scrape the spoon along it). Cool and refrigerate.

*this took a long time, folks, like, hours.
Easy Vegan Wheat Bread for the jam, both tomato and sumac-elderberry. This makes huge loaves, btw. Below you see the wonder that is sumac-elderberry jam. Behold. And, lo, it was good.
Read "World Made By Hand"- really fun, great characters, post-apocolyptic... what could be better! It was like Garrison Keillor meets the end of the world!

Started "The Doomsday Book" by Connie Willis, another apocolyptic book. Pretty good, engaging.

No knitting.

Jam, man!

What We Had For Dinner Last Night;

Roasted Eggplant and Lentil Soup based off of this recipe...

1 large eggplant, quartered lengthwise
3 T olive oil
1/2 C French lentils
1/2 C moong dal
14 large sage leaves
2 C water
1/2 t onion powder
1/4 t garlic powder

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place eggplant on a rimmed baking sheet and drizzle with 1 T olive oil. Season with salt. Bake 30m or until very tender.

Meanwhile, in a med saucepan, cover the lentils with 2" water, salt with 1/2 t salt and add 2 sage leaves. Bring to boil, lower heat and simmer 20m. Blend in blender with 1 C water and pour into soup pot.

Remove eggplant from oven, scrape flesh into blender and blend with 1 C water. Add to lentils in pot. Season with garlic and onion powder, salt and pepper. Stir in 1 T olive oil.

Fry the sage leaves in 1 T olive oil on high, 30s per side. Garnish soup with fried sage.

This was pretty good, if you haven't fried sage before, you really should, it's quite good!


The above is what I hovered over seemingly all day as I tried to make Sumac Elderberry Jam. I did persevere and We Have Jam!! More pics later. I think it's very good, I suppose I would. The idea is that the tartness of the sumac is supposed to heighten the flavor of the elderberries and I think they are a good combination.

Sumac Elderberry Jam

2 C sumac extract*
2 C elderberry juice**
4 C sugar
1 package Pomona's Universal Pectin

Boil up your sugar, sumac and elderberry. Add your pectin as per instructions on the package. Boil until it thickens and pour into jam jars. Boom! You've got jam!

*place 4-5 heads sumac in tea towel, tied up, cover with water and soak overnight
**pick 2 C worth of elderberries, cover with water and boil. Mash through strainer and reserve juice. Add water if needed to make 2 C juice.

I think if I do this next year, I'll use regular pectin and I'll not soak as many sumac heads as I did (I soaked an entire pot full and so now I've got sumac extract in the fridge). I also will perhaps leave the elderberry skins and seeds in to see if there's enough pectin in them to set without adding pectin. Must google this.

Purple Viking potatoes


melon! so refreshing!
shell beans- I'm using these in soup today, excited to see what it will be like...
fresh sage! used in soup above
tatsoi- bigger this time!

Think Of The Blanket

What We Had For Dinner-
Spicy Peanut Spaghetti w/ Thai Basil

1/2 lb spaghetti (12)
1/4 C thai basil, packed
1/4 C oil (16)
2 T creamy peanut butter (5)
1 T peanut oil (4)
1 T soysauce
1 large clove garlic, roughly chopped
2 t sugar
1/2 t salt
1/2 t cumin
1/8 t chili garlic sauce

Boil pasta.
Blend all ingredients (except pasta) in food processor.
Drain pasta (you don't have to drain it super thoroughly).
Mix and eat. Yum!

This recipe came about because I didn't want to make pesto yet again and I was too lazy/didn't have the ingredients for the recipe our CSA sent this week for Thai basil. Said recipe did use peanuts etc and it kind of reminded me of a spicy peanut spaghetti recipe I'd made before, so I just subbed in peanut butter and blended it all up and added cumin for some reason and voila! It was really tasty. You should try it!

