"It is good to be alone in a garden at dawn or dark so that all its shy presences may haunt you and possess you in a reverie of suspended thought"

-James Douglas

time seems like it's bizarre, lately. like, i can't wrap my mind around the fact that it's ALREADY the end of November. everyone is just as crazy, if not more crazy, than i. this leads to spidzer Thanksgiving plans.

for dinner at my mom's we don't need to bring anything, but want to. so...sauteed brussels sprouts w/lemon and pistachios,it is.
plus, i want to make a vegan pecan pie, but do not, despite hours(yes, hours) of searching, have a recipe. they're all too slightly different and i don't know which direction to go w/it.

i'll let you know, maybe.

also, we're having Thanksgiving at mom's on Daniel's birthday, so i might make him some sort of cake, i just don't know. i mean, i like cake and i guess that decides it. i like cake.

i haven't been reading enough lately and i can feel it in my brain. it's like it's short circuiting or something.

"luckily" winter's on the way. so, lots of time for reading.

planted a couple herbs in small pots for the winter. brought in the oregano and thyme that aunt Janice brought us and our rosemary plant. newly sprouted are a bunch of cilantro and a few dill, plus a bunch of catnip that i'm trying to use cat-mind control to try and save so that they can grow at all before they get attacked/eaten. oh yeah, and a bunch of sage that, if you ask me, is one of the best-looking herbs out there.

i will now medicate my brain w/coffee and recipe-searching.

“What fun is it being cool if you can't wear a sombrero” -Calvin and Hobbes

Salsa verde.
We grew tomatillos.
(I hate that this computer doesn't know Spanish-therefore it squiggly underlines verde and tomatillos b/c it thinks that i misspelled them)
Didn't have any of the peppers the recipe called for, so i used 2 of the small super-hot ones that my step-dad gave us from his garden, and it burninated my mouth, but was otherwise good.

20 tomatillos
2 hot peppers
2 cloves garlic
appx. 4 T lime juice
salt
cilantro
1/2 onion

besides my mouth being on fire, it turned out fairly well.
have a bunch of tomatillos left, i think i'll give it a day or two and try again, minus the burning!

“I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion" -Henry David Thoreau

had a BUNCH of pumpkin puree left from when i made the ravioli. wasn't really ready to make more ravioli, so i made some pumpkin, cranberry, walnut muffins.

every recipe that i could find called for either brown sugar or molasses, which there was neither of, in our house,so i searched and searched and finally found one that called for neither. but it didn't seem altogether right,so i altered it,very slightly.

2 C flour (1 C w wheat, 1C white)
1/2 C sugar
1 T baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1/2 t cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg
15 oz. pumpkin puree(yes, our measuring cups have ounce measurements and i forgot to look at what that equated to...)
1/2 C cranberry (i would recommend cutting each cranberry in half)
1/2 C walnuts(smashed)

they are pleasantly not too sweet,but fruity and pumpkin-y. had one then w/soup and it was perfection. just had one w/coffee and it was just as good.

"We dare not trust our wit for making our house pleasant to our friend, so we buy ice cream." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

i made pumpkin ravioli,again. after looking back to last year's MND-posts, i realized about half-way through making this year's that i did not actually post too much about it and that i'd written all of the dough and filling-making stats in my "recipe book" (very commonly called a cookbook...FYI.)

so, i guess i will post last years' recipe:
dough: 2.5 C flour
appx. 1 C water
2t olive oil
salt

filling:
brown sugar
(vegan)butter
nutmeg
pepper
sage
vinegar
oh, and pureed pumpkin.

this year's recipe:

dough:same

filling:
pureed pumpkin
water
garlic powder
S&P
cinnamon
nutmeg
ginger
vegetable oil

and a critique of both:
the critique of last year's will have to be from memory,which, if you know me,is not terribly reliable. let's see, it was really, really good. there.
this year's was clearly a lot different. i don't think that this year's filling was as "smooth" as last year's. it seemed...chunkier? which isn't to say that it wasn't good. i just baked some pumpkin inards and Cuisinart-ed it. it definitely wasn't as sweet of a filling. the sweet filling offset the savory-ness of the sauce, if i remember right. this time we made a garlic-oil-sage sauce for it. i was satisfied.

*shrug*

still have a bunch of pumpkin left. will make more filling using a sweeter take on the recipe. i froze about a dozen and will make a nice,tidy comparison at a later date.

hmmm. i wonder how whole wheat flour would taste for the dough? i'll stick to perfecting the filling first...

oh, i also baked the apple pie-pocket-things that i froze this last summer and besides one leaking all over the tray, they were perfect and eaten w/ice cream...you know, b/c it's almost winter. and nothing says 'good-times' like ice cream when it's frigid outside...

lousy smarch weather!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/dining/29toma.html

//A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.// -Carl Reiner

again, i'm always so bad about this...i guess my conviction w/everything waxes and wanes and i'm sorry.

tomatoes are odd. they're all incredibly late this year and some seem to be diseased w/ some kind of "blight". mom's tomatoes, too, so i know that it's not something that we did wrong,specifically.

hopefully, before it gets too much colder there will be enough healthily ripened to make a couple ounces of reserve sauce for winter.

speaking of which, i keep putting off freezing latkes from our potatoes and making one last batch of apple sauce from the apples i picked a couple of weeks ago.

i also want to make zucchini bread,which i haven't made yet this year as we weren't blessed w/any amount of zucchini, this year.

everything just seems really stunted and slow-going as far as the garden is concerned,this year, and it's gonna be like trying to garden in Antarctica,soon.

bat-peep time!

after returning from Kristyn's wedding too much later than we should have and subsequently only sleeping 6 hours, i'm lazy. add to this that it looks depressing and overcast out, i did one quick garden walk-through and in about a week we're going to be tomato-ed. a pumpkin is perfectly shaped and the size of an infants' head.(ew, what?) okra looks like a couple might happen sometime maybe next week...one of our pepper plants flowered! due to some unfortunate-pepper-happenings(or not-so-much) i have no idea which kind it is,but whatever! i like peppers of all kinds, save roasted red ones...which i don't think you can just grow all roasted and red...a few cucumbers have started. cucumber flowers,despite their yellow-ocity are really pretty. i don't have the mental-energy to think about any of this right now...