Now, it’s not that Aunt Toby and the DH are willing to sleep on burlap sacks. A good closely woven cotton (ok, perhaps with a bit of poly in it) sheet set is a joy to sleep on (especially after they are freshly put on the bed, after you’ve had a nice hot bath, and..oh, we won’t go there) and anything else can be frankly annoying. But one problem with sheet sets is this: The sheet where, ahem, the rubber meets the road, is the sheet that starts to wear out first. And unless your linen closet is stocked 100% with one single color (no prints, no weird stuff, no 1970s hippy dippy Indian prints in gold and burgundy) and it’s the same color, then if you wear out the bottom 25% of your bottom fitted sheet (I’m talking to you, Mr. “Won’t trim the toenails”), then you have a flat and two or more pillow cases that do not go with anything else.

Instant candidates for the rag bag or out into the garbage and off into the landfill far away. And usually that flat and the pillow cases are in just fine condition, thank you very much. So, pitching all of that, no matter how much you paid for the sheet set can be more than a bit of a waste.

Many of us who read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” series may recall her description of making sheets: Because the looms for muslin did not make the fabric wide enough for sheets, the girls and women would have to take two lengths (long enough to tuck under the mattress at both ends) and oh-so-carefully seam them up the middle with teeny little stitches, in a flat way, to make two flat sheets (America had to go without fitted sheets until an African America inventor, Bertha Berman, was awarded the patent for the invention in October, 1959. Bertha Berman Patent).

The really good thing about linens, under the Laura Ingalls Wilder regime, is that as the middle of the sheet wore out (and the middle of the sheets always wore out first, especially if one sheet was perpetually used as the bottom sheet), the household sewer could take out the stitches, flip the two halves and resew up the outside edges now to the center seam and the center area which was now worn, would be on the outside. The sheet would wear evenly that way and by the time it was done for, it really was worn out and probably would be taken apart, sewn up into something like curtains or used for other things. Once America had two nice matching flat sheets, households could just rotate through the flats and wear them out evenly that way also.

But we, post-Bertha Berman, buy our sheets in sets, with only one fitted bottom sheet, which wears out and leaves us hanging out there with the extra flat sheet and the pillow cases. Cannon Mills, et al. should raise their glasses on a regular basis to Bertha Berman for insuring that they have a steady market in households that have to throw out the usable rest of sheet sets and buy entirely new sheet sets just because the fitted bottom sheet has worn.

And so, Aunt Toby and the DH have found themselves with a bottom flat queen sized sheet from a very nice set which frankly someone (cough) put his toe nails through … and which I am not willing to pitch. I realize there are people (I can hear the eyeballs rolling back into people’s heads right now), regular readers all, who are now saying to themselves, “Oh, no, now she’s going to tell us to repair the damn sheet.”

Yep, that is exactly what Aunt Toby is going to show you how to do. This is frankly a patch job. I admit it, but it’s at the bottom 25% of the sheet; no one but the inhabitants of my bedroom will ever see it and all it will do is provide the DH and me with a certain feeling of Puritanial thriftiness that a) we could still keep using all of the sheet set and b) that we would not be putting more stuff into the landfill that truly does not belong there.

Here’s what you do:
Using a lightweight iron-on fusible interfacing, pull the edges of the rip together and iron a piece over to hold everything in place. If there are other odd holes, patch with small pieces.

Make two patches. The first one, for the underside of the sheet, should not only go over the ripped places, but over the entire worn area. If you are not sure how far that extends, hold the sheet up to the light – you’ll be able to more easily see through the worn area. Make the patch for the underside slightly larger than the worn area, pin on top and sew that on. Don’t bother with hemming the patch; use your zigzag stitch. I also go across a couple of times to hold everything in place. The second patch, for the top, should just go across the actual rip itself. Between these two patches, you will have a solid, well wearing area that should withstand even the thorniest toe nails.

