White World

Good morning, my friends. It's a white world outside this morning. Toward the end of yesterday, I took a picture that I posted to Facebook. I was saying it had snowed almost all day long, but it was 33°F, and so there was almost no accumulation. After all that work at snowing, the snow day was turning into a bust. And I won't even mention the snowpocalypse predictions for our area.

It was a whole different story this morning. I think about ten inches fell overnight. Some of you will sniff at such a paltry accumulation, but it's a lot of snow for us here in the Pacific Northwest. This is what we see from our living room.

I like how my little flower pots look like cupcakes...or snow cones.

This is the view from Eliza's window.

From where I sit right now, this is the view from my window. If you look way out there beyond the trees, you can see there is snow all the way to the valley floor. I can only imagine the snarled traffic out there this morning. Fortunately, our kiddos are all work-from-home types.

Our birdie friends are appreciative of the full seed feeder.

Backing up to yesterday morning, we had grocery shopping to do. There was time to stitch up the day's inchy before we needed to be on our way.

It had backstitch and cross stitch. I like that combination of stitches. Then a tiny chain stitch on the string for the spoon that appears outside the frame. 

When we returned home and the groceries were put away, I went to work on the Dream Big Leaf quilting. The leaves in this round are a little oddly shaped, which makes it hard to decide how to quilt them. The first one was done with a traditional feather.

The next one was done with a sort of forking hooked motif in the center, and then some picket-fence-looking things on the side branches.

On the next one I did a more fern-shaped feather.

On the next one, I stitched in the veins and then filled in with some concentric loops.

After four leaves, I ran out of imagination for this, and stopped for the day. It was true when I did the Dream Big panel a while back. I could only do 3-4 petals before I ran out of ideas. There are four more leaves on this round, and so I'm going to attempt to finish those today before moving on to something else.

When I stopped yesterday, I decided to do a little more slow-stitching. I'm just getting started on the Winter Wonder piece prepared a few days ago.

It was nearing dinner time, and so I went to work on the component parts of last night's dinner. It's shrimp week here at the Three Cats Ranch after scoring four pounds of shrimp last week when it was a buy-one-get-one-free deal. Since I knew I needed to use the shrimp, I went perusing my shrimp recipes, both tried and untried. Last night, I tried this new one from America's Test Kitchens called Brazilian Shrimp and Fish Stew, or Moqueca.

Mike asked me what made it Brazilian, and so I did a little reading about it. Wikipedia tells us that there are several different versions of this dish. The one I made most closely resembles Moqueca baiana and was developed in the state of Bahia, Brazil. It was further influenced by African and Portuguese cuisines by adding dendê palm oil and coconut milk, respectively. Traditional ingredients remain the same with the dish typically garnished with chopped coriander, then served with rice and farofa.

The original recipe called for pickled hot cherry peppers. They are usually sold jarred, next to the pickles or jarred roasted red peppers at the supermarket. I could only find mild peppers yesterday, and so I added a 1/4 teaspoon of crushed red pepper to increase the heat. It was nicely spicy, but not too hot. Here's my adaptation of the recipe:

Brazilian Shrimp and Fish Stew (Moqueca)

adapted from America's Test Kitchens

Servings: 6

Ingredients

Pepper Sauce:

4 pickled mild cherry peppers (3 ounces)

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper

½ onion, chopped coarse

¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil

⅛ teaspoon sugar

Salt

Stew:

1 pound large shrimp (26 to 30 per pound), peeled, deveined, and tails removed

1 pound skinless cod fillets (¾ to 1 inch thick), cut into 1½-inch pieces

3 garlic cloves, minced

Salt and pepper

1 onion, chopped coarse

1 (14.5-ounce) can whole peeled tomatoes

¾ cup chopped fresh cilantro

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 red bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and cut into ½-inch pieces

1 green bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and cut into ½-inch pieces

1 (14-ounce) can coconut milk

2 tablespoons lime juice

Serve over Jasmine rice

Directions:

1. FOR THE PEPPER SAUCE: Process all ingredients in food processor until smooth, about 30 seconds, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Season with salt to taste and transfer to separate bowl. Rinse out processor bowl.

2. FOR THE STEW: Toss shrimp and cod with garlic, ½ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper in bowl. Set aside.

3. Process onion, tomatoes and their juice, and ¼ cup cilantro in food processor until finely chopped and mixture has texture of pureed salsa, about 30 seconds.

4. Heat oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat until shimmering. Add red and green bell peppers and ½ teaspoon salt and cook, stirring frequently, until softened, 5 to 7 minutes. Add onion-tomato mixture and ½ teaspoon salt. Reduce heat to medium and cook, stirring frequently, until puree has reduced and thickened slightly, 3 to 5 minutes (pot should not be dry).

5. Increase heat to high, stir in coconut milk, and bring to boil (mixture should be bubbling across entire surface). Add seafood mixture and lime juice and stir to evenly distribute seafood, making sure all pieces are submerged in liquid. Cover pot and remove from heat. Let stand until shrimp and cod are opaque and just cooked through, 15-20 minutes.

6. Gently stir in 2 tablespoons pepper sauce and remaining ½ cup cilantro, being careful not to break up cod too much. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve, passing remaining pepper sauce separately.

My notes about the recipe: Haddock or other firm-fleshed, flaky whitefish may be substituted for cod. Untreated shrimp is preferred, but if your shrimp are treated with salt, do not add salt to the shrimp in step 2. The recipe doesn't say what kind of coconut milk to use, but I used full fat, unsweetened, and it was very tasty. Lite coconut milk would probably also work.

* * * * *

In other news, Sam Hunter has finally posted a picture of the quilt created by participants in her Collaborative Embroidery Project. You can read about it at the end of this post right here. This was my submission:

She had to hold off revealing the quilt until QuiltCon, and if any of you are lucky enough to be at QuiltCon today, you can see the quilt on display there. Here's the little note she sent out with her morning email:

Honestly, it just could not have turned out better. Can you believe all the beautiful colors? The instructions said not a thing about the color of the fabrics to use, yet what you sent made this glorious colorwash. I really hope you're proud of your work, because I'm not sure I could be prouder of you! 

And here's the quilt that she created from the many submissions she received.

I've circled my submission below:

So that was kind of fun. I like participating in these collaborative efforts.

That's all the news I have for you today. I expect the newest inchy has been posted, and so that's where I'm headed next. If it isn't too treacherous, I might try to get out and take some pictures this morning. For sure and certain, I'm making some banana bread for National Banana Bread Day. I don't make the rules. I just follow them.