Chicago and Christmas Cookies

 What an eventful week we had! Thursday, Terry and I took advantage of relatively warm weather (40’s) and the fact that the kids are still in school to go to the Big City for the first time since the pandemic. It was a nice day, beginning with getting all day passes on the train for just 10 bucks each! Normally, it’s $9.50 each way. “That’s like two free beers at Chistkindlmarket!” Terry said. We all have our own ways of assessing comparative value.

Ten dollar day passes in the ticket clips on the train 

Whoo-wee! That wind was NOT warm as it came whipping off the lake and into our faces as we headed up Madison. I was glad to have my hat and long underpants! Our calculations were correct. Christkindlmarket was the least crowded we had ever seen it. We walked right up to the counter and got two brats with sauerkraut. Next we walked right up to a counter a few shops down and cashed in our savings from the train tickets.

The relatively deserted entrance to Christkindlmarket

We shared a tiny stand-up table with an older woman (well, a little older than us) and her daughter. They were drinking that nasty hot spiced wine in souvenir Christmas mugs. Each year’s mug is dated and has a different design. I can see how that could be habit forming. After you get, say, 5 years of mugs, could you give it up? But where would you ultimately store them all? This year’s mug marked the 25^th anniversary of Christkindlmarket. That’s a lot of shelf space. The daughter was off foraging when we colonized our half of the table. I asked the mother if she collected the mugs.

“No, my daughter does,” she answered.

The daughter returned with potato pancakes. We chatted while we ate and drank. All of us came down once a year when there was no pandemic.

When we finished lunch, we moved on to the vendor booths. Terry was drawn to a stall selling Belgian chocolates molded into novelty shapes, such as nuts and bolts. My eye caught a chocolate croissant in the booth next door, St. Roger Abbey French Gourmet Patisserie of Marengo, IL. I’d heard of the nuns in Marengo. They are always getting in trouble with the City Council over permits for one thing and another. My croissant was $4.50. I gave Sister $5.00 and told her to keep the change. I felt that the sisters were a bit stingy with the chocolate, but not with the butter. It was an exceptionally flaky croissant.

Terry joined me with a white chocolate car in a fancy box with a gold seal, for which he paid $19.50. Get that man out on the town, and he just goes crazy.

Chocolate car in a fancy box

Our next stop was the windows at the store formerly known as Marshall Fields. The story this year was of a reindeer named TipToe, who was learning to fly. This window shows the lecture from the cliché wise old owl. So lame.

TipToe, the blue reindeer in front, gets her flying lecture

There is no more viewing of the tree in the Walnut Room from the floor above. TipToe and her friends were positioned around the tree. We could have had immediate seating in the Walnut Room during peak lunch time. Everything is different now.

TipToe at the base of the Walnut Room tree

This is the tree at Millennial Park.

The Christmas Tree at Millennial Park

The city was nicely reflected in the Bean.

The Bean

Here is our self-portrait on the Bean. I have the red coat and the yellow camera in front of my face.

Terry and me reflected in the bean

We walked up Michigan Avenue. The Mag Mile has taken a pandemic hit. There were several stores for lease. Crime has increased in the city. There were no Rolex watches on display in the windows. I saw a salesman locking the door on a diamond store. I guess you have to knock or have an appointment to get in.

We admired the bust of Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable, the first non-Indigenous resident of the area. He established a successful trading business in the late 18^th century, but it was not until almost 200 years later that he was acknowledged as the founder of Chicago. Why? He was a Black man. The honor first went to John Kinzie, White guy, who bought Pointe DuSable’s property. I was surprised to see from the plaque that he lived to be 73 years old. Considering all the hazards of frontier life, that’s quite remarkable.  

Pointe DuSable, a handsome man

We didn’t go all the way to the Hancock this year. Terry wanted to catch the 3:45 train home. We had one more beer at Christkindlmarket on our way back to Ogilvie station. I got suckered into buying a pretzel. They always look so good, and they always are so dry. Bah.

When we crossed the Chicago River, we saw a crane hoisting up building materials to a skyscraper under construction. 

A crane in action

Back at home, I weighed Terry’s white chocolate car. It was 3.52 ounces, which figures out to be $88.64/pound. Way more expensive than Godiva.

This is what $88/lb chocolate looks like

Saturday was Christmas cookie day. I prepped the doughs on Friday, using butter by the pound. Kate wore the commemorative apron she and her sister Kim made after our jam session. It doesn’t seem like it was three years ago. Time flies. Kim was supposed to join us, but was snowed in up in Oshkosh.

