Casa Walsh

Look! Snow! And the obligatory weblog photos of the Blizzard of 2005!

Here’s peeler bravely marching into battle against the snowdrifts:

I hope there’s nothing important, like a car, under this pile. Only spring will tell:

The best thing about working for a university: snow days. I tackled our half of the sidewalk Monday morning:

The neighbors, inspired by my awesome snow removal skills (or by the realization the snow can’t be that bad if a girl can clear the sidewalk in 10 minutes), shoveled the other half of the sidewalk later in the afternoon.

*Cooking from scratch update*

I made mayonnaise.

This weekend I also made an apple cake, deviled eggs, cream of broccoli soup (avec homemade stock), and cheese puffs. Sweet cabin fever.

“Whew, cold enough for ya?” Yes, it is cold enough for me, please stop asking.

I finally finished Mini Swans’ X-mas presents. The mittens and hat she got to take on the plane with her, but the scarf had to be mailed from frigid Cambridge to  “freezing”* Santa Cruz.

*low 40s at night

The yarn is called tagliatelle, a merino wool tape. Tough to wind, but good tension and pretty easy to work with.  

Enlarged to show texture:

The cold weather compells me to put something on the stove or in the oven. Not only that, but I become fanatic about making food “from scratch.” For example, I’ve never bothered to make my own vegetable stock, but I happened to have all the ingredients hanging around, so I did.

I took the advice of Mark Bittman and roasted the vegetables first. Here they are waiting for their turn in the oven:

I tossed the roasted vegetables in a big pot with water, sherry, parsley stems, and the leftover carrot and celery greens (the veggies in the box arrive with all their parts), and let the pot simmer on the stove for about a half hour. After straining the stock, I filled two empty pomegranate juice bottles (saved because of their neat shape), and two ice cube trays.

By this time I was really hungry so I made some puttenesca sauce with some fresh stock, a can of italian tuna (in olive oil – I will never eat water-packed tuna again – hooray! another thing to be snobby about), capers, olives, canned tomatoes, parsley, and garlic.

Up next: mayonnaise, from scratch