Fabrics to use. On this sheet, I used a shirt weight linen – because I’ve got it from a project I did for the DH. Other fabrics you can use are muslin (regular or bleached, though bleached will not wear as well; bleaching will weaken the fibers). Just make sure the fabric has been washed in hot water, dried and ironed flat.

Happy sheets!

It was one of those experiences where you meet someone and you feel as if you’ve been friends ever since middle school. Geri is a New Yorker through and through. Though Aunt Toby did work in ‘the city’ for about a year during the period when no one knew if the city government was going to go bankrupt (they didn’t) or if I would stay (I didn’t), I left to go back to graduate school for a degree in accounting (which did not stick; the director of the program told me I’d make the worse accounting graduate they’d ever seen), met the DH at a softball game (he was catching; I was pitching), switched programs and the rest, as they say, is history.

Geri has many very kind things to say about me here:
When Geri Met Toby

And I have to say that her web site and programming on the site are first rate and thoroughly enthusiastic about a demographic that frankly gets zip in terms of attention and the credit that it (ahem, and me too) deserves: Women over fifty years of age. When you look at that group, it is truly mindboggling in terms of what we have achieved over the past 40 years. Unfortunately, American business still believe that the only group that counts is under the age of thirty, which given the general buying power of women over fifty, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Geri has put together a great site, filled with inspiring stories, great ideas, terrific giveaways and contests. Worth daily visits.

(photo courtesy of Denis deFreyne)

I was not the only winner. The lovely Jennifer (I’m not sure of her permission on names, so for the moment, she’s just Jenn) of New York City also won and to be truthful, this class was really for someone like her (kitchen filled with equipment she didn’t know how to use; fridge filled with take out containers) rather than me (though one of these days I will get a class on soups and pie crusts, two things that Aunt Toby avoids like the Plague because I am truly not very good with either one), but I’ll take any day trip down to New York that involves good food.

Jennifer and I converged on Jyl’s new digs (she just moved from her large loft apartment to a much smaller place). The kitchen area was pretty typical ‘New York City Apartment’ sized, which means that it was, in total, about 8 feet wide by about 4 feet deep, just enough room for an L of kitchen counter with cabinets, a fridge, sink and a four-burner stove. More than once during the afternoon, we had to do the ‘kitchen cha-cha’ with Jenn and I rhumba-ing between the stove and the sink, with Jyl giving running instructions and commentary from just outside in the open livingroom/dining area. But all in all, we left with our heads full of ideas, new-found confidence on Jennifer’s part in terms of working with knives, ground meat, and entertaining (both of us – for all Aunt Toby loves to cook – I am also the person who immediately embraced taking my kids and their friends to bowling for birthday parties. Having people in my house gives me ‘entertainment performance anxiety’).

I will get into more details in future posts, but here is what we learned and came away with:
Flavored Simple Syrups – which we used in what I’d call ‘personal soft drinks’ – we used already made coffee and a raspberry tea concentrate as the ‘water’ in the simple syrup. But, you can also use the flavored syrups as part of personal cocktails with vodka as well. I have to tell you that the coffee one, even with just seltzer, was absolutely fabulous – sophisticated, refreshing.

Hummus – which we have discussed before here. Jyl reminded us (and it’s a fabulous idea to remember), that hummus can be made out of any processed dried bean, so if you want to use black, navy, pinto, kidney, etc. instead of chick peas, then go for it!)

Pesto – which we substituted hulled sunflower seeds for the pine nuts since Jyl’s neighborhood store did not have them that day.

Bruschetta – Given what time of the year this is, I think this is something – because it is so easy – that anyone can whip up as a ‘before dinner appetizer’.

In the oven toasts – using day old Italian or French bread, sprinkles of extra virgin olive oil and freshly grated Romano cheese. These can be eaten by themselves, or used for the pesto or the Brusschetta or the hummus. Certainly a better tasting and healthier choice than a ‘bag-o-chips’.

