And to celebrate, I’m having my first-ever giveaway. For the next two weeks, if you leave a comment on this page and also link to it in your blog, you’ll be entered for a random drawing to win 3 patterns by Karie Patch Designs. I’ve come to know Karen DuMont through our Electric Quilt classes at Quilting Adventures and she comes up with the cutest designs. Even if you don’t win this time, I hope you’ll check out Karen’s patterns and buy some.
So you’d think I’d have a really great post prepared for this auspicious occasion, but to be honest, it snuck up on me. I was thinking I started this in November of last year and was shocked, shocked, when I took the time to look it up to find that I only had a few days.
So I have no new quilt projects to share, no new photography, but I do have some favorite fall recipes that I dug out. I love to make soups and stews this time of year (why is it that every recipe makes so much? Since it’s only John and I, we either eat it all week until we’re sick of it, or I freeze it and we forget about it. That just happened this week, when I pulled a container of soup out of the freezer that I made in September of last year. Yikes! Well, either it was going to be freezer burnt and inedible or halfway decent. Amazingly, it was good!).
White Chicken Chili
1……..2-pound cooked rotisserie chicken
1…….. tablespoon olive oil
2…….. medium yellow onions, peeled and chopped
4…….. cloves garlic, minced
8…….. ounces canned green chillies, chopped
1-1/2…. teaspoons EACH: cumin, oregano
1/4…… teaspoon EACH: ground cloves, crushed red pepper flakes
2…….. 15-ounce cans white northern beans, drained
6…….. cups chicken broth
3…….. cups shredded Monterey Jack cheese, divided
salt and pepper to taste
salsa, halved grape tomatoes, chopped fresh cilantro, sour cream (optional serving suggestions)
Remove meat from chicken and shred.
Heat oil in large pot over medium-high heat. Add onions and saute until translucent, about 10 minutes. Stir in garlic, chilies, cumin, oregano, cloves and crushed red pepper, and saute 2 minutes. Add beans and broth and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer a few minutes. Add chicken and 2 cups cheese and stir until cheese melts. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Serve with salsa, remaining cheese, tomatoes, cilantro, and sour cream if desired. Makes 6-8 servings.
This is extra yummy and the freezing tip that I believe saved the more-than-a-year-old soup is to fill your container (don’t forget to leave a little head room) and top it with plastic wrap. Push down on the wrap so that it is in complete contact with the surface of the soup. This prevents ice crystals from forming. I’ve tried different kinds of containers for freezing and I’m really liking the Ziploc Twist-n-Loc. They come in different sizes and I freeze a combination of 1 cup (for single servings) and 2-or-more cups if we’re both going to eat it.
I hope you enjoy this recipe, I’ll be posting more throughout the two-week birthday celebration period.
Saturday, John and I ran over to the Harvest Festival at Meadow Farm in Glen Allen. This is so close to our house and in 13 years, we’d never been there. With a festival, it seemed like a good time to check it out and take pictures! Unfortunately, the temp was in the upper 40s/lower 50s and it was cold. I don’t do cold very well. I need some gloves without fingers so that I can keep my hands warm and still work the camera.
This is a sorghum press. I’m not sure what sorghum is, it looked like a plant, the stalks of which were fed into a machine and as the horse walked around in a circle, the stalks were pressed. I don’t know what came out, a liquid perhaps?
Two ladies were spinning carded wool into thread (see she had the right idea with the gloves).
And the threads were dyed at the next booth, using natural materials for the colors.
No living history farm would be complete without a blacksmith.
I thought it was funny that a lady came up to me, asking questions about the pumpkin patch for which I had no answers. Because I was hauling the tripod around, she told me I looked “official.”
I’ve seen vehicles up in the DC area with Diplomat license plates, which makes sense because, ah, that’s where the embassies are.
But on our way home from the Folk Festival we were behind this one on Cary Street. It just struck me as funny that a diplomat would be driving a vintage VW bus.
I am writing to let you know that one of your photos has
been short-listed for inclusion in the ninth edition of our
Schmap Richmond Guide, to be published early November 2009.***
They found this photo in my flickr photostream:
Although they don’t pay for photos, I went ahead and submitted it. I wonder how long their “short-list” is? If I hear from them again, I’ll let you know.
Amy over at ParkCityGirl came up with this wonderful idea to showcase bloggers’ quilts.
So here’s one of mine.
First the back story. Before there were blogs, there were email lists. Groups of people with a shared interest, a community of like minds. I have belonged to one such group, the Cyberbees. First there was Rootsweb, an online genealogy community, and at some point, Rootsweb decided to diversify and created lists around non-genealogical themes, hobbies and specifically quilting included. So the Cyberbees were born, the charter members having not only quilting in common but also genealogy.
I joined in 1999, not long after it was begun. There are a few of us “original” members left and quite a few have come and gone. We had some international flavor for a time, with one member in France, one American who moved to England, an Australian, and a handful of Canadians (most of the Canadians have stuck around and I think the Aussie is still on but she doesn’t post much). We have lost a few to cancer. We’ve had retreats, two of which I was able to participate in. The first in North Carolina at a Boy Scout camp and the second at the Jersey shore. Others have been held in Arkansas, Florida and British Columbia.
In 2005, one of the Bees suggested a “Challenge Swap.” Those who signed up mailed pieces of one fabric of a certain size to the coordinator who in turn, bagged them all up and mailed them back to us. So now we each had pieces of identical fabrics. And they were certainly varied. The challenge was to design a quilt using every one of those fabrics and one extra of your own, if desired.
Behold, my Genealogy Angel:
Sadly, only a few of us actually finished ours, but now that I’m looking at the participants on the label, most of them are still on the list. I’m going to nag them and see if I can’t “challenge” them to finished what they started.
I need more 3-day weekends. I just don’t seem to get much sewing done on the regular ones.
Today, I put the borders on the quilt-without-a-name:
I prefer mitered borders to long horizontal/vertical ones, but that Y-seam sure presents a challenge. I’ve done several quilts this way now, but I still can’t say that I do them well. Three of these seams came out pretty good, but the fourth one has a pucker. I used my 3-tries-to-fix-it philosophy, after that, it is what it is. Any further futzing can wear out the fabric/seam allowance. The problem with the Y-seam is the Y. Once sewn, it’s hard to get in there and fix it. So hopefully, it will quilt out LOL.
Yesterday John and I went to the Richmond Folk Festival at Brown’s Island. We hadn’t been before, but had heard people say in years past that we really should have gone. So this time we did. Saturday was kinda rainy and we were having a dinner party that night anyway, so we went yesterday which turned out to be a good decision. It was a beautiful fall day.
We got a late start, having to go to church in the morning and all, and just as we were leaving, John got a call so that was another 20 minute delay. There were so many acts we didn’t get to see, but the ones we did catch were wonderful.
Jeffrey Broussard and the Creole Cowboys is a zydeco band.
Wylie and the Wild West is a cowboy western band. Wylie did the yodel in the Yahoo commercials. Remember that Yahooooo?
Both of these acts inspired a lot of spontaneous dancing:
Clinton Fearon and the Boogie Brown Band (Jamaican reggae) inspired some hula-hooping. I don’t know where the hula hoops came from.
I took some video but not being much of a video editor, I found this professional one posted by the Richmond Times-Dispatch:
If you live in the Richmond area and have not taken in this festival, make sure you do it next year. It’s worthwhile.
