Kitchen Styling

Years ago now, I had the fun of designing a layout and installing (with Jeff and my father) kitchen cabinets into what was a bare room with a stove and a fridge in our 1920's house. I fitted things around the existing windows and woodwork, so there was (thankfully) no ripping out other than a few short lengths of chair rail. Ever since then, I have been looking for a plate rack to go on one remaining bare wall. I finally found one that would be well suited!

Here is a before picture showing the small stretch of wall above my dry goods area/rolly cart.

Jeff did some measuring and affixed the metal hanger to the wall. (We settle for 'more or less' measurements in an old house!)

And then he hung the rack for me! (That's the July 7th batch of pickles below the shelf.)

It was set up just in time for decorating with some new Emma Bridgewater pottery I'd ordered from England in the recent sale. I love the way the new pottery mixes and matches with my mostly vintage hand-me-downs and the few newer things I've collected.

On the top shelf, the striped mugs are espresso sized. The polka dot pitcher is a 2 pint sized measuring jug. I plan to use the Union Jack creamer for cream/milk and the 'baby' mug for sugar. (At some point I will have to get something with the blue stars motif to go with my striped pieces and they will represent the 'stars and stripes' so I do not appear unpatriotic!) The little glass compote in the picture below is my salt cellar, with an espresso spoon for scooping. The dish was from my Grandmother, along with the basket and the mini cutting board (which I had given her when I was little).

I just love the vintage look of the Happy Cows mugs...here's a close up with a couple of older Britains metal toys.

Not all of my new things fit on the new shelf! (It was a very nice sale!) Some of my new things will go in the dining room or pantry. I bought a half price ('first') 'Christmas' teapot to go with the robin and berries mugs, bowls and small plates I've had for 5 years or so. The pieces mix and match so well and I actually think they are fine for any time of year.

I got a bunch of 'seconds' of plates and pasta bowls and mugs in the sale in the Hellebore pattern. The seconds were much less expensive and I don't have to worry about stacking them on shelves or putting them in the dishwasher since they come with some blemishes to begin with. I was so excited with my new things that I took the picture before I even washed off the grease pencil seconds marks. I splurged for 'firsts' on a matching teapot and jug though, for extra nice display purposes as well as use.

And the pasta bowls. Won't my homemade pasta be even better served in these?! The two little French bowls can hold fresh, grated cheese and olives to go with the pasta! Or pickles, when I am serving other things.

A certain tea towel ended up in my cart too...

The pottery from England was packed very securely with compostable brown paper, so after unpacking, I hauled the boxes out to our bin in the garden to throw all the paper in. Of course, the dogs thought this was great fun and that the box was a toy for them. Saffy claimed it for awhile and then finally let Silas have a turn too.

Perhaps they thought they were going to go for a ride? They do get wheelbarrow rides when they hop into that, so maybe they thought it was something similar. Such silly dogs!

There are still a few finishing touches I'd like to get to at some point in the kitchen, like maybe replacing some doors and putting some kind of rack/hooks? on one wall of the pantry, but for the most part the kitchen is done. Anything that wears out can hopefully be replaced with something very similar. For example, we had to get a new faucet this spring. It was impossible to get the same one as before, but we got a new one with an even taller spout than the last one and it is actually even better to use! I like when new things are better then old...often times I feel like it's very much the opposite.

It takes me years to get house things done, but fortunately part of the fun of housekeeping and decorating is the process. Now, I'm going back to arranging and rearranging my new pieces of pottery!

Garden & Cooking Update

Today, I pickled 8 more pints of pickles. Here are the cukes just after washing. It was hot work picking all those, to say nothing of the canning process!

When it gets a little cooler in the evening, it is fun to wander around and peer under leaves. Here is a pumpkin!

I am slowly getting the tomatoes tied up. There are a number of small, green tomatoes.

Another view of tomatoes.

Three varieties of string beans are in this row, so I will be able to cook up mixes of yellow and green types.

Jeff stood next to some sunflowers for scale.

Beans, 4 o'clocks and 2 rows of zinnias.

4 o'clocks.

A close up of a gaudy, bright 4 o'clock bloom. I have a mix of colors. These broken color, peachy ones are some of my favorites.

The flowers outside the veggie garden are more subdued hues. Here are some balloon flowers by the house. They are slightly more purple than this picture shows...one of those colors that is hard for the digital camera to get.

A little bit of the herb bed.

Pretty coneflowers.

And, as if today wasn't busy enough with picking, pickling, tomato tying, a big UPS delivery, and more I forget...I made fresh 3 cheese ravioli! The filling is a mix of soft goat cheese, ricotta and Pecorino Romano with egg for binding.

They were delicious! Do you like my rustic squares? They were varied, but they all held together during cooking and that's the important thing.

There are already too many pictures in this post, so soon I will do another post to show you some of the lovely new things delivered recently to dress up my kitchen/dining room!

Fireworks

The weekend fireworks displays around here have been like no others before! With fireworks stores and big fireworks racks even in the grocery store, because of a recent change in the laws, it seemed like everyone was lighting off impressive displays in addition to the town shows.

As a result, we had to stay home with the neurotic (Silas) dog who gets panicky at the pop sound of bubble wrap or a pan with water droplets on the outside of it heating on the stove. You can imagine his reaction to neighbors three doors in each direction launching fireworks and setting off crackers! Then, the big town fireworks started and shook the ground.

Other than the dogs' reaction, the fireworks are very fun to see. Even though we didn't get to a party closer to the display, we still got a glimpse of the town fireworks from our yard as you can see from the collage.

Plus, we got to see fireworks displays in the distance, across the Bay, and far to the horizon because the land is so flat here.

