Come in for a Spell

October 29, 2017October 6, 201812 Comments

Song of the Day: Thriller – Michael Jackson – click here for music link

I am sorry to say that I have become one of those people who hide inside on Halloween…..you know those cheap miserly souls who turn off the lights and pretend they’re not home. Only last year the three little girls from across the street came pounding on the door while it was still daylight, and I do mean pounding (the idea of someone not celebrating Halloween being foreign to them), so I managed to scrape up some change for I had not sunk so low as to have resorted to giving out apples. I used to do Halloween – I used to buy 120 bags of Cool Ranch Doritos or Cheetos, and the same number of chocolate bars when there were lots of kids in my neighbourhood, but they have all grown up. Then when my mother moved off the farm to a subdivision loaded with kids, I did Halloween there, until her hip surgery when she could no longer get to the door, and I started working evening shifts. I remember it being fun, checking out all the different costumes. I have an old box of costumes in the basement somewhere, pirates and witches and gypsy things, but none of that is in style anymore. I should throw them out, but for some reason whenever I clean up the furnace room, back in they go. The kids were always excited to get something other than stale bags of chips, but the chocolate bars got smaller and smaller over the years – I am sure by now they must have disappeared entirely and all you get is the wrapper.

Usually Halloween would be cold and rainy, but wasn’t that part of the fun, walking around the neighbourhood with your friends at a time you would not normally be out. It was such a miserable windy night two years ago that looking out the upstairs den window periodically I saw exactly one spook the whole evening. I always worry when only one spook shows up at the door – wouldn’t it be lonely or scary to go alone? Do parents even let their kids go out on Halloween anymore, or is it safer at the mall or at a class party? When I grew up in the country, my mother drove us up and down the line to the neighbouring farms, where we went inside and made them guess who we were, and sometimes even if they had guessed right we would solemnly shake our heads no. Then we were treated to popcorn balls and fudge and all manner of delightful homemade treats. The only year we begged our mother to take us into town afterwards (we had heard you got more candy in town), we got the dreaded apples – the saviour of those who have run out. Our costumes were home-assembled, ghosts and witches and tramps, since everyone knew everyone anyway, but with those hot plastic masks which made it difficult to breathe, we thought we were well disguised. Occasionally someone along the line (blamed on the older boys) would push over an old outhouse or shed, but other than that there was no vandalism, just a bit of nighttime mischief. We ate our Halloween candy too – the best first, then portioning out the rest over the next few weeks, saving those awful molasses Halloween Kisses for last. I wonder if they still make those? What do parents do with all that stale candy now that kids aren’t allowed to eat candy?

If I’m going to do Halloween properly this year I will need some new decorations. I don’t have much in the way of decorations – an ugly rat I used one year to scare my assistant – I put it on top of her computer terminal and she jumped sky high.

A sign that caught my eye at Winner’s one year – Come Inside For A Spell. My mother painted a witch picture for me so these will help decorate the front door.

Witch on Broom – 2017

She also did Ghost Barn which is currently in a juried art show and they liked it so much they asked to keep it on display over the winter.

Ghost Barn

Recently I saw a black candy bowl with a bony arm that reached for you when you took the candy and a battery operated scary voice – but it was $25 and might scare the little ones. I once had a Count Dracula that spewed bubbles out of its mouth when you walked past it and that was a great hit, but the battery died after a few years. My little 5 year old neighbour advised me that the dollar store is the best place for decorations, so I bought a ghost to hang in the birch tree (best on a windy night),

Ghost in the wind

and a black spider web for the front door.

