Jon writes...

Three pictures that I have been forgetting to send...

This one is the bunnie under the dwarf lilac at 4425
who stayed and watch me rake the yard.

Also, two views of the eagle that has been roosting on a light pole at L. Harriet for the past 2.5 weeks to the delight of people passing under it...Until it poops.

JD out.

kitchen chairs

Dear Mary and Jeni,

Dear Mary and Jeni,

Well, to tell the truth, so far it is only one chair. But the fabric is almost finished for the other two. Now I have to look around for a 4th chair to recover and paint. It doesn't have to match, but I would like it to be close in size. These are wonderful 'lady' sized chairs. Not too big and my feet reach the ground!

I have been having fun doing this project. It started from a picture in Fons and Porter's Quilting Magazine this summer. First I did the little footstool and now I have these chairs that I found free out on the curb in Mayville.

They were sort of a maple color and the seat was glued down with crud under the sides of the upholstery and they smelled of smoke. However that is all in the past and now they are just as cute as the dickens.

I hope I get them finished before I have to return to Minneapolis next week.

Love,

Nancy

Giblet Gravy by Mom

I have been online recently and seen a lot of posts about gravy. Evidently Thanksgiving makes a lot of people nervous about that particular part of cooking a Thanksgiving meal. Our mother has made Giblet Gravy for years. She got her recipe from our paternal grandmother who never measured anything. I had to keep an alert eye on Mom to get this recipe down correctly. I have made it for 5 years now and it works every time so I guess we have it right.

The best part about this recipe is you make a gravy 'starter' a day or two before and then all you have to do is stir it into the hot drippings from the turkey and heat it up. Mom does it right in the roaster which she puts over two of the gas burners of the stove so she doesn't have to pour the drippings into another container.

It makes a medium dark thick gravy with many bits of the giblets and the neck meat in it. When you also grind up the cooked veggies it has some color too. This is not a gravy for someone who wants a pale thin gravy. This is a robust gravy.

GIBLET GRAVY BY MARGARET E. DREW

I spent the afternoon (12/24/04) cooking and thought I would write down Mom’s method of making giblet gravy. She starts two days before serving, but the day before will do. Tools are a small stock pot and an old fashioned food grinder.

Ingredients:

Turkey giblets and neck

One carrot, in pieces

One celery stalk in pieces

One small (2-3inch) onion quartered

2 cloves garlic, smashed or not, your choice

2 teaspoons each pepper and kosher salt

Water to cover

Flour

First Mom removes the giblets and the neck and puts them in a pot with water to cover. To this pot she adds one carrot in about 4 pieces, one stalk of celery also cut into pieces and one small onion, again in pieces. The onion was the size of about ¼ of a softball. She puts a couple of teaspoons each of salt and pepper and the garlic into this stock. Then she puts it on the stove to simmer until it is easy to get the meat off the neck. This will take at least one hour and probably more. I like to simmer it at least two hours. Add water as needed as it cooks out.

Eventually she thought it was cooked enough and decided it was time to grind up the giblets. (She used to simmer it for hours when we were younger and now she doesn't. I think it would be better to do it longer. The meat should be very tender.)

After the giblets and broth have cooled she made Dad get out the old-fashioned grinder and clamp it to the kitchen table. Then she told me to cut the tendons and gristle off of what I think was the kidneys. (There were two) After that she told me to pull all the meat I could off the neck. (This is why you cook it longer.) We threw the remainder of the neck away and stuffed the meat in the grinder with all the giblets and squished it all out into a bowl. We ground up all the veggies too.

Once that was ground up she mixed up some flour and water. Probably about 1-½ to 2 cups worth. It should be about the texture of Elmer's glue. Then she started heating up the broth from the giblets with the ground up stuff added to it. She tasted it at this point but didn’t add any more seasoning.

When it was boiling she added the flour/water mix, slowly whisking it in as she went along. She added it in about 3 batches and said she wanted it “really thick”. When we had added all the flour/water mix she cooked it about 5 more minutes and we left it on the stove to cool. It was very thick when it was hot. It was solid and pale tan when cool. She said you could add seasoning at this point but if you tasted it now it would taste really floury so she didn’t add anything at this point. When it had cooled we put it out on the porch, covered, until the day we cook the turkey. (We live in Minnesota and the enclosed porch is an extra refrigerator in the winter)

On the day you cook the turkey you will finish the gravy.

