Ten Down

My block per day goal is holding fast. Yesterday, I quilted the 10th of 12 blocks for the Cats of a Different Color quilt.

Only the bottom two corner blocks remain, and then it will be ready for binding. It's a grocery shopping day, but I'm still hoping to have time to quilt another block this afternoon. If I can get another done today, I'll be able to finish the quilting tomorrow. After that, I'll open a bottle of champagne and celebrate!

Mike was home early yesterday afternoon, and so I only managed to get one corner sewn onto my nine-patch blocks.

They look like little nine-patch houses now. I'd live there, wouldn't you? They're going faster, with no pinning required. They can be chain-pieced pretty quickly. It's giving me plenty of time to listen to my current audio book, for sure, since this constitutes mindless sewing.

This morning I finished stitching the 19th of 20 blocks for the Bee Loving quilt. This one is called "Bee Adventurous".

The original truck was stitched in mint green, but I made mine dark green like the truck my grandfather used to have. It'll be several weeks at least before I get to the last block for this quilt. When I do, it'll be this block, "Bee Friendly".

With that one finished, I'm ready to trace out Block 8 for the Hocuspocusville quilt, which seems entirely appropriate during this last week before Halloween.

If I don't get it traced out today, I'll do it tomorrow morning. There Must. Be. Stitching. at all times, as I'm sure you're well aware.

The winter weather seems to have moved in permanently about now, and the dark days practically scream out for chili. There have been lots of different kinds of chili peppers in our CSA shares recently, and I literally had bags of them in the crisper. For that, I decided to pull out a recipe I tested for American's Test Kitchens many years ago, and it was a great use for all those peppers. I didn't necessarily have the same peppers called for in the recipe, but I used what I had.

My peppers were all red. I used red jalapenos, and I removed the seeds and ribs from all three of them. The rest were all red Anaheims. Even removing the seeds and ribs, this was plenty spicy, but not so hot it knocked our heads off. We added a dollop of sour cream to cool it off a little.

My recollection from my previous try was that this was quite a production. On the other hand, I reasoned, I was still working back then, and so I was willing to give it another try. It is still a production, but I'm more patient in retirement, and so it wasn't too much effort. The results were well worth it. It could be made less time-consuming if one were to use a whole roasted chicken from your grocery store deli, but I do think there's some flavor imparted by cooking the chicken breasts right in the stew. 

If you're up for a really good chili and don't mind spending a couple of hours on a weekend afternoon, I can recommend this. You can find a link to the recipe right here. It makes enough to feed a crowd...or just one or two, with a healthy helping of leftovers for another night.

So that's where things stand here at the Three Cats Ranch. Grocery shopping, here I come.