Kate and her commemorative apron

I rolled and cut out the cookies. Kate prepped the frosting. Jane switched the trays and put the cookies on the cooling rack.

Rolling

Jane waits for the next tray to be done

When the cookies were cooled, the frosting began. Jane put chocolate frosting on the bison while Kate did the vanilla cookies. Then it was time to decorate.

So many cookies!

Kate and I tag team with different colors of frosting

And decorate.

Still decorating....

Finally, we had the cookies done.

Christmas bison with wreaths and bows

Lovely sugar cookies in the late afternoon sun

We also made peanut butter blossoms and Mexican wedding cakes. We were too tired to take on the pecan bars, so I did those today. I’m done baking for awhile. I’d better be!

Oh, Christmas Tree

 It is hard to imagine a drearier day. All of Chicagoland is socked in with freezing rain. Freezing rain is the worst. The football players on both teams are baubling the ball around at Soldier Field like it’s a hot potato. I bet they are all thinking of a hot shower right now.

We’ve had a rather eventful week here. I finally, finally used the last of the 20 pounds of carrots I harvested at the end of summer. I pulled the first carrots from the high tunnel Tuesday morning. They are so beautiful! They will last all winter in the soil. They are biennials, after all. Their reproductive cycle is two years long. They store energy in their roots the first year and use it to set seeds in the second year. I have one raised bed of carrots. I am looking forward to finding out how long that will meet my needs. I don’t think I’ll probably get through the whole winter without buying some. I assure you, the carrots from the high tunnel are much better, so crisp and fresh.

How lovely art the high tunnel carrots!

Tuesday afternoon, we cut our Christmas tree. Terry showed me several trees from the first planting up by the house. They are getting crowded and all are lopsided. It’s not a terrible thing. The flat side can go toward the wall. Here’s the one we selected; its flat side is where the lilacs blocked its growth in the back.

Our free range Christmas tree in its natural setting

Terry crawled down in the dead leaves with his chainsaw.

Terry cuts the tree

Soon the deed was done.

And drags it to the house

We put it up in the living room upstairs. There’s more space, and we’ve been going up there to watch TV in the evenings. We will be moving up there for good after we get some renovations done.

The tree in the stand

We put on our usual decorations.

Decorated

And turned on the lights.

Lit up

As I was unpacking the decorations, I saw that the “J” had fallen off one of the wall plaques. Now we’re ready for Hanukah!

Oy to the world!

The last momentous event of the week was the arrival and installation of an automatic coop door. I have been dreaming of one for years. Jane was kind enough to do some research for me, and I finally found the time last weekend to make a spreadsheet of features and decide which one to order. I went with the Omlet Automatic Coop Door—Green. It has three control options—manual, timer, and light sensor—as well as a safety function to prevent it from decapitating any chickens. I could also get an adapter to plug it into an electrical outlet instead of relying on batteries. (Not everyone has electricity in their chicken coop. Batteries seem to be the default for automatic doors.) The thing that sealed the deal was that it had the best ratings for low temperature operation. I had hoped we would get through more than three days without worrying about the channel getting clogged up with ice. When I was out earlier, it seemed like it was staying pretty dry, but I will definitely have to check it tonight.

The new automatic coop door with light sensor (above right)

Once we had it installed, the hens all stood around outside, eyeing it suspiciously. When the sun when down, though, in they went! That was one hurdle. The door closed all by itself when it got dark enough.

It opened up in the morning, just as it should have. When I went out to do the chores, however, all the chickens were still in the coop. The new door is about half the width of the old door, and it seemed like they couldn’t quite figure out how to get through it single file. My presence in the coop was alarming enough that they were motivated to use their limited problem-solving skills. Saturday morning, they went out on their own, but there was a great deal of confusion. Where are the scratch grains we get every morning when the door opens? They dashed around the run in a tight group, not wanting to miss out if someone found the cache. They are so funny! They will just have to learn to wait until I finish my tea. Because I can.

The best part of the coop door is that we can now go out for the day without worrying about getting home by dusk, a particular problem now that the girls go in at 4:15. It’s like a whole new world has opened up for us!

Thanksgiving

 I was a total slacker with the camera over the weekend. Thus, I have but two photos for the blog this week, both of which were taken by Nancy.

