Fun With Clay & Workshop Progress

Hello, friends.  J found cypress boards for a good price for the workshop porch floor, so Monday morning, we headed out to get them.  A sweet potato pie was made with leftovers, and enjoyed for dessert and breakfasts.  A friend came for an outdoor visit, and gifted me organic pears.  We bundled up in alpaca throws on the porch, and drank hot tea.  I used the first pear in a salad, along with pomegranate arils, pecans and feta.  For dinner, I harvested collards for a saute, pulled zucchini tots from the freezer, and boiled potatoes.  Sweet potatoes were shared with a couple of friends.  Another day, I pulled a bag of pesto from the freezer, enjoyed on pasta with a green salad, and with some lovely sourdough bread J brought home from a local co-op.  I worked on a new batch of clay pumice stones.  The prepared clay was picked up at a friend's, and she also gifted me strawberry jam.  Yum!  I had fun working on the stones, which are drying now.  

My sister and I met on Friday, to celebrate her birthday.  We enjoyed catching up over a glass of wine.  Saturday morning, J & I headed out to get the unfinished pine flooring he found on craiglist, after dropping off a truck he finished working on nearby.  The flooring was more than we needed for $80.  The majority of the boards were 16', which wouldn't fit in the workshop, so we cut 8" off all the long boards  to accomplish that, and get them out of the weather.  Well, I marked them, and he cut.  J also cut and screwed the first few porch floor boards, which will make it easier to go in and out of the workshop.  For dinner, he asked for vegetable soup.   It was nice to use our tomatoes, crowder peas, canned cabbage, onions and garlic, plus a small amount of leftover succotash, and a few store bought veggies.  I remembered carrots I had dehydrated a few years ago, and tried rehydrating them for the soup, but their texture was awful, so I ended up giving them to the dogs, who gobbled them right up.  I made portabella sandwiches to have with the soup.  

We didn't get the hoped for snow either of the two possible days this week.  Sunday was a cold, rainy day, so I decided to make butternut squash & caramelized onion galette.  It's rather time consuming, but what better time than a slow Sunday?  Plus, it used up another 6c of frozen winter squash and two of our sweet onions, which are fading fast in storage, and need using.   J worked on orders, which he finished up late afternoon, so I had no powder coating to do this weekend.  I worked a bit on paperwork.  Two of the places had more than one document being returned.  I combined them into one envelope, which saved postage.  Two library books were picked up last week, and a free Kindle book was started, which pulled me right in.  It's called The Keeper of Lost Things.  I checked, and it is sadly no longer free, unless you get it through Audible.  A free movie on amazon prime and several youtube videos were watched.  The chickens got a warming treat several days, made from oats, warmed homemade buttermilk, foraged plantain seed, and dried lambs quarter.  A little extra protein and nutrition to get them through these cold days.  No buttermilk was used in baking during the week, but using it for the chickens will help me use and refresh it.  Wishing you a lovely first week of February.