One of my fondest memories of trick or treating in the country was getting homemade treats, so I think Rice Crispy squares will be just the thing for those three little spooks from across the street, along with their Cheetos and Doritos….and maybe some microwave fudge…

PS. They say that on All Hallow’s Eve the veil between this world and the spirit world is very thin. Speaking of spirits, my first WordPress follower, Janowrite has a blog on ghost stories and the paranormal. Here’s a link to her website and her books. https://bookemjanoblog.wordpress.com/ Please pay her site a visit as I am sure this must be a favourite time of year for her. I found it kind of uncanny that my very first follower would deal with the paranormal as I had only made the blog public a week previous and was feeling kind of discouraged and thinking I might give up. (In truth it was more time consuming than I had thought). Then last month at a craft show, I had an interesting conversation with two ladies who had a psychic booth. They were selling crystals and stones and I had stopped to look at their jewelry, and picking up their business card, asked if they did housecleaning too. (I did not have my glasses on). They laughed and said they did clearing, as in helping people who had died get to the afterlife if they were having difficulty, kind of like an escort service for stuck souls. Then the other day, a picture of my dad’s tombstone randomly showed up at the top of my picture file, a picture I had not seen for over ten years. I wondered if it was a sign from the afterlife that I should continue? If you’ve had three signs, you should pay attention. Happy Halloween and may the only Ghosts you see be kindly spirits.

If you are looking for something to read in between handing out treats the book, I See You, is highly recommended.

I See You by Clare Mackintosh

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A murder mystery thriller perfect for reading on Halloween night in those lulls between handing out the candy…..ok maybe not such a good idea. Guaranteed to have you double checking all the locks before you go to bed, and I personally ended up deleting all personal pictures from social media. I liked the fact that the characters were flawed, which made the ending so much more delicious – a real treat.

Halloween Update: It was a cold night but windy so the ghost was swirling merrily in the tree. Good costumes but nothing exotic, except for one Donald Trump. Lots of leftover candy which needs to be donated as it is rapidly being consumed. I had a helper for the evening as the 9 yr old girl from across the street had both arms in casts, but she could still move her wrists so she helped me hand out candy and we played Go Fish and Crazy Eights in between (funny how those games come back to you). Later after their rounds, her two sisters came over and they collapsed on the couch in a candy induced coma to watch tv….unfortunately I don’t get the Disney Channel so they went home at nine. The Rice Krispie squares were all consumed (because our dad knows you won’t poison us), but I didn’t get around to the fudge…..oh well there’s always next year.

Apple Pie Memories

October 24, 2017April 12, 20182 Comments

Song of the Day – Don’t Sit under the Apple Tree – Glenn Miller Band – click here for music link

Farmer’s Market Apples

Like many people I don’t make apple pie, I make apple crisp, but once a year I will try, using store bought crust and apples from the local farmer’s market, so at least I can say I made a homemade pie….sort of. Pie crust is a lost art, drilled out of my generation by decades of warnings about saturated fat and heart disease. With apple crisp you use oatmeal which is supposed to be good for you. Now things have changed again and they say it’s sugar that’s bad not fat. Unfortunately, apple pie has both, but moderation is also the key, so I think the occasional piece of apple pie could be justified, in view of the newer guidelines. I am just trying to convince myself that anything made with lard could be good for you.

My attempts at pie crust have produced a rock-like substance, which is why I stick with the crisp, but my mother’s pie crust was light and flaky…. she used Crisco, but I prefer butter, at least you can get some omega-3’s. Unfortunately, my mother says she has lost her knack for pastry, (it’s an art form that needs to be practiced regularly), although every once in awhile she will make a crust for a turkey pie, which is still better than anything you can buy in the store. I remember when we were kids my mom would make three pies a week and a dozen butter tarts (I have used her recipe for butter tarts with great success but with store bought shells), and it would all disappear. My father was a prolific pie eater, but as he did a lot of physical work he never gained an ounce. I remember an old man dropping by the homeplace one day unannounced in search of his roots. I think his grandmother was a sister of my great grandmother Ellen, but as this was long before I had any interest in genealogy I didn’t pay much attention, although even then as a teenager I was interested in history and stories. My mother was in the middle of making her weekly pies, her board and rolling pin all in a flurry of flour. He stayed for supper and said it was the best apple pie he had ever eaten and it reminded him of his mother’s baking. (No one had the heart to tell him there was a picture of his relative upstairs in the attic, riddled with holes, from where my brother had used it as a dart board). Later we went to visit Ellen’s homeplace, a farm with a big old yellow brick farmhouse set high on a rolling hill just outside a city about eighty miles away (ie prime real estate). A doctor had bought it and was renovating it so his daughter would have a place to ride her horses. It was a beautiful spot. The only thing I know about Ellen is that she was a school teacher who had married a local farmer fifteen years older than her in 1870 and she raised nine children in our house. My great grandfather John was by the few accounts we have, a gruff old man, and when her mother was sick and dying he refused to take her to visit, so she decided to walk. Such is the family folklore, but I hope someone might have offered her a ride part of the way. This is an old picture of the homeplace and Ellen out front with two of her daughters and grandchildren. I still have the chairs they are sitting on, and the matching antique dining room table which folds out to seat twelve.