Once we have the turkey out of the roaster, we put the roaster with its drippings on the stove and scrape any crusty bits into the juices. When it is heated and near to boiling then we add the thickened giblet concoction in large spoonfuls to make the actual gravy. I like to use a wisk when I am slowly mixing the drippings and the 'starter' together. Because you have already cooked the flour into the giblet blend you don't really have to worry much about getting lumps in the gravy.

That is when Mom adjusts the seasoning to taste. We seldom need to add any more. The veggies and the giblets add a lot of texture and taste. It makes somewhere between 1 and 2 quarts depending on how much stock you end up with and how much drippings you have. We always have plenty for leftovers.

Indoors, Outdoors and Quilting at Faye's

Hi Mary and Jeni,

This is what is left on my ancient crabapple tree. Jim's parents planted it in the late 1940's. It has had many branches fall off or die but it still has the apples each year. I am waiting for the Cedar Waxwings to come and clean it off.

Speaking of clean, this is my new, chair and a half sleep sofa. The cats love it. It is a good thing I took pictures as soon as it and the 'storage ottoman' were in place. The room is just a junk pile right now. I have also added three painted wooden kitchen chairs that I am in the process of making new quilted seats for. (no pictures of those yet)

Alice and Abbie above, and Abbie below.

It was not hard to find them on it for pictures. Here is Alice queening it up for the camera.

Then I spent last weekend at Faye's with my cohorts in crime. We just love being given the key to the store and being able to play all weekend. This is the quilt top that I finished on Saturday.

It is a queen sized (84 x 108) and is intented to be my summer quilt. I am putting a lightweight cotton backing on it instead of the flannel I put on my black and white quilt that is the same pattern.

Yes that is me being proud.

Love,

Nancy

Quilt Camp and More Leaves

Hi Mary and Jeni,

I was at quilt camp Thursday through Sunday this week. We had a great time. It was put on by Faye's Henhouse and hosted at the Cooperstown Bible Camp. The ride out was sort of scary as it had rained for over 24 hours and the gravel roads to the camp were, what we North Dakotan's call, 'greasy'. That means it is sort of soapy in texture and it is really easy to slide off into the ditch.

This is the quilt top I made this weekend. It is stitched into rows, but the rows are not stitched together yet. Luckily the Bible Camp has these convenient valances for you to pin your quilting up onto.

Another thing the Bible Camp has in abundance are oak leaves.

Here is a closeup of the pile I was standing in.

They also have lovely hiking trails. I went out and walked for 1.86 miles with my friends Deb and Karen. You are probably surprised that I walked that far. So am I. However, now that I am off of the cholestorol drug Lipitor, my muscles have stopped aching all the time. Even much of my foot soreness was part of the Lipitor problem. I have been off of Lipitor for about 3 months now and I feel as if I went back in time to when I was 5o. Heck, maybe 40. So we walked.

Above, Deb and Karen are waiting patiently for me to take a picture.

Below is a shrub, about 7 to 8 feet high. With these red berries. Anyone have a guess as to what it is? I certainly don't know. We saw many of these on our walk.

We crossed over the 'mighty' Sheyenne River on a floating bridge near camp and then started to walk back.

And walk back. Notice the lovely Oak Tree in the left foreground.

And walk back some more.

When we dropped into the woods for a while we saw this beautiful moss.

Eventually I tired of the woods and it's uneven footing and followed a deer track up onto the road. We saw this huge fir/pine/spruce tree and none of us knew what kind of tree it is. We hope someone will tell us.

Naturalists we are not.

However you might note that Karen is another leaf collector! Well, maybe you can't tell but she is holding up a handful of oak leaves.

How did they get that far ahead of me....?

Well it might be because I kept stopping to photograph leaves in the mud.

We are easily amused here in North Dakota

I think that is the last one.

Soon after all the leaves in mud we made it back to our sweatshop in the main lodge at the camp. It is a wonderful room and we all sewed merrily into the night. Some of us (not me) stayed up until 1 a.m.

I went upstairs early and read in bed for a while. (The first Jesse Stone novel by Robert B Parker) Then, since last night was the time change, I actually saw the sunrise this morning.

Beautiful.

Here is a closeup of my quilt pretending to be a stained glass window. It is all florals from my 'watercolor' stash. It will be queen size (86 x 108) when I finish it.

Love,

Nancy

Fall, continued: Seattle

Hi Nancy!

