A Room with a View (of a Sign)

A couple of years ago I saw a wooden sign in a gift catalog that I really wanted to have to hang in our bathroom.  But being rather frugal (ahem), I thought the price asked was too much.

I kept thinking about the sign and even searched online for one like it more than once.  No luck.

A week or so ago I decided I could make the sign as a small quilted wall hanging.  And so I did.

Here it is in place over the window at the far end of our long, narrow, small bathroom.

Since most of you won't have a chance to enter our bathroom and get close enough to read what it says . . . 

. . . here's a close-up for you.

I don't care what anybody else in my family says (and they have not all been complimentary . . . just no sense of humor), I love it.

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Since we're talking bathrooms, I want to share a little story with you.

A Bathroom Story

Papa Pea and I have been known to bemoan the fact that we have only one bathroom in our house which is kinda sorta unusual these days.  Every time we think having that second bathroom would be very convenient, I think back to my grandma and grandpa and how they managed to survive while raising seven children . . . with only one bathroom.

Actually, in their first home the bathroom was that little house in the back yard known as an outhouse.  Years later while their kids were still all home, they did get "modernized" and gained an indoor bathroom.

Their situation changed and they moved to a new location, a new (to them) house, but still containing only one bathroom.

In the early l940s, some of their kids had grown and left home, but Grandma and Grandpa and three of their daughters still lived under the one roof.  World War II was in full swing, my dad was shipped overseas so my mom (who was pregnant with me) moved back in with her parents.  Shortly thereafter, the husband of one of Mom's older sisters was sent overseas so she and her infant son moved in with the rest of us.

This meant that the members of the household were then Grandma and Grandpa, their youngest daughter still in high school, two other daughters who had graduated and joined the work force, my mom and me and another daughter with her infant son.  That adds up to seven adults and two babies.  Yep, all of us and only one bathroom.  (Plus, no hot water.  All water for dishes, laundry, filling the bath tub, etc. had to be heated on the kitchen stove.)

So when Papa Pea and I think we suffer any kind of hardship (puleeze!) because we have just one bathroom for the two of us, it brings me up short, and I realize we have it pretty good, don't you think?

The end.

Well, Darn . . .

Yep, that is a great big ol' tow truck backing up to load our Suburban onto it.

And there it is leaving destined to be dropped off at our mechanic's garage. 

How did this all come about?  Well, Papa Pea was off early one morning recently to get our resupply of fresh, raw milk products.  He was about four miles from home, going up a steep grade when the truck started to lose power.  He was able to pull into a driveway, get turned around and coast down the hill for a couple of miles before he ran out of "hill" and had to stop.  One more try and, yippee, the truck started again, but ran for only a hop, skip and jump before stopping . . . for the final time.

He was then only a couple miles from home so called for reinforcements.  I didn't want to pull him home with the big pickup truck with the 9' plow on the front so we contacted Chicken Mama who was home and available.  She grabbed a towing strap and other equipment that might have been needed and soon successfully towed him home with her Suburban.

Papa Pea and Gilligan took a cursory look at the truck and after checking what they could here in the yard, decided it was probably a fuel pump or related problem.

Since our mechanic is about seventeen miles away, up and down some hills and twists and turns in the road, and our Suburban currently has little or no braking power, we decided not to chance towing it all that way.

Only way to get it to the garage was to either manually push it . . . or call a towing service.  We opted for the latter.

We're hoping to hear soon what the diagnosis turns out to be.  And that it's not gonna break the bank to do the repairs.  Besides being an excellent mechanic, J is a good friend and will do what needs to be done to get us back in business.  

In the meantime, we're not stuck without options for transportation.  All will be well.  Considering this is the first time in the nearly fifty-five years of our marriage that we've had to have a vehicle towed (other than towing it ourselves), we can't complain one bit.

Done Ahead of Time!

I keep a small wall hanging or sign to the left of the door that leads from our enclosed porch into our house.

I've shown you this one before but it still makes me smile every time I see it.  It usually goes up when I take the "Christmas-y" one down.  Then when spring seems as though it really is going to appear in the north woods, this one comes down and I put up something "spring-y."  Except I didn't really have anything that appropriately heralds the spring season.

But now I do!

I recently finished this small quilted wall hanging, and lo and behold, it's done before I actually need it.  (We had a temp of 14 degrees this morning so unlike some of you with beautiful spring flowers dotting your landscape, there's no evidence spring has arrived here yet.)

The label I gave it is "Spring Piggies." 

Here's a closer view of the

  happy little piggies.

The pigs came from a panel I bought a month or so ago showing different farm animals.  Along with the pigs are horses, chickens, goats, and sheep.  It took me forever to choose which grouping of animals I was going to use for this wall hanging.  I finally cut out the pigs and started winging it from there.  

I wasn't sure how it would end up or if I'd be happy with it.  Turns out, I do like it a lot, and now want to make something using some of the other animals.  Where will I use them?  Probably in my pantry.  I already have a few small pieces on the walls in there for decoration  and color, but I'll bet I can squeeze in a couple more.

Sorting in the Root Cellar

Last Saturday was time to do one of our routine sorting jobs in the root cellar.  We knew it was needed since our 30+ degree weather is causing the temp in the cellar to rise degree by degree.  Not good for keeping the environment cool for as long into spring as we can.

Papa Pea hit on a great idea for trying to keep the cellar a little cooler and at the same time add moisture/humidity which we're usually lacking in our cellar.

