What we did last weekend

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We played outside!!

It was a beautiful Autumn weekend: some sun, some blustery wind, some squalls …

We made the most of the sunny times.

And in between…

I am having so much fun making this blanket! This is early Saturday … the end of the first skein of yarn. I have 7 skeins altogether and I think that will be about right … 6 might be enough and if so, I’ll have enough to make a snood or scarf with the last … we’ll see.

The sun is out, but still … naps are necessary :)

It was a big cooking weekend. I had a lot of tomatoes from my local organic farm: roasted them with broccoli, cauliflower and carrots, then pureed and pressure cooked with some ghee and onion (Marcelle Hazan style). The roasting and the extra vegetables and then the pressure cook = my version of a Marinara sauce for soup and pasta bakes.

I also roasted a whole chicken: shredded the meat and made broth from the bones, etc. Most of the chicken and broth I froze for future meals.

… AND a small batch of beef stew. Some of it went into beef pot pie for Sunday lunch and the rest into the freezer.

I like to freeze meal components like broth, meat, sauce, veg. I freeze single/double servings and it makes it easy to make what I’m hungry for, fast!

Hot apple pie!! I have some wonderful Honeycrisp apples and have been making pie. That is a 5.5 inch pie dish so it makes 4 mini-slices … perfect for house of 1 human. BUT, Emmett LOVES the crust which is a flaky, all butter crust made from Erin Jeanne McDowell . It is not only the ingredients, but her technique. Her videos for Food52: Bake it up a notch are great instruction. I thought I made a good pie crust, but now … I make a GREAT pie crust!

The video link is for Erin’s puff pastry instruction which includes “rough puff”. The rough puff is the extra flaky version of her pie crust recipe. I make the rough puff, divide it into 8 pieces and freeze them wrapped in cling wrap. 1 piece (1/8 recipe) makes a single crust for my 5.5 inch pie plates, 2 for a double crust or 2 for a single crust in a 9 inch pie plate, etc. The rough puff takes me 10-15 minutes to mix and get into the refrigerator. It is ready to use in an hour. I usually use a bit and freeze the rest in the 1/8 pieces. It takes maybe 2 hours for the frozen pieces to thaw enough to use.

I use the same for a topper for pot pies: YUM.

So … it is Monday morning as I write this post and we are getting a slow start. It is dark, raining: everything from drizzle to full on downpour with thunder.

Autumn in Montana.

3 Responses to “What we did last weekend”

  1. Margaret

    Can you please send me a piece of your apple pie??? It looks delicious. That blanket looks interesting – how big will it be? And as always I love the photos of the boys.

    • Liz

      I wish I could send some pie and then we could have a virtual coffee break !! The blanket will be about 50 x 60 inches which is the size called a throw blanket here. The looped yard is fun [for me] to work with and there is no worry over gauge since the loops are stitched so if following a pattern, the result WILL match the pattern size. I’m also working on a crochet project which is squares of sampler stitches. I’ve started 3x … first time my bit was 5.5 inches wide and it is supposed to be 9-9.5 inches. THEN, 2nd go got closer but it didn’t look right. FINALLY, watched the video that is available with the kit. I’d been working from the written instructions, thinking I knew what I was doing … Anyway, 3rd go is 10 inches. I think I’ll finish the square and see how a 2nd comes in size wise. I realized that what seemed like a good idea: a lot of squares stitched together at the end, could be kind of tricky if the squares are not all the same size!

      I’m sorry that your comments keep going to moderation! I’m not sure why … oops, I do know for this one … your email address is entered as gmai.com. WordPress matches email address with previously approved comments, i.e. when you have an approved comment, then any additional comments with the same email address are automatically approved.

      • Margaret

        Ah, that explains the moderation…my mistake.

        I imagine the apple pie – it is delicious! As for your blanket, or throw, it looks as if it will be really cosy. And yes, it will be easier to join squares together if they are the same size. They don’t need to be exactly the same because you can block them and make them the same by a bit of stretching or adjusting.

        I’m knitting a pair of socks at the moment but I want to start a sweater soon. It’s getting colder.

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