Minced meat soup

I made chili con carne on the other day. I had only big bag of minced meat (700g) in the freezer, there is a shortage of minced meat here. I try to use it sparingly, so I used only half of in in the chili.

Potatoes need using up, they are sprouting already! I got half swede and a nice parsnip for free, but I needed carrots anyway, so those I bought. And never-ending cabbage from the fridge.

Peeled and diced potatoes, carrots, swede and parsnip, and sliced a thick wedge from the cabbage (and sliced it to smaller pieces). Into the pot I added leftover ketchup from the "empty"bottle - there's always some left that will not come out. I just pour some warm water into the bottle and shake... A stock cube and some green powder, paprika, salt and pepper with a whole clove of garlic. And tumeric! I forgot about it. Once the soup was boiling, Iadded fried minced meat from the fridge.

Once potatoes and swedewere soft, soup was ready. We ate it with sourdough rye bread, which was free, too. Very good warming meal in this dark rainy day. I think most of the world thin soup as a lunch, but for us it is just a meal. Meal is a meal, no matter what time of the day it is eaten...

                                                                 (added a picture later)

The whole pot of soup (or stew, we call it soup because there is liquid) was max 4€ for five people! No leftovers, I think. (later: I was wrong, there's still 2 more portions left, so lunches later)

Tomorrow I'm going to make something with the chicken leftovers. Pasta? I don't mind I can't eat it, I'll have some leftover chili.

Now I've managed to pay all the credit cards I had to use earlier this year for car repairs. Next, I need to save up money for another surprices which are wainting to happen. I've not had credit cards unpaid at the end of the month for a long long time, so this wasn't very pleasant situation. At the same time I'm paying for another loo to be built. I haven't bought the seat yet, but I do have the sink, tiles for the walls and floor and panels for the ceiling. And there is no water connected yet. Yay.

Medieval madness

 So it's midsommar. Midsummer. We've had a warm week lately, and now - cold and wet. Yay!

But luckily it was warm and dry last weekend, when we had our Medieval Fair. Of course ys wanted to be a plague doctor- he has this black leather beak mask. Well, he didn't have rest of the outfit.

Mom to the rescue!

Idk if there's enough needles?

It's been a long long time since last time I made any garment of this detail...

So in a few days I made him a tunic, a veil/robe and a hood. Next year he needs new trousers (he has brown medieval trousers but they are not good match to this outfit, they were for the peasant outfit.

Here is ys and my lovely brother. He is ys's godfather, which is a bit strange because both of them are atheists. But it's completely another story... Oh yeah, ys really really really needs proper shoes, too. I can't make leatherwork, so have to find another solution for that. Anyone has elephant skin for the shoe soles? Maybe mammoth skin? Dinosaur skin?

(I know there are a lot of anacrhonisms in those outfits, but you just can't have it all)

We found very nice buckle/clip for ys for his tunic - but of course it's not visible. But it was only 18€, which is a bargain! Th mask was filthy expensive, we bought it last year. Fabrics for the outfit were less than 70€ (they are linen or linen blend). I bought an applewood needle for needlebinding (? oh, its nalbinding?) but I still don't get how you are supposed to proceed after the first loops... Maybe I'll get it by the next summer.

I'm trying to NOT to do any food shopping for the rest of the month. I have my freezers shockingly full, I've been able to get food and bread from the waste food distribution organisation (grand words, the organisation is a woman from my community society, and she's also the distribution system...). Now I'm trying to get us eat to eat through the freezers. Just now there's a whole chicken in the oven, it was already seasoned, so I just dumped it into the cast iron pot (dutch oven) with the lid on. Now I need to wash and boil potatotes (I got maybe 6 kilos of new potatoes), and we will have some freezer veggies steamed/boiled with them. Of course I don't eat poultry, so I'll have some pickled herring (lime and ginger), which was free.

New potatoes, butter and pickled herring with some sourdough rye bread - my summer is here.

Skipping the winter?

 I've tried to find time to write a blog post. Once I've made part of the text, cats start a fight od 'Suma needs to go out. And when I', able to continue, I've lost the plot, I had no idea what I was going to say 😆

I've had an interesting winter workwise. I've written an article with my colleagues on a real magazine (about my work)!!! Need to add that to my CV. I've got three more years in the EU commission work, and it means I need to travel abroad. I don't like flying...

The weather in this winter has been miserable. Wet, grey, soggy, lousy. Thick clouds all the time, we haven't been able to see auroras, or full moons or planets. Next week forecast says 20cm snow. Oh NOW it will snow when spring has been here for weeks?

I haven't put any seeds to germinate, because I'll be on work trip next week. After that I might be able to do something with all the seeds I need to get growing. Papricas, chillies, tomatoes, maybe ocra. No aubergines though, our summer is way too short and cool for them.

But the big news!  My sister gave a birth to a number three January, so now she has been stuck to sofa with the baby 💗  The baby is growing fast, weight gain is about 500g per week!!!

No pic of number three, but here is my field last weekend:

Polytunnel is still a skeleton, sunny parts of the village are bare, my field has some 10 to 30 cm of snow. Tractor tracks go to our forest, it's time to do next winter's firewood.