So yeah, it’s been a rough year, but I’m thankful that my chosen family—in this case, Terry, Jane, and Nancy--can get together and have a fun day. I’m also thankful that these particular people are the types who will hop up and help get dinner on the table. Jane made gravy; Nancy got out dishes and put food in serving dishes, and Terry opened the champagne. I carved the turkey, which was perfectly cooked, if I say so myself.

The first cut on the turkey

Taking off the wing

It was a nice day with good food. My innovation this year was to bake the herbs (fresh from the high tunnel) in the bread for the stuffing. Jane declared it a success. It made the flavors infuse into the bread in a way that took it to the next level. I got the last of the Brussels sprouts out of the high tunnel. I have mentioned that they didn’t grow right this year. I managed to salvage enough for dinner, but threw out about three times that volume. We had mashed Caribou Russets. To finish up, we had “pumpkin” pie made from BetterNut Squash, a new variety Terry tried this year. I loved it! The flesh was so firm and smooth. Not like watery, fibrous pumpkins. The only thing not from the farm (other than staples like salt and flour) was the turkey. I get such a kick out of that!

I suspect the cliché of turkey fatigue is from a time when all turkeys were 25 pounds and no one had freezers. Our turkey was gone long before I was tired of it. Jane and Nancy took some leftovers home. Terry and I ate turkey, gravy, potatoes, etc. until last night. There was barely enough turkey left to make turkey soup from the stock that I made from the carcass. We finished Jane’s legendary gravy with toast for lunch today. And that’s it. All gone, except for two more dinners of turkey soup in the freezer.

One holiday down, two to go. Then we settle into winter and wait for spring.

Last of summer produce

 The extra refrigerator is empty of all summer produce. I used the rest of the apples in a crisp and gave the last 6 pounds of carrots to a friend who was going to dehydrate them for soups. The only other thing in the refrigerator was a small melon that had been in there since mid-October. Remembering the liquified giant watermelon, I cut the small melon in the sink. But it was good!

A passable melon after a month in the refrigerator

It was a little squishy around the seeds, but cutting that part got rid of the seeds as well. Bonus! While not the best watermelon I ever ate, it was passable and better than what I expected after a month in the refrigerator.

I cleaned the refrigerator this morning. It looks a lot better without raspberry juice smeared on the shelf and too many dead fruit flies on the bottom to count. This is just where I want the spare fridge to be the weekend before Thanksgiving.

A clean refrigerator is a thing of beauty

Following an extremely gloomy spell, the sun finally came out yesterday. The girls were so excited to get back to their dust baths. Unfortunately, as I approached to take a picture, most of them ran to the fence to greet me in breathless anticipation for treats that I did not have. These were the only two left in the raised bed.

Dust bathing on a sunny day

It may get down below 20 degrees tonight. I’m not sure what the temperature will be in the high tunnel. I know that low 20’s will turn Brussels sprouts black. Not wanting to risk it, I harvested. My goal was to have Brussels sprouts for Thanksgiving, and I made it.

The high tunnel Brussels sprouts

You may recall from an earlier post that my Brussels sprouts did not do well this year. I think I may have topped them too soon. The best sprouts I have are ones that resprouted from a side bud after topping. This picture shows the new shoot with the young sprouts developing. You can see the joint between the two at the bottom of the picture.

A side shoot that I let grow is light blue-green above the greener green of the old shoot at the bottom.

I hope you all have a lovely Thanksgiving with good food and good company!

First snow

It’s feeling like winter. It makes me sad, but it is seasonally appropriate. The goldfinches are not gold anymore.

Not-gold finches

Their general strategy is to have representatives sit on the bird feeder and throw seeds to the ground as fast as they can. Then everyone flies in and has a party on the lawn.

PARTY! Mostly goldfinches with a few house finch crashers

The weekend had about the most dismal weather you can get--rain, snow, wind. Why, yes, that is snow in the picture.

Snow

When Terry came to bed Saturday night, he told me there was an inch of snow on the ground, even though the forecast was for no accumulation. By morning, though, most of it had melted from the grass. Only the deck bore testimony to the night’s precipitation.

The last vestiges of the snow that fell Saturday night

Last week, I wrote about the tomatoes biting the dust. I had some tomatoes ripening in the house. The very last one went to bacon, lettuce, avocado, and tomato sandwiches. I’ll long for ripe tomatoes long before they are available again, but for now, I’m glad to be done with them.

