The Root of All Things

There was a little of everything on yesterday's agenda. After writing yesterday's post, I got to work pickling the beets I'd roasted on Saturday. The beets in the CSA share the past few weeks have been huge...as big as softballs. They are just as good as the smaller ones, but they take a long time to cook. I roasted mine for 1 1/2 hours before they were tender enough to call them fully roasted. After that I skinned them and chunked them up. Yesterday I loaded them into pint jars, filled them with pickling solution and processed them. It was a good way to use the beet abundance.

About the time I finished those, Mike walked into the kitchen holding three green tomatoes he found on the floor of the greenhouse. He told me there were tons (probably, literally) of green tomatoes in the greenhouse. They keep growing and growing and growing and producing more and more tomatoes. For whatever reason, they are no longer ripening. It was a weird year for the tomatoes. Anyway, all of that to say that my personal capacity for canning has worn a little thin for the season, and so canning yet more tomatoes doesn't sound appealing at all. 

As I was telling one of my blogging friends just yesterday, I think I have processed over 100 pounds of tomatoes this year. I'm envious of those who have mothers, sisters, aunties, and daughters to help them. None of those folks exist in my world, and so it's me, and me alone, doing battle with the tomatoes. Nevertheless, I do believe I'll head out there sometime this week and grab myself some green tomatoes for green tomato salsa. Somehow I know I'll hate myself if I don't.

When the beets were safely out of the boiling water, we headed out to the wineries to pick up our shipments of wine. It was a little hazy in our area of the world yesterday. The clouds were one thing, but the air is also full of smoke from people burning leaves. Backyard burning is banned in the summer. Now that the rains have returned and things are less crispy, folks are burning all their accumulated yard debris. Nevertheless, I was able to get this picture while at the Sokol-Blosser winery.

When we got home, there were still a few hours left to work on my latest quilting project for our CSA farmers. All my veggies are top-stitched now, and this quilt is ready for quilting.

This one was a lot of fun to top-stitch. When I started stitching the carrot tops, I put on my stitch regulator and did some free motion machine embroidery. Carrot tops are sort of lacy, and so I attempted to make this one look lacy with my choice of fabric and some stitching. It doesn't show up very well in this image, but I'm happy with how it turned out anyway. 

The free motion machine embroidery worked so well that I just left the stitch regulator on as I stitched the rest of the veggies and their roots. I gave the carrot some ridges and roots.

Garlic has a sort of fuzzy flower...

That image came from the Mountain Valley Growers website in the California Central Valley. I tried to duplicate how it looked in thread.

I gave the onion some (what?) veins and some roots.

Then I defined some cloves on the garlic and gave it some roots.

My favorite, however, is this beet green. I'm never sure I can translate what's in my head to needle and thread, but in this case, it turned out just the way I hoped it would.

I'd like to show you a picture of the whole thing, but as you can see, there's an obstacle in my path.

Okay. There we go.

When I perused my stash looking for a backing fabric, I stopped looking when I came to this tomato fabric. Poifect. It's been in my stash for years, and now it's day has come.

I'm not sure what to do about the binding yet, but I'm leaning toward green.

Today I need to catch up on some housework, and I'm going to try a cake recipe I saw in the NY Times the other day for Teddie's Apple Cake.

(Image source: Jim Wilson/NY Times)

I've made apple cakes in the past, but they always end up tasting like apple-flavored cakes to me. With those big chunks of apples pictured there, this one looks super good to me. I'll switch out the brown raisins for the golden ones. As I've said many times before, I don't like those rabbit oofies in my food. While we were out yesterday, we picked up some Granny Smith apples, and so now I'm itching to bake it.

Also, I'm fresh out of hand work, and so I truly am going to get busy on the next block for the Gingerbread Square quilt. 

If there's time, I'll get to work on the next block for Lisa's quilt too...this one submitted by Teagan.

I've been studying this one for a while, and I think it's going to be a kind of stained glass applique block if I can pull it off. It's going to be tedious and tricky cutting the applique piece for the black lines on the butterfly, but I think it's the best way to accomplish it. I'll embroider the rest, including the antennae on the butterfly.

Big Bertha has been giving me trouble. A problem she's had from the very first time I turned her on has reared its ugly head and is making itself known in a way that can no longer be ignored. I'm hoping I can limp along with it until I get a couple more projects finished, and then I'll take it in for service when I go back to quilting on Eliza. And all of that to say that I'm going to sew the buttons on the Dream Machines quilt if I can keep the sewing machine operational.

My guild meeting is tonight. Our speaker is Suzi Parron who literally wrote the book on Barn Quilts.

Something to look forward to. So, there's lots on today's agenda. Time to get going.