March 28, 2021- The picture of the year, in context

 

This is a garden blog. But it is always published in the context of who we are, as we muddle along, sometimes in the cold and dark,  in Iowa City.

The winter picture contest has now ended.

A new year has begun.

The people we have lived with for two months are gone.  They have gone back to Maine.  Further down there are pictures of this glorious time.

It is so quiet.

The left behind toys have been found and mailed. 

There were just two of us for dinner last night.

Spring is here. It is that time when each day brings something new.

I was in the garden for hours yesterday. 

Stooping and bending can be a challenge after a few hours.

I have begun to pot things up for the spring sale. 

There are still corners of the yard that need cleaning.

It is post time.

In the picture contest, the winner is...

Well, wait.

There was a tie. What happens if you have a tie and there is no tie breaker?
I guess there are two winners.

Here they are

The final voting was

This coming week?

I will pause the voting, at least for a week. 

I will continue the blog into the future. I do hope you continue to ride along. 

Your comments will be all the more appreciated.

Right Now

This is a little iris riticula. 

Here was the first daffodil. It bloomed on March 25 out by the walnut tree. Sometimes the first daffodil is in a protected area, like on the south side of the house. Not this year. These flowers will be joined in the next week by others around the yard.

This is a pink corydalis. They bloom at the same time as the scilla/squill. They make a great combination.

I have a few scattered around the garden. They are on my "more" list. 

This picture below is a little blue chionodoxa. It is another little spring bulb that adds a slighly different hue to the thouands of silla some of which appear in the above picture.

Here is one of the crown imperial fritillarias emerging, without much subtlety. The straw us there to tell me where it was planted. You hate to plant something on top of something else.

Julia's recipe

Poppy seed strudel, #1

My grandmother made strudel, sometimes the paper-thin-pastry-with-raw-apple-bits kind, but more often the yeast dough kind with poppy seed filling. She never used a recipe and she did not write anything down, so those of us left behind have to try to figure out how she did it. Here is one version, based on a recipe in a Hungarian cookbook. It's richer than my grandmother's, not a bad thing, but I am still in the hunt for what I think of as the real thing.  

The ingredients: 1 tablespoon of yeast (or 1 package); 1/4 cup plus 1 teaspoon of white sugar; 2/3 cup of milk; 2-1/4 cups of white flour; 1/2 cup (1 stick) softened butter; a pinch of salt (say 1/8 teaspoon; if you use unsalted butter, use 1/4 teaspoon salt); 1 egg; 1 can of Solo poppy seed filling. 

You could use another flavor of Solo filling, but why would you do that? 

Note that I used 2 cans. This was a mistake, leading to filling leakage, which can be seen below. Use 1 can.

I started by measuring the flour into a bowl. I added the 1/4 cup of sugar and the pinch of salt and the butter. I used a pastry blender to cut the butter into the flour-sugar mixture.

Meanwhile, I heated the milk on the stove just to lukewarm - warm to the touch but no hotter than that. 

I added the 1 teaspoon of sugar and the yeast to the milk and stirred it in. 

When the yeast was bubbly, I stirred the egg in a little bowl and added most, but not all, of it to the yeast/milk mixture. 

Then I stirred the wet stuff into the flour mixture. I had a helper, who mostly watched and provided encouragement. 

And did some counter clean-up work. He is in a fastidious stage, even picking up his toys before dinner. 

I took out a piece of parchment, sprinkled it with a bit of additional flour and kneaded the dough. For maybe 7 or 8 minutes. I added a little more flour from time to time. The goal is to have dough that no longer sticks to the parchment, but just barely. More flour, but not too much more flour. 

Kneading is basically pushing down and back on the dough, then turning the dough 90 degrees, folding it into a round-square blob and pushing down and back again. Over and over. 

When the dough was kneaded, I plopped it into a bowl (which I had brushed with regular oil). I flipped the blob over so it was oiled all over. 

Christopher was still wiping up scattered bits of flour. 

I put the bowl next to a heating register and created a little tent with a clean dish towel.  It was chilly so the furnace was cycling on and off. 

On a warmer day, turn your oven on to 200 degrees at the beginning of the process and turn it off after 5 minutes. Cover the bowl with a clean dish towel when it goes into the oven.

The dough doubled in size (not measured in any objective way - you will know risen dough when you see it). It took maybe an hour. 

I deflated the dough. The term "punch it down" is sometimes used which is too aggressive for me. 

I turned it out onto my parchment again and let it rest quietly for maybe 5 minutes. Then I took a rolling pin to it. I ended up with a rectangle about 12 x 16 inches. 

At this point Maisie came by to see what I was doing. I was spreading too much filling on the dough. 1 can is the right amount. 

I thinned the filling with a bit (maybe 1 tablespoon) of milk. The filling should be spread in a thin layer all over the dough - leaving maybe an inch of dough all around the perimeter. 

Cute baby. 

I turned the oven on to 325 degrees. 

Cute baby with a rolling pin.

When the filling was spread, I rolled the whole thing up, starting at the back and rolling forward. I pressed down along the roll as I went to prevent air pockets. The roll should be compact. 

Next I rolled it over and pinched the seam (where the loose edge met the main part of the roll). This is important to the goal of keeping the filling inside the roll. 

I rolled the roll right side up again, and I brushed it with the last part of that beaten egg. 

I baked the roll for about 45 minutes, on a silpat lined half sheet pan. 

Here it is. Golden brown and shiny. And it leaked filling. The dark stuff is poppyseed filling. Easy enough to eat with a spoon. But it would have been preferable if leakage had not occurred. 

Somehow we forgot to take a picture of a slice - it was lovely, like a cake roll. And delicious. 

Odds and Ends

I have put together a few pictures of the last two months, when we wonderfully hosted are granchildren and Katie and Elisabeth. We had a few celebrations. This first picture was observing Christopher's birthday right after he arrived.

They were here for the snow and bitter cold in February.

We learned about magnetels.

Trains were one of the regular features.

Maisie really liked hats, sometimes.

Chritopher had never seen nesting eggs.

The kitchen was a regular part of home school.

We did not let the cold stop outdoor activities.

We observed.

The snow was finally right for making creatures.

Then there was Spring.

The fairy house got some attention. Every 100 year old elm tree should have one.

Those first few flowers were precious.

The glorious mountain of wood chips.

So this chapter ends.

It is time for what happens next.

If you are in the neighborhood please come by.

It is a glorious time. 

Philip