Covid Journal, Day 93: A Cooking Kind of Day

68 this morning and cloudy.

Today turned into a cooking day. I didn't plan it but that's what happened. Those cherries, you see. After a morning packing ebay, catching up on blogs and housework, I was finally ready to make pie.

I ended up with a beautiful cherry pie, and 8 turnovers that didn't last long enough for a photo. We also put on a large kettle of sassafras tea which was put in jugs for the freezer for later use.

I finished baking just in time for the poetry workshop group meeting on Zoom. They are so good I often wonder why they have me in their midst! But I am learning a lot. One member was just selected Poet Laureate for Ohio so you can see the level of talent. It was a very good workshop, and lots of good conversation too.

After that I went out to the garden. I weeded my little row of leeks, then picked lettuce, kale and beets for dinner, brought them in and made salad, cooked the greens in chicken broth, and made a pan of friec potatoes. Now Larry is grilling salmon and that will be dinner, with the pie and ice cream for dessert.



Homegrown, homemade food is the best...but it also takes a lot if time. Thankfully we now have the time to prepare it. I miss being out with friends---and today would have been a storytelling day--but we can make the best of this gift of time, can't we?


Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Garden Time

We have had rain and rain and rain and rain....talk about a wet spring.

My herb planters are thriving with all this rain.

Plenty of high winds too, more than I can ever remember. I also do not remember so many trees falling, except during extreme events like the derecho a few years ago, or the random tornado that ripped through about 2 miles from us.

Catching rainwater is no problem these days! The deck seriously needs to be painted but there has been little opportunity between rain and travel.

The gardens are doing okay so far, but the constant rain is washing away soil nutrients. The squash is blooming but not setting fruit.We're going to have to fertilize, something we don't usually have to do as the manure and mulch we add are usually enough, with perhaps a little blood meal, wood ash and bone meal added.

The peas did nothing--too much rain and the place I planted them stayed too wet. So yesterday Larry pulled them out and planted water-loving cucumbers in their place.

The good news is that we are getting some fresh veggies despite the weather. Yesterday we harvested our first new potatoes, a cabbage, dill, and green onions. So dinner was a real treat--salmon with dill sauce, new cabbage and new potatoes, these last two simply boiled with butter and salt and pepper.

Since it was Father's Day, I made a cake too--chocolate layer cake with cream cheese icing and raspberry sauce made with our raspberry. It's been a year, I think, since I last made a cake like this, and it was delicious.

It was good to be in the kitchen cooking. The last week was one of those hit-and-miss weeks. I made meatloaf which lasted, as usual, for several meals, but my mind and heart were not in the kitchen because I had so many storytelling projects lined up for the week and my brain was just busy. This week I am working on next week's weeklong writing workshop, along with trying to get a few painting projects done. Cooking may be back-burnered again. We'll see.

Here's my recipe for the fresh dill sauce. I looked online but almost all the recipes I found used lots of garlic, sour cream and mayonnaise--which seems to me, besides being high calorie, would mask the flavor of the dill. So I opted for something simpler, and the dill flavor really shone through. It's really a basic white sauce.

1/2 stick butter, melted.
2 good-sized green onions, chopped small.
Saute' the onions in the melted butter.

Then add:
2 TBSP corn starch.
Cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens.

Add slowly, stirring all the while:
1 cup of milk
Cook until thick, stirring occasionally. Bring to a boil and boil one minute.
(if it's too thick, add more milk, or water--I used water, to thin it down)

Stir in:
1/4-1/2 cup of finely chopped fresh dill.
salt and pepper to taste.

You may need to add more liquid as the sauce cools, if it thickens too much.


Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.