One of the small birds which had been coming to the feeder for months got too used to Pounce just sitting outside watching. It made the mistake of thinking an old fat cat was not a threat.
Now its wings and feet are my first specimens drying for use on cards this year.
If you guess (or you know) what kind of bird it was I will send you a couple cards. Ones already made–you do not have to wait for these wings to be used.
First right answer wins.
The venison gives off a lot of liquid: that is one of the points of curing meats. This was after 48 hours. The meat is ready to be drained and go into the freezer.
After being frozen overnight, it came out and I ended up using the mandoline to slice the carpaccio into paper thin partial slices; I could not get very many whole slices. But it tasted just fine.
The meat counterpart to lox.
The Food and Cooking of Sweden by Anna Mosesson has provided me with the recipes and ideas for curing salmon into gravlax, and now in process, curing venison. It is a wonderful book to look at, and I have realized we eat sort of “Scandinavianish” this time of year. Meat, potatoes, greens.
So this is how to cure a hind leg muscle from a deer:
Prepare your cure: equal parts salt and sugar, some freshly ground pepper, fresh thyme (the deer are stealing it from the garden now anyway).
Prepare the muscle by removing the fell, connective tissue, etc. There is always somebody around here who wants to help with this job.
On aluminum foil, put down a layer of cure and spice, the meat, and then use the rest of the cure to cover the meat. Enclose meat in the foil and place in a nonreactive container in the fridge or cold porch. Mine went into a glass casserole dish. Quite a bit of liquid will be pulled from the meat over the next two days.
Turn it over every 12 hours if you remember.
John and Joel helped me choose the colors and participated in dying these three skeins. The yarn is Lamb ‘O Lakes, 8 ounce skeins, about 750 yards per pound.
What, never heard of it? The hand picked fleeces were from a 500+ Finn-Dorset flock my husband shepherded. They were sent to be spun in Vermont back in the ’80’s for the business a friend and I ran for ten years called : Lamb O’Lakes. I hand-dyed all theyarn. We made one-of-a-kind things before it was popular to do so. We had a knitting machine that I learned to use. I used to solve knitting dilemmas in my dreams.
I do not crochet. But the girl does, and recent guests did. Quite a lot and quite imaginatively. A sampling:
Mittens, hat, scarf and purse. The purse was started at
your house, Uberimma!
I, meanwhile, finished two scarves.
Then, thanks to a heads up by the same Uberimma, I bought two bags of Noro Kureyon. On sale. If you do not know of it, then spare yourself and do not look at it. I am both a spinner and dyer and still could not resist the single strand multicolor change yarn.
And then there is Ravelry. Stop now if you have no moments to spare. It is a great way to find lots of ideas and patterns and lose time that could be spent elsewhere. Since I had ordered the Kureyon, I spent time looking ate lovely objects knitted with it and found a Finnish doubleknit scarf I really liked. Kaisa, a friend from Finland, came over and interpreted it for us one day.
So I started right away on yarns I had, then dyed some more with the two youngest boys who were very interested in all things fiber related. Including silk from milkweed pods.
Angela took the photo last night.
There is more, but must run books to the library.
1) To the tune of Handels’ Hallelujah Chorus: “Tapioca! Tapioca, Hallelujah, Ta–pee-oo-ca!”
Continue as desired.
2) To the tune of Bernstein and Sondheim’s “Maria” from West Side Story:
Lasagna…
The most wonderful smell I have ever smelled:
Lasagna, Lasagna, Lasagna, Lasagna…
All the beautiful tastes of the world in a single food…
Lasagna, Lasagna, Lasagna, Lasagna…
Lasagna!
I just met a dish named lasagna,
And suddenly that food
Will always change the mood
For me.
Lasagna!
I just ate a dish named Lasagna,
And suddenly I’ve seen
How wonderful some cheese
Can be!
Lasagna!
Eat it hot and there’s trumpets braying,
Eat it cool and its dressed noodles playing.
Lasagna,
I”ll never stop eating Lasagna!
The most wonderful smell I have ever smelled.
Lasagna!
3) From Annie Get Your Gun’s “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better“: Hawthorne’s Song:
Anything you can eat, I can eat faster.
I can eat any thing faster than you.
No you can’t.
Yes I can.
No you can’t.
Yes I can.
No you can’t.
Yes I can, yes I can.
Yes, he can.
is also in bloom now, even after the killing frost last night.
For supper we had venison shanks cooked all day in blackberry juice with onions, salt and some herbs. Potato chunks added later. Wonderful.
There are lots of visitors to the asters these sunny days gettin gtheir last licks in before the flowers all fade;all sorts of flies, wasps, bees. Here are a few.