The Homeplace circa 1915

How many weekly pies you would have to make to feed nine children, as well as all the threshing crews. Like I said, it is a lost art form. I wonder what will happen when all those older women who make the turkey and fruit pies for the church bazaars are gone. Homemade pie will be a memory of the past. No one has time to make pie now, it’s easier just to buy one. Although I have never had much luck with store or bakery pies as they usually have corn starch as a thickener and I find it gives it a peculiar taste, but then I am comparing it to what I grew up on. Although in a pinch President’s Choice sells a perfectly acceptable frozen apple crisp, made with Northern Spy apples, and you still get the benefits of a lovely smelling house. I am sure all those cooking shows must have some instructions on the perfect pie crust, so one of these days I’ll have to tune in….and practice, practice, practice.

: My kitchen crabapple wreath

Scoop of the Day: The local farmer’s market sells crab apple jelly, from BayField Berry Farm, and last month when I was at a craft sale, amongst all the crocheted and quilted offerings, there were a couple of tables selling homemade jellies and jams, including crab apple, which is made from the pressed juice, so I would not even attempt it…..besides which I am all jammed out for this year – this jam session is over.

Bushel of Apples – 2015

PS. The fruits of my labour…

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Quote of the Day: Good apple pies are a considerable part of our domestic happiness.” (Jane Austen)

Apple Picking Time

October 17, 2017April 12, 20181 Comment

Bushel of Apples – 2015

It’s apple picking time…. which means apple pie season, my favourite time of the year. I don’t actually pick apples, (I’m lazy), but instead buy them from the farmer’s market which is supplied by a local orchard. Although on a nice fall weekend we might drive down river on a leaf tour to a place where you can pick your own but which also sells to customers from a small stand. They always have spy apples there, which are the best for cooking, despite what people say about all those new varieties. (I once had a grocery store clerk tell me you could make a pie with Macintosh, and I suppose you could if you wanted applesauce). Spy apples are always later in the season, but well worth the wait, their tart taste cancels out some of the sweetness of the sugar.

When this farmland was first settled everyone grew apples, and stored them in root cellars for cold storage. From my genealogy records, according to the 1860 agricultural census, they had to record how many acres of orchards they had, so it was an important crop, and a symbol of prosperity at the time. It was also their main source of vitamin C over the winter, and I wonder if the expression, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” came from it’s prevention of scurvy. Both the homeplace and my grandparent’s farm had the remnants of the original apple orchards from over a hundred years ago. My dad’s farm had mostly crab apple trees, and a few eating apples, but the trees were so old the fruit was basically inedible, although the blossoms did have a heavenly aroma in the spring. The orchard was right beside the house and during my teenage years pity the poor sibling who would have to cut the grass in the orchard with a push mower and run over all those hard little things, which made for a very bumpy experience. (A riding lawn mower was the best thing ever invented). My grandmother’s orchard had better tasting snow apples, and on Thanksgiving my younger brother and I would climb the fence and brave the field full of large but rather dumb cows to pick some, and also to gather chestnuts, which my brother used as fences for his farm animal set. My grandmother lived to be 96 and every year she went apple picking with my uncle to the orchards down river. Her old farmhouse had a little unheated vestibule beside the kitchen where she would store the apples in bushel baskets, so when you entered her house you would always get a lovely whiff of the smell of ripe apples. Someday soon my house will smell marvelous from the cinnamony scent of warm apple pie, in the meantime I’ll just have to light some apple scented candles.

