Squash Recipe #9: Butternut and Corn Chowder

Here's a recipe we tried last night for the first time.  DH had seen a recipe in the January issue of the in-flight magazine of the airline he flew on for his work related trip earlier this month, and had thought it sounded good.  So when he got home, he tried to describe it to me, although mainly he could only remember 'chowder', corn kernels, butternut squash, and chicken broth.  My suggesting ingredients, based on my culinary knowledge, while he was trying to remember what he'd read apparently was annoying rather than helpful, and he couldn't recall much other than that he'd thought it would be a good soup.

Being the loving wife I am, and you know, still on the lookout for new ways to use my bumper crop of squash, I got on the internet and attempted to find a recipe using those ingredients.  Without much luck.  Oh, I found numerous butternut corn chowder recipes, but really not any using chicken broth.  Most used vegetable broth, from a can.  I however, wanted to use chicken broth, partly because DH was adamant that's what the recipe he'd seen used, and partly because I have several quarts of homemade chicken broth in the freezer.

Finally, I ended up reading a variety of recipes, pulling common ingredients from them, adding my chicken broth, and winging it.  The chowder came out pretty tasty, so I wrote down exactly what I did in order to be able to replicate it in the future.

Butternut Corn Chowder

2 small butternut squash (about 1 pound each)
1 medium (or 3 small) onions
2 Tbsp veggie oil
2 cups corn kernels (thaw if using frozen corn)
1 1/2 tsp curry 
1 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 quart chicken broth
1/2 cup heavy cream

1. First, peel, seed and cut your squash into 1" chunks.  Also chop your onion(s).
2. In a pot, heat the veggie oil on medium, then add the onion and squash.  Stir occasionally, until onion gets soft, about 5-6 minutes.  
3. Add the corn and curry powder, and stir well.  Let heat for about 2 minutes, then add salt and pepper.
4. Add the chicken broth, bring to a boil, then turn heat down and simmer, covered, for about 25 minutes until the squash is tender.
5. Remove half of the soup from the pot.  In small batches (about a cup and a half), puree in a blender, returning pureed soup to the pot.
6. Once all the soup is back in the pot, stir in the cream.

At this point, I just turned the heat off and served the soup.  It was hot enough before the addition of the cream that the cream did not cool it off much, so I didn't feel it needed to continue to heat more.

We ate ours with croutons, which was a first for us--having soup with croutons versus crackers, rolls, biscuits, muffins, bread or toast--but is a way many of the chowder recipes I'd seen while trying to find a butternut corn chowder said to serve it.  So I did.  And it was good.

very orange looking chowder

Knitting. . .Another New Skill

Last week's knitting lesson was sort of a lesson, and sort of not.  DD2 did not go with us (having her first 'real' date that evening--meaning with a male friend to something not school related), and neither DD1 nor DD2 had their ruffled scarves all the way knitted, so we did not learn to finish them by sewing off the ends.  And, since they hadn't completed the previous lesson by knitting the entire skein of yarn for their scarves, along with DD2's absence, the instructor and I decided not to start a new project that evening either.

Instead, I asked her about knitting in the round.  It sounds so intriguing, especially when I keep seeing patterns for things that say 'knit in the round', and people who hear that I am taking knitting lessons ask if I'm learning to 'knit in the round' yet.

She said that she had some circular needles and some yarn I could practice with, and for an hour or so, DD1 and I sat with the instructor and just got the hang of knitting in the round.  I also learned how to knit on, because my tail I started with wasn't quite long enough to fill the circular needles, which is what the instructor wanted us to do.  As she was showing me how to knit on to add stitches to my cast on row, the instructor said "normally I don't show beginners this. . ."  We weren't making anything, just filling the needle with cast on stitches, inserting a row marker, and then knitting and knitting and knitting to our hearts content.  Well, to our time limit, anyway.