From Scratch Meatballs and Spaghetti with Sauce. This is heaven on a plate and Jyl showed us a very nifty trick in terms of serving it so that you do not get that icky ‘ooo, look, the sauce is getting all watery and separating’ thing on the plate.

Strawberry ‘shortcakes’ with sweetened whipped cream. This is a definite ‘fast and easy/support your local bakery’ sort of dessert where all you do is wash and slice up the strawberries and ‘marinate’ them a little bit in lemon juice and a little sugar, whip up some heavy cream with a little bit of vanilla and sugar and serve over slices of the best pound cake you can find.

In addition, and this was definitely great for the anxious (ahem, ME) entertainer, we also did a very fast run through on table settings (yes, I WILL treat myself to some ‘charger plates’ – they really did seem to upgrade everything terrifically), more colorful napkins (or perhaps I’ll get some fabric and make my own – this has to be the easiest sewing project..but sewing up hems on 8, 10 or 12 squares might get into the ‘mindless’ at some point. Probably better to have this as a ‘want to sew but don’t want to do anything hard’ project). And we did some ‘deconstruction/recycling/re-imagining’ of a flower arrangement that had, as we say here at Chez Siberia, gotten a little ‘tired’.

Lessons learned:
Planning is everything. It really is worth taking the time a couple of days ahead if you are entertaining, to think through what you want to make, the order you need to have things (the simple syrups actually needed to be made first since it starts with boiling liquid and sugar and needs to be thoroughly chilled when you want to make the drinks just before dinner). Even planning down to the what plates or utensils you will need and digging them out (always one of my anxiety points since I tend to keep things that we don’t use often in boxes in the basement).

Simpler is better. I haven’t thought of serving spaghetti and meatballs as an entertainment option ever. But Jyl is right – it’s one of those dishes that a) everyone likes, no matter what their age and b) even if you can get it in a restaurant, everything has been made way in advance and has to be reheated. It usually never even hits the tick on ‘good’ range. Making the sauce and meatballs from scratch and getting fresh pasta raises this combo to the almost ambrosia stage. Better a dish people already come to the table liking and present them a version that they will close their eyes while chewing than a fancy dish you’ve never made before that they will poke around on the plate.

Put your time and best efforts with stuff you can and like to do. If you are not a baker, find a bakery that does a really really good job.

We made everything that day with the following tools. No other gadgets or little fiddly stuff necessary:
Cutting board and good sharp knives
One stock pot for the sauce
One large frying pan to brown the meatballs
Smaller pot for the simple syrup
Small electric hand mixer for the whipped cream
Food processor
Cookie sheet to make the toast
Bowls

That is it – all you need.

Take it away, Jyl Ferris!!

But, what to do with them? Some of my most depressing moments in the kitchen (and as hard as it is to believe, Aunt Toby has moments of domestic self-loathing just like everyone else) have been in the middle of an August or early September heat wave, with the sauce on the stove and the canner going as well, and sweat dripping down my face (anyone wanting to excuse themselves may do so now), the sink full of washed tomatoes and three humongous bowls of freshly picked tomatoes sitting out on the counter. This is usually accompanied by the sound of the DH’s voice gaily wafting from the garden, “Hey – we missed a lot out here; I’ll pick them so the slugs won’t get them!”

Yep. Those are moments when a shower at the Bates Motel has a certain charm.

However, a bit of creativity and outright avoidance will get us through.
First: Drying.
One of the best ideas we had several years ago was to get an electric food dehydrator. We use this for just about everything that can be cut up and then used later, whether it’s fruit, veggies, onions, you name it. We had a lovely appetizer in an Italian restaurant on our last trip to Edinburgh, Scotland (vs Edinburgh, PA), which consisted of little tomatoes which had been dried and preserved with garlic in olive oil, accompanied by thin slices of mozzarella cheese. This works especially well with tomatoes such as Princip Borgese, but being a totally classless American, I did it with cherry and grape tomatoes. Same great ’summer in a bottle’ flavor.

