I hope everyone who celebrates Winter Solstice had a beautiful day! As for James and I, it couldn’t have been more perfect.
As some of you may know, James does all the cooking year-round except for the Winter Solstice when I take over and plan a sometimes rather elaborate meal. This tradition came about because James works in retail and there are many years when he does not get Solstice off from work and is therefore not home to cook a celebratory meal. Sure, we could choose to have our meal on a different day, but for whatever reason, we decided the meal needed to be on the actual Solstice. Since James was not reliably available to cook, I took on the cooking. And, of course, I couldn’t cook just anything.
I usually start going through recipes in the middle of November and come up with a menu by Thanksgiving, which gives us time to get all the ingredients that are sometimes a challenge to find and require some revision. This year, however, ingredients were no problem at all.
Working in an academic library, I generally get a big chunk of time off around Christmas and New Year’s, and this year is no exception. I was even able to take a few extra days on either end. So I began my holiday vacation Friday, which was very important because part of the Solstice menu was sourdough bread that requires two days to make.
I found a great recipe with easy to follow instructions. I am one of the people who, during the pandemic, started a sourdough culture. My starter, Tilda, has been with me since May 1, 2020. I feed her–them–regularly, and they keep happily growing and reproducing. Friday afternoon Tilda obliged me with the starter for a loaf of bread. I made the dough according to instructions, covered the bowl with a damp towel and allowed the critters to do their thing overnight and into mid-morning Saturday.
Then it was time to follow through with the process, the second rise, the baking, and hoping it all turned out ok because I have never made sourdough bread before. This was the result:
The crust was crusty and the inside was soft and chewy. Beginner’s luck?
The bread went along with the simple miso and tofu soup:
There were some minutes of panic when I was ready to make the soup and asked James where the wakame had ended up and he couldn’t find it. He did find it eventually and everything ended up just fine.
After the soup came the main dish, stuffed butternut squash. This one I did some mixing of recipes. The original recipe was for acorn squash, but why buy an acorn squash when I have butternuts I grew in the garden? I had to scoop out a larger hollow in the butternut for the stuffing to fit in, and the squash took a bit longer to roast than an acorn would, but it all came out just fine.
I filled the squash with a wild rice stuffing. The rice stuffing recipe includes apple and walnuts and I didn’t want a sweet stuffing because butternuts are sweet enough already. So I left out the apple and walnuts. Instead, I added spicy crispy chickpeas seasoned with a home-mixed tandoori masala spice blend. Unfortunately, I wrote down the recipe and don’t remember what blog I got it from. The spicy chickpeas played well with the wild rice stuffing and squash and added a nice sort of crouton crunch.
And then for dessert, which we actually had earlier in the afternoon with coffee, snickers cake. My version did not look as fancy as the one in the online recipe, but it still tasted amazing
So much yum!
We ate the all the squash, but there is still stuffing, which with the chickpeas makes its own meal, and soup and bread. And cake of course. Leftovers rock!
If James doesn’t do it first, I’m going to have to try to make another loaf of sourdough bread in a few weeks to see if it was a fluke it turned out so well, or whether I’m actually pretty good an the bread making.
Now I’m on vacation through January 5th. There is garden planning to do, reading, relaxing, knitting, and a few other projects.
My bruises from being doored last weekend are healing up nicely with the help of comfrey salve I made from my garden comfrey last year. And thankfully, no further injuries materialized. My repaired cargo bike should be ready to pick up from the shop tomorrow.
There is always plenty of joy to be had if only I pay attention. This last week there were holiday cards and some surprise gifts. On Thursday we had 5.5 inches/ 14 cm of snow. James and I decided to take public transit instead of putting our lives in danger with bad drivers on unplowed roads. There is much joy sitting on a warm bus and allowing someone else to worry about getting me to my destination. On the way home in the evening, there were so many homes lit up with holiday lights that I had the chance to savor, something I cannot do much of on my bike since I need to pay attention to what is happening on the road.
The juncos, who are themselves a joy with their little round fat bodies, keep visiting the garden to eat amaranth and hyssop seeds. Watching them through the window never fails to make me smile.
And today, the chickens made me laugh. It’s been pretty cold so we haven’t opened the run to let them out into the garden, but today was sunny and just below freezing and I thought perhaps they would like the opportunity for some fresh air. They don’t much like snow, but they will walk down the snowy garden path to the snow-free deck just to be outside. I figured that is what they would do. But when they finally decided to investigate beyond the coop, only Ethel and Sia came out, walked to the top of the stairs from the chicken garden to the main garden, stood there a few minutes looking out over all the snow, decided nope, then turned around and went back inside their warm, dray, straw covered run.
