Thrifting with Heather

Want to see what $6 can get you at the thrift store if you have insider tips from Heather, the professional thrifter?? How about 6 bags of fabric...

Here are the stacks of lovely cottons en masse...
These flannels were a part of the bagged up thrifted fabric score.

And now for fun, some close ups of the others grouped by colour...

Can I tell you how I was totally mind-numb from realizing that I amassed all this yardage for a mere $6? Wow. My scrappy themed quilting stash just received a major boost without a major drain to my wallet. Now, are there any questions as to why I like thrifting?

* A huge thank-you to Heather for leading me to best thrifted fabric haul I've ever had. (Hopefully you don't now think that you have to bait me with fabric in order to get me to cross the dreaded bridge to visit with you ... although it did work yesterday...;o)

Housekeeping

I forgot to mention in my post yesterday that we stopped at a few fruit stands on the way back from Keremeos and found canning tomatoes for 39 cents a pound! We bought two boxes of them, which totalled over 50 pounds in weight!

In the evening, R and I started a production line - he washed the tomatoes and removed the woody stem and I quartered them and chopped them up in the food processor and poured them into quart jars. We froze 22 quarts of tomatoes in glass jars which will be (a) preferable to plastic bags and (b) better than the shop-bought tomatoes in cans with the dubious plastic lining, and will be used for pasta sauce and soup through the winter.

Both my chest freezer and the freezer above my fridge are now almost full, which is quite an accomplishment for me!

My other accomplishment this week has been to get my windows and walls cleaned. These jobs were on the "to do" list for last Spring (you know, Spring cleaning is called that for a reason) but somehow I never got around to it (so that's where the kids learned Procrastination).

Anyway, the work is done. Here's how. I ventured bravely into my teenaged son's room to check for evidence of midnight snacks. I found lots of ... well ... we could call them science experiments, because there was plant and animal life growing in various corners of his room. Among the plastic containers and ziploc bags, I found jam jars - six or seven of them actually - and it didn't take the deduction skills of Sherlock Holmes to realise he'd been raiding my cold store room and eating my jam by the jarful! Now that's a fair amount of work there - to say I was pissed off is an understatement - so I decided he'd have to pay me back with sweat equity.

He wasn't happy about it (good!) but he had to help me clean the fingerprints off all the walls in the house, wash the outside of all the windows and clean the insides with a vinegar solution and microfibre cloths. Our windows are the sliding kind, two outer and two inner panes in aluminum frames, and the space between accumulates dead bugs and webs so they had to be vacuumed out as well. Thankfully the panes lift out fairly easily for cleaning on both sides, but it's not a job I do very often! Hopefully they'll stay clean for long enough to look presentable for my in-laws' visit in October!!

A grand day out

First, I have to thank Heather for giving me the idea of putting sliced fresh peaches on top of oatmeal (or, as it's called in our house, porridge). I have had it for breakfast two mornings in a row - I added cinnamon and raisins and a sprinkling of turbinado sugar too.


Today, my family went to the Keremeos Grist Mill. It is a restored flour mill, originally built on the site about 140 years ago. We learned a lot about the history of the area, the people who started the business, how they built the log buildings and the tools they used.




When the mill ceased to be used as such, it was left empty for some time. Later it was used as a hay loft and an artist's studio. When it was decided to restore it as a historical building, all of the pieces of machinery that had been tossed in the lower room had to be put back together by guesswork.



This mill wheel was constructed to be as similar to the original as possible. The flume in the top left of the photo is bringing water from the creek. A simple wooden lever inside the building diverts the water either downwards into the runoff channel or over the top of the wheel to start the machinery.


Here, S is trying his best to pump water with the old-fashioned hand pump. K, being bigger, had more success. Inside the Exhibit building, there were many samples of wheat and it's different components. There was an excellent demonstration of the two main methods of getting the grain around the mill - an auger which makes it travel horizontally and a bucket system (small metal scoops attached at intervals to a textile strap, which would originally have been made of buffalo hide). We were able to turn the handles and work the model.