Second: Freezing.
Don’t ask me where we got this technique, but we’ve been using it for fruit for years and it works for really any veggie also that is not too watery (for example, it will not work with things like zucchini – to freeze summer squashes such as these, grate them up, squeeze out the excess water, bag up and freeze for things like baked goods later). What we do for tomatoes is slightly different but the theory is the same: Cut up the fruit in question, lay out on cookie sheets, leaving space in between, and put in the freezer. When they are completely frozen, take off the cookie sheet (you might need to pry them off with a spatula), put into bags or other freezer containers and seal. If you are using ziplock(tm) bags, close almost all the way and suck out the air. The fruit will still stay in separate pieces.

For tomatoes, there is just one small additional thing to do: once you’ve cut them up in pieces (and with a big tomato, you should be cutting it up into 6-8 pieces; with a plum tomato, probably 4 pieces), use a spoon and get out as much of the “gishy” gelatinous stuff inside as you can. In freezing this will be very watery when you defrost. But freezing is a great way to keep tomatoes for when you want to do something later. Later in the fall, when it’s cooler, the garden is done and when you need tomatoes OR, you actually want to do a bit of canning or make sauce or whatever, you just pull out the bags, throw the tomatoes in a pot and off you go. You can cook up whatever you want and serve or cook it up and using the directions on your canner, can it up then.
A bit of summer when you least expect it.

So, how do you know when they are ready? Well if you have soft necked garlic, the top of the plant just collapses and dries up. Once that happens, you are good to dig them up. If you have hard neck garlic (and these are obviously hard necked), the central stem dries up and turns white. Once that happens, the bulbs have matured and you can dig them up.

There are several ways to save garlic, but all of them start with cleaning and drying. Once you have dug the bulbs up, shake as much dirt off them as you can and rinse well. Put out in the sun and let them dry for a day. Some people save them in jars; there are methods of braiding the stems and the leaves. Here’s our method:
First: Make the decision of whether or not you are going to use any of this harvest to replant for next year. If the answer is ‘no’ then you can buy or order garlic stock from other sources. If the answer is yes, then look over the bulbs and choose the biggest healthiest one you have, split it up into cloves and plant into a prepared bed as far down as your hand can reach in soft soil. The best time to plant is right after the first frost in your area.

Second: Take the rest of your garlic, split into cloves and peel, break off the little root bit at the end, rinse off and put into some container that you can reopen, like a yoghurt container or a ziplock(tm) bag. If you are using a bag, you can suck out the excess air when you get to the last little bit to zip shut. Then just put into the freezer and use as you need them. Easy as pie and lasts seemingly forever.

We’re brand new to turkey raising this year and it has been truly delightful to find out that turkeys make a bunch of different noises. But, none of them sounds like ‘gobble’. What I think that refers to is more like a ululation. ululation

They also cluck and make a noise that sounds a lot like a ‘ping’ – sort of a “Star Wars’ sort of noise. Again, I have no idea who’s doing what (supposedly the tom’s ‘gobble’ and the hens ‘cluck’ but I think they all ‘ping’.

As you can see, they look a LOT more like turkeys than the last time we took a look at them for you and they are starting to puff up and present ‘display behaviors’ a lot more now. But we have the rest of the summer and into the fall before they will be big enough to be recognizable ‘painted on a china plate’ turkeys.

But it is coming – get over it.

So the best thing, actually, that you can do right now is look at your calendar, wherever you are, and ask yourself the following question: When is the farthest we can count on daytime temperatures staying above 55 degrees F?

