Winter, here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?

This month kicked off with the prediction of six more weeks of winter, and around the United States, most of us simply shrugged and smiled.  If the next six weeks were anything like the weather we were experiencing then, who cared if it stuck around another six weeks?

Yesterday morning, we awoke to gun-metal gray, cold skies and an even colder rain.  I gleefully predicted it would turn to snow, and my confidence was rewarded.  Mid-morning, we enjoyed a few glorious minutes of big, wet snowflakes floating down to earth.  Places east and west and north of here received enough snowfall to measure; we did not.  This week’s temperatures are predicted to be springlike, which is fine by me.

It has been an odd winter, as winters go.  But then again, southern winters are never predictable or “normal.”  However, we are fortunate to be able to consider the winter season as our shortest annual guest:  she typically stays around only a few months; sometimes less.   While she’s here, you never know quite what to expect – she can be mild-mannered or she might party like a rock star and trash the place. But short visits from winter – even if they a bit temperamental – are one of the things I love about living in the south.

This week, I start my vegetable seeds – pics are coming.  And I will get some baking done.  And if the weather is nice, I might get a jumpstart on spring cleaning, both inside and out.  I’m not sure winter is  ready to take her leave of us just yet, but I see many signs that indicated she’s packing up and preparing to move on.

A good guest always leaves before she outstays her welcome.
An even better one leaves you wishing she’d stay just a bit longer.

Happy Monday,

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Recipe of the Week: Stuffed Pepper Soup

January is national soup month in the U.S., which makes sense.  Most of us are faced with cold and/or wet and/or snowy weather this time of year, so a bowl of hot and hearty soup warms us from the inside out.  

Like last year, I’ve focused on soup recipes each Wednesday in January.  (You can find lots of soup recipes in my Recipe Box here.)  Today’s recipe is a newer one I recently found on Pinterest.  I made it for our family last week, then made it again for the Bunco girls on Monday night. It was one of those recipes that was on the right track, but needed some modifying; here’s my second rendition which was well received:

Stuffed Pepper Soup

Ingredients:
1 pound ground beef
1 onion, diced
2 green peppers, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, or 2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 jar mushroom and pepper spaghetti sauce
1 can petite diced tomatoes
3-4 cups chicken broth
1 cup cooked rice (1/2 cup uncooked)

Directions:
In large stock pot, brown beef.  Drain and remove from pan. Add a tablespoon of olive oil and saute onion and peppers until soft. Add back the beef and all other ingredients except the rice.  Simmer for an hour or longer.  Just before serving, stir cooked rice through.  Makes 6 servings.

The original recipe called for two cans of diced tomatoes and tomato sauce; not spaghetti sauce.  And a LOT more rice. It also had a very short – 35 minute – cooking time.  When we tried it, we found the rice made it very thick; more like a stew. And the flavor of the peppers and tomatoes didn’t really meld together, but remained raw and distinct. I gently modified the ingredients and quantities, and adjusted the cooking time. That is key to most soups:  unless you’re dealing with ingredients that will toughen or fall apart if cooked too long, be sure to give your soup some time for the flavors to release and come together.

Happy cooking!

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A dilettante’s guide to garden planning

Roses are red, violets are blue.  I love gardening, do you?

As much as I love actually gardening, I love garden planning almost as much. It is a gardener’s winter therapy.  The new plant and seed catalogs are piling up on my desk, full of picture-perfect flowers and bright promises of warmer months ahead.  (Okay, so it’s really just daydreaming and doodling, but it’s with a purpose.)

I especially love planning when I have a blank slate to work with, like I do now.  First up on my to-do list is to create a potager-style vegetable garden with raised beds.

And my heart’s desire:  a long sweeping border full of flowers for cutting.

It would be easy to dive into a planting frenzy – so many plants provide gorgeous bouquets.

But instead of buying and planting willy-nilly, I have a method for designing these beds that will look thoughtfully landscaped, but not formal or boring, offering an evolving sequence of blooms from spring to fall.    It’s cottage gardening with some self-control.  If you follow this method, you’ll never wind up with a tall plant squatting in front of a delicate, diminutive one, or loud heavy orange blooms squeezing up against a froth of lacy pale pink petals.  Unless you want to, of course.

Step 1:  Determine the size of your bed (it can have curves, but this scheme works best with oblong or rectangle beds. Planting schemes can be adapted for island beds in round, kidney or square shapes – we’ll talk about those in a future post.)

