french fry home fries

It's not the healthiest dish in the world, but if you want a great way to use up leftover doggy bag french fries, that are never edible no matter how you reheat them...

Dice them up. (This one included some onion rings, but that works just fine too.)

Parboil a few potatoes and dice them up too. Put everything in a skillet with a few tablespoons of butter. If your doggy bag didn't include onion rings, you could saute half a diced onion first to add a little flavor.

Fry for a good long while, scraping up all the bits on the bottom of the pan. The soggy leftover french fries are important but the crispy bits at the bottom of the pan are critical.

I said it wasn't healthy. But it is absolutely delicious, especially with farm-fresh egg omelets.

juneathon week one

A little round-up of my progress so far, which I have been faithfully tweeting. Paige mentioned running poetry a few days ago and now I find myself composing little poems to pass the time while I try not to feel sorry for myself and how out of shape I am at the moment.

Thursday's haiku:

Running in the rain

Soft susurration on leaves

Sets a gentle pace.

Yes, I admit it, I was particularly proud of using the word susurration in a poem.

Friday's ditty:
Ran 1.5 miles,
And walked for one.
Not a large total,
But got it done.

Saturday's limerick:
An out of shape runner from Jersey,
After winter who felt like a Guernsey.
Juneathon came along
She ran all month long,
And then I couldn't come up with a rhyme for jersey in my misery of trying to run 4 miles to the ballfield to catch the second half of Terzo's baseball game. Running to a place that I had to get to, with no option of cutting the run short or turning around, was my only hope of getting some miles in this morning.

Total for first week of Juneathon:
Miles run: 16.5
Miles walked: 1.25
Poems composed: 2.8
New mantra:

knittus interruptus

A cleaner workroom two weeks ago meant I finally found the missing project: a cotton vest that would be perfect for these cool late spring nights. When I picked it up again to finish it off, after three months of hibernation, the pattern seemed to be written in greek. The lace made no sense anymore, and all the alterations I had started (longer body length, higher bustline) were a mystery. It goes without saying that I hadn't made any notes that would help with the problem.

After two nights of staring at it in confusion, the only way to deal with the problem was to rip, rip, rip and try to get back to a recognizable point.

Of course, once I figured out where I was and got down to finishing it, only a few hours of work were left. I had put it down to work on the Downton Abbey projects, so abandonment was necessary, but I can't believe how close I was to finishing it off! It took me almost as long to figure how to pick up. For the record, it is Sweater Babe's Little Lace Vest, with modifications.

Interesting side note about that blocking mat. I was soooo happy when I found these extra large interlocking mats at Five Below and snapped up a couple. I was even more thrilled when my whole project fit on one mat!

Then I took the sweater off when it was dry and found out that color-fastness was not included in the low, low, Five Below price. Even the lace pattern transferred! Now I can block out any sweater with the proper dimensions marked out.

The buttons arrived today from Melissa Jean. It appears that I have a full blown addition to her buttons. Nothing else will do. But seriously, with the leaf lace, could I have chosen anything else after I spotted these?

Even better than the perfect buttons is the perfect fit.

The modifications turned out exactly as I planned.

It may have taken months from start to finish, but I got it finished at just the right time for once.

strawberry pickin'

Things sound so much more authentic without that last "g," don't they?

My dear friend Amy messaged me on Tuesday night, asking if I wanted to go strawberry picking the next day. I readily agreed, and then promptly forgot. This was especially rude of me because I told her I would let her know when I was done with an 11 am appointment, and when she contacted me at 12:30 asking if I was done, I was in the thick of a knitting design problem and reluctant to leave it.

I hemmed, I hawed, I dragged my feet, I did my best to get out of it. I have no idea why. Thank goodness I remembered that Amy is the source of so much fun and diversion in my life, and I am really better off listening to her and following where she leads, because I always have a great time.

Strawberry picking at a local farm was no exception. I had forgotten how amazing a fresh-picked strawberry can taste. Sweet liquid sunshine in tiny berry form. The fruit in the supermarket isn't even the same species.

Amy and her daughter Emily (another treat, seeing Emily home from college) took pity on my late arrival and rusty picking skills and tossed as many into my container as they did into their own.

 We were thrilled to see so many weeds in with the strawberries, evidence that the farmer didn't spray heavily, if at all.

I haven't stopped eating them since, reasoning that they are pretty much guilt-free. Even if they aren't, their perfection is fleeting and way too good to waste.

brotherly harmony

For years, Secondo and Terzo have butted heads on a monotonous and noisy basis. They both get along well with Primo, but the two of them together, alone, are oil and water. Most days we have to forbid them from being in the same room with each other to keep the peace. Perhaps it is a form of rivalry for Primo's attention, but whatever the cause, it is extremely annoying.

Yesterday however, I glanced out the back door to check on Secondo's progress with planting the garden, and saw this unlikely sight.

The two of them, working together, talking and laughing and getting along for an unprecedented length of time. I found out later that they had been playing the game "Would You Rather" while they cleared and planted the garden. Questions consisted of such classics as "would you rather lick cow poop once or drink soy milk for the rest of your life?" (I thought the obvious answer was (b) until I found out that soy milk would be your exclusive drink; I had to agree that (a) would be my choice if I was forced to give up coffee.)

Then tonight, my husband went outside with Terzo to work on his pitching, with the septic mound serving double duty as a pitching mound. Lo and behold, when I checked on them, Secondo had donned his work boots and grabbed a bat to provide a strike zone. He was never a baseball player, so this was doubly generous of him.