Snowstorm, so soup it is!

It's been snowing 7 hours. Forecasts say it will be snowing until tomorrow noon.

So soup.

We had one and a half cervelat-type sausages in the fridge (local basic sausage). Not my favourite, but hb likes it and it IS cheap. And I know how it's made, because I've been in most sausace factories here. I fried it before adding to the soup -not necessary step, but it tastes so much better.

It looks like any other potato-based soups I make these days, because I have a lot of beets and everything cooked with beets gets red. Ok, someone might call it a stew, whatever. This is how my grannies made this ❤️

1,5€ for the sausage, 0,2€ for spices and stock cube, max 1€ for vegetables (carrot, swede, beet, potato, peas). So pot full of soup less than three euros, less than 50 cents per portion.

Hello darkness, my old friend....

 As a child I was afraid of dark. While walking to school I frantically squeesed my flashlight. It wasn't very powerful, it was 70's anyway.

Now the darkness is my friend. It's a good thing that we have formed a friendship, becaus during cold seasons there's not much light. It's dark when I wake up. It's dark when I take 'Suma for a walk. It's dark when we leave home when I take ys to school (no public transportation here, school trip is 14 km one way). And of course it's dark when I finish my work, at four pm. Yay.

But it's not pitch dark, there is tones in darkness. Last weekend there was more than enough light - full moon at it's brightest illuminated even forest floor. And if there's clouds, nearby town sheds enought light to shatter it from the clouds so I can walk safely without having to worry about stumbling. It WAS darker in the 70's. There was energy crisis (oil crisis) so street lights in the town  were off, if there even were any. It was 70's, not a modern day light pollution era.

And if I don't use any extra light, I can see everything around me, with flashlight I can see only what's in the narrow beam of light. And if there's too dark that I can't see - well, nobody else can't see me neither! So it is safe to walk in the darkness in the countryside.

Cities are totally different. I've never seen so dark shadows like there are in cities - darkness is a deep void, not a soft and comfly blanket like it is in the countryside.

Chocolate semolina pudding

I usually cook one porridge a week. And when I say porridge, I actually cook something rest of the world calls as pudding. 

Today was porridge cooking day, as it is Sunday. On Sundays I try to make something that can be easily eaten during the week as a snack, breakfast or when you are hungry but have no time to make a sandwich!

Favourite is, of course! Semolina chocolate pudding. Chocolate semolina pudding? Chocolate porridge 😁

I'm cooking on the woodstove now. It keeps the house warm and save electricity.

Once cooked, you can see separate semolina grains. This time I used a small amount of polenta, too. I'm the only one liking polenta, and we were given one package. I'm not wasting any food!

You can buy semolina grains with cocoa and other stuff, but it's quite expensive - at least I think it is. It's easy to mix yourself.

1 l milk

1 dl semolina

1 dl sugar

(1 tsp vanilla sugar)

1/4 tsp salt

I cook this in bain marie/double boiler pot, because I just can't cook milk in normal pot without burning it...

I mix everything but salt and let it cook in double boiler for half an hour or longer. In normal pot it takes only 10 to 15 minutes. Once it's cooked, I add salt.

This is very good hot and cold. You can have it with  milk, cream, vanilla custard etc but I just eat as it is. It is very sweet! But this is how we like it.

I also made a sort of Yorkshire pudding. We eat it as a sweet dessert with jam.

I use pizza cutter to make slices, I forgot to take a picture before I sliced this. (and someone had already took a slice or two)

And it's October

I don't know how days go past so fast - or rather weeks. It was August, and September somehow just rushed by, waved and puff! it's October.

August and September were exceptionally warm months, summer didn't want to leave. And then in one morning it was autunm, trees went yellow and red overnight, grass turned golden yellow just like that.

Now we have had frosts - few years ago frosts were here in the end of August, not in the beginning of October...

I'm quite confident we will have winter very soon and without any warning. Bugger.

I've been mushrooming, today we were in our forest, me, my sister, Number One and 'Suma. In 45 minutes we picked our bags full of mushrooms, and we hardly touched the edge of the mushroom harvest there. I still need few bags more mushrooms to freezer. It's going to be an expensive winter, I think.

At least I managed to pay off one car loan, and another has only one half payment left. Then all vehicles are our own again! And it gives me a small extra sum of money to build up an emergency fund. For now my emergency find is my Master Card, which is not good. I have still money reserved for some specific purposes, like sys's drivers licence...

Since beginning of covid our money situation has been tightening and tightening - we are not buying anything more than before, but everything is so much more expensive. We have less money to spend with higher prices. I don't get paid more if I work more, I could have the hours off, but will not get any extra money. Hb is working only day shift, so no extra money from night shifts either.

But we'll manage, I just need to cut all extra spending (not much there) and be wary of any pitfalls. Few more years and our mortage is completely paid off. Hb might get a small amount as inheritance once hir parent's house is sold - but it could take two or three years before that happens, and keeping up the house costs us around 200 euros per month! I have suggested that the house be put up for rent, but it's too much effort, they say (hb and his siblings).  Oh well, it's only money 😡