Step 2: Plot the bed on a rough grid of 12-inch or 18-inch squares (curves and bends are easily accommodated:  you can drop a plant out, squish it in closer, or ease it to the left or right instead of being perfectly gridlocked.)  Big grids or little grids?  Personally, I plan – and plant – on a 12-15 inch grid for a fuller look.  But I have been known to regret it when a plant sprawls larger than I anticipated. Huge plants and shrubs can be given a double or quadruple spot on the grid.

The top/back row is plotted (left-right): Tall/Early, Tall/Mid, Tall/Late, Tall/Early, Tall/Mid, Tall/Late…repeating as many times as needed.

The middle row is plotted as Medium/Late, Medium/Early, Medium/Mid, Medium/Late, Medium/Early, Medium/Mid….

And the front/bottom row is plotted as Short/Mid, Short/Late, Short/Early, Short/Mid, Short/Late, Short/Early…

Step 3: Choose your plants.  Depending on the size of your space and your sensibilities, you can choose one, two or three different plants for each height and bloom season.  (Fewer choices will give you more repetition and a more formal, polished look. Choosing more varieties will give you a fuller, freer look. However, if you go with more than three different plants for each height and bloom period, try to make sure each plant is included at least 3 times and choose plants that are similar in color and/or texture to provide visual continuity.)

Below is what my planting scheme looks like for each season (each block of color represents a specific plant’s bloom color; the green blocks are the foliage on adjacent plants when they are not in bloom at that time.) Each of these plans represents an area 3 feet by 12 feet – I’ll just keep repeating it down the fence row, stretching approximately 16 feet on each side of a wide gate.  I’m using two plants per height and bloom season; 18 different plants will be repeated every 6 feet.

See how the flower colors start demure and pastel in spring and become more vibrant in summer and blazing hot colors in the fall?  It’s almost impossible to find screaming orange blooms in early spring (except tulips), or muted pastels in the fall, and I think it’s easier and more natural looking for your colors to to work with Mother Nature than trying to fight her.

E=early/spring flowers

M=mid/summer flowers

L=late/fall flowers

By staggering your plants by their peak bloom times, you don’t wind up with a bunch of competing (or clashing) blooms lined up in front of one another.  Instead, each season builds to a peak, then  gradually gives way to the next. By designating each plant as tall (I classify anything over 4 feet as tall), medium (2-3 feet) and short (under 2 feet), you ensure that the tall ones are always in the back.

What about the advice of planting your perennials in groups of 3s or 5s and creating big swaths of color for impact?  The ugly truth is those swaths tend to turn into huge voids when the bloom season ends. By repeating the plants every second or third spot, you get rhythm and continuity without “busy-ness”  and the entire bed looks fresh and full of blooms from spring to frost.

If you like this idea, you’re welcome to borrow it and apply  your plants to it; please send pictures and bragging tales of your success stories!

If you are interested in having a planting scheme and nursery shopping list created for you, please contact me.  I create custom plans based on your climate, sun and shade environment as well as your personal plant preferences, for a small fee. The plans include a planting chart and specific plant recommendations, plus mail order sources for varieties that may not be available in your area.

It’s way too soon to get planting, but now is the time to get planning, especially if you are ordering any plants for spring delivery.

Happy gardening,

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What goes up, must come down

Just like the old Blood Sweat & Tears song and Newton’s law of gravity, the Christmas decorations that go up must eventually come down.

When do you take yours down?  I have friends who have them down in the twinkling of an eye, pretty much as soon as Christmas dinner is finished. 

As for me, I let mine linger a bit.  We start our decorating later than most, and I’m just not ready to put it all away on December 26.  But I do make sure it’s down shortly after we’ve ushered in the new year.

Every year for several years, I have vowed to go through all the Christmas bins and straighten them out.  This year, I made good on that promise.  No excuses – the walk-in attic is adjacent to our bonus room, so I had the perfect staging area to spread out all my tubs and really organize them.  I also did a little “Santa’s Workshop” repair on a few items that needed re-gluing.

Today marks the 12th day of Christmas (see note), and I’m happy to say my decorations are down and tucked away, and I’ve even made a little headway on decorating the dining room for the winter months.  Den and foyer are next.

There were two distinct approaches I could take to stowing away my Christmas decorations:

1. Room-by-room (kitchen, dining room, UT stuff for the bonus room….)
2. Like-goes-with-like (garlands, ornaments, lights, nutcrackers, Christmas village…)

I chose…both.

For example, the kitchen tub contains everything I need to set up my kitchen for Christmas:  tree decorations, Christmas mugs and linens, even my party paper goods (of which I have enough to last the next 30 years.  Okay, maybe just the next two or three, but it seems like a lot.)  Next to it is the box with next year’s gift mugs for my 3rd graders.  I picked them up on clearance, and it’s one less thing to worry about.