In my area, that time is probably mid-late October. Yes, we get frosts and freezes during that period, but we still can have most of a day where the temperature (especially if it’s sunny) over 55 degrees F. And having that date for yourself is a really useful thing because 55 degrees F. is the drying and curing temperature for lots of materials that you might want to be using between now and when winter shuts things down. Materials such as:

Paint: both latex and oil need hours of temperatures at 55 degrees F or better to dry on the surface and cure underneath.
Caulk of all types
Gypsum wall board compound
Glues and adhesives of various types

Ah, I see the light dawning. Aunt Toby is talking about the dreaded home projects which many families undertake in the fall to get ready for the winter. Whether you are replacing windows or just caulking around them; painting the outside of the house when the bugs are not as ferocious, or just doing ordinary maintenance when it’s a lot more pleasant to work than it is in July and August, looking at the calendar NOW and figuring out how much time you have to actually get things done (barring any awful rain and that can happen also) will help you plan.

Some things take longer than others. The DH and our son caulked all the windows in the house in a couple of hours (but then, we have a house with only three bedrooms so if you have a larger home, your mileage, as they say, may vary. Doing a home paint job takes so much prep work, that this is something that you might want to start right NOW, in order to be able to still have daytime temps over 50 degrees F to work with.

You have more leeway, naturally, with indoor projects, but again, the 55 degrees F still applies. So if you want to rip out some walls, put in insulation, wallboard and wall board compound, and then paint, this is still something you want to keep an eye on. We ended up having to do a ceiling repair in our living room in early November and even with fans, the wallboard compound and then the paint seemed to take weeks to finally dry up enough. As it was, there was still a section where we had to rip out the next summer and redo it because some moisture got trapped and we got bubbling and blistering coming to the surface.
So: check your calendar and think: “When will the daytime temps get below 55 degrees F?” And start thinking about what energy saving and maintenance projects you need to take care of between now….and then.

Why do I like purple podded bush beans?
First: Earliness. Bush beans are notoriously finicky about soil temps. In general, if it’s not warm enough, they just lie there and rot at their leisure. Purple podded beans, for some reason (don’t ask me why; I have not a clue), can handle temperatures much much cooler than the standard, much beloved by all (but not by the Siberians, I’m afraid) “Bush Blue Lake’. So, I’d love them even if they did not have any other advantages.

Second: Hardiness against damp conditions. Again, bean seeds can be very delicate when it comes to spring conditions where it rains and it rains and it’s chilly and it’s raining and the soil is just wet. Again, I’ve had springs here where we’ve had to sow beans such as Bush Blue Lake several times before conditions have dried out enough for the damned things to germinate. Purple podded beans just pop up, no matter what.

Third: They have this ‘gee-whiz’ feature which is very helpful when you want to blanch and freeze them: Put them into boiling water and as soon as they turn from purple to green (and it’s a good, dark, pine green), YOU ARE DONE! Pull them, throw them into cold water, freeze them under whatever method you use (we use the ’stick them into plastic bags and vaccuum seal them’ but to each his/her own). Just take a look at the photographs: Same mix of beans, same pot, photo just taken one minute apart. Magic. I love it.

As you may recall, the chicks and turkey poults arrived, aged three days, in the middle of May. So, at this point, they are 10 weeks old. The really interesting thing is that although they were just about the same size, within days, the poults took off and haven’t stopped growing since. They have a long way to go before they are …ahem…oven ready. But they are certainly growing. We have two heritage breeds: Bourbon Red and Slate Blue. We could have gone with the standard ‘butterball type’ which is referred to as ‘Broad-breasted White’ but since we’d never raised turkeys before, we decided to give a couple of heritage breeds a try. So far, I can tell you this: If you can keep them alive for the first couple of weeks – they are tough as nails. Now, because of what we estimated to be their later size, we decided that making them some sort of version of ‘chicken tractor’ was just not going to work for us. We also wanted to give them a bit of shelter and fenced in a large area around a small shed that we already had. We also attached pvc pipes to extend the fence posts and ran snow fencing around that (I think we should buy stock in whatever company produces ‘zip ties’ because we seem to have gone through an amazing number of those this year). And, to be blunt, we hampered their amazing flying abilities by shortening a couple of the flight feathers in their wings. Literally, it would be like cutting your hair, but it unbalances them enough that they can’t get up enough speed or lift to get over the snow fencing.
Again, a small reminder: Like the chickens, we have to supplement what they find on the ground or in eating the plants with a mash. With turkeys, you need more protein than you do with chickens but basically we are talking about the same sort of feed ration made up of grains.