Our tour guide filtered the ground wheat through two filters to show us how three products can be produced - the really rough stuff (which was fed to animals), "brown" flour and "white" flour. I was pleased that he explained that most of the nutrition had been removed from white flour and that it was ironic that the wealthy people, who preferred their baked goods to be light and white, were doing themselves a disservice, while the poorer people who ate their flour less refined were getting way more nutrition. He told us that white flour, when left to mature for three months, naturally lightens. However, modern producers can't wait so use chemicals to bleach the flour and then, as they have totally stripped all goodness out of it, put back some vitamins artifically. When he asked if there were any questions, I laughingly said, "Yes, why do people buy white flour?" Really, you might as well eat cardboard!


The mill is surrounded by beautiful gardens in which are planted flowers and heirloom fruits and vegetables. There is also a tearoom where we drank tea, coffee and home-made lemonade. I think the mill is a family-run business because there were two children serving people. (By the way, the washrooms were very clean and fragrant - always a good sign in my book!)


In one visit to this mill, the children were learning history, social studies, physics, biology.....all things which we will be able to report to our Learning Consultant at Self Design next week.

L bought himself a DS Lite (which to the uninformed, is a handheld game system) this weekend, so he had his head down and his thumb stuck to it for a large part of the drive, but thankfully he kept it in his pocket while we were at the mill.

I took this photo of him when we stopped to stretch our legs on the way home.


And finally, a self-portrait (cropped to show just the important bit)! I took this knitting project out with me today so I could knit while R drove.

This is some Lion Suede that L had from his very short-lived attempt at knitting a scarf. He only did a few rows and it's been sitting in a bag for about two years. I like the teal colour and will keep this for me as I think it suits me.

This is a neckwarmer of very unusual construction. I cast on 15 stitches and knitted straight until I was getting near the end of the skein. Then I started decreasing one stitch at the left edge every four rows until there were only 3 stitches left. After binding off, I sewed it into a spiral. Because of the decreasing, the top edge is fairly level, but as you can see the cast on edge sticks out at the bottom making an interesting V- shape, like a bandanna - it makes me think I could pull it up over my nose and rob a bank! Just need to knit myself a Smith & Wesson now.

Clearing up the garden

I miss my usual morning email and blog check-in and when I come back Heather has been posting like mad and canning like crazy!

Today R spent a few hours outside and pulled out the tomato and bean plants. The tomatoes are green but they won't have a chance to ripen now, with the fall weather starting. We ate the last green beans for lunch. The beefsteak tomatoes that are growing up against the house in a bag of peat did however have some success. The first ones we picked had blossom end rot, but with more diligent watering the subsequent fruits have been very good. Today they were turned into a big salad.

All of the potatoes have been dug. This huge bowlful is for eating and a small quantity has been set aside for seed for next year. We have stopped eating shop-bought potatoes, finding them too hard to digest, but our own are totally different.

This is how we cook them - with a sprig of mint, also from our garden. Then we eat them with Earth Balance Buttery Spread.
For supper, I cut the remaining rhubarb and made this pie. I make my pastry the way I was taught at school. When we emigrated to Canada, I tried adapting it to cup measures but it wasn't the same. So I use a scale and work in ounces.

The rule is...half fat to flour. So for a pie with a bottom and a lid, I use 16 ounces of flour, 8 ounces of fat (half of which is Earth Balance Buttery Spread and half of which is Earth Balance shortening), a little salt and cold water.

Another rule is...keep pastry cool as you're making it, unlike bread dough, which is kept warm.

When you've measured the flour into a bowl, add the margarine and shortening cut into pieces and rub the fat into the flour with your fingertips. Only your fingers should get messy as you combine the ingredients. When the mixture looks like breadcrumbs, and there are no lumps of fat left, then you add the water a little at a time. You mustn't add too much - just enough to have the dough hold together - and mix with a metal spoon, not your hands, as this will keep the pastry cooler. Then you can roll it out and use it in your pie.

I like to precook my rhubarb or apples or whatever is going into the pie. The filling should really be cool when it goes into the pie shell, though I'm usually doing this late in the day and haven't got time to wait! Tonight, I waited until the oven was hot, poured in the sweetened rhubarb, still hot from the saucepan, topped it with the pastry as quickly as I could and popped it into the oven (25 minutes at 400 degrees). This was the first time I had made pastry with kamut flour and it was very good.