Yes, the caroler’s book is upside down

On the other hand, my nutcracker collection stays together (albeit in one large tub and two wine boxes – they are the perfect size for storing them.)  I store them as a group even though some go to the sunroom, some to the kitchen, some to the den and some to the foyer.  I always shuffle them up, so each year I can pull them out and decide who-goes-where.  Ditto for the garlands and wreaths.  But the light strands and ornaments are separated in tubs for specific trees: dining room, big tree, UT tree.

I also tucked in some reminders for next year to make decorating easier – you know, those things you tell yourself, “next year, I’ll do it this way instead” and next year, you remember it too late?  Yeah, me too.  Maybe my notes will help next year – we’ll see.)

Of the stuff I didn’t use this year, I designated one tub for Santa Claus decorations, and another for snowmen and the cream/gold ornaments. When I get the urge to switch from silver to gold, or do a Santa or snowman theme, I can “shop” from my own inventory first.

After everything was in tubs and I had tossed all the irreparable, melted, discolored or otherwise unusable stuff, there remained two large bags of “haven’t-used-in-forever” (or maybe never) stuff.  I’ll take pity on the Goodwill folks who are dealing with the year-end glut, and keep them until early next fall to drop off. They’re set aside in one corner, visibly marked for their final destination.

The only remaining to-do is to get some shelving up in the attic so when I need the tub on the bottom of the stack (isn’t that always the one you need?) I don’t have to offload all the other tubs to fetch it. But that’s a task that can wait for a warm Saturday so we don’t get frostbite in the process.

Even though Christmas is officially over and the decorations are down, I think I’m going to be vacuuming up glitter and pine needles for a very long time….

Happy cleaning,

P.S.   A big thank-you to Mr. Kurek for setting me straight on how to count the twelve days of Christmas. I’m just glad I was a day ahead, instead of a day behind!

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Recipe of the Week: Homemade Hot Cocoa Mix

When our children were young, winter meant hot cocoa – and lots of it.  But small children tend to leave half the mug undrank (undrunk?)  and it pained me to waste so much.  When I considered the cost of each individual pouch of mix, I felt like I was pouring good money down the drain along with the cold, undrinkable cocoa. The bulk canisters of pre-made mix weren’t any more cost-effective (on a price-per-serving basis, they were even more expensive than the pouches most of the time.)

But a friend of mine shared with me her recipe for homemade hot cocoa mix.  Score!  It’s easy to mix up and very inexpensive if you have a lot of hot cocoa lovers to satisfy.   Over the years, I tweaked her recipe a little her and there, most notably adding the chocolate pudding mix.  Here’s my current version, which is still subject to change – feel free to modify to suit your own preferences for taste and texture.

Nancy’s Hot Cocoa Mix (with a few tweaks)

Ingredients:
8 cups powdered milk
1/2 cup powdered chocolate drink mix (Nestle is always a favorite but any brand will work)
1 4-ounce box instant chocolate pudding (optional but recommended for thicker texture)
1/3 cup powdered non-dairy creamer (you can use cinnamon, peppermint or other flavored creamer if you prefer)
1/3 cup powdered sugar

Directions:
Sift or mix together in a large bowl or canister – stir well until there are no streaks of brown or white.  (A pasta stirrer makes a good utensil to blend the dry ingredients).

Store in tightly sealed canister or other container.  Use 1/3 cup mix to 8 ounces boiling hot water.  Stir and serve with or without marshmallows (homemade mallows  make it extra yummy!) or whipped topping.  Makes approximately 30 servings.

Happy mixing!

 

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My mantel, my mantle

In each home we have owned, I have wanted (and gotten) a fireplace with a mantel. Last home had two fireplaces and three mantels (one fireplace was two-sided.) I love (REALLY love) having a fireplace. And – of course – a mantel. But decorating said mantel doesn’t come naturally to yours truly. And this home’s fireplace has the added complexity of having a massive brick wall above the mantel. Everything seems to recede into the earth-tone brick.

I know, I know..what a problem to have, right?  But all whining aside, I’ve developed a real mental block when it comes to decorating this prominent feature of our living space, and each season seems to bring new and bigger challenges for me.  (I never decorate the mantel the same way twice.  Maybe if I found a style I really love – or even really like – I’d just fall back on it each year.  So far, nada.)

So the mantel has become a mantle.  You know, a yoke, a burden, a responsibility that I shoulder alone (because if I left it to the menfolk of this family, there’d be some random UT memorabilia thrown up there willy-nilly.  And that’s just not happening.)

