The Sunchoke Dilemma

Holly dropped off a beautiful sample of her winter CSA supply this weekend, including her recent post subject:  The Sunchoke.  Ah, the sunchoke.  As if I know what the heck to do with the little ugly root, also known as a "Jerusalem Artichoke."  No, it's nothing like an artichoke by looks or taste.  It is, however, high in iron and fiber, and it's flowers are lovely and belong to the daisy family.  Oh, and it's also known as an earth apple, which is weird, since in french a potato is called "pomme de terre," meaning "apple of the earth."  Anyway, I sensed a challenge when Holly said that neither she nor Jess (csa partner, blogger, and creator of the lovely items at Barefoot by the Sea) knew what to do with their sunchokes.  So what did I do?  I made pea soup, of course!

1 lb package of dry peas
12 cups water
1 small onion
2 carrots, chopped
4 Tbs butter
1.5 tsp salt
.5 tsp pepper
1 or 2 ham hocks
3 peeled sunchokes

Rinse peas, then combine them with water, onion, carrots, butter, and hocks.  Cover and heat to boiling for 30 minutes.  Then add salt and pepper, cover and simmer for 20 more minutes.  Add grated sunchokes (I used a small cheese grater) to the soup and cook for an additional 10 minutes.  This leaves the sunchokes tender but not soft and adds texture to your soup.  Hocks can be removed and boned, the ham placed back into the soup.  Cook it up until it's at the consistency you desire.  We love pea soup at our house.  Well, Joe and I love it, and the girls are in training.

...and the weekend's not even over!

We called around to make sure everyone's chickens were still living before we realized that Boogie had gotten into some red stain.  Oh, puppy.  

The girls' tunnel will never get old.  They've loved it since they were a year old!

Here's the set-up at my first-ever try at selling jam at a local fair.  I had a great time!

Good friends taking a break from tree-hunting at Boiling Springs tree farm in Dayton.

Ruby really takes after her father...

Quadrabatching

Today I mastered the quadruple batch.  That is to say that I successfully made 32 jars of  jam in one pot, then processed the jars in two baths.  "Success" means that the jam jelled properly, the lids sealed as they should, and it tasted so yummy that I talked to myself at length about how good it was while scooping spoonful after spoonful from the bottom of the leftover jar straight into my mouth.  What are you doing making jam in November, you ask?  Your raspberries don't live through the late fall frost?  Neither do mine.  These are local frozen berries, of course.  Enough to make a bunch of jars for holiday gifts and this weekend's upcoming holiday fair at the Dayton School.  Yep, I'm actually participating in a local fair.  Oooo-eeee!  I'll let you know how it goes.

Holiday Photo 2010

I originally had visions of dressing our three girls in cute white cable knit sweaters, kahki pants, and little girly hiking boots-- oh, and matching pig-tails. I'd bring them to the beach, a peaceful drive of course, and I'd set up something formal-- they'd be smiling as if totally restful, looking longingly toward the horizon, thinking deep 3 and 4 year old thoughts all the while.  Needless to say, I didn't even get as far as "Go get your sweaters on."  It was a dress-yourself free-for-all in the house this morning, after which Erin and I toted the girls, including Althea, Erin's cutest-ever 1-year-old, out to Devin's camp site for some Christmas card hopefuls.  Here are the results.  Let me know which one you like the best, if any.

And here are lovely Erin and Thea-Thea, which sounds like "FiFi" when my girls say her name.  It was a beautiful day for a walk, and Thea's a good little tree-climber!

Winter Project 1

You know that winter's pretty much here when I start a series of unnecessary projects around the house.  Here's the first.

I never ended up liking the light fixtures I picked out for the kitchen in our house 2 years ago when the place was built.  Specifically, I hated the one above our dining room table.  So, when the kids were in their most wild mid-afternoon craze, I upped and turned off the power in the whole house, not really knowing which individual breaker to switch for the one light.  I took apart the fixture, removed the light bulb and the socket in its entirety, and waited for Joe to get home.  Poor guy.  He gets in and I say, "Ok, honey.  I have this great idea about replacing our kitchen light fixtures with big old ball jars.  What do you think?"  He took one look at what I had done and promptly replaced the light bulb part of the fixture, then turned the power back on.  Oh, he also drilled a whole in a wide-mouth ball jar cover and added a screw top lid to the fixture in case I decided to randomly decide on a jar while he wasn't looking.  I know it's hard to believe, but this already looks better than what was there before:
 

Next, I hopped in the van on a cold and rainy Monday, kids in tow, and ran up to Peter Snell's antique place on route 202 in Hollis Center.  Now, if you've ever driven by the place, you might not guess it to be the kind of spot where you'd find fine art or other beautiful vintage items.  On the contrary, however, (I always wanted to say that!), the acreage of beat-up trailers, broken-down dump trucks, and other modes of ugly storage is jam-packed (note use of "jam") with tons and tons of old and perfect items.  From old windows to ladders, tools to toys, furniture to jars, it is a picker's dream.  Yeah, I stole that term right off my favorite tv show, American Pickers.  So I drove the van around the dirt roads that wind about the place and right up to the little trailer I know to be filled with antique jars.  Ball jars, clear, green, blue, you name it.  Malted milk jugs, mustard jars, liniment jars, all kinds of funky old glass stuff.  It was awesome.  I bribed the girls with their own individual sticks of gum while they waited for me on the steps of the trailer.  Oh, and by the way, Peter Snell mentioned that American Pickers will be featuring his place in August next year!  How cool is that?  That practically makes me famous!  Enough about my fame.  This is what I brought home:

And this is what I did before Joe arrived home from work on the same afternoon.  The photo's not great, but I'm telling you, I love it!  I can't wait to use a couple more of the jars to do the island lights in the kitchen.

Fall Randoms, 2010

The Rubys

Well, I wasn't sure just how to spell that since the Rubys I'm talking about are two little girls' names.  So is it Rubies?  I don't think so.  I'm going to make up my own rule on this one and go with "Rubys."  Anyway, before I get to the two Rubys, here's the back story.  A couple weeks after Charlie and Ruby were born, we learned that Ruby's aorta was too narrow in one spot for blood to get through the way it is supposed to.  Without getting into too much detail here, the aorta is the big important artery that runs from the heart to other important parts of the body.  The doc decided that Ruby ought to have this narrow piece of her aorta removed, and the wide parts sewn back together.  Thus, when Ruby was 4 weeks old, she had heart surgery to repair a coarctation of the aorta.

When you have a baby who stays at the Barbara Bush wing at Maine Medical Center in Portland, at least where Ruby was located, you share a room with at least one other baby and her family, if not a few other babies and families.  We happened to share our hospital room with another Ruby and her parents.  Two Rubys?  Ruby R. is 4 months older than Charlie and our Ruby, yet when we met she was just a tiny thing.  She had an esophageal condition which prevented her from being able to keep food down in any way.  She was hungry all the time, and her parents couldn't do anything to help her.  Everything she ate would come back up.  I mean everything.  So, the two Ruby's were repaired, and our families have stayed in touch ever since.  We get together at least once a year, as we truly believe our friendship was meant to be.  This year, Meghan, Ruby, and baby Ramona (a year old!) came down for our annual play date, and the kids acted as if they see each other every day.  The Ruby's always end up in cahoots, as if they understand at the age of 3 that they have a common bond.  I'm telling you-- meant to be.  And yes, both girls are super-healthy now.

Can you pick out the twins in this photo?  It's getting harder and harder to tell!