homemade (semi) fast food

This is what I call homemade fast food. I pop a spaghetti squash in the oven before the dogs and I go walking. When we get back, it's almost done. Then the rest is made up, plopped in a pan, and baked.  Sometimes we have a green salad with it, but not always. With the onions, mushrooms, sauce and squash, I'm thinking the vegetable category is covered.

It started out as a lasagna recipe but, as they often do, has evolved to become simpler. I've renamed it. If you don't know about hot dish, it's what a casserole is called in North Dakota (where I grew up), South Dakota, and Minnesota.

Italian Spaghetti Squash Hot Dish

1 lb. Italian sausage*

1 25.5 oz. jar pasta sauce (I use Muir Glen's tomato basil)

1 cup chopped onions

1-2 cups sliced mushrooms

2 cloves pressed garlic

2 t. dried basil

1 t. salt

1 T. dried oregano

1 large spaghetti squash

olive oil

8 oz. sliced whole-milk mozzarella cheese 

grated Parmesan cheese

Poke 5-10 holes into the squash and bake at 375 degrees for an hour (leave it whole).

Saute the onions, garlic, and Italian sausage, adding the mushrooms last. Add the spices and the sauce; simmer for at least 15 minutes.

Slice the baked squash in half lengthwise and scoop out the seeds. Then scrape and scoop the squash noodles into an oiled 9" x 13" baking pan. Drizzle a little more olive oil over the squash. Cover with the meat sauce. Place slices of mozzarella cheese over the entire top. Sprinkle grated Parmesan cheese over it all and put back into a 350 degree oven until it's nicely melted and browned.  

*Have you noticed that a pound isn't 16 ounces anymore? It's true, the last time I bought Italian sausage, it was only 14 ounces. The times, they are a-changin'.

Also posted at Food Renegade, Grain-Free Tuesdays, and the Hearth and Soul Hop.

ice berry dyeing

I was all set to do some ice flower dyeing to achieve a bluish-purple color. But the frozen purple petunias had somehow disappeared from the freezer. Now how does that happen, anyway? The best I could do was run out into the rain and pick all the pansies with blue or purple petals, get them into the freezer asap, and then start a countdown of at least 24 hours. But I was too antsy to wait, plus everything was ready to go, so I grabbed some frozen elderberries meant for syrup and did a little ice berry dyeing instead.

Frozen elderberries placed in warm water.

Cloth immersed in dye-bath for 48 hours, stirred occasionally. Alum was the mordant.

       

Hung to dry.

Left to right: Linen, silk shantung, silk organza and wool.

These photos are straight off the camera with no tweaking at all. Purplish-pinkish, with a watercolor effect on the linen and wool. I've ironed these, but haven't washed them. Don't know that I will, actually.

moon rays

Today is the full moon, time again to acknowledge and celebrate goodness, abundance, and fulfillment. I haven't yet named this moon . . .  it will come . . . but its moon rays make these things stand out for me today.

kitchen magic: making moons emerge from cloth

knitting: a little something for the chain link fence

stitching: moons onto cloth

out of the dye-pot: elderberries

into the dye-pot: onion skins

gardening: dozens of seedlings waiting for warm weather

harvesting: greenest greens ever

reading: this gift, an out-of-print dye book for the very region I live in

admiring: the greenest (and longest) grass ever

infusing: lemon balm moon infusion to deepen meditation

What are those moon rays shining on in your life today?

3 moons moonday

Three full moons have emerged from small pieces of cloth. I like to think of them as having been there all along, that I just didn't see them before.

On this moonday in the sign of Scorpio, the moon is hours away from complete fullness. Scorpio makes us go deep, mentally and emotionally, sometimes uncomfortably deep. There is an intense and edgy quality about Scorpio days that calls for loving and nurturing ourselves to stay centered.

I try to be aware of which body parts are affected by what sign. Scorpio rules the sexual organs and urinary tract. This is a good time to heal those parts and to also lessen any irritating factors for them. Bad menstrual cramps may be a call for self-care -- cups of lemon balm (Melissa officinalis) or chamomile (Matricaria recutita) tea, a hot bath, or a hot-water bottle are soothing. Or try a dose of cramp bark tincture (Viburnum opulus) in a spoonful of chocolate syrup. Chocolate has minerals, you know.

Scorpio is a great planting and watering day with its cool, moist energy. Seeds and seedlings planted under the water signs, Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces, usually do very well in general and I will definitely be taking advantage of this energy today.

It is believed that the plant world goes into a deep meditative state during a full moon. So on the nights before spring and summer full moons, I sometimes make a moon infusion of calming lemon balm to deepen meditation and inner work. And with this moon in the sign of Scorpio, lemon balm is even more appropriate.

Here's how to make lemon balm moon infusion: Fill a large jar at least halfway with lemon balm leaves and stems picked fresh from the garden, fill with water, cover and set it on the Earth where the moon will shine on it -- if it's cloudy, that's OK, it still works. The next morning, strain if you like, and refrigerate. Drink on the evening of the full moon before or during meditation. It is also especially beneficial for the inner work of examining suppressed feelings and emotions.

Before bleaching magic.

moon making

It is what it is. Just a bunch of pieces for moon making. I'm finding that I really like being in this space of cloth coming together for the first time. Brainstorming, only with cloth instead of paper and pen.

I wish I could get my garden planted and make moons at the same time. And I wish you good weather wherever you live on Mother Earth.

If you're a gardener in the Rocky Mountain Region, here's a newspaper article on native herbs I was recently interviewed for.

in the green

How green can anything possibly be? Here are three sprigs each of lemon balm and mint to make herbal drinking water, sort of like sage water, only different. Added to a 1/2 gallon jar of cool water and refrigerated overnight, I can't get enough of the stuff -- it tastes so fresh and green. 

You can tear the leaves, bruising them as you do, to make the flavoring process go a little faster. I left these intact for this batch. The difference is time and whether or not you want a little bit of leaf to nibble on with every sip or so.

Yesterday it rained. And it rained and rained. It's still raining. Loving every minute of it. Looking out from our front porch doesn't usually look this bright green but right now it's a feast for the eyes. We have a fair amount of bluegrass that I'm slowly digging out for more plantings. I'm learning that people feel strongly about their grass lawns, there's lawn pride, lawn hate, and lawn guilt for starters. In its defense, I have to say a lawn is a pleasure to walk barefoot on and for kids to run and play on; and it cools the ground surface around the house lessening that alarming heat-transfer issue. Bluegrass is surprisingly drought tolerant -- one year this lawn was only supplementally watered twice (my teenagers were deeply embarrassed).  My mantra was "dormant, not dead." I once visited a garden that had an expansive clover and violet lawn and it was heaven -- that would be the ultimate.

the blue dress

This is the bounty from a day of goodwill-hunting.

It's a sleeveless, floor-length indigo dress . . . 

. . . home-sewn on what seems to be discharged linen or rayon or ? The cloth itself has a 4" pattern repeat woven into it, looks almost like it was embossed.

I wonder a lot of things about this piece -- what type of dye was used for the original indigo color, what tools were used to make the discharged design, a bleach pen or a brush and bleach? A template was obviously not used. Any fine lines you see are either the treatment or creases, not stitching. It's just so interesting that someone did this much discharging on the dress or discharged this much cloth to make the dress, I honestly haven't been able to figure that out. At first I thought it was treated first, but then look at the hem up there. Anyway, it's pretty cool.

But I didn't buy it to wear.