The sheep (see our suspicious friend at the top), on the other hand, because they are ruminants, are being moved around and fed fresh pasture every couple of days. And as you can see from the photographs, they are really doing well. This photo from the side gives you a good image of the digestive capacity of ruminants – see that abdominal area? That’s all the most sophisticated digestive system you can possibly imagine, used to convert cellulose into protein. For all the attention paid to feed rations for sheep, goats, and cows, frankly, they already have the wherewithal to produce everything they need with their four stomach system, complemented by their cud chewing. It’s an amazing system and as you can see from what these lambs look like at this point, with absolutely no effort on our parts – although we did put out a bit of clover seed last year, what is available to them is everything from golden rod to Queen Ann’s Lace and very very rough grasses. The ‘dressed weight’ on sheep is about 35%-40% (so, in other words, if you start out with a 100 pound sheep, you will get between 35 and 40 pounds of cut and wrapped lamb BACK), so we are planning to keep the lambs on grass for as long as it lasts. We have had a lot of good rain over the past two weeks so the pastures have come back nicely and it looks as if we will be able to take the lambs through into the fall without having to buy hay for them.

One plan we do have is that once the turkeys and lambs have, ‘gone down the road’, and the chickens have been separated out between the hens who will stay with us for eggs and the roosters who…won’t, the pastures will be empty again and we will find a way to harrow up the pastures and put down lime and perhaps more pasture grass seed this fall before the snow flies. One of the problems we have with this pasture is that it is so ’sour’ (an acidic pH) that we don’t have the sorts of plants that we want to have. So putting down some limestone to bring the pH closer to neutral is really important and opening up the pasture soil to that and the seeds before the snow starts to fall and ground freezes will give us a good start for next spring. And yes, they really do go ‘gobble’.

Waistbands are tricky like that. When you put the waistband on, you are raising the item on your body. And then there is the whole ‘weight gain and/or loss’ thing. I tend to gain in the front of my stomach and even if everything ends up the same circumference, more inches in the front pulls the item toward the front, throws off the side seams, and generally makes your Aunty extremely grouchy. Same deal when I lose weight – the front drops down because the waistband is too big. Fixing a waistband is one of those onerous tasks that causes more women to end up putting safety pins in than any other, I think.

Enter the DH – or more correctly, the DH’s dress slacks, which I have taken in and out on numerous occasions when he, too, has gone through some body changes. This was not a terribly difficult task, as men’s dress slacks have a waistband which is split in the center back. As a matter of fact, the two pieces of the waistband are put onto the center back seam without it being sewn all the way first (the light is beginning to dawn, right?), so that tailors can make their adjustment without having to take the waistband off first.

Women’s clothing, on the other hand, generally has a one-piece waistband on it. To fix a problem you have to take the entire waistband off and then do the adjustment at whatever seam and then fiddle around with making the waistband smaller and yada yada yada. Hair-pulling ensues.

So, since I don’t want to have to do THAT anymore, here’s what I did:
I measured all the way around the waist on the pants and added the amount I would to put the pants closures on. Then I added an inch for every place I was going to split the waistband.

I split my waistband actually in two places (the zip is in the left side seam): the right side seam and the back center seam.

I opened up the center back and side seams of the pants about two inches, applied the waistband pieces there, sewed up the waistband seam and the side seam and the waistband seam and the back center seam in one go.

I folded over the waistband, sewed it down.

Done. Best fitting waistband I ever had. And if I need to take it out, I can just open up the waistband where I sewed it down at the the back center seam and the side seam, open the waistband down as far as I want to get more breathing room, and resew it.

I will, in the future, do a version of this on ’store bought’ slacks and blue jeans so that you can see that you can use this same technique to rescue these pants also.