And still later, down in the basement playing multiple rounds of ping-pong* together. Will wonders never cease? Or is it simply the case of any port in a storm, as Primo is around less and less these days?

The obvious title for this post was "brotherly love" but that is taking it too far just yet. I will settle for not screaming at each other on a regular basis, praise them to the heavens every time I catch them at it, and pray that it sticks.

* This ping-pong table was inherited from our previous house, a fixture in the basement when we bought the house in 1999. We estimate it was over 40 years old at that point. It was in terrible shape, covered in paint splatters and dirt, but my husband restored it for... nothing. The boys were too little to play. We couldn't bear to leave it behind when we moved in 2002, so we brought it here and installed it in another basement. Until last week, it was the collecting point for all sorts of detritus and debris. Secondo suddenly decided that he needed to learn how to play for a high school lunchtime diversion, and coerced Terzo into helping him clear it off. They haven't stopped playing since. It only took 15 years, but the restoration is finally appreciated and the cost of moving it finally paid off.

cruels

April may be the cruellest month, according to no less an authority than Mr. T.S. Eliot himself, but it had nothing on May around here. A farm is always a study in entropy, but this month has been particularly brutal. Just a few representative examples:

• We lost the power to our barn—thank goodness it was after lambing and shearing—and we have no idea why or how to fix it, though it looks like it may involve ripping up our back patio. 
• The sheep are getting out of the electric fence repeatedly. We finally caught onto the fact that the charger is not charging it for some unknown reason, so it's no wonder the sheep are treating its boundaries as more of a suggestion than a rule. 
• In the mess of the computer upgrade, we may have lost the vast majority of our photos for 2013. I must admit that I am less upset than I thought I would be by this one. 2013 was a really crappy year.

Also in May, I discovered an abscess on Kevyn's jaw. An abscess on a sheep can be a serious problem, a sign of a nasty disease known as caseous lymphadenitis, better known as CL. CL would be devastating for our flock and for us. We would have to cull heavily in an attempt (probably futile) to get rid of it. Showing sheep would be out of the question this year. None of our sheep could be sold on as breeding stock, and we would have to worry about carcasses being condemned by the butcher.

I was a bit panicked, needless to say.

The abscess is next to my hand.

The vet wasn't able to come out until ten days after I found it, so I did all the research I could and tried to keep calm. The abscess was not near a lymph node, which is where CL is mostly found. The entire flock had been blood tested for CL two years ago and had come up clean, so there was that. All of our replacement sheep have come from CL-free flocks. We have never had a carcass condemned or seen any of the other problems associated with the disease.

The vet was a little less positive. She was reluctant to drain the abscess, because CL is tremendously contagious, but I wanted a culture done on its contents so we could get some answers and hopefully peace of mind. Kevyn was not super happy about the process, as you might imagine, especially the flushing part, but we finally got it finished and drew blood for another test for good measure. Kevyn and her lambs were put in the barn, to be quarantined until the results came back.

Kevyn became downright miserable. She is the leader ewe in our flock, and it killed her to be apart from everyone else. Her lambs were scant comfort. She hollered her head off every day in protest. I felt awful, but there was nothing to be done for it.

Finally, finally, we got the results. Yesterday the culture came back negative. Today the blood titer came back negative. Hooray, hooray, HOORAY! Kevyn was cheering the loudest of all as she was finally able to join everyone else on pasture.

So what was the problem? I am pretty sure it is cruels, another of those marvelously idiosyncratically-named sheep diseases. Cruels is an abscess that forms after a sharp piece of hay, a thorn, or some other prickly irratant works its way into the soft tissue of the sheep's mouth, then becomes infected and forms a walled-off abscess. The location on her jaw was a bit unusual, because it is usually found on the lips or cheek. The greenish color of the pus (sorry) and its thick consistency were classic, however. Despite the vet draining it, it seems to be filling up again so we will have to keep an eye on it.

It can join the list of everything else we have to worry about right now.

juneathon

It's funny, how the image people have of you can be frozen at an image that bears no resemblance to your current state of self. A few weeks ago, someone was relating how they described me to an acquaintance as "you know, the runner."

Unfortunately a runner is the furthest thing from what I am right now.

As a matter-of-fact statement of affairs, I have barely run this year. My new job was catastrophic in this regard: I managed one morning run in the four months I worked there, even counting the weekends. Meanwhile, the pounds piled on all too quickly. I have not weighed this much since I was pregnant.

Drastic action was called for, so when the sign-up for Juneathon 2014 landed in my inbox a few days ago, it seemed to be the kick in the pants I needed. Juneathon, a British invention, requires participants to perform some sort of exercise every day in the month and then blog about it. Luckily the rules have been relaxed and I just need to tweet, not blog, so I don't have to add any unnecessary content to the already-aimless drivel on here.

Speaking of tweeting... I started a twitter account back in January, on a whim, on my way to Vogue Knitting Live. I am @winterspastkris, in case you are interested. For the next month, it will pretty much be about running, but maybe it will be the other kick in the pants I need to start doing a little more with that. Up to now I haven't had too much to say, because I cannot avoid the nagging feeling that the world (a) doesn't need to hear that much more from me; and (2) doesn't really care.

For now, however, I just need to get my rear end in gear, whatever it takes. So for this morning, two miles run and some core exercises: box checked [done].