Last Saturday Rob and I put up our Christmas tree. As we “labored” (as Rob likes to say) we drank hot apple cider out of some festive Spode mugs. The mugs were my favorite part of the day; they have handles that look like candy …
I spent Veterans Day gardening, revamping the bed in front of the breezeway. The bed isn’t very big, but it’s in a pretty prominent spot, right near the main entrance to our house—so I’d like it to make a good impression. The first thing I …
This weekend Rob and I spent all day Saturday cleaning up our vegetable garden. The outer beds, where our pomegranates and clown peppers grow, had become jam-packed with wild petunias (Ruellia caroliniensis), so we dug those out. I felt bad removing them because wild petunia is a beautiful native wildflower, a great nectar source for butterflies, and (at least in some areas, I read) a larval host plant for the common buckeye. Wild petunia has gone crazy in my yard, but I’m only removing it from the vegetable area. It’s welcome to stay in other spots, because it truly is a terrific plant. It blooms for months and tolerates drought. There’s really nothing not to like. It’s just a little overly enthusiastic sometimes.
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| The vegetable garden, all tidied up |
A few months back, Mom gave me this adorable fall wreath. She made it herself. I love it. Mom is always up to something, and I want to be just like her when I retire. She’s constantly sewing and crafting. In the evenings she knits scarves and shawls and even stuffed animals as she watches Father Brown. She’s a member of a circle group at church and bakes breads for the church bake sale every Sunday. (She volunteers for everything.) Her yard is the lushest place, and she’s always got something she wants to show me in it. The other day it was her clementine tree; it was loaded with bright orange fruit, and nearby her Mr. Otto sasanqua was blooming, full of pink flowers as delicate as butterflies.
On Friday Mom had her annual pumpkin-carving party. We ate chili and hot apple crisp and carved our pumpkins on Mom’s kitchen floor. My brother-in-law Matt’s pumpkin was particularly awesome. It was nose-less, and it was throwing up pumpkin guts.
“That’s great,” I said to Matt. “I like how he doesn’t have a nose.”
“Oh, but he did,” Matt said. “You see the scar, right?”
And, yes, right in the middle of the pumpkin’s face were a big silver scar and a dent, as if his nose had been cut right off.
Jake, my 12-year-old nephew, went a different route and carved a scene rather than a face on his pumpkin. He carved a ghost with a flaming grin rising from the grave. I kept hearing Jake in whispered negotiations with Mom. He wanted her to judge the pumpkins and award him first prize.
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| Photo by Kris Kimel |
I just spent two weekends and the week in between working on a skirt for my Halloween tree. I finished it up on Sunday morning, and I’ve got to say I’m pretty happy with it just because I think it’s so funny. It’s decorated with …
I’ve been especially pressed for time this month because my cat Josie has started a special kidney care diet and she’s decided she won’t eat her special food unless she’s sitting on my lap. Josie eats so slowly. She takes a few licks, then stops …
My mom recently took a trip to the Smoky Mountains, and she brought me a jar of Amish Wedding peach-pecan jam as a souvenir. I wanted to do something special with the jam, so on Saturday I used it to make Vegan Jam-Filled Oat Bran Muffins from a recipe I found in my all-time favorite cookbook, The Joy of Vegan Baking.
The muffins turned out perfect, and the jam was delicious—it made me wish I could take a trip to the Smokies. I’ll tell you a little about my mom’s visit.
She went up to the mountains with my sister Kris and Kris’s kids, Sophie and Jake, and they stayed in a cabin near Gatlinburg. They had fun every day for a week. They went gem-mining and hiked to a waterfall. They waded in cold mountain streams and got to see elk. They fooled around in the little town of Gatlinburg, which is like a permanent carnival, eating caramel corn for breakfast and giant snow cones for lunch. They visited all the Ripley’s attractions in Gatlinburg, including the Odditorium, the 5D Moving Theater, the haunted house, and the aquarium. Sophie and Jake spent their life savings on souvenirs (Jake got a giant stuffed narwhal).
On the way home they stopped in Dillard, Georgia, so Sophie could feed the goats at a wacky tourist trap called Goats on the Roof, and that’s where Mom got me my jam. She gave it to me last week at Jake’s birthday party, handing it to me as I sat with my cupcake at her big dining room table.
“Now I know you’re not much of a jam eater,” she said in her very Mom-ish way, “but I got you some anyway!”
Vegan Jam-Filled Oat Bran Muffins
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons ground flaxseed
6 tablespoons water
2 cups oat bran
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped walnuts
11/4 cups almond milk
1/3 cup canola oil
1/2 cup jam
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees and add papers to your muffin tins.
In a food processor or blender, mix the flaxseed and water until thick and creamy. This is your “egg.”
In a large bowl, combine the oat bran, flour, brown sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, and walnuts. Set aside. In a small bowl, combine the flaxseed mixture, almond milk, and oil. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until just blended.
Fill the muffin cups about half full with batter. Place a dab of jam in the center of each cup. Add more batter to fill the cups about three-fourths full, covering the jam.
Bake the muffins for 20 minutes.
Last weekend I made my first batch of muffins in our new kitchen. I cooked up some Vegan Orange Cranberry Muffins with a nutty, crumbly brown sugar topping. I used this recipe, which was easy to veganize with ground flaxseed (to replace the egg) and …
Last weekend we spent four days (Friday through Monday) painting the dining room, a project associated with our big kitchen redo. See, there used to be a pass-through from the kitchen to the dining room (it was essentially a big hole in the wall), and …
Rob and I spent last Sunday organizing our new kitchen cabinets. I had fun arranging my Fiestaware into bright, shiny stacks and asking Rob questions like, “So, what’s your favorite color of Fiestaware?” (I always like to chat and bug Rob while we’re working on a project, and I call these dumb questions “conversation starters.”)
If ever we were not in the kitchen, if we happened to stray into another room or find ourselves at Winn-Dixie, Rob would say, “Hey, what are we doing? Let’s go play in our new kitchen!”
And we’d go and organize or reorganize a cabinet.
“So,” I said at one point, “do you think we should put our different vinegars in alphabetical order?”
Rob said he thought arranging the bottles by height was good enough.
“So,” I said as I lined up the balsamic and the red wine, “what’s your favorite kind of vinegar?”
“Let’s not talk anymore,” he smiled.
