Garden Planning

Our yard is currently still a snow-covered tundra, but eventually I'll be able to access the dirt again.

It's melted down some now, but this is what it started with.

One day.

In the meantime, I sketched out where the vegetables are going this year, planned out moving the composters, and put together a list of what to do and what to buy in Google Docs.

I need to sift the beds this year - take out a lot of the pebbles and whatnot - so hopefully it will thaw and dry out a bit soon so I can do that, then sift & spread compost, move the composters, and turn over the beds.

Eventually!

Old Family Recipes

This is what it looks like outside today:

That's the fish pond over there on the left, with the bubblers to keep it oxygenated.  So I figured today would be the day to make the nut roll.

Okay, it's six nut rolls, but still.

This recipe comes from my mom's grandmother Aunt Jo and is Croatian in origin.  The theme:  I need bigger bowls:

Proof three packets of yeast, you say?  The bowl was full-full by the time I was ready to add it to the mixture, and I put the plate under it just in case it spilled over in the meantime.

So yeah, you start with proofing three packets of yeast with a teaspoon of sugar and half a cup of warm water.  But really you start with putting two pounds of pecans (or walnuts, but pecans are better) in the food processor, one pound at a time if your food processor is small like mine.  You run them through that till they're finely ground, then put them in a bowl with a cup of sugar and a cup of brown sugar.  I had to up-size that bowl, too.  They can sit like that while you get the rest of the stuff ready, but you're eventually going to add a stick of melted better and half a can of evaporated milk or so.

Back to the dough.

So you put eight cups of flour in a big bowl. I used the biggest bowl I've got, a giant Pyrex mixing bowl, and I really wanted a bigger one.  Add to that a cup of sugar and a half a teaspoon of salt, and then cut in a pound of butter.

Yes, I've already mentioned five sticks of butter at this point.  Apologies to everyone I know who's trying to lose (or keep off) weight.

Once you've got the flour mixture crumbly, add the yeast mixture, a can of evaporated milk (12 oz.), and six egg yolks.  At this point it's really easier to mix with your hands, and you're going to knead it all together until the dough comes off both your hands and the bowl.  You may need to add a bit more flour.  The recipe says you can refrigerate the dough overnight if needed, but I've never seen anyone not just roll it out straight away.

Now you're going to go back and finish mixing the nut mixture; add the melted stick of butter and half a can of evaporated milk, and then add as much more of the milk as you need to get the mixture spreadable.

Divide the dough into six parts.  Roll one part out into about a nine by twelve inch rectangle and spread with a sixth of the nut mixture.

Roll it up long-ways and put it on a greased (or lined) cookie sheet.  Mom fits three on a pan somehow, but I went with two.

These are going to bake at 350F for thirty to thirty-five minutes; ten minutes before they're done, you brush them with an egg glaze (one egg plus two tablespoons of water) and then bake until they're golden.  Accept that they're going to split; I don't know yet how to prevent this, but I suspect it has to do with the yeast, so different a rolling tightness or possibly even just cookie sheets without sides might make a difference.

The nice thing about pan lining paper is you can just kinda slide it off the pan onto the counter once they've cooled a bit.

If you're going to eat it right away, dust the top with powdered sugar.  Otherwise you can wrap them in plastic wrap, then foil, then put them in freezer bags to freeze.

The recipe as I've got it from Mom:

Croation Nut Roll from Millie Krilich (note: I don't actually know who Millie Krilich is, since that wasn't my Mom's grandma Mom said Millie was the friend Aunt Jo got the recipe from - she tried a bunch of them, and this was the one she liked best)

First - mix 3 pkgs. dry yeast in 1/2 cup warm water in a small warm bowl & add 1 tsp. sugar & set this aside while you're mixing the items below:
Use large mixing bowl - cut together

• 8 cups flour
• 1 lb. butter or margarine
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp. salt

When you've got the mixture above crumbly, add:

• 1 can Milnot (evaporated milk)
• 6 egg yolks
• & the yeast mixture

Knead to a nice smooth dough.  Add more flour if necessary.  You can knead right in the bowl till it leaves fingers and bowl.  Or knead on floured place on table.

Cover bowl & refrigerate over night or you can roll out immediately.

Divide into 6 balls.  Roll out to about a 9 x 12 inch size (approximately).  Spread filling (ingredients below) on rolled out dough.  Roll with finger tips to make a tight, small roll.  Bake on greased cookie sheet at 350 degrees (usually can fit three to a sheet) for about 35 minutes.  10 minutes before they are done, brush with the following glaze: 1 egg beaten with 2 T water.  Put back in oven till light browned.

Mix:

• 2 lbs walnuts or pecans (ground fine)
• 1 c. white sugar
• 1 c. brown sugar

Add 1 stick of melted margarine or butter.  Mix in 1/2 can Milnot and stir.  Add more Milnot until mixture spreads easily.

Pumpernickel, Day 3

Yes, I know, there was no Day 2.  Day 2 was mostly uninteresting; after twelve hours, the mixture hadn't done anything, so I popped it in the oven and turned on the light (one of the recommendations if your kitchen is too cold).  Then when I checked it last night it was finally making bubbles, so I fed it (50g flour, 50g water) and put it back in.  Hopefully I have a relatively long-lived oven light.