He filled pails with snow which we carried down.  I thought we were just going to let the pails full of the snow sit on the gravel floor, but as he explained, if we dumped the snow onto the ground, it would still give off cold air, the melted snow would seep down into the gravel (and ground) and add some needed moisture.

I wanted to build little snow people to play among the apples, beets, potatoes, etc., but for some reason he didn't want to take the time to do that.  (He's such a spoil sport.)

Sorting the apples was first on the agenda.  Yes, we did find quite a few that had started to spoil, but still have several remaining boxes of them that look really good.

We even have a few of the sweeter eating apples left (the rest are for cooking/baking) like these we brought into the kitchen.  They've developed a few blemishes but are still firm.  We have maybe twenty more of them left.  (Funny how the tastier apples are always the first to disappear.)

Nearly everything else in the cellar looked good considering the time of year.  

The cabbages we stored hanging from their roots have lasted longer than with any other method we've tried.  The remaining green ones are looking better than the red.  (Drat.  I prefer red cabbage.)  The outer leaves are wrinkled and soft and not nice, but the bulk of the heads of the green cabbages are still firm.  The red ones, not so much.  Most of them are on their way to the poultry.

We did pull out and toss the pail of kohlrabi we thought we would cook up and feed to the poultry over winter.  Even though Papa Pea simmered the chunked up kohlrabi over night on the stove in the garage, the . . . um, uh, . . . aroma . . . okay, AWFUL SMELL was too much for us to tolerate.  I guess an old kohlrabi is not a good kohlrabi.

It will be interesting to see how long the clumps of snow last in the root cellar.  We strive to keep the temperature about 35-37 degrees, but it's already in the low 40s.  Another sign spring really is approaching.

This Is What Our March First Looks Like

So, okay.  These pictures weren't taken on March 1st, but rather March 2nd.  (As usual, I'm a little slow.)

I got it into my head yesterday that I should take a picture of my raised bed part of the garden on the first of each month from now until the end of this coming gardening season.  Just to chronicle what a difference in the landscape a few months can make.   Looking out of a window in Papa Pea's upstairs office, I think I captured the whole area of the raised beds.  (Please excuse the corner of the roof line that insisted on being in the picture.)

Raised beds, you say?  What raised beds?  It took nearly to the end of our winter season for the beds to be totally covered, but covered they are now.  (The box-like structure in the back of the picture is a compost bin which is about three feet high.)  What will the same scene look like on April 1st?  Stay tuned.

This was one section of our driveway when we took a walk out yesterday to our mailbox.

Certain parts of the driveway melt sooner than others.  The gravel showing in this picture was actually dry.  Papa Pea commented that's the way you like to see snow and ice melt.  Slowly and drying out as it disappears. Unfortunately, that doesn't usually happen.  Most often (and I'm sure it will be the case most everywhere this year) we have to slog our way through the dreaded Mud Season with plenty of the gooey-gloppy stuff in abundance.

How does the landscape around your place look currently?  From some of your pictures recently, I've seen both spring flowers blooming and lush, green grass showing and, from those of you in the northeast, three feet of new snow!

Linguine Casserole with Spaghetti Sauce

The beginning of the organic co-op in our town was a humble one . . . on the enclosed front porch of a couple several miles out of town.  The original idea was to enable folks to buy nutritious foods economically in bulk.  We formed a buying club of sorts and it quickly became very popular.

That was the co-op's infancy.  It quickly grew into toddler stage and beyond and moved to a (very small) store front in town.  During this time, no meats were carried and many of the members were vegetarians as we were at that time.  I was asked if I would submit and post a vegetarian menu weekly highlighting a dish containing an ingredient (or ingredients) that could be purchased at the co-op.

One of those recipes was Linguine Casserole with Spaghetti Sauce.  But somehow, someway, I lost my recipe and couldn't make the dish for many years.  Well, I just found a thick folder of all the recipes I submitted to the co-op during that period and now had the "lost" recipe in my hands.  (You can guess where I found this folder, right?  Yep, in THE BOX!)

I eagerly made this casserole a couple of nights ago and it was as good as I remembered so I'm sharing it here.  It would be great with pre-cooked, crumbled sausage or bacon in with the pasta and cheese (if you didn't want to keep it vegetarian) or by adding meat to the spaghetti sauce or adding some pre-cooked, baked meat balls as I did.

I didn't have linguine, so substituted spinach fettuccini.  Close enough. 

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Linguine Casserole with Spaghetti Sauce

8 oz. linguine, cooked and drained

2 eggs, beaten

1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

2 tablespoons dried parsley

8 oz. mozzarella cheese, grated

Combine cooked linguine, eggs, Parmesan cheese and parsley.  In a greased 11" x 7" (approximately) shallow baking dish, layer half of linguine mixture and half of mozzarella cheese.  Repeat layers.  Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes.

Cut baked casserole into squares and serve with your favorite spaghetti sauce on top.

This recipe can be doubled to serve a large group.  Leftovers freeze well.

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Mixture in baking pan.  Only needs

top layer of cheese.

Topped off with cheese,

ready for oven.

Just taken out of oven.

And served up on plate.

We made a good dent in it 

the first night.

Then I warmed it up the next night (flavor was even better, we both thought) and still had a smidge bit left that I served with scrambled eggs (cooked right in with the leftover casserole) this morning.

Enjoy!