La Campaña por la Lana

Once again, a day late and a dollar short.  Sigh.

 
The campaign ended - yesterday.

They had sheep.  Real live sheep in Serrano!

They yarn bombed La Coruña.

Oh well, I guess there´s always next year.

Tasha Tudor

I´ve been feeling my age - had a birthday and an inexplicably sore shoulder is bothering me - and I´ve been wondering about aging in place at the ruin. Demographic projections for Galicia are dreadful, as for the rest of Spain, with aging populations left in place and younger people emigrating as fast as they possibly can.  I suspect climate change and the ongoing global depression haven´t been factored into these studies, and more people will be forced back to the pueblos just to survive, but the pattern is there.  And yet I find reasons to hope I can be an eccentric old lady toddling around my property.

 Source

Tasha Tudor was an author and illustrator who lived to the ripe old age of 93 on her place in Marlboro, Vermont.  From Abebooks:

A true traditionalist at heart, Tudor was not an admirer of modern ways and lived her life according to the same basics found in many of her books. She raised her family in a farmhouse that had no television, radio, or electricity, and used oil lamps for light. She spun flax into her own clothing, raised goats for their milk and even outfitted her homes with Victorian furniture and tools.
Her stories maintained this Victorian feel and Tudor had amazing success with this style. In a career spanning 65 years, she wrote or illustrated more than 100 works, the first of which was Pumpkin Moonshine in 1938 - the story of a small girl who sets out to find the finest and largest pumpkin in order to make the most perfect jack-o’-lantern. Her final publication was Corgiville Christmas in 2003, the third story set in imaginary Corgiville where corgis, cats and rabbits are getting ready for Christmas.
Because of her longevity and fame many of Tudor’s books are highly collectible. Some of her early books such as Amanda and the Bear and Alexander the Gander are now out-of-print so copies in good condition often sell for more than $100. At the high end, a first edition or a signed copy of one of her more famous titles usually fetches upwards of $500 and any original artwork usually sells for well into four figures.

I personally find her illustrations a tad too saccharine in a very Victorian way, but she was certainly a skilled and successful artist.

Source

There is a book available of her extensive gardens, and Amazon UK has an extensive preview.

Amazon

A video (in Japanese) of her beautiful gardens.



Some more shots of her gardens from the book Tasha Tudor´s Garden via Linen and Lavender:

Tudor often declared she wished she´d lived in the 19th century.  The house pictured was really only about 20 years old - built for her by one of her sons.  She was also an avid collector of period clothing, the extensive collection auctioned after her death.

 Source

Unfortunately, her legacy has been somewhat marred by a rather ugly family feud over her estate of around $2 million.

Don´t believe I shall have that problem.  But really,I think her inspiring gardens must be her best legacy.

Source

For more:

Tasha Tudor and Family
Tasha Tudor Museum

Hoosier Cabinet

Source

The Hoosier Cabinet is an iconic piece of furniture from the early decades of the 20th century - a baking, cooking, storage facility all in one.  Originally manufactured by the Hoosier Manufacturing Co. in Indiana, they were a fixture of older houses all over the American midwest and beyond from the era before fitted kitchens with built-in cabinets became commonplace.

The typical Hoosier cabinet consists of three parts. The base section usually has one large compartment with a slide out shelf, and several drawers to one side. Generally it sat on small casters. The top portion is shallower and has several smaller compartments with doors, with one of the larger lower compartments having a roll-top or tambour. The top and the bottom are joined by a pair of metal channels which serve as the guide for a sliding countertop, which usually has a pair of shallow drawers affixed to its underside. The whole assembly, with the counter retracted, is fairly shallow, about 2 feet deep; the width and height are generally about 4 feet and 6 feet respectively.

This example has distinctive curved storage bins with the folksy name of  ¨sow belly¨.

Source

I lusted after one for years, which would have been ideal for our 1920´s Chicago bungalow, but they were running around $1000 or more and to get one into a container and ship it to Europe seemed unrealistic.

Source

They have inspired books.

She uses the Hoosier cabinet as a lens for social history. As a multi-purpose piece of furniture that claimed it could enable you to do almost everything you ever need to in a kitchen without moving a step, even saving up to 1592 steps in one day. Depending on what year you were in or what marketing message was being promoted, it might help the housewife to ‘stay young’, ‘abolish (household) slavery’ or be the best gift a father could give to his daughter to teach her how to cook. Its local setting is Indiana, where they had manufactured over a million cabinets and created hundreds of jobs by 1916. But its really a story of early twentieth-century America and the drive for efficient production, provision of mass furnishing, expectations of  consumer comfort alongside the gradual commercialisation of the kitchen industry. 

There are even kits available, in case you want to build your own.

 Source

And you can find plans online, if you are even handier, or plans and hardware here.

Source

And more images on pinterest.