You beat me to it - I, too, have been taking pictures of leaves. I've also started my yearly pick-up and placing of leaves into my telephone book collection. First, I took out all the leaves I'd collected in Minneapolis last year - most with holes in them from the brutal hailstorm in the spring. I haven't had much luck collecting leaves here, because it got really cold and snowed, and the leaves froze before they turned color. So most of them are brown.

But in Seattle...I went to meet Brian as he got off the ship. Here is the ship he spent the last (nearly) four months on:




I drove for two hours through Seattle after I "deplaned" and when I got to the ship, I called Brian and found he was at the airport. Holy God! He was trying to make things easy for me so I wouldn't have to drive through the traffic. Anyway, I went back to the airport, and after that he drove and everything was fine. You know what a good driver he is; he can drive a car full of Drews all yelling out the wrong direction.

We went to the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks and Carl S. English Jr. Botanical Gardens. We do this almost every time we are in Seattle together. Brian likes to watch boats and ships pass through, and I like to be there with him. First thing, we saw the most interesting blooms on a tree:

I didn't check to see what kind it was, but what fascinating blooms - they looked like plastic flowers. They had plump petals.

Enough of that - about the leaves:




Here is the walk alongside the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks. That's a drawbridge up ahead, that opens up when a big ship has to come through. The trees were gorgeous everywhere. Then we got closer.



and closer:


It was too much. I actually had to give up picking up leaves because I would have needed a dump truck. I was stunned. I was awestruck. It was amazing. And this was just one leaf experience out of several in Seattle this weekend.

Leaf experiences are fleeting. I think that is part of their charm. They will be gone in an instant, a few hours, a day or two. I had a stack of leaves, but for lack of a phone book (no, I don't lug phone books around on weekends...yet) they dried up into curls. I managed to get a few home in a paper bag. Next year I'll dig them out of the phone book and be delighted once again.

Autumn Leaves

One of the things I always loved about growing up in Minneapolis were the leaves in the fall. All colors, big and bright would fall into our yard. Now, living in North Dakota I don't have that abundance of color in the fall. I have planted some trees in the yard, Paul, helped me, years ago. But they are trees that are suited for our climate, and although they are Maples, they are Silver Maples or crossed with Silver Maples and I get yellow brown leaves. At least I finally get some leaves anyway.

I don't know what it is about the leaves that I love. The crunch underfoot maybe? I do know I love the colors. And I know that this year the leaves are littering my yard in a handsome manner and I keep peeking out the windows to look at them even though most of them are not a very pretty color.
This is my 'cat' fence, with leaves.

What brought me out with the camera was the view from the back door onto my new porch. The leaves of the Amur Maples are dropping onto it and looking quite colorful.

All of us have noticed it. Some of us escaped into the yard to look at it more closely. Abbie from the inside.

Yes, Alice is out. She is such a sneak.

In the back near the new deck are two Amur Maples I planted years ago. These are small trees, sometimes grown as shrubs with lovely fall color.

At least for North Dakota this is about as good as it gets.

I appreciate every little bit of color there is on these two trees. These were the ones with lots of branches down last week after the heavy wet snow. The trees themselves are now very twisted and broken looking with large empty spots where branches used to be. The leaves though are still beautiful.

Love,

Nancy

Slivers everywhere

Hi Mary and Jeni,
Slivers of wood that is. This is a quiz.
What does this say and where does it say it?

Do 'ya give?

All right, here is the answer.

"Never again will I put a sliver in Maggie's finger." And it is signed "X"

Yes, you got it right. I knew you both would. It is the old front door.

Lots of history on that door. Decades of history, including the saying written with magic marker on the bottom inside. I have seen many people stare at the door for a while and then look around at us. WTF?

But the stuff on the outside of the door is the most historic.

A history of Mom and Dad's political views over the years.

1984, Twenty five years ago. Who was running for president then? Jim says Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro against Reagan.

A sign from 1990... almost twenty years ago.

Jim says he didn't put this one up, but Monroe Crossing is a bluegrass band. They have even played here in Clifford, North Dakota! I notice it is right next to an American Farmland Trust sticker.

This is one of Mom's.

I enjoy this one alot.

The reason I am profiling the door is that the parents have told me they are getting new windows in their bedroom and a new front door. Probably before we get back for the winter. It will sure be different.

Then when we got back to the farm we found that we had missed a snow storm that had put lots of heavy snow on our trees. The result was two tree limbs down in the road. We could just barely drive around them.

When we came into the yard we had limbs down on our trees next to the (beautiful) new deck and also two down on the crabapple tree. Lots of work for tomorrow.

So, slivers everywhere.

Love,

Nancy