It was all about practice and repetition.  It was fun.  I'm not sure, but I think I might like knitting in the round better than knitting on straight needles.  I definitely want to pursue it further.

It has been just over four days since that last lesson.  I have nothing knitting related to work on at home since we didn't start a new project (in hindsight, I wish I'd purchased some circular needles just to I could practice it more at home), and the knitting bug is biting.  So. . . I dug out some straight needles I'd purchased several years ago (when I started  wanting to learn to knit) and a nice soft skein of yarn, and last night I started a plain Jane normal scarf for myself.  Plain Jane in that it will be completely of knit stitches, no ribs, cables or anything fancy.  I'll just knit and knit and knit until I feel the scarf is long enough and then I'll bind off.  Something to keep my hands busy when I'm sitting, and satisfy my urge to knit, because our next lesson is five long days off yet!

Little Homey Touches

I'm not much for knick knacks and doo-dads.  Most of my decorations consist of a few framed pictures hung on the wall. Ten of which contain my kids at various ages and stages.  That only leaves about eight others, one of which is a wedding photo of DH and I.  Another is an aerial photo of our property, which was an anniversary present a couple of years ago.

Point being, I'm naturally more into function than decoration.  Although in the last few months, I've been finding myself adding a bit more embellishment to certain parts of the house.  Lest you think I've gone all foo-foo girly, let me add that part of it has been finding a way to use a few items I want to have without them just being clutter.

One item that helped greatly in this endeavor, was an over-the-toilet cabinet that I snagged at Goodwill this past summer for less than $10.  It was in great shape and didn't even need painting.  I gave it a wash and some new shelf paper inside, and it was ready to set into place.  In addition to holding towels and toilet paper in a location very close to the shower and the commode, it is a great place to display some of my treasures from recent travels.

The top shelf contains a picture of a juvenile bald eagle I took when we delivered DS2 to his freshman year of college, an amaryllis I am growing from a bulb (something I've always wanted to try growing and scored earlier this month at Wally World for 75% off), and a homemade candle in an antique canning jar that was a gift from a friend several years ago.

The bottom shelf holds another canning jar that contains sea shells DH and I collected on a sunset walk along the ocean when we went to Myrtle Beach last summer, a small chunk of granite from where DS2 took us climbing this past August (to show us where he rock climbs/rappels), another picture I took in the U.P. (sunlight and shadows along a tree root woven dirt path in the woods), and a mostly intact conch shell I found during that beach walk with DH last summer.

Nothing fancy, and nothing that cost much of anything, but all have meaning to me.

A new item in my bathroom is a hand soap dispenser I made yesterday from another antique canning jar (this one is also a pale green, and scored from Goodwill for 59 cents!) and the pump portion of a many years old hand soap bottle from the store.  (I get my hand soap by the gallon and just refill existing dispensers until they give up the ghost after a decade or so.)

It was super easy to make.  Basically, I took a lid and ring that I had, poked a hole in the center of the lid (I confess, with a corn stabber aka holder for eating corn on the cob), enlarged the hole by mashing a screwdriver through it, then used a pair of needle nosed pliers to gently pull the edges of the hole larger until the fattest part of the underside of the pump dispenser fit snugly into it.  Then I just trimmed the straw part of the dispenser to the depth of the bottom of the jar, filled the jar with soap, and screwed the lid down with the canning jar ring.  Voila, country style frugally decorative--yet very functional!--hand soap dispenser.

Two more items put to functional yet decorative use reside near my front door in what I suppose you could call the foyer--although it is really where the hallway and front door and stairs to the second story all meet--are my childhood toy chest (made by my maternal grandfather--who died when I was 18--used by me, then used and outgrown by all four of my kids), and a doily handmade by DH's maternal grandmother (who has been deceased for nearly a decade).