This morning I took it out, and it had definitely grown; I threw out half, fed it again, and popped it back in the oven.  It's in the smelly phase; supposedly once the preferred yeasts are growing it won't smell so bad.

Yeah, yeah, I probably need to clean the oven.

So today I'm snowed in; we've got about five inches of snow and sleet, and now it's doing some kind of mix of rain and freezing rain.  It's noon, and our street still hasn't been cleaned.  Supposedly most of this is supposed to melt by tomorrow, and I'll be able to go to work again.

Those plants way in the back? Those are my brassicas that are in denial about winter.

Ice!

So I came home tonight and discovered that our pond is well and truly on its way to icing.

We have bubblers in it for the fish to hopefully keep them alive over the winter; you can see the four tubes pretty well in this:

Bubblers have an interesting side effect apparently:  little ice tubes, like you get in the sediment by volcanic vents in the ocean.  The flash didn't cooperate as well here, but this is a closer shot of them:

I'm curious what it will look like in a couple weeks when we've had some cold for a while.

First snow

It's a good thing I harvested the broccoli on Tuesday!  A little after two o'clock this afternoon, this started:

By four o'clock it looked like this outside:

When I left at about five-thirty, I had something more than an inch of snow on my car.  It's been three years today since I got my car, and I think it may have snowed a little then, too.  But not like this.

And of course, while I upgraded from a jacket to a coat today, I didn't bring a hat.

The drive home wasn't bad, although parts of it were slushy.  There was a car spun off on the opposite side from where I spun off a couple years ago; there was a trooper and a tow truck there.  This was before that, in Schoharie County still:

Closer to home the snow isn't sticking as much, but we've got a bit of a layer on the back yard.  (Looks like they're saying about two inches.)  This does kind of nix my idea of giving the lawn a last trim this weekend.

Clouds

Driving home yesterday, I saw cloud patterns I'd never seen before.  They were a couple miles ahead of me; it was raining intermittently, occasionally heavily.  (Sorry for the blur - my phone doesn't have stabilization for its pictures.)

As I got closer, this is what I could see:

It was kind of neat, because they looked like the women they used to carve onto the prows of ships.  Here's a little bit closer:

Basically, that was what the back-edge of the front looked like; this is what it looked like on the other side:

Bonus picture:  a Schoharie Creek fog snake, from back in September.

Schoharie Creek

I've been driving across Schoharie Creek to get to work for over six years now.  At first it was three times a week, mostly in the afternoon or evening, since I was working part time.  For three years now it's been five days a week.

Irene was not kind to Schoharie County.  Other places - Greene County in New York and much of Vermont - were hit harder, and neighborhoods along the river in Schenectady and Troy in New York saw flooding.  Relief and recovery efforts are underway; the small towns may take years to get back to normal.  The Gilboa dam is sound - for now - but it's in the back of everyone's mind.

I-88 bridge across Schoharie Creek was barricaded.  Traffic was diverted onto Route 7.

When Schoharie Creek came out, every bridge across it - from the Route 30 bridge in North Blenheim to the New York State Thruway and Route 5S bridges in Fort Hunter, where the Schoharie flows into the Mohawk River, were shut down.  I don't know that they were all underwater, but there was water across I-88.  That scenario I had been mapping in my head (How do I get home if the dam goes?) didn't even require the dam breaking - it just had to have record flood levels.  Luckily for me, I was on the home-side of the bridges when it happened.  I just couldn't go to work until the bridges reopened.  With the Mohawk also over its banks and many of its bridges closed, I'm not sure I could have even detoured north of the river to get there.

Schoharie Creek, about five years ago, was the inspiration for the elemental dragons I created for one of my Dungeons & Dragons settings.  Some mornings when you come down the hill on I-88, just past the 103 mile marker heading west, there's a snake of fog above the creek, tracing its route through the valley.  Unfortunately I'm driving when I see it, because I would love to get a picture of it.  Schoharie Creek has a mist dragon.

Storm damage

Not our place, my folks:



They had hurricane-force wind gusts Tuesday night; their power will be out for a while. The barn is about 150 years old. It's mostly a hay/straw-barn, although while they had hogs (there are a few left, but they're mostly gone), the pens along the east side were hog pens. The place has been a hog farm for a long time.

That picture looks east-to-west at the buildings below. (Not a live Google maps link, just a screen capture.)



Fascinatingly, Google's using the USDA Farm Service Agency maps. I say fascinatingly because transcribing field data on these maps at the local office was part of my first paid job. (Up and to the right of the building on the far left, you can see the cows. The picture is several years old, because the white cow has been dead a couple years now.)

Rain O.O

So, I stopped at the post office to mail a card on my way home. This was right next door:



That's Cobleskill Creek. Usually by the point it gets this far, they've closed that bridge in the background, but they hadn't done that yet when I was going home.

Argh

Ok, so I live in New York, right? Not "The City," the rest of the state. And I should be used to it, since southern Indiana's weather is crazy, and I lived there almost twenty years, and I've been in New York almost ten, but...

71 today, 45 tomorrow? What is October thinking, dammit? Space heater or fan, make up your mind already.

Gah, snow

I went to refill my prescription today, and on the drive home, I saw snowflakes!  NO!!!  Make the winter go away!