A Story to be Continued.........

After building this house 8 years ago, we are finally getting some projects done!  Like finishing the basement.  For 8 years I have had my crafting area in a corner of the basement, and I've had to trip around "the obstacle course" to get anywhere.   It didn't stop me from sewing quilts or doing projects, though.  But it sure would be nice if the area I had to work in was neat, orderly and well lighted!  And so we began to close in an area that will only be mine!  Here is a before photo.   When the after photo is done, I will post that later on.  What a cluttered mess, huh?  Ya, I know where everything is, but there isn't really any place to put things.   Soon there will be shelves, electricity, new lighting and a nice big table for cutting and laying things out.   So, this post is "to be continued............"

It's not pretty, but functional. 

A Thanksgiving Long Ago

Every year memories of a long ago Thanksgiving come to mind.  It was a Thanksgiving on Nov 23, 1981, the year me and my family went to Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth Massachusetts.   We were living in Rhode Island at the time, so it wasn't too long of a drive.   Plimoth Plantation (they use the old English spelling) is a living history museum where the people there are 'character actors' of Pilgrims of 1621.  They live in a village of homes built to look like the originals of that time.  Now, wouldn't that be an interesting "job", to be a Pilgrim from April through November and act like it is 1621?  When you visit this living history place, you watch them do gardening, cooking and general living.   You can ask them questions, but if it is about something that happened after 1621 they don't know what you are talking about!
     Here is a photo of the general place, and one of me and my children.   They were about 7 yrs old in the photo and I was about 33. (Was I really that young?  Sigh.......)

Me and my boys at Plimoth Plantation

A general view of Plimoth Plantation

This is a living replica of the original Mayflower ship

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!   And by the way, please don't call it "turkey day".  This day is not to honor the American turkey!  It is a day set aside to give thanks to God for our many blessings!   That is what the original meaning was back in 1621.  The Pilgrims were a very religious bunch of folks and came here for religious freedom.  They patterned their thankful celebration after the Harvest Home celebrations in England at that time era.  And if you really want to celebrate like they did, then you need to eat clams, venison, wild game birds, corn porridge, and boiled pumpkin.  Yum, yum, eh?  Our Thanksgiving  menu has changed a lot over the years, and the modern day menu bears little resemblance to what was eaten throughout our country's history.  Every generation added something new, and cooks added their new ideas, and suddenly it is the 21st century and people think you should 'only' eat turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green bean casserole and pumpkin pie.
     Well, whatever you decide to eat this year, think about the many blessings we have received.  And Happy Thanksgiving!

Playing the Psaltery

This week I am practicing the psaltery for our church's annual music program after our Harvest dinner.   The psaltery I have is called a 'bowed psaltery' because it is played with a bow.   Back in 2001, I attended an event called a Frontier Rendezvous in Aitkin MN and saw a woman there playing a psaltery.   These frontier rendezvous events are a re-enactment of life and skills back in the pioneer days, and this lady was playing the psaltery with two bows (she had the psaltery on a little lap stand so she could play with both hands) and played a variety of Appalachian and folk tunes.  She was an excellent psaltery player and I was very impressed, both with her and the instrument.  I knew right then that this was an instrument I wanted to learn to play!  A very dear friend bought me a psaltery for Christmas that year, and so I began to learn.   A bowed psaltery is easier for a keyboard player like me to learn because the strings are arranged with octaves of notes on one side, and the sharps and flats on the other side.  The arrangement of the instrument is more or less like a piano keyboard, but the opposite in sound - i.e. the higher up you go, the lower the tone.  The psaltery is played by moving the bow on the strings in between the metal pegs, and how fast or slow you play is determined by your touch on the strings and technique. 
     Over the years I have improved somewhat, although I will never be as good as that lady at the Rendezvous.  I still have a hard time with string technique.  But I do a fair enough job that I feel confident playing at church.   For the past couple years I have done hymns on the psaltery, and this year I will play the hymn 'God Will Take Care of You'.  (Last year I played 'Let All Things Now Living' to the tune of Ash Grove)  The psaltery has a very delicate sound, so I need to play in front of a microphone in order for the congregation to hear me in a large room.  But the sound of a psaltery is soothing and mellow, and music like Christmas carols or folk/mountain/Celtic music or hymns sound especially good on it.   You can hear what a psaltery sounds like by Googling it (try You-Tube) and then you can hear really good musicians!

The psaltery is played by holding it against your body and moving the bow between the pegs on the strings

A close-up of the bowed psaltery.  It is tuned by adjusting the pegs on the bottom.

Putting rosin on the bow.

A close-up of the strings

   Over the years I have learned to play accordion, organ and piano.  Playing the bowed psaltery adds a new skill, and certainly helps to pass the time on those long winter evenings!

