no need to waste time on the weekend

30 days of lists - day 4: favorite time wasters

i could have added glee to this list. i've been watching it most of the weekend. tho' i don't sit down to watch, i carry the little iPad around and watch while ironing and cooking and loading the dishwasher and folding laundry and doing a thorough cleaning of our bedroom (it was high time) and untangling all of my necklaces, which had been severely tangled by kittens. so i guess it wasn't really a waste of time. tho i'm well into season 2, i think i'm really mostly watching for the singing (i've always been a fan of musical theatre). the characters are caricatures and the situations quite absurd and the manipulations, oh, the manipulations, make me tired. but those kids can sing. it's not going to be one where i rush to find other sources for episodes not yet available on netflix, i can tell you that, but it was good to have as company while cleaning.

we turned all of the apples from our tree and two of a neighbor's trees into 30 liters of cider. it has an alcohol potential of 6%, so the apples were pretty sweet! half of the house and the back terrace were permeated with the sweet smell of apples. both husband and i feel so industrious working on such a project. even tho' all i really did was wash all those apples, husband crushed them and pressed them in his big apple press. he's already planning improvements in the design for next year. i have a big jar of the crushed apples in the pantry, fermenting into apple cider vinegar. these experiments in homesteading are conscious moments of happiness for both of us. we're looking forward to tasting and then bottling the cider in a few weeks.  

i tried my hand at making agnolotti (basically a fancy name for a little gnocchi-sized ravioli), using this recipe. they were a big success and i even have two bags of them in the freezer for another couple of meals. i made a sage brown butter instead of cilantro because it seemed more autumnal, plus i had sage and no cilantro left in the herb bed. i highly recommend them. they are time-consuming but pretty easy to make. and they'll impress the socks off your guests (provided you'd like them to lose their socks, that is). i know i've said it before, but my moments of conscious happiness often take place in the kitchen.

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if you put this longitude & latitude into google earth and zoom in, you will see something interesting:

16° 51′ 55″ N, 11° 57′ 10″ E

read more about it here.

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here's wish you all a happy and productive week.
may all your phone calls be good news.

take the blood of one pomegranate

a moment in the kitchen to make a mother proud. sabin was preparing a salad and cut into a juicy, garnet pomegranate. instead of continuing to make the salad, she said, "mom, i'm getting the camera." and she proceeded to take 186 (not even an exaggeration) pictures of pomegranate graffiti on the cutting board. 

it seems that one has more influence on forming the child than one thinks.

but guess who ended up making the salad...

counting creativity

inspired, i'll admit, by my own post on mushrooms over on domestic sensualist, the new cooking blog that i share with the fabulous bee, i made a gorgeous chicken recipe last night and it was so good, that i'm going to count it as #73 in the year of creativity:

it involved five kinds of mixed fresh mushrooms (which i bought at the store, i didn't forage for them myself in the forest this time), an organic chicken, three shallots and a bottle of hard, dry cider. it was absolute heaven. and i'm using the leftovers in a risotto this evening, so it was even economical in that it will stretch to two meals. i'll be sharing these recipes soon over on domestic sensualist.

while it was simmering away in the oven, i preserved some pretty little pears in a gorgeous mixture of sugar, vinegar, ginger, cinnamon, vanilla and star anise. i'm going to try to resist opening them for a few weeks, but it will be difficult. i give you #74.

and this afternoon, we finished sabin's little plushie man. i'm counting it as #75 because of the level of help which i was required to provide. isn't it adorable? i'm not sure about how i sewed the head to the body, but am chalking it up as a learning experience. and keeping my fingers crossed the head doesn't fall off.

when we got home from sabin's riding lesson this morning (thankfully she has moved to a morning lesson on saturdays), there was an exciting package waiting for me. it was from the lovely christina of soul aperture. and proved once again that bloggy friends are the very best kind of friends. thank you so much christina for the card and the fun cupcake supplies, plus real american popcorn boxes! sabin insisted on making popcorn immediately and using one of the boxes. is there anything more cheery than a traditional red & white popcorn box on a rainy, grey saturday? and i've already put one of the eat me tags to good use, but that's a surprise, so i won't say more. a big, heartfelt thank you to you, christina, you really made my day!!

hoping your saturday is going well too....