Negra Sombra/Black Shadow

Some music to go with these rainy, chilling autumn nights.  This version by Luz Casal and Carlos Nuñez which may be familiar from the film Mar Adentro.




Negra Sombra is a poem by the leading Galician literary figure, Rosalia de Castro, 19th century writer and poet.

In Gallego:

Cando penso que te fuches,
negra sombra que me asombras,
ó pé dos meus cabezales
tornas facéndome mofa.


Cando maxino que es ida,
no mesmo sol te me amostras,
i eres a estrela que brila,
i eres o vento que zoa.


Si cantan, es ti que cantas,
si choran, es ti que choras,
i es o marmurio do río
i es a noite i es a aurora.


En todo estás e ti es todo,
pra min i en min mesma moras,
nin me abandonarás nunca,
sombra que sempre me asombras.


And in English (translation No. 4):

When I think that you have parted,
Black shadow that overshades me,
At the foot of my head pillows
You return making fun of me.


When I fancy that you've gone,
From the very sun you taunt me
And you are the star that shines
And you are the wind that moans.


If there's singing it's you who sings,
If there's weeping it's you who weeps,
And you are the river's rumour
And the night and the dawn.


Everywhere you are in everything,
For and within me you live
Nor will you ever leave me,
Shadow that always shades me.

From the very interesting translation page :

Historical Background

"Negra Sombra" was probably written after two of De Castro's babies died a short time apart. Twenty-month-old Adrian died from a fall in November of 1876 and Valentina was stillborn three months later (Marina Mayoral. "Biografía de Rosalía de Castro." Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes). 

Another version with piano:



Back in September, Luz Casals, a cancer survivor, produced an open-air concert/eco festival called Festival de la Luz in Boimorto to benefit the Spanish Cancer Society.  Unfortunately, they had some weather issues, but hopefully will be back again next summer.

Pumpkin Ravioli

My dear friend T always raves about some pumpkin ravioli in sage brown butter at his local eatery, so since it seems suitably autumnal, I decided to give it a go.

 Source

I adapted this recipe

I halved the pasta dough quantities and got about 8 raviolies each, which turned out to be perfect, this is a filling dish.  But I might make the full version and freeze half the next time.

Pasta dough (make in advance as it requires minimum 30 min rest):
300g ’00′ flour
3 large free-range eggs
1/2 teaspoon of salt

1.  Sift the flour into a large bowl (or onto a clean countertop) and add salt
2. Make a well in the centre of the flour and crack eggs into it
3. Mix well with your hands or a mixer with dough hook
4. When the dough comes together, knead for approx 5 min or until smooth, adding flour or a tiny amount of water as required to get the dough to the right consistency
5. Wrap in cling film and allow to rest for a minimum of 30 min
6. In the meantime make the filling (as per instructions following)
7. Cut your dough into 4 equal pieces
8. Keeping the remainder tightly wrapped, take one piece and put it through your pasta machine, starting at the widest setting and continuing onto the narrowest (or you can use a rolling pin but it won’t get as thin or consistent)
9. Cut shapes with ravioli cutters (or a ravioli wheel or knife, making sure the shapes are consistent

I didn´t have OO flour, I just used half strong white flour and half wheat.  A pasta machine would really help here - it was a lot of work getting the pasta acceptably thin, and they were still a little on the chunky side once cooked.  I started out rolling between to sheets of baking parchment, but it wasn´t really necessary - the dough wasn´t particularly sticky or difficult to work with.  The ravioli tops will need to be slightly larger than the bottoms to accommodate the bulk of the filling.

I went ahead and sauteed some onion and garlic in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and then added the pumpkin puree, which I got by quartering the pumpkin and gently simmering/steaming for about an hour.  I would have roasted but our oven is on the fritz.  Simply scoop the pumpkin out of the skin when done.  I also used feta cheese.

I had a lot of filling left over, which is in the freezer waiting the next batch. 

 Filling:

1 butternut pumpkin

salt and pepper

sprinkle of nutmeg

goat cheese (I used fromage de chevre)

75g butter

bunch of sage leaves, torn roughly

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C
2. Cut pumpkin into quarters or large chunks
3. Bake until tender (about 30-40 min)
4. Remove from oven, allow to cool and mash pumpkin flesh, seasoning with salt, pepper and nutmeg
5. Add a teaspoon full of pumpkin and a dollop of goat cheese to the top of each side of ravioli
6. Use a mixture of flour and water as ‘glue’ and run it around the edges using your finger
7. Put the top on the ravioli and press edges together to seal
8. Cook in boiling water for approx 2 min (fresh pasta is much faster to cook than pre-made)
9. Meanwhile, add butter and torn up sage leaves to a pan over low-medium heat.  Allow to brown but watch closely to ensure it doesn’t burn.
10. Drain cooked pasta and top with sage butter sauce