The poor aloe plant that sits atop the doily (which makes a great decorative touch to a really not so pretty plant and pot) didn't like the 50-something degrees which the house got down to during our power outage last week.  Prior to that, it was nice and rigid and upright (and occasionally used for treating burns and stings), but now it's rather sad looking and blackened in spots.  It also came into my possession at no cost when I volunteered to re-pot all the plants in one of my children's classrooms about fourteen years ago, and the teacher told me to keep all the 'sprouts' from any of the plants I was working with.

Anyway, the toy chest holds a variety of miscellany, including some seasonal decorations for the walls in that corner of the house and a few afghans that I rotate on the back of the couch with the seasons (handmade by various family members, some long deceased).  But mostly it dresses up the entry way, gives me somewhere other than the floor to put that plant, and holds our most recent family picture--the only one with all eight of us in it--which was taken at DD1's graduation.

Next time you go decluttering in your house, take a good look at your miscellaneous heirlooms and emotional treasures, and see if maybe you can come up with functionally decorative spots to use them rather than having them stuffed into drawers, cabinets, boxes, and basement corners.

Working in the Woods Again

With all the wind storms we've had in the last few months, there are a lot of downed trees out in the woods again.  The Saturday before we lost power (due to 10+ hours of sustained winds about 50 mph), DH and the girls spent most of the day out cleaning up the road in the woods.  They had to cut up several trees that had fallen along the approximately 1/3 mile of "road" (really a two-track path dozed with the tractor the first summer we owned the property) we have back there.

While there, DH eyed a few more trees he wanted to cut up; including two large ones that had fallen across the drainage ditch that is just across our back fence line and separates our woods from the neighbor's field.  However, those two big trees would require more time and more equipment than he had that day.

So, this Saturday, he and I went back there with the tractor, chains, come along, log tongs, machete, and chainsaw.  We spent 4 1/2 hours retrieving those trees.  It wasn't easy.  In fact, at times it was downright scary when they hung up and started to tip the tractor.  Time to stop and reassess the situation!! Tilting sideways or nose-down on a tractor is not high on my list of fun things to do.

We got them, though.  Without tipping the tractor, and with no injuries to either of us, save some scratches from the wild roses that one of them fell on.  (Hence the need for the machete--whacking rose briars.)  At one point, DH was down in that drainage ditch, standing on we weren't sure how thick of ice, his chainsaw held at head height, while he cut through the fork of a big black cherry tree.  Once the fork had been severed from the trunk. leaving us with three parts (left fork, right fork, and trunk which was still attached to a 6' root ball that was frozen to the ground), it was fairly easy for me to drag each big log (left and right forks) across the ditch with the tractor.  Once they were on solid ground, DH cut them up with the chainsaw.

I intended to take some pictures while we were working on the beasts, but, well, my cell phone battery didn't like the cold weather and decided to be too weak to take pictures.  Maybe next time, I'll bring the real camera (and something warm to keep it in!)

Sixty-One Hours

That's how long we were without electricity this week.  Based on info we got from the electric company's website, our power went out shortly after three a.m. on Sunday.  On Sunday afternoon, they were telling us it would not be restored until Wednesday night, after nine p.m.  The temperature outside was in the single digits, and wind chills were in the negative teens.  Without electricity to run the pump on the wood boiler, the house was not getting heat, and the wind was making indoor temperatures plummet.

DH went and bought a generator within an hour of getting the electric company's restoration estimate.  Four days without power was not an option.  Based on outdoor weather conditions, and the rate the house was losing heat, he estimated that by Monday night we would be having water pipes indoors freeze.  That would be tragic, as we have lots of water pipes with our hydronic radiant heat being in the floors.  Frozen, burst pipes in the floors would pretty much mean tearing the house apart to repair it from water damage.

And so, we did something we don't like to do:  impulse bought a large ticket item.  No time for research, no time for shopping around.  Go to the local big box store, find that they have very few on the shelf, and get one to bring home and power the essentials with.

