a tablescape mystery item?

Last week when my sister was thrifting without me she found this fun rack with six small covered ramekins.  They were white and she knows my penchant for small white dishes especially and white dishes in general.  So she grabbed it up and I set about researching it as to its use.

It has a chrome rack with a folding handle.  The ramekins hold 1/4 cup.  The rack holds them up off the table about 1/4 to 3/8 inches.  The covers rest on the lip but do not fasten.  Both the ramekins and the cute covers have raised fluting. Were they used for cooking something?  I tried to think of what I could cook in them that a quarter cup serving would be  the right amount for.  I had recently been making pot de cremes but it seemed small for that.  Was the rack with the handle for lifting the collection out of a water bath?  I had heard about but never cooked coddled eggs.  A quick google search for egg coddlers showed a similarly sized container but one with a screwed on metal lid.  None with a rack and none that matched my little cuties.  

 It kind of reminded me of the marsala dabba that I found a few weeks ago.

When the marsala dabba showed up at Goodwill it was something that I had not seen before but it had markings on the side so I was able to google it.  It holds Indian spices.  My new ramekins were not marked in any fashion.  I googled ceramic spice containers and found many sets of little dishes, many with covers and some with covers with a notched out area that held a tiny spoon.  Mine did not come with notches or tiny spoons.  Many of them were pairs or three matching pots on a rack or wood tray.  Some were called spice jars, some condiment jars.  There were none that are exactly like mine.

I may never know what their intended purpose was or how they were marketed and sold but I might give coddled eggs a try.  I am not into exotic spices yet and if I were I have that dabba to hold them.  As often happens I fully expect that when I quit looking for them I will discover their purpose.  Until then they will dress up my collection. 

Joining Tablescape Thursday at Between Naps on the Porch here.
 

yum

I don't know about where you live but in my neck of the woods there is a short window of time in late winter/early spring when Meyer lemons show up in our local produce sections.  I have been watching for them because awhile back I saw a recipe for a Meyer lemon margarita on the web.  It was a Rick Bayless recipe and it looked doable and good.  I don't drink a lot of margaritas but it is almost required, to my thinking, when at a Mexican restaurant.  Even then I usually choose a fruity, kind of sweet margarita.  (Peach is one of my favorites).  I am not really much of a tequila drinker aside from a shot of Don Julio in memory of my brother a couple of times a year. I was eager to try this recipe.

This year when the Meyer lemons were spotted I bought four bags and a bottle of tequila.  I only needed two but I also have the extras soaking in Everclear to make a batch of limoncello.  That post won't be written for another four weeks.

To make Rick's margarita the tequila is infused for four days with the lemon peel and then strained.  The simple syrup is cooked with additional Meyer lemon peel to infuse the syrup.  The Meyer lemon juice is collected for the third part of the recipe.  When the family was together at my mom's for Easter some of us  had a batch of margaritas.  It is made by the pitcher so it couldn't be easier.  Our ingredients were refrigerated and we poured it over ice to serve.  It had a strong tequila presence and was a little less sweet than I am used to but boy was it yummy.  It was easy to do and I tried to make it easier since I would be taking everything along.  When I had finished straining the tequila I poured it back into the bottle.  It would make two pitchers.  When I was done making the simple syrup I measured out the amount that I would need for a pitcher and placed it in small canning jars in the freezer.  I also measured out the juice and put the right amount for a pitcher in another canning jar.  When I headed into Mom's I grabbed the tequila, two jars of frozen infused simple syrup, and two jars of frozen lemon juice.  By the time it was time to throw together the drinks the frozen parts were still partially frozen and made for an icy drink when mixed together and poured over ice cubes.  

no ice in this picture but pretty yellow color

 Rick Bayless' recipe can be found here.

Cheers!

ooh la la French desserts

When my favorite thrift/estate store had a big sale in preparation for moving one of my treasures purchased was a stack of cookbooks.  I already have many, many cookbooks so I patiently poked thru their selections and grabbed several that I didn't already have.  Included in my choices was a small paperback book called Simple French Desserts that had been published in 2000..  I love all things kitchen related so many of the tools and dishes needed for these desserts were things that I had already been collecting.  I have individual souffle dishes, individual tart dishes  for creme brulee, other small dishes suitable for pots de creme and I had recently found a coeur a la creme mold and a kitchen torch.  I was set to go.

I didn't make the souffle, that will be for next time.  But this weekend provided a couple of opportunities for trying other recipes from the book.  On Saturday my brother was visiting at my parents and so we got together for supper.  My sister and her daughter and daughter's boyfriend joined us and I brought creme brulee for dessert.

On Sunday my son and his girlfriend were visiting and we got together at my parents' house again for dinner and this time I brought two versions of pots de creme, one chocolate and one coffee.