Later in the week will bring a thaw, so perhaps enough snow will melt to entice them out for a walkabout.
Reading
- Book: 44 Poems on Being With Each Other, edited by Pádraig Ó Tuama. Ó Tuama does the On Being Poetry Unbound podcast. I have listened to it before but it isn’t my cuppa. Still, I love reading poetry, and James brought this home when an advance reading copy showed up at work. The poems are great and I found some new to me poets I want to investigate further. However, Ó Tuama makes a small personal introduction to each poem and then follows each peom with 3-4 pages of explication. I very soon gave up reading everything but the poems. It’s not that the other bits were not good, he does a fine, nonacademic job of explaining poetry because he is himself a poet and approaches the poems as a poet and a reader of poetry. But, I don’t need anyone explaining the poems to me, I can do that just fine. I think this book would be great for people who like poetry but are intimidated by it, who feel like they need a friendly assist in learning how to be a poetry reader. So if that sounds like you, then definitely give this book a try.
- Lecture: Writing in the Stupid Age by Anne Haverty. This is the text of a lecture Haverty delivered at the United Arts Club in Dublin in October. She talks about literature, art, culture and AI. It is very good.
- Graphic history: Among Giants: A Brief Hydrological History of the Upper Midwest. A graphic history of the upper Mississippi River and valley. Brief and glacier-ific.
- Map: Indigenous Artists Give Minnesota Map a Makeover. I wouldn’t call it a makeover. I’d call it a map of the land before white colonial settlers stole it and renamed everything.
Quote
“You could say we have been softened up to give ourselves up to AI. Our language is withering into banality, our concentration is wrecked, our respect for our unique capacity for thinking and creating eroded. We have come to take refuge from each other in the machine. As AI learns to do better will we be happy to hand over to it that capacity for thinking and creating, the capacity that gives us much of our sense of purpose and fulfilment? “
~Anne Haverty, Writing in the Stupid Age
Listening
- Nothing of particular interest this week
Watching
- Movie: National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. It’s a classic annual must-see at my house
James’s Kitchen Wizardry
Suspended this week for my Solstice amazingness. He’ll be back at it week, I’m sure.
I am unapologetically stealing your stuffed squash recipe. May be what the boys and I have here on Wednesday. I was already leaning toward something with wild rice and hazelnuts. Chickpeas work just as well. Maybe better because no annoying papery skins to deal with.
Merry Midwinter!
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Do steal the squash recipe! Let me know how you tweak it. Hazelnuts would be delicious in it, and in spite of the papery skins, you wouldn’t need to cook and season them like the chickpeas. Whatever you decide for your Christmas meal, enjoy!
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I’m glad you had a lovely Winter Solstice. I made Solstice Stockings for my granddaughters, so that will be a tradition in years to come. I’m so impressed with your bread making, I have given up trying!
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Solstice Stockings! I love it! We’ll see how well the bread making goes the next time I try it. It could all have been pure beginner’s luck! 😀
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Happy Solstice! Your bread looks amazing. The whole meal looks amazing. Well done!
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Thanks Laila!
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I cannot think of another year during which so many people brought up the Winter Solstice, and every time that happened, I thought of you and James. I also learned that Winter Solstice is when the shortest days of light are behind us, which runs contrary to how we usually feel come January and February: it’s like the days get longer and draggier, but really, we’re all lost in post-holiday boredom/lack appreciation for rest. Much like your chickens, I’m forcing Nick to sit with me in a cuddle lump this break. Honestly, it’s the first time we’ve spent winter so slowly/patiently.
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Awww, thanks for thinking of me and James! Yes, Winter Solstice is a celebration of the turning of the year and the days beginning to grow longer. I hope you’ve been enjoying cuddling with Nick!
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Well, mostly he’s been doing house projects. First, it was Operation Block the Mice Entrances. Then it was “Why are the lights flickering?” Next was the “Hey, the pantry wall is no longer attached, and since it’s over the basement stairs, that’s a problem” insulation project. Today, it’s the Why The F&*k Is the Roof Leaking Into the Kitchen problem.
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Ugh, we’ve got Operation Block the Mice Entrances happening here too. I read they can get through holes the size of a nickel. Ugh. On the plus side, James has never been so good at keeping all the dishes washed and put away. Good luck with all your house projects! Ah the joys of home ownership 😉
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I’ve read the size of a dime!
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Well dang, that makes finding holes even more impossible.
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You can do it. You got this!