So now our vegetable garden is looking much tidier. There's not much left that's edible, except for a small batch of lettuce seedlings which will hopefully grow well in the cooler weather to come.

Salsa

We always give preserves as gifts and so we (mostly I) spend quite a bit of time at this time of year canning things. Today was the first batch of tomato peach salsa. These are the ingredients.The tomatoes and peaches blanched and ready to have their skin removed. Add them and the remaining ingredients and cook for about an hour. That's it. It takes about as long as it takes to listen to The Very Best of the Drifters CD (twice!) and disc one - The Hits from the Johnny Cash the Legend Box set. (go on Samantha, you can listen to the songs if you click on the link.) Yes, I know...my music preferences were set in my formative years during long car rides with my parents listening to their music. I love oldies. I now take great pleasure in indoctrinating (sounds better than brainwashing, doesn't it?) my own boys with the same music on my long car trips with them. Recently I was skipping a few songs on a Gordon Lightfoot CD to get to Cotton Jenny and W stopped me at Old Dan's Records to say that he liked that song and wanted to listen to it. You see, it really does work, a five or six hour drive is plenty of time to turn them onto Elvis, John Denver, Merle Haggard. etc. Although for some reason I haven't been able to get them to warm to Anne Murray yet. Hmmm. Better plan another road trip. Wanna come Samantha? I promise I won't play any of my Elvis CDs. (do you believe me?)The original recipe is somewhat different than how I make it now. (right Katherine and Samantha?) It only called for 2 cloves of garlic. Two cloves? I don't even get the garlic jar out of the cupboard for 2 cloves. C'mon, two whole heads is more like...at least. I decided that I had enough ingredients to quintuple the recipe.(is that a word? sounds right) It is probably a good idea when one decides that they want to quintuple a recipe to take into account the size of one's biggest pot. It all turned out fine when I decided to do two pots full and that way be able to make one spicier than the other.
Here they are all canned. The bigger batch at the front is Hot!, the smaller batch at the back is Not!

Good Stuff

Katherine, would you believe me if I told you that I whipped this up yesterday?No, I didn't think so.

Would you believe me if I said that I found it at a thrift store in a bag of fabric for $2 for the whole bag?
Yes, I thought so.
Now would you believe that there are bags of quilting fabric like this to be had for $1? And that all you have to do is come over this way ( you know what and where I am talking about) to get them before they are all sold? Tempting? I could throw in some grazing in my garden to tempt you even more...you must be out of beans by now. A visit with us and tea...you aren't even hearing anything about me or the garden are you? You're just seeing that fabric and not even hearing the rest. Sigh! That's O.K.. I totally relate.
Does Tuesday work???

A Corny Post

Since my two freezers are already full and we haven't even come close to preserving all of our garden produce and haven't even started with our other plum tree, we decided to get another freezer. S found a second-hand one and brought it home yesterday then we went to a friend's to pick a whole lot of free corn. Once home I blanched it, cut it off the cob and froze it in 3 cup packages. We also froze a dozen on the cob, just left them with the husk on and put them in a bag in the freezer, we have heard that this works fine. This corn is delicious, it likely helps that we are eating it only hours after it is picked. I made some for the boys to eat and I had one or three cobs myself ( really, it is very important to sample for um...taste and uh, doneness, yeah...that's it, before preserving these things). I have another couple dozen to eat or make into something today. Corn chowder, maybe?

I like to always freeze packages flat on a cookie sheet first so that they stack nicely in the freezer and so that I can fit more in. With three freezers I think I should be able to have almost all of our food on hand this year.

I also couldn't resist stopping at a field and picking a bunch of their Romas. My friends are thinking I am even more crazy than they usually do because they know that I have about 70 tomato plants of my own but I needed these tomatoes. :-) My peaches are very ripe and the timing is perfect to make my tomato peach salsa ( this is a favourite with everyone I make it for) however, I don't have enough of my own ripe tomatoes yet. I picked about 20 pounds and will make a massive batch of salsa today that will be tucked away in the cold room to give as gifts throughout the year. The first few jars will be going to the people we got the corn from as they love it too.