I did also make a coeur a la creme but it needed to drain for 24 hours so it wasn't ready for the weekend due to my not planning ahead. I also decided that since many of the dishes required separated eggs and I had whites left over that it was a good time to make another French goodie, macarons, with the whites.   Once I had a refrigerator stocked with the extra desserts it only made sense to arrange them on a tray and take a couple of pictures.

None of the dishes were particularly difficult but they did involve several steps and seemed to create a mountain of dirty dishes.  The pots de creme and the creme brulee are essentially custards and so they require egg yolks to be separated from the whites and beaten with sugar, cream that is heated, then strained, and then mixed with yolks and then once poured into the little individual dishes they are baked in the oven in a bain marie or water bath. They were served with creme Chantilly, a sweetened whipped cream.  The coeur a la creme required both whipped cream and whipped egg whites and the macarons, whipped egg whites.  My mixer got a work out. I must have washed that bowl and beater five or six times.  For the chocolate pots de creme the heated cream was poured over chocolate to melt it.  For the cafe au lait pots de creme the broken coffee beans were steeped in the hot cream to infuse the cream with a coffee flavor and then strained before mixing with the eggs.

creme brulee

crunchy sugar topping

cafe au lait in an espresso cup

cafe au lait, creamy coffee color

pot de creme

coeur a la creme with blackberry coulis

tasted good but difficult to serve prettily

macarons with meyer lemon buttercream

I love fussy cooking so this was right up my alley.     

 

Not exactly a tablescape but still joining BNOTP for Tablescape Thursday here.

farm update

The farm has been kind of busy the past weeks with lots of stuff going on.

It is maple sap season 

The weather is kind of sporadic so when the conditions are right, not too cold or not too warm, the sap is running.  There has been a lot of windy weather and  couple of times the wind has blown the buckets off the tree.  It is a small operation, I only have two trees, but this year I added two more buckets and taps which has doubled my capacity.  Since I have read that it takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup, I probably won't end up with more than a couple of pints of syrup but it is fun.

The winter greenhouse

The winter greenhouse is winding down and switching over to the spring season.  One experiment that I tried was last spring I bought a hanging basket that contained some strawberry plants.  The plan was that after spending the summer outside we would try to overwinter it in the greenhouse.  A few weeks ago I was pleased to see that it was flowering.

 and now it has one small white strawberry that is just starting to ripen.

  It doesn't look like much yet but I am encouraged to try more baskets next winter.  I have quite a bit of room for hanging baskets and some empty baskets.  Rather than buying them already planted at the nursery I will pot them up myself.

I also overwintered my rosemary and sage.  Some of my rosemary has been blooming for a while now.  These plants are two years old.  We started them from seed to be used on the tables at my daughter's and son-in-law's wedding party last summer..

The spring greenhouse

It is that time when the greenhouse gets too warm for winter greens and the plants bolt, turn bitter and go to seed.  It is also the time that the seedlings that I have started under lights in the basement are ready for transplanting from the trays that they were started in to their first pot, usually a red solo cup.  Since the bigger pots take up a lot more room as they are potted I have been gradually moving them to the greenhouse.  There have been some cold nights so I am back to running the milkhouse heater some nights but they seem to be doing well.

I started with tomatoes, peppers and herbs.  Now that more of them are moved outside I have been starting some of the other crops.  It has been damp and cloudy.  We are a ways away from the ground being ready for even early cold hardy crops much less tomatoes and peppers so they have some time to get bigger.

I am joining BNOTP for Met Monday here.
   

A fun project for a sad reason

My sister has been involved in a benefit for a young man who has cancer.  She is donating items for the silent auction.  The young man and his family are involved in rodeo so quite a few of the people expected to come to the benefit are 'horse folks' so she decided to do something horse related and we collected recipes for homemade horse treats.  She did the baking and I crafted  labels for her to tie onto the bags of treats.  I followed her theme and created labels that were a cowboy hat with the ingredients of the different treats listed on the back.  She made three baskets.  Here is one.

 Each basket included identical contents.  She made seven different treat recipes.  A clear bag held each treat and they were tied with a raffia bow and a cowboy hat tag was added to provide the name of the treat and a list of the ingredients used on the back.  A cute striped placemat lined the basket and a couple carrots and an apple rounded out the treats. 

The cowboy hat tag fronts and backs were cut on the cricut and assembled.  Each hat was made from six different card stocks.

 
She also made up baskets that held homemade cake donuts that were made by our parents.  Those baskets included two coffee cups and a selection of K cups including one called Donut Shoppe.  I also made tags for those baskets which were tied to one of the cups.  These tags resembled a disposable cup with a frosted donut along side.

Her kitties were very interested...

The benefit is raising money for a man in his early 30s who is fighting cancer for the second time.  His situation is not good and hopefully the money raised will help he and his new bride financially as well as letting them know that a concerned community is supporting them emotionally as well.