Artist of the Day: Helen McNicoll (from time to time I may feature a new artist I have discovered, unless otherwise specified all the other paintings are by my mother).

Helen McNicoll - The Apple Gatherer - 1911

The Apple Gatherer – Helen McNicoll – 1911

Last month I went to a talk on the Group of Seven at our regional art gallery. The speaker showed a slide of a painting by Helen McNicoll, called The Apple Gatherer which was painted in 1911. She was a contemporary of the Group of Seven, but being female, not considered part of the group. I think I much prefer Helen’s painting, as it is full of colour and light. Maybe next spring I will plant an apple tree…

Quote of the Day: “I’d like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony, grow apple trees and honey bees, and snow white turtle doves.”

Song of the Day: I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing – by the New Seekers – click here for music link

Book of the Day: Apples to Oysters by Margaret Webb has a chapter devoted to apple orchards.

Apples To Oysters: A Food Lover’s Tour of Canadian Farms by Margaret Webb

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An interesting read about Canadian farmers, starting with apple growers and moving across the provinces…..oysters, cheese, vineyards, wheat etc. I found the stories fascinating and being from a rural background could relate to the appeal of the farming lifestyle, as well as the uncertainty of the farming business as most of the stories involved smaller generations-old family farms. If you ate today, thank a farmer!

Autumn Decor

October 6, 2017April 12, 20182 Comments

October Trees – 2014

Mother Nature is starting to decorate for fall. Despite the warm days, the tips of the maple trees are starting to turn red and gold. I love to decorate for fall inside too, mostly with dollar store finds, but you can get very creative with dollar store finds if you weed out the tacky ones, the plastic pumpkins and fake looking wreaths. Every year I haul out the same things from the basement storage area and spend an enjoyable hour or two making the house look cozy for the cooler days ahead. I put away the seashells and the starfish from the fireplace hearth, string the mantel with fairy lights, and switch out the floral pillows for plaid. The days are getting shorter and soon it will be dark at five pm and time to hibernate inside, because as lovely as autumn is, winter isn’t far behind. Enjoy it while you can. In the words of Anne Shirley, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” (Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery)

I put two $4 swags from the dollar store around the lantern on my dining room table and strung fairy lights underneath ($11 at winner’s with a 40% coupon) for a romantic fall centrepiece.

A $3 garland of fall leaves lines the mantel, with small bittersweet wreaths decorating the candles at both ends.

Add some fairy lights – and it’s magic!

More fairy lights in urns on the side, and a bowl of apples on the hearth.

I bought this bunch of Indian corn at the grocery store last year, and the bouquet of autumn leaves is another dollar store bargain.

More bittersweet wreaths around the candles…(you can see I still have wallpaper….it is an old house and I have not finished renovating it inside, but I kind of like it….it’s very B&Bish)

Even the cat gets into the act….

Now it looks as colorful inside as it does outside. Happy Thanksgiving!

Tom Turkey – 2013

Farewell to Summer Song: Chad and Jeremy – click here for music link

Harvest Tea

October 1, 2017April 12, 2018Leave a comment

Song of the Day: Harvest Moon – Neil Young – music link

I was going to write about Harvest-Fest but as I am currently sick this week with a horrible cold/flu, it’s chicken noodle soup and the couch for me. It’s been four days now, and I’m still feeling too achy and miserable to even nap or read, two of my favorite activities.

Bowl of gruel…..er chicken noodle soup

iHarvest-fest is a locally sourced dinner held in one of the neighbouring towns at their outdoor farmer’s market, with food prepared by gourmet chefs from locally grown meat and produce. I weep when I think of that tender beef and all those heirloom vegetables I am missing, the fancy goat cheese arugula salad, the artisan bread, and best of all the Pie Lady was going to provide desert. There was to be rockabilly swing music and a full harvest moon in the sky. But as I said it was to be held outdoors, and I did not think it was a sensible thing to do in my current state of health, so I sold my tickets. When you are older, you tend to become more sensible, (I have bad memories of H1N1), so I am going to write about my harvest tea instead.

