Dear Minions!
As promised something fun! As the Christmas rush slows down at the fabric store it frees up a little time for me to dedicate to writing. There has been so much that has gone on since May I guess I should start from the beginning! first off I wanted to post a few pictures from the March Against Monsanto rally, it really was an amazing afternoon spent with some awesome people!
A lovely couple had extra poster board and sharpies to share with people who didn't have a sign of their own, we gratefully accepted! Monster holding our lovely sign
Quite a turn out! it's hard to tell, but there were about 100 people gathered together!
A better shot of the sign and I!
A line up of protesters facing the street! I had two passers by ask me about the protest and what it was all about, hopefully we'll see them there next year!
Monster signing some petitions!
Alright! on to the next thing!
As I said the other day much of the summer was spent foraging and berry picking. The foraging was rather pitiful and devolved into tromping through forests in fancy Victorian style skirts( does that count as devolving? It was tremendous fun, we just didn't have anything to show for it at the end of the day!).
Monster pondering a plant on our first foraging trip! We were on the hunt for beech trees, we had no luck sadly......
One of our trips took us to the arboretum for an exercise in tree identification when we stumbled upon these two beautiful trees! On the right, next to Monster, stands a beautiful Ash tree and across the path on the left is an Elm tree! The significance may be lost on a lot of people, but my sister and I follow a Norse/Teutonic path of paganism. According to the Norse myths, the first humans were created out of an Elm tree (woman) and an Ash tree (man). If you stand on the path between the two trees and look up you see their branches intertwined, leaves all intermingled, it struck us as soon as we stepped between them and both agree that it would be a perfect spot for a handfasting!
The berry picking was so much fun that we've decided to make it a new tradition! It was an excellent way to hang out and get fresh air, not to mention all the delicious berries!!! The first trip out resulted in a haul of 16L of strawberries! We made 3quarts of jam ( we tried substituting conventional sugar for xylitol, which is a natural sweetener derived from hardwood trees and therefore GMO free, so it turned more into a sauce than a jam, but it is absolutely divine mixed with organic yogurt and granola!)
We also managed to make two beautiful strawberry rhubarb pies! To sweeten we used local buckwheat honey that we picked up at the farmers market! If you aren't familiar with different kinds of honey ( as most honey you buy in the grocery store isn't actually honey, it's a corn syrup concoction! Ahhh!) Buckwheat honey has a very deep, strong and earthy flavour to it, which I find perfect for baking as it creates a beautiful contrast to and rounds out the sweetness of the berries!
We also ended up with a bunch of leftover berries to store in the freezer for smoothies and stuff. So excited for next summer!
The next berry adventure yielded 10L of blueberries, they were absolutely incredible and made many batches of beautiful turnovers, pies and smoothies, sorry I kind of failed in getting any pictures that day! The lady at the farm informed us that because of all the late frosts and lingering snows last spring that it made the berries closer to the ground the best, boy was she right!
Well, that's the end of the exciting berries and fancy skirt post, next week we'll get into some crochet adventures, or maybe an abandoned asylum adventure....... Not really sure which way to go.
So until next time darlings.........
Keep kreepin'
Missa Deadlove xoxo