I am joining BNOTP for Met Monday here.

 

a little garden start

Today I was reading that warm weather in February can mean an early spring.  We are having a mild stretch.  Yesterday and today it was 60 and I think that a few more nice days are predicted before it cools off again and there is the potential for more snow.  Our last frost date for our zone is the third week in May.  I have been slowly working into the seed starting routine.  Last year I saved some seeds and purchased larger packets of others hoping to have quite a few seed varieties that wouldn't need to be ordered new.  So before I start whole flats of different seeds I am starting small amounts of them to check on their germination potential.  Then once I know what I have that is usable I will know what I need to order.  It was good to get everything set up, the heat mat out and the lights plugged in and working.  It is a good feeling.  So far I have some baby seedlings breaking thru the soil mix surface so I am encouraged by that.

The other thing that I am doing is getting ready for my second season of maple sap collecting and syrup making.  Last year I tentatively tried tapping one of my maple trees.  To be honest, I had never considered tapping the trees until the spring before when sap was dripping from some places high in the tree where we  had had some branches cut the previous fall.  I could hear it dripping on the ground.  So I bought one tap, bucket and cover and when that worked I bought a second.  I have two large maple trees in my yard, not sugar maples but they will work for making syrup.  My trees are large enough that they are supposed to be able to handle more than one tap and so today I bought two more taps, buckets and covers so this year I will double hopefully double my yields.  There is a magic formula of certain warm daytime temperatures and certain cooler overnight temperatures that stimulate the sap to move and I am not sure if the current temperature pattern is right but if it is I will be ready. 

A picture from last year.

Farm update

The warm weather has had some definite effects that I am grateful for.  The herd's water is staying thawed and I am glad to not have to fight with that morning and evening.  My yard and especially the area that I walk to the barn has been a sheet of ice and much of that has melted so it is a little safer.

I have also not had to run the little milkhouse heaters in the winter greenhouse for over a week.  This has been kind of a disappointing season for the winter greenhouse.  The cloudy winter has really negatively impacted the growth of the greens but also the lack of sun has not helped to  warmed up the greenhouse. On a sunny day the greenhouse will warm up to over 100+ degrees and then it will cool off somewhat slowly overnight.  Most of the days this winter the greenhouse was lucky to have a daytime temp in the 60s or 70.  Then it would cool off more quickly and need supplemental heat during the night.  We have not had more than a handful of those sunny days this winter.

As an experiment we tried overwintering some potted ferns of my sister's patio and a potted ghost pepper of Cait and Robb's both of which did not make it thru a frigid spell earlier this winter when it was really cold ( I want to say -20+ for 36 straight hours but don't quote me) and the greenhouse dropped to 28 degrees and it was enough below freezing to kill them.  My other experiment, a potted strawberry plant had a lot of brown leaves but now is having some new green growth.  We will see if it flowers and produces strawberries.  My hope was that it would fruit during the winter but even if we can get earlier berries in the spring that would be great.  I think next year I will try a few more.  I have room to hang quite a few and quite a few hanging baskets so I think that I will try a few more next year.

Our deer fence took a hit.  The first snow left the poles bent in half or leaning.  The plastic mesh seems to be okay so I am hoping that we can replace those posts with wood ones and be able to rescue it.  It is a big garden so a lot of holes to dig.  At the same time it will be an opportunity to reinforce the bottom edge to keep out the rabbits who last year found their way under.  I keep hoping that the rabbits will be afraid of the big dogs that live here but so far it does not seem to be the case.  I think they guard all of the animals on the farmsite and think that the rabbits in the yard and the pheasants in the grove are to be protected as well.  And I guess that is okay.

Joining Met Monday at BNOTP here.

a valentine table--next year

I didn't do Valentine's day.  I don't have pink or red or heart decor.  But yesterday my sister and I hit our closest Goodwill and I fell in love with and came home with some pieces that will work for next year.

I found a few pieces of a pink Fiesta.  Four dinner plates, three cereal bowls and four smaller bowls.  I have always been a fan of Fiesta but up until yesterday my only purchase was a white chop plate that a found while thrifting for $2 last year.  I have a set of my grandmother's vintage bowls that she gave to me a long time ago but I have not bought my own.  I drool over them when I see them new on display in the retail stores but this was the first that I have found this many matching ones in a thrift store. 

The square quilt was a $5 purchase at the same Goodwill.  It is beautiful and in great condition. It is greens and pinks.  The back is a green floral and there is a coordinating floral that is repeated in the borders and makes up the heart in the center.  The back has an embroidered corner stating that it was in 2001 with a couple's names and a church from across the state.  There is a casing sewn into the top edge on the back so that it can be hung on the wall.  

I am drawn to these shades of green and the pinks match the Fiesta dishes really nicely.  February 2018 I am ready. 

I am joining Tablescape Thursday at BNOTP here.