Last week I had the Group of Seven Art Ladies here for tea and a viewing of my mother’s latest collection of paintings…she did 98 paintings last year, or about two per week. My mother has painted for over forty years, but she held her first exhibit last year at the age of ninety. Usually you have to be dead or famous or preferably both to get into our class A gallery, but I entered her in a contest and she was one of three local artists selected for a pop-up exhibit. One of the art ladies was her co-exhibitor and while not all are painters they are all art lovers, so I guess you could say she has a fan club now. One of the things about living to be ninety is that most of your friends have passed away, so it’s lovely that my mom has this great new group of friends. Having lived in a medical world for most of my life, one of the things I found most interesting about the art world is how happy and cheerful and positive everyone is. (Not that medical people are necessarily miserable, but it can have a high burnout rate). Creativity is joyful – what child didn’t love art class in school. One of the reasons the gallery curator gave for choosing my mom for the exhibit was that her art was reminiscent of Maude Lewis, the east coast painter whose paintings are full of color and joy, a celebration of life, although my mom’s paintings tend to be more rural based as she lived on a farm for fifty years.

Harvest Moon – Sept 2017

Although I consider myself a foodie, I don’t particularly like to cook. I see nothing wrong with buying something if someone else can make it better than I can. But I do like to set a pretty table. I have lots of lovely things I have collected over the years, tablecloths and place-mats, many of them from April Cornell, mostly in blues, as I have four sets of blue dishes. But as it was fall, I pulled out my red Chinese-looking plates that I bought at Winners two years ago. (It fit the theme, as we did go for lunch at the Chinese restaurant first, as we would need sustenance to get through all those paintings.) As Winners is hit and miss, I was unable to get a complete set of mugs or teacups, so I am still on the hunt for things that might match the plates. I made a cherry cheesecake using the old Philadelphia cream cheese recipe from the eighties, (the one with the can of sweetened condensed milk, and lemon juice to cut the sweetness, takes about ten minutes, and best made the day before to set), but bought the Presidents Choice Lemon Curd Cake, (with a small jar of McKay’s Lemon Curd from my friends store to add extra flavor), because it is better than anything I could make, so moist and lemony, and low in calories at 150 per slice. The ladies really enjoyed the the deserts and the table settings. Although younger than my mother they are of the age when people had and used good china. So few people bother today, as no one has time anymore, but sometimes it is nice to be pampered and spoiled. The lavender sachet party favors were a hit too.

It’s important to match your desert to your dishes…..no seriously, it’s just how it turned out, including the peaches. So although I was sorry to miss Harvest-fest this year, (I expect a detailed update from someone), I have fond memories of a fun afternoon spent with a lovely group of ladies.

Book of the Day: I Let You Go – Clare MacIntosh When I was sufficiently recovered enough to be able to read again, my book club selection was so suspenseful it kept my mind off my misery…..highly recommended….see Good-reads review below.
I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh

This book was a selection of my book club, but sadly I missed the discussion. I loved it – it was so suspenseful! It kept me my mind off the misery of three days on the couch sipping chicken noodle soup and nursing a horrible cold/flu. I am not British so was unfamiliar with the book (it was a crime bestseller in 2014), or the author……or waxed jackets. A waxed jacket was mentioned so often that I looked it up on Wikipedia…….”A waxed jacket is a type of hip-length raincoat made from waxed cotton cloth, iconic of British and Irish country life. Today it is commonly worn for outdoor rural pursuits such as hunting, shooting and fishing. It is a cotton jacket made water-resistant by a paraffin-based waxing, typically with a tartan lining and a corduroy or leather collar. The main drawback of a waxed fabric is its lack of breath-ability.[1]….” So, if you are ever on the Welsh cliffs on a cold dark and stormy night when there is a murderer about, please wear one, lest you end up sick like me! PS. I was not crazy about the spooky rather ambiguous ending, but the author’s Q&A profile on Good-reads assures us that Jenna has a happy ever after. I have the author’s second Book – I See You – on order.