Next up is the first steps toward making Elderberry Sumac Jam. Eldermac Jam? Suberry Jam? Let's just call it good. Above you see the humble Elderberry. We had a bush of these in our yard growing up and I loved eating them. So, it was kind of tedious removing all the berries into the measuring cups to make 2 C, but it was also sort of zen. Don't eat any unripe berries, they're toxic.
Here you see my giant pot. Inside is all of the sumac, wrapped up in two tea towels, soaking away for the night. Some recipes call for mashing up the sumac (or even blending it!) and boiling it and then straining it etc. but that seemed messy and unsanitary or something (never mind me) so I just soaked them in the cloths. Maybe I only soaked out the tannins or something and not the malic acid, who knows. I think it will serve the purpose. As you can see below, it turned the cloths red-brown. I mixed a teaspoon of the sumac juice, a teaspoon of the elderberry juice and a teaspoon of sugar together this morning and it tasted really good. I'm excited. Today I will procure the canning supplies (I'm a cannin' virgin!) and then "Canning, ho!".

I typed out my lace pattern and saved it, so I can go back to it if I ever want to knit an entire blanket out of it or whatever. Now I'm kind of at a loss for the cabin blanket, I should grab some of my stash yarn and start working on it. Oh, and figure out if I have enough. Oh, and here's the real deal on that, my husband will kill me (this is a personal joke between us- I always rip out my work and reuse the yarn for whatever next catches my fancy), because I want to use the blue and green yarn that I bought for Samus and I just checked on Ravelry and I DO have enough to knit the blanket I think and this is so typically me- I start a project in the Fall, specifically a sweater project, vowing that this is the year that I will knit a sweater and then I stall and then I eventually rip it out. Yep- 8 months later and I'm bailing. But it's for a good cause, really! Think of the blanket, dear!

No reading; planning the next Great American Novel- will get back to you on this...

Sumac.

What We Had Last Night;
Boiled Red Potatoes Fried Up in the Skillet with Oregano From Our Backyard (and lots of olive oil and some salt)
Easy Macaroni and "Cheeze"

This is sumac. I got it from my in-laws yard (thereby eliminating the risk of it's being sprayed with chemicals). Those hairs? The red stuff? Is malic acid, which is very tart. It dissolves in water. If my neighbor lets me pick some elderberries out of her hedge, I'm going to try my hand at Elderberry Sumac Jam.

See, the original idea was to make sumac, the spice, but I just can't figure out how to get those little hairs off of the seeds!! Maybe if I tumbled them about in a sealed container with some rock salt?!? But then there's all this other stuff you can't see tucked in between the branches and the stem, this brown stuff? That I don't think you're supposed to eat? I'm stumped.
So I'm going to make jam. Apparently, you can also make lemonade.
Isn't it pretty?

Aebleskiver, aebleskiver, aebleskiver.

Wow! What a weekend!! We. did. a. ton. of. stuff...
We went blueberry AND apple picking at Cain's Orchard! This was the best. I mean, check out that view below! The blueberry bushes and the apple trees were right within walking distance of each other, and they were both packed with blueberries and apples!! So bounteous!


We got to ride out on the tractor, which was such a seminal experience for D. when he was a child, we tried to pass it on to the girls last year when we went to an orchard near our home to pick apples, but THERE WAS NO TRACTOR! Bah. This was so, so much cooler. Also, the apple trees you can pick from are not in the parking lot. Also, there are no semi trucks bringing in all the apples you see already bagged up in the store (the owner outed an orchard near our home, the one we went to last year, actually, and told us that they sell apples from another orchard- SCANDAL!).
This, my friend, is a bushel of apples.

Oh, I also got an aebleskiver pan at the store at Cain's. Whoah- there was so much kitcheny goodness there I almost peed! Seriously. I'm kicking myself for not picking up another set of measuring spoons... Anyway, I'm really excited about the aebelskiver pan because you can use it to, duh, make aebleskiver, but also Poffertjes, appam and takoyaki. It was totally serendipitous that, after seeing this post on aebleskiver pans, I went to Cain's and saw one there! Can't wait to try it out (although wikipedia tells me I got the pan for a gas stove, not an electric, d'oh!)!

We also had another experience of Wisconsin's beauty! We went on a hike with some friends to Wildcat Mound. Let me tell you, we are going back there when the leaves have turned!!! Gorgeous views of rolling hills, sandstone bluffs, beautiful pines... incredible! It was deserted on a Sunday morning and we and the kids had fun clambering up rocks, tasting pine nut seeds, playing in the sand, picking up rocks and acorns and playing with sticks.

So I finished up Eragon, started the next one (can you believe it?).

No knitting.