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Happy Belated Solstice! I thought of you guys over and down there and hoped you had jjust as tasty a meal as we did (and obviously that was the case). I love the stuffed squash idea. I’ve cooked nine squashes in two weeks, so I’m looking for a way to keep it interesting. heheh (#niceproblemstohave) Ohhh, the juncos are amazing. We have moved one of our feeders to a different place and it is the TALK of the Chickadee Town (somehow twice as much traffic…we’ll have to remember to place it in different places again next year). (We make two sets of holes before the ground freezes in case we need to move it, this time we didn’t “Need” to but apparently it was a hit to do so just randomly.) Congrats on your culinary success. I’m particularly impressed that Tilda showed up in her/their holiday best to make you look extra brill.
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And a happy belated Solstice to you Marcie! Thanks for thinking of us! An abundance of squash is not a horrible thing to have 🙂 Juncos are just so small and round and cute. That’s funny about your chickadees and the response to moving the feeder. I wonder what they like so much about the new location? I wonder if you moved it back, would the traffic continue or would it drop off? And thank you! Tilda was amazing and I have since ordered a whole sourdough bread for beginners cookbook with recipes for all sorts of yummy breads and rolls 🙂
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I wonder if it’s the same one that I was borrowing regularly from the library, called something helpful like Beginners Sourdough. A skinny oversized book and the guy talks about his family quite a bit (including one daughter). Our most reliable loaf is an Irish Soda (dense, not fancy) but we’re hoping to expand into a spelt boule soon (it’s rocky); I’ve bought a new cookbook but I need to grow into it, cuz it seems to be for s-e-r-i-o-u-s sourdough people. (Cooked the last of the squash today: more comes tomorrow. hahaha)
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The book is called Artisan Sourdough Made Simple by Emilie Raffa. Oh making GF bread is tricky. Good luck with your spelt boule!
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This: “There is always plenty of joy to be had if only I pay attention”. Yes, something I keep telling myself, particularly when I am thinking about giving up things that give me pleasure. And most of that joy is people related. They are the important thing.
Congrats on your sourdough bread. I’m super impressed.
Funnily, Mr Gums and I were talking squash at lunch today, because there was something on my plate that I called squash – using the American usage for some reason – and he said that’s not squash. So then I had to explain to him that Americans call what we call pumpkin squash. For example, I said, butternut pumpkin. Americans call those hard gourd vegetables – like acorn squash – squash, I said! And then I come home and read your post! The only things we tend to call squash here are the little button/pattypan squash, and we think of zucchini as squash, but the hard gourds we call pumpkin. (Here is a description on a blog written by a North American who now lives, I’ve just discovered, a couple of hours from me: “In Australia, most winter squashes are simply called pumpkins. The word “squash” is commonly used for the summer squash, which are picked young with soft, tender and edible skin like the zucchinis and yellow buttons.”)
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Let go of the things that don’t bring you pleasure, and cherish the things that do!
Thank you! I was pretty impressed myself with the sourdough! 😀
How funny about squash and pumpkin. I love to learn things like this! We have summer squash and winter squash and pumpkin refers to a specific type of winter squash rather than a general term, as you know! But did you know that zucchini and most other summer squashes are actually pumpkins? They are both curcubita pepo, only one variety was bred with thin skin for summer and one with thick skin for winter storage. I just found that out a few months ago while reading a book by a seed hunter and found it fascinating. It also explained why everyone says not to grow zucchini and pumpkin near each because they cross-pollinate easily.
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I did know they were all in the curcubita family – is that what you meant? And melons too, which makes sense I guess when you look at them.
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Yes, but not just in the same family, but the same botanical name with zucchini and pumpkin being specific varieties. Melons are in the curcubit family as well but they are not pepo and will not cross-pollinate with squash. so fascinating digging into. I may have missed my calling as a botanist farmer 😀
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I have some catching up to do! I don’t know where the time goes, well, except of course this year my poor mother has syphoned off a lot of it. But anyway! I’m delighted to read all the details of your solstice meal which looks incredible as always. YUM indeed! I also misread the final paragraph and thought you’d made the chickens laugh, which tickled me no end. My cats are 100% behind your chickens – they’ve been hibernating inside this winter and zoom out to do their business in 30 seconds flat!
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Thank you, I’m pretty pleased with how the cooking went 🙂 I would love to make the chickens laugh! We used to have Marianne, a black australorp, who had a call that sounded like laughing. It was so loud you could hear it down the block. She probably wasn’t laughing, but we liked to imagine she was. 🙂
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