4th of July Garden Tour

Although it is a New England tradition to have your peas ready for the 4th of July, my peas were grown, picked and pulled out by July 2nd this year! It was a very early season for peas this year. Goodbye peas...I will miss them, but I would get tired of shelling them if the season was longer. Pea time is short and sweet!

Today, Jeff and I prepared some more plastic mulch and laid it out on the garden where the peas were. This will conserve the water from the drip lines under the plastic and suppress weeds.

The squashes to the left of the above picture will now have room to grow out across the mulch. Also, when these seedlings get their first true leaves, I will plant them in the new sections of mulch. They are my second crops of zukes, summer squash and cukes.

Here is my current cucumber patch, abutting a row of tomatoes. The tomatillos are in the background in the tomato cages.

I need to get to work on tying up tomatoes. You can see they vary in size, so I will have a staggered harvest. The smaller plants were started outside. They will produce just as well as the early, indoor started seedlings, but will ripen later.

This is the tomato 'annex'. I had some more room away from the main block of tomatoes. Plus, you can see the zinnias.

I love cosmos in the garden, particularly inter planted with eggplants, but also with summer squash.

A row of eggplants. There are some more in the mixed row to the left of the picture. There are some gaps to the right where I will fill in later with second crops of things.

This is a rather pretty speckled Romaine lettuce.

A baby butternut squash.

And, almost ripe acorn squash...yes, in early July...what am I going to do with winter squash in July?! Good thing I love it, LOL!


Ok, not a garden picture, but I had to add it. As I headed out to the garden to take the pictures, Bandit was in his cardboard cat house I recently made for him. He was sleeping with one back leg hanging out the door. Is this the cat equivalent to me sleeping with a leg out from under the covers?

Hope you enjoyed the garden visit! Happy 4th of July!!

Pickles Before the 4th of July

I don't think I've ever pickled so early in the season before. Today, Jeff and I canned 8 pints of Bread and Butter Pickles!

I picked cukes and from those selected ones of similar size. Jeff washed them and I sliced them.

The sliced pickles went into a big bowl along with sliced onions. Some garlic went in on top to flavor, but was to be picked out later. I sprinkled on the pickling salt and covered it all with ice and it went into the fridge for 3 hours.

I like to prep everything in advance.

The jars were sterilized in the dishwasher, the big canning pot was brought to a boil and the cuke mixture was drained and put in a stock pot to be brought to a boil with the seasonings. A smaller pot on a back burner held hot water for the lids.

A peek in the pickle pot showing the cukes getting the distinctive color.

I didn't get a picture of filling the canning jars as that is a busy stage and has to be quick and sterile. Here's a close up of the finished pickles!

I'll probably make a few more batches this summer, so I have plenty to give away to family at Christmastime and some for us to eat too.

The Great Turtle Release

Yesterday, on our late afternoon trip around the yard, the dogs and I had just gotten around the corner of the barn, when we all spotted something walking across the lawn. I could hardly believe my eyes! It was a painted turtle!! You know from my posts that we have a pond behind our property, but also you've seen from the picture that it is quite far away. I'm am not sure where the turtle came from, but it seemed like we should transport it to the water and release it there, safely away from roads and lawn mowers and such.

I told the dogs to leave it alone, picked it up and was holding it when Jeff drove in from work. He was certainly surprised too! He got an old glass tank out of the barn and we put a little water in thinking the turtle might be feeling rather dry.

It was neat to look at, but we knew we needed to release it right away. It was pacing around the tank trying to find a way out.

Here is a close up of it all squeezed into the shell.

I leashed the dogs and they were very interested in the turtle, but were told to definitely not even think about eating it!

We all hiked toward the pond. On the way, along a grassier stretch than shown in the picture, there was a group of some kind of rodents squeaking under the grass. This was terribly exciting for the dogs who had to bury their noses in the grass to try to find rodents. I, nature lover that I am, am not so fond of rodents...especially ones hidden in ankle deep grass I'm wading through in rolled up pantlegs. I was worried a dog would scare one into running up my jeans! We managed to persevere through that and continued on.

Jeff set the turtle on the mud near the water and we all bid farewell to it. And it proceeded to sit there like a stone. You can see it in the center of the picture.

So, Jeff gingerly walked out further on the semi-dry mud and got the turtle to the waterline.

At last, its head came out and it pushed out into the water and submerged.

We headed back home, enjoying the rest of the walk with the dogs.

Hopefully the turtle is happy too!

'5 Minute' Bread

For years, I've been using a bread machine for kneading dough, mainly for pizza crust, but I've been wanting to try no-knead bread for awhile now. I recently got a couple of dough rising buckets so I could try it in a way that would work in limited space and not take up too much room in the fridge. (The dough buckets are more upright than a bowl.)

I have started with a basic recipe but plan to try some of the variations in the book Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes A Day and may get the sequel which has healthier, whole grain recipes.

I weighed the ingredients to be sure I had the right amounts. I opted to mix the ingredients by hand directly in the dough bucket. It was a cinch and there was hardly any clean up, basically just the spoon!

It rose very well on the counter for 2 hours. Here it is toward the end of the 2 hours, before I put it in the fridge.

A little over 24 hours later, I grabbed a blob of dough from the bucket, shaped it and let it rise for about 45 minutes.

Here is the baked boule with my fingers for scale. A nice amount of fresh bread for dinner and a little left for breakfast or snacking too. The flavor was excellent and the texture was nicely chewy.

We ate this first boule last night. The remaining dough in the fridge should make about 3 more small loaves during the next week. I think this technique is going to become a habit!