From about six p.m. on Sunday, until the electricity was restored after four p.m. on Tuesday (yay, 29 hours earlier than predicted!), we fed the generator gasoline (thankfully at the "low" price of only $3.18 a gallon--it jumped to $3.43 on Wednesday!!) so that we could have a working pump (and damper) on the wood boiler, intermittently run the well pump for water, and power our refrigerator and giant chest freezer (which is full of 3 deer, numerous chickens, a couple turkeys, a little pork and beef, and assorted vegetables).  That was it.  Better than nothing, but still not life as normal.

Toilets could be flushed, but the more often they were flushed, the more often we had to cut power to the freezer so the well pump could be run.  So the "if it's yellow. . ." rule applied for three entire days.

Running water for a shower or bath, not an option.  Sink bathing with a wash cloth was all that was offered.  I can't tell you how good that first shower Tuesday night felt!

Most rooms were without electricity so that it could be 'saved' for the essentials of heat and saving our cold-storage food items.  Two of the three bathrooms do not have windows.  Using those two, even in the day time, required bringing a flash light.  When the power came on on Tuesday, the first comment after someone used the bathroom was "I can pee with the light on!!"  Okay, it sounds funny, but it really was a comment of appreciation for modern conveniences.  It really makes you think about the things you take for granted, like light in the bathroom.

Going to bed at night also meant bringing a flash light so you could see to walk up the stairs.  And back down again in the pre-dawn of morning, plus getting dressed, brushing teeth and hair, etc.  Waking up on time meant bringing your cell phone to bed (usually all cell phones stay downstairs at night, not in the bedrooms) and making sure you set the alarm on it.

Cooking was done on the cook top only, so menus had to be reconfigured to serve only non-baked and non-roasted dishes.  We had venison steaks the first night, then a couple pots of soup:  turkey and chili, which not only fit the bill, but also helped heat the house with their long simmering times (from scratch, of course, cooking 3-5 hours each).  Breakfasts were tough, without a toaster.  'Fried' toast (bread buttered then toasted in a frying pan on the stove) is not as good with eggs as toast made the normal way.

Breakfasts and dinners were cooked by the light of two oil lamps, one next to the cook top and one on the island where all the mixing, measuring, and prep work was done.  Dishes were left from dinner until the sun came up the next day, so they could be washed in good light rather than the dim flickering of the oil lamps.

The living room was the one room DH had connected to the generator.  He had to watch football playoffs on Sunday night, plus DD1 needed to be able to use her computer to complete college assignments that were due the next day.  Not to mention being able to charge our cell phones, which were also our alarm clocks!

All in all, 61 hours of no/reduced electricity wasn't too bad.  I got a lot of things done that normally get put off, like the mending that requires hand-sewing instead of on the sewing machine, and decluttering the study.  Several trash cans worth of old papers went into the wood boiler that day!  We read, we knitted, we talked.  We brainstormed ways to make improvements for the next extended power outage.  DH examined which circuits in the electric panel need to be connected to the generator in the future, figuring what their combined load would be and what the generator's capacity is.


Wednesday, it was good to wake up to heat, and light, and the alarm clock beside the bed, and quiet. . . no generator running outside.  Wednesday also meant washing a whole lot of laundry, three missed days of laundry.  Catching up on emails and other internet related stuff.  Refilling the 'emergency' containers of water kept for watering the animals during an outage.  And using the oven to cook dinner!  What a blessing ovens are.

One Windy Night.

Last night was extremely windy.  The power went out at least once between 11:00 and 2:00, as when a large thump from outside woke DH and I up at approximately 2:20 a.m. (he looked at his cell phone to determine the time), both of our alarm clocks were blinking.  When they blink, it means the power has gone out, and come back on.

Being very dark, we could not tell what outside had made the large thump, but we could see, barely, the image of branches against the night sky out in the field, so we knew that at least the big oak--really big oak, DH cannot span one side of its trunk with his arms outstretched--in the field had not blown down.  The oak is so big and old it would be a shame to lose it.

