postcard from the paddocks

Well, we've been having some weather lately.

It's okay.

We don't mind.

We are tough.

Besides, we can go inside anytime we want to!

And in the shelters, we have plenty of food!

But sometimes we'd rather have a picnic in a snowstorm:

It's just Winter.

We've seen it before.

We've dressed for it.

And even if we don't see it for a few days...

we know the sun will come back again!

~~~~~

they came back

Even in the middle of a dense snowstorm...

...a bird's gotta eat!

The evening of the first big storm, the bluebirds returned! 

They've been here every day since.

~~~~~

snow and rain and ice and soup

Do you use an "instant pot" or other pressure cooker? I bought a 6-quart Gourmia during a holiday sale a couple of years ago, and it earns it's footprint in my tiny kitchen.

It's become my method-of-choice for vegetables and bulgur, both of which I cook often. Also for hard-boiling eggs. There's been a lot of experimenting and note-taking, to get the timing right - at first it's incomprehensible how short the cooking time can be - and sometimes my experimenting produces a nice surprise like this one:

The Easiest Soup Ever.

I take one jar of pasta sauce:

The shelf of What Was On Sale

And one package of Barilla tortellini.

And I make tortellini soup:

In case anyone wants to try it, here's the detailed description.

• 1) Pour a whole jar of pasta sauce into the pot.
• 2) Rinse the jar by filling it with water and shaking it, then add the water to the pot.
• 3) Repeat step 2 and give it a stir. You have added 2 full jars of water to 1 jar of sauce.
• 4) Turn on the pot - lid off - to a setting that will heat the liquid. I use "Saute" because it was the first one I tried, and it worked.* It takes just a couple of minutes to see steam rising from the sauce. Turn off the pot.
• 5) Add the package of tortellini to the pot, give it a stir, put on the lid and set to Pressure Cook for 4 minutes.
• 6) As soon as the 4 minutes are up, release the pressure and take the pot out of the base so it won't keep cooking from the residual heat.
• 7) You are done making soup.

*I do Step 4 because it can take 10 minutes or so for the closed pot to come up to pressure, and I think preheating the liquid gives the pot a head-start. That way the tortellini isn't sitting in liquid, not cooking, for more time than is necessary. It's just my theory, but like the Saute button, it was an experiment and it worked, so I'll probably keep doing it forever.

So far I've tried six or seven different sauces, and the results were good every time. Sometimes different in consistency - once the sauce I used was quite watery all by itself, so adding 2 jars of water made a lighter soup than usual - but always tasty. Sometimes after cooking the sauce is still so thick, I add even more water to it when I reheat it. This is what happened yesterday, when I tried a new sauce, this one from Italy; the result could be served as "tortellini in a lot of sauce," but I really wanted soup so I diluted it again before serving.

At first I made a note to add even more water to the pot the next time this brand of sauce is used, but then I thought about storage space and realized it's more practical to make it the same way next time, freeze it in my favorite Pyrex bricks, and then add water when reheating.

Here are two Pyrex 3-cup containers, destined for the freezer:

And here's what it looked like with even more water added:

One thing that has really surprised me is that no matter how much water I use, either during or after cooking, I haven't needed to add more seasoning. Isn't that strange? Sometimes I do add things to a bowl of tortellini soup - like cheese or olives or yogurt - but it's not really needed.

This pressure cooker "recipe" is my best soup discovery ever.

So far.

Do you have any pressure cooker tips to share? Please do!

~~~~~

snow

Well, it was a storm, alright.

I took these snaps yesterday morning, when we had about six inches of snow. We got over a foot before the snow stopped last night.

During morning chores yesterday, Violet and her daughter Sambucus were invited out of the paddock to hunt and gather between the barn and the house, while I was to-ing and fro-ing, to-ing and fro-ing.

They had a grand time!

The hemlock branches were weighed down by snow, and both goats meandered over to help themselves to branch tips.

Did you know that goats have no upper teeth in the front of their mouths? The way goats break off a mouthful of something is to grab it and then snap their heads up, with their front bottom teeth acting as a cutting edge.

Sambucus demonstrates the grab:

And, with snow-laden branches, the secondary result of the snap:

Want to see it again?

You're up, Violet!

The grab:

And the snap!

This is the face of a very happy goat:

~~~~~

here we go

 ...WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 4 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO 1 AM EST MONDAY...Heavy snow expected. Total snow accumulations of 8 to 12 inches. Winds gusting as high as 35 mph.

Everybody ready?

Extra water buckets filled and brought inside?

Flashlights, laptops, phones charged?

Candles and matches at hand?

Something to read/knit?

Just in case.

~~~~~