Citrus sections are a delightful way to eat up the abundance of oranges and grapefruit this time of year. With all the pithy white and membranes removed, even the pickiest of eaters will delight in a bowlful. When I first had sectioned oranges at my in-laws’ house, I wondered how on earth they had spared…
Author: toadstoolsfairyrings
Real French Dressing
I’ll never forget the moment I stepped inside Tata Gabby’s apartment building in France. The beautiful wrought-iron grating clanged behind us as the door shut out the streets of Nice and the bright summer’s day. We were enveloped in dimness as we walked up two flights of beautifully tiled stairs. I struggled to drag…
10 Ways To Celebrate A Destitute Christmas: #1. Scrumping Citrus
There is a sort of transcendental peace about poverty. I usually find the holiday season fun, but very stressful. The crush of shopping, making sure all the favorite holiday things are celebrated and everyone will get what they want, and all the worry about planning the holiday make me anxious. This year, when Black…
Barley And His Wives
This year turned out to be “The Year of the Rooster”. It had nothing to do with the Chinese zodiac, mind you. It was because everyone unloaded roosters on us. One day a neighbor showed up, shortly after the incident that led to the goats being jailed indefinitely behind permanent fencing (the neighbor to the…
Cassava Stuffing – An All Local/Homegrown Recipe
There is nothing to inspire thankfulness and gratitude more than sitting down to a meal that is all home grown. When all the sweat and worry is yours, when you have watched the seasons turn as small seeds became large plants, as chicks became pin feather-studded adolescents, and finally a flock of magnificent birds with…
Painting and Whitewashing
One thing that we had been meaning to do for way too long was to paint the inside and outside of the barn. It was sheathed mostly with recycled plywood we salvaged from the brewery that supplies us with small loads of malted barley mash for the pigs. Bare wood in Florida does not last…
Before The Frost
The first frost last night prompted us to glean what we could from the remainder of the summer garden – mostly roselle, small eggplants, and fiery-hot peppers. A beautiful magenta amaranth plant that had volunteered in the winter garden was harvested for soup greens. Ethan pulled up the entire hot pepper plants…
Wedding Lace
Last night I cast-on for my first-ever knitting commission: lace for a friend’s wedding. This pattern is one of those lace patterns that doesn’t have the easy row of knit or purl between lace rounds, but it is a nice challenge. Lace can feel so tedious, even if it is not so many stitches long…
Roselle Mock Cranberry Sauce
Roselle is one of those garden plants that hardly anyone knows about. I first saw it growing at Karen Sherwood’s farm about ten years ago, and was impressed as much by its striking appearance as I was with the flavor of some homemade soda Karen had made with it. It is common and well-known in…
Autum Colors
One of the Marina di Choggia pumpkins we pulled out of the garden in August Thai Red Roselle Down here we don’t get the stunning fall leaf display the way it happens up North. There are beautiful leaves to find, but the landscape is never lit up with brilliant reds, yellows, and oranges. …
Yarn Along: Lace
The cat insisted she be in the photo – I swear I didn’t set it up around her. It was all I could do to keep her from sitting on the lace. I mentioned in a previous post that I had tried in vain to find lace knitting patterns on Ravelry. I found a few,…
Tired Puppies
We picked up two Great Pyrenees puppies on Saturday. They are still little roly-poly bundles of fluff, but I could tell that they had grown since we had visited them just two weeks ago. Everyone was so excited. Puppies to play with! We have never had a puppy before, having gotten our previous dog Belle…
Toadstools And Fairy Rings 