A Cosy Lamb Tagine and a Colorful Wooly Link

We're in for a rainy week, including this weekend which will probably slow the Saturday Farmers Market traffic some in Amherst. Rain happens this time of year, so I try to act smart and spend time outside when the weather is beautifully clear and crisp. Took a lot of sunflower photos at sunset the other day when the mosquitoes were ravenous. Good thing because they are going to start looking tired after all the rain. 

When the weather starts changing, I can feel my need for comfort food grow. I start craving stews, soups, apple tarts and sauce, Sunday roasts, hot chocolate.... anything to make me feel warm inside and to fill up the house with those smells that make the place feel like home. Being sheep farmers, we eat a whole bunch of lamb stewed up in these forms of comfort cooking.

 

One of our favorite ways to eat lamb is in a tagine style stew seasoned with dried fruits, ginger and cinnamon. This season, we are lucky to have fresh ginger available from Old Friends Farm. I buy a chunk (or root as I should refer to it as) every week at the Saturday market. If I don't use it all quickly, I stuff it in the freezer and it grates beautifully all winter long. 

Here's a new recipe I developed for our Leyden Glen Lamb farmstand - perfect for autumn days. If you don't like lamb, you can substitute beef, chicken, or your protein of choice. Surprisingly, Julia LOVED this even though she is in a "no-spice" period of her eating career. You can add chiles if you like things spicy. 

Moroccan Lamb Tagine from Leyden Glen Farm

with Old Friends Farm Fresh Ginger,
Prunes, Apricots, Apples, and Carrots

A tagine is actually a conical pot used in Moroccan cooking. I don't own one (this site is mind-boggling - who knew?) but it isn't necessary to have one to cook a good tagine. I use my copper dutch oven so feel free to use any heavy pot with a lid that will fit in your oven. For the lamb, I use our bone-in shoulder roasts or chops but if you can't find bone-in (they add more flavor, you know), use a boneless shoulder roast or any lamb stew cut. You can experiment with using fresh fruits (apples, pears, plums) or other dried fruits such as raisins and figs. Making a tagine is like making art - layers of experimentation and each one is different.

2 lbs. lamb shoulder roast or lamb shoulder chops - bone-in
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 large onion
5 cloves garlic
2 cups water
1 cup dried prunes
1/2 cup dried apricots, cut into 1/4” pieces
4 Tablespoons Old Friends Farm grated fresh ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon (and more to taste)
3 large carrots - peeled and cut into 1/2” diagonal chunks
2 Tablespoons butter
2 medium size firm apples (Honeycrisp,  Granny Smith, Delicious)
1 Tablespoon honey
handful of slivered almonds
For serving: cooked basmatic rice or couscous

In a dutch oven, brown the lamb on all sides over medium high heat in the olive oil. Remove to a platter. Peel and chop the onions and garlic. Brown the onions and garlic taking care that they do not burn. When done, return the lamb to the pot. Add 2 cups of water, 2 tablespoons of the freshly grated fresh ginger and the cinnamon and bring to a boil on top of stove. Cover and place in a 250 degree oven and cook for 4 hours until the meat falls easily off the bone. (Alternately use a crock pot set on low and let cook all day.  You can skip the browning step for crock pot cooking.)

Boil some water and soak the dried prunes and apricots in water while the meat is cooking (for at least 1/2 hour). Reserve the soaking liquid.

When lamb