We tried to go back to sleep, although the strange noises the wind was making did not make relaxing into sleep easy.  As we lay there, the conversation went something like this:

me:  "The wind sounds wrong."
DH:  "Yes, it's strange."

silence for a few minutes.

me:  "I'm trying to decide if I want to go to sleep, or go to the basement."
DH:  "mm hmm."
me:  "But it's January, and the sky is clear, I can see stars.  You can't have a tornado in Michigan in January, and you can't have a tornado when the sky is clear."
DH:  "Nope. It's just wind, no tornado.  But it sure sounds funny."

Eventually, we went back to sleep.  To be woken up a little while later by the sound of something metallic hitting the ground somewhere near the back of the house.  Now, the alarm clocks are no longer on (I had reset the time before we drifted back to sleep), so I know the power is out.  Eventually I get back to sleep.

We woke up just before 8 a.m. as the sky was becoming light.  Still no power, and the house is chilly.  The really strong winds are sucking the heat right out without electricity to keep hot water circulating from the wood boiler to the house and through the floors.  We get up and get ready for church, sans showers.

When the sun is up higher, and we can see out in the yard and to the barn, I discover what made the loud thump in the middle of the night.  The door to the chicken house, which is on the east side of the coop, has been torn off and now lies in front of the coop, on the south side.  Hmmm.  That's not good!

Long story short, after church DH and I had to install three new (more heavy duty) hinges on the chicken coop door.  He also decided, about 3 p.m., when the electric company finally gave us an estimate of when our electricity would be restored--Wednesday night--that it was time to break down and purchase a generator.  Without one, we, as people, would get along fine by bundling up and just telling ourselves we were polar bear camping indoors (DH and the boys used to go polar bear camping outdoors when they were younger), but our pipes would most likely be frozen and burst by then.  Tomorrow's high temperature is only supposed to be 15 degrees, and Tuesday's forecast isn't any better.

So, tonight, we have new hinges on the chicken coop door, which is latched tight against the cold and predators, and power to our heat system, fridge, and the TV.  So DH can watch the football championships.  Once football is over, he'll shut off the circuit to the living room, and turn on the one for the chest freezer.

Dinner was cooked, by oil lamp light, on the cook top (one of the reasons I went with a gas cook top versus electric:  so I can cook in a power outage).  We enjoyed venison steaks with sauteed onions and mushrooms, peas, and steamed sweet potatoes.  For dessert was no-bake cookies, also made on the cook top.  Just because the power is out doesn't mean we have to starve!

We Progress to a Knitting Project!

Knitting lesson #3 was last night.  No new stitches, but a real honest to goodness project to make.  Scary stuff!

Actually, it isn't as hard as we thought when the instructor first told us what we were to do.  We are making those ruffly scarves that are so popular right now.  And using some pretty funky yarn.  It looks like the yarn itself is crocheted out of thin threads.

This is the skein:

(I decided to do pink and send the finished scarf to K2 for her birthday in a few weeks.  Pink is her favorite color.)

This is what the yarn looks like when you spread it out like the instructor told us to do:

At which point we looked at her like "what??????  How are we supposed to work with this???"

Actually, it is really easy to work with.  You use the loops at the bottom of the yarn.  They spread apart really easily.  As you knit, it is the width of the yarn that makes the ruffle.  

Super easy, just 6 stitches per row, all knit stitches.  After an hour of knitting, this is what mine looks like so far:

I can foresee this being done in a few more hours.  Price at the yarn store to purchase a made scarf identical to this:  $12.  Price on the internet (yeah, I looked, for my own frugal reference): $12-$20 or so.  Price of my skein of yarn last night: $5.99 less my 15% student discount.

Let's see, I can watch tv at night with DH, and knit while I'm doing that, and make a scarf in two nights or so.  Hmmm. . .