I'm Addicted

Now that I have your attention and you are wondering what I'm addicted to, I'll tell you............crossword puzzles!  It all started about 3 years ago when Harold was first diagnosed with cancer and we had to spend many, many hours in the hospital.  He would be in a room for several hours with an IV drip, or we would be waiting for tests and doctors and procedures.  The hospital tries hard to please patients with a TV in every room and plenty of snacks and magazines and friendly nurses to talk with.   There's even a great cafeteria, a chapel, and a piano in the lobby you can play.  But I still found myself with a lot of time to fill, and Harold spent most of the time sleeping during chemo.   So I went to the hospital gift shop to look for a book to read and found a display of puzzle books.  Remembering that I used to work crosswords as a kid - the Five and Dime store around the corner sold easy puzzle books for kids - I bought a couple of those books.   And that's when I got hooked.
     At age 65 I have accumulated a head full of useless information and trivia facts.  Working crossword puzzles brings to mind all that stuff that I forgot I knew!   Now I can use all that stuff I learned in college, all that Latin I took in high school, all the years of history and pop culture I have read about.  It really is amazing all the facts I can bring up in my head from the puzzle clues!  They say that "old people" should do things to keep the brain active (in a few months I'll be 66 and I think that qualifies me as an old person).   I work puzzles while soaking in the tub, or in waiting rooms at the hospital, or with my morning coffee (of course AFTER I do my daily devotions and Bible readings, the Lord comes first!), or sometimes in the evening before bed.   Harold always laughs at me for working at least 3 or 4 puzzles a day, and if there's a puzzle in a newspaper I'll work it.  
     I have to say I've gotten better at these puzzles.   The 'easy' ones I can do in about 2 minutes.  The medium ones take about 1/2 hour, and the hard ones are very challenging for me at this point.   Last spring I took an Amtrak train out to Massachusetts to visit my son and his family.  It was a 37 hour trip.  Yep, I took along 5 or 6 puzzle books, and about 2 dozen sharpened pencils with erasers in a nice plastic flip box.  What a nerd, huh?  Everyone on the train was playing with electronic gadgets or watching movies on an iPad or texting.  Here I was, an old school geek, playing with paper and pencil.  Oh well.   If a person is going to be addicted to something, I guess crossword puzzles are fairly harmless.    So, a word to my family:  if you ever wonder what kind of gift to get for Mom, how about crossword puzzle books?   hee hee..........

Good For Another Three Months

Today Harold and I went to Fargo to his oncologist.  Some of you may know that Harold has been fighting multiple myeloma for the past 3 years.  He has had radiation for tumors, almost 3 years of chemo, and lots of at home drugs.  He's been in remission for a few months now, and the good news is that he still is!  From now on he only has to go to Fargo to the Roger Maris Cancer Center every three months for an IV drip of a bone strengthener and a check up with the oncologist.  And instead of weekly blood tests, he only needs monthly blood tests.  Unless something changes this will be the new routine.  He is also taking a new anti-cancer drug called Pomalyst for multiple myeloma (bone marrow cancer), and that seems to be working well for him.    This is a good deal, because driving to Fargo is not only boring, but it can be dangerous in the winter.  The land is extremely flat (Harold says you can watch your dog run away from home for 3 days), and when it is snowing and windy, the driving is always white out conditions.   Today I took a photo of the typical landscape we drive through for 2 hours to get to Fargo:

Flat, boring driving out on the prairies in North Dakota and Minnesota

Here are a couple photos of this same stretch of land in the winter.  As you can see, driving is difficult and any kind of wind at all blows the snow into near zero visibility.

North Dakota prairie on a clear winter day.

North Dakota when the wind is blowing on the prairie. (And wind chill is about 50 below zero)

So, as you can tell from the pictures, if we don't have to drive much to Fargo this winter that is wonderful news!   We don't have to drive to Fargo until February 5, 2014!  And any trips we MIGHT make to Fargo (for fun or shopping) we can do on a nice clear, calm day when it isn't snowing and the roads are not icy!
We really do love the prairie lands when crops are growing and the prairie grasses and wildflowers are blooming.  But winter on the prairie is something else.............well, us northern Minnesotans and North Dakotans are a truly hardy bunch of people, don'cha know!

A New Way to Cook Wild Rice

I usually don't write articles about cooking very often,  because there are guys who read my blog, too, and I can just hear them right now groaning that 'this will be a boring one'.  So maybe this will appeal more to the ladies - but if any of you guys out there do cooking, listen up, because this method works! 
     I was reading a Thanksgiving cookbook and the lady mentioned that wild rice could be cooked in a crock pot.  Since I know that it takes wild rice a long time to cook, I had my doubts that putting raw wild rice in a slow cooker would work out ok.  So being the ever-skeptic, I had to try it.   The recipe said to use a 3 to 1 ratio of water to wild rice.  This is what I did:

1 c. wild rice
3 c. vegetable broth (bouillon cube)
1 onion, chopped
about 1/2 c. chopped red pepper
1 carrot, chopped
1 can mushrooms, juice and all
1 stick of celery, chopped
salt and freshly ground pepper

I put everything in the crock pot and put it on HI for 1 hour and low for 3 hrs. (The recipe said you could do 5 hours on low - I might try that next time).  And hey - it works!   The wild rice is cooked nicely!  And you don't get that 'wild rice smell' while it is cooking.  If you have ever boiled wild rice you know what smell I am talking about - kind of a "weedy" smell.
     I think this will work out great for holidays.  Wild rice makes a nice side dish for holiday menus, but oven space is at a premium for baking a casserole of it, and stove top space is usually also at a premium with so many things going.  Putting the wild rice in a crock pot works out great, keeps things warm, and you already have a nice serving dish!  So, I learned something new, and I am sharing this with you all..............

A perfectly cooked side dish

The Yearly Bittersweet Quest

Every year about this time I enjoy scavenging for bittersweet to make wreaths and swags for decoration.  I just love the colorful bittersweet vines at this time of the year.   Unfortunately, it is getting harder and harder to find bittersweet around here because our dear Minnesota DNR has decided that this plant is a 'noxious weed' and they have tried to eradicate it with lots of sprays - and they have just about done it, too!   About the only place to find this colorful vine is on someone's private land or at the edges of woods. Wreaths made with this plant can last a couple years if you carefully pack them in a box and don't disturb it much.  Last year I made a very small swag because I couldn't find much, but this year I found enough to make a nice wreath!   What do you think?  I have this hanging on my back porch. To me, this says "Fall" like nothing else, and the price is right, too - free!