So let’s back up to last spring, when I put together an homage to our South Carolina spring trip, with blown-up photos of starfish and sea stuff. I really liked that scheme, but:

1. There was a complete and utter DEARTH of tasteful or inspired mantel decoration between the holidays and spring. Oh my.
2. In retrospect, the scale was still a little small. Or maybe it’s just me thinking I should somehow cover that vast expanse of brick with SOMETHING?

At any rate, spring and summer, the mantel stayed pretty much the same.  Then came fall and I did pump up the orange with some seasonal items.

And then…the Christmas mantel.  Three days of decorating resulted in this.   Pffft.  And now that has been down for several weeks….and there’s a void once again.  I keep looking at blogs with mantel ideas, hoping to get inspired. Or find something I could shamelessly copy item-for-item. (Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and all that.)

A painting class scheduled for last week got canceled due to snow.  Alas, it was going to be a painting of a winter wonderland scene, which I had hoped would grace my mantel until it is time for another trip to South Carolina.  I decided it was high time to implement Plan B.  (Well, to be more precise, it was time to create and implement Plan B.  And now that you’ve heard all my excuses and rationalizing, here’s this year’s winter mantel.

I’m not sure it’s worthy of much commentary or explanation, but in case you’re interested, here’s what I did:

I started out with a print of Monet’s “Magpie,” one of my favorite winter scenes, in a brushed silver frame.  In front of the print is a mix of old and new candle holders, with crushed oyster shells in the bases.

Hobby Lobby had some fantastic closeout deals on the black candlesticks (which I really wanted last Christmas, so a very early “Merry Christmas 2011″ to me!) ;  their flowers were 50% off and I already had the vase sitting around collecting dust.  The mirror was borrowed from the dining room.

The center is another mix of old and new:  the bronze barnstar is new (but was half off!), while the vase, bird statue, candle and “Family” sign are from recycled from seasons and mantels past.  (Okay, some of the floral stems are new, too.)

So what do you think?  Will it carry us through these bleakest months weeks of the year?  Any suggestions or ideas?   I’m really hoping this mantel can be gently transitioned into a spring mantel in a couple of months.  I like the idea of gradually changing it over every few months instead of a total overhaul each season.  Especially since I seem to encounter a mental block when I’m faced with the prospect of a complete change-out.

And in case you’re wondering, yes, we’ve thought about painting the brick or covering it with drywall and painting it the color of the walls, but our time in this house may be ending soon. If that happens, I’m not going to waste the time (and extreme energy) to tape and mud and sand and paint, especially dangling from a ladder, when the next residents may not appreciate or value my efforts.  Of course, if we decide to stay put, then that may be high on my list of honey-do’s this spring.

Happy decorating!

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It’s beginning to smell a lot like brisket…

And yes, the title may be hummed to the tune of “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas” – which it is that, too. In fact, if it were December, the white stuff on the ground would be a welcome novelty. As it is, it’s just another cold, wintry day. Three days of snowfall. What can it mean? We’ve never had this much snow since we moved here in 2000. At least it’s a good excuse to continue making comfort foods.

And so the crockpot is burbling away with a nice lean brisket, approaching tender perfection. A bowl of bread starter was puffing and bubbling along all day, basking in the radiant heat from the crockpot.

My family’s favorite brisket recipe is called “Mrs. Ringle’s Brisket” and was part of the Once-a-Month Cooking menu, where it was described as an overnight recipe, cooled and frozen in the morning. (Confession: I have no idea who Mrs. Ringle is.) I rarely prepare it overnight, as I’ve found the smell of food cooking wreaks havoc with my sleeping pattern: I tend to wake up and smell it in the wee hours, and then I can’t go back to sleep. (It’s not hunger, it just somehow offends my sensibilities – and olfactory senses – to smell food cooking all night.)

I braved the frigid temps long enough to dart into the greenhouse and find my 20-row seed starting trays. I think I have about 18 varieties of tomatoes, and another 4 or 5 of peppers, plus some eggplants. If my math is correct, I can parlay these into 24 six-packs, nicely filling two flats with 72 cells each. A manageable grouping of plants to keep indoors during the next 6-8 weeks, depending on weather. (Really must get the greenhouse fixed soon.)

In April I’ll plant out 1 or 2 of each variety and offer the rest to family and friends. Of course, that assumes the seedlings are up and growing enough to survive a week of neglect at spring break. That week away has been known to throw a real wrench in my seed starting in past years. And can the seed trays stay safe from the threat of the paranoid nocturnal wanderings of Luci(fer), the Mainecoon feline? Only time will tell. Tomorrow, a bag of seed starting mix and a new grow light are on my must-get list.

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