The last tomato sandwich of 2021

The only thing left that requires my attention are a few more apples. When the weather is so gray, wet, and bleak, I can’t keep myself out of the kitchen. I have to find something else to do soon, however, because every freezer we own is packed with baked goods. Anyway, I looked through some cookbooks for an apple cake recipe. I came up with on in King Arthur Flour 100^th Anniversary Cookbook. I’m beginning to suspect that these recipes are of more historic than culinary importance. The cake was leavened with yeast rather than the usual baking powder and/or soda. It did not have much of a yeasty flavor, a disappointment to me. It also had a kind of weird aftertaste. I’ll give it this—it aged well. By the third day or so, the weird flavor went away. I admit that it was a pretty cake, but I doubt if I will make it again. 

Not-so-good apple cake

More preparations for winter

 I wasn’t thinking all the way through when I planted the raised beds last summer. I put the Brussels sprouts in a bed next to the chicken run. Here’s the problem: the Brussels sprouts don’t get harvested until after the first frost. They say a mild frost makes them sweeter. Therefore, when we moved the chickens up to winter quarters as daylength fell below 13 hours, I had to exclude the Brussels sprouts bed (as well as two adjoining beds) from the run when I put up the fence. Poor hens! Nowhere to dust bathe.  

Three adjoining raised beds

In the Before Time, the killing frost would certainly come before mid-October. Hilda said for the first several years they lived here, it frosted on Sept. 15 like clockwork. Now that the climate is warmer, the first frost date has been creeping further and further into the autumn months. This year, it didn’t happen until the first week of November, when the temperature dipped below freezing briefly for a couple of nights. The Brussels sprouts did not do well this year. I have no idea why. I salvaged what sprouts I could before the first all-night freeze. I’ve ruined beautiful stalks of sprouts in the past by waiting too long. There are limits to their frost tolerance.

When it warmed up again, I turned the raised beds with a broad fork. A broad fork, as the name suggests, is 20 inches wide. There are handles on each side of four large tines. One stands on the crossbar to push the tines into the soil, then pulls back on the handles to break up the soil. Eliot Coleman recommends the broad fork to preserve the soil structure. I can’t claim to understand exactly what he means by that, but I have observed that earthworms generally survive the process. The same cannot be said of rototilling. Terry is a fan of rototilling and thinks that broad forking is untidy. He does concede the earthworm point, however. Besides, breaking up the clods gives the girls something to do.

The broad fork leaves clods

When I finished with the broad fork, I moved the fence to the outside of the raised beds. I took the risk of doing this while the hens were out, betting that they were wary enough of my presence to not take advantage of the sagging fence. All went well, and the fence was repositioned without any escapees.

The first thing the hens did was scratch around in the oak leaves around the raised beds. I watched for awhile, and only one of the Dominque pullets had the courage to hop up on the edge of a raised bed. She hopped right back down. There’s a reason that we use the term “chicken” to describe cowardly.

I got tired of waiting and carried on with other end-of-season outdoor tasks. When I saw Terry, he said, “You’ve got to see the hens!”

I got my camera and stealthily approached the run. If they see you coming, they run to the fence, hoping you are bringing treats. I needn’t have worried. They were completely focused on dust bathing. Mind you, there are three beds, one bed for every 3 to 4 chickens, but they were all right on top of each other in the middle bed.

Everyone has to be in one bed

OMG! This is the BEST. THING. EVER!

Eliot Coleman (in Four Season Harvest) also says that if you plant carrots in the high tunnel the first week in August, they will get just big enough before the soil freezes that you can have baby carrots all winter long. Due to the late frost, the high tunnel carrots are enormous. 

The carrot bed  in the high tunnel

Fortunately, these huge carrots are not as woody as ones of similar size from the grocery store. I’m not sure if it’s due to variety or freshness.

Giant carrot

The beets, planted at the same time, are also quite robust

Alas, the tomatoes took it in the shorts when the real cold came. We say goodbye to fresh tomatoes until next year. Pulling out the last of the tomato plants is a melancholy task. Sniff.

Sad, dead tomato plants

I was working at the Green Living Expo all day Saturday. When I got home, Terry said there was a surprise for me in the kitchen. There on the counter was the first Dominique pullet egg! They certain took their sweet time to grow up. Since then, however, we’ve had one brown pullet egg every day.

First Dominique pullet egg between two hen eggs. So cute!

Now that the time has changed, I can close the coop before dinner. This week, I’ve been rewarded with some fabulous sunsets. And so, day by day, we prepare to hunker down.

Autumn sunset