HOMEMAKING

Autumn + Thanksgiving = Perfect excuse to be in the kitchen. Thanksgiving dinner was a braised turkey; Stu found the recipe in the NY Times and asked me to make it. It was quite delicious and, since it uses parts instead of the whole bird, can be cooked more often than "feast" days. After dinner, I made a pecan pie with rum in a spelt crust devised from pieces of two or three recipes. Friday morning three varieties of heirloom apples went into an apple crisp. And today the leftover turkey became a turkey hash to accompany fresh eggs over easy.

More prosaic but still very tasty treats await the coming week as there are mustard greens and string beans in the produce bin and some cabbage and (yet more) broccoli rabe out in the garden, waiting to mingle with barley or brown rice for some slow simmering.....

We've been taking walks through the long holiday weekend, as the days start in the chilly low 40s but warm up to a very sunny clear 60. Our goal is to walk all of Ukiah. This may take a while, as my knee only likes about 1 - 1.5 miles at a time. This is another advantage to having moved to a small town. Before we left San Francisco we had discussed essaying this project there.Here it is actually something I can put my head around as doable. Our walking so far has focused on the scenic, older northwest side of town, and we keep finding neat little things. Today it was an unmarked public greenspace that starts in the middle of a block as a narrow path running alongside Gibson Creek and ends up coming out a long block away as a tiny park.

This is a detail of my current sewing project, a quilt for the guest room. Pictured is most of a patchwork, 12 squares x 12 squares, that is the center medallion to be set on the diagonal and surrounded by...something else. The color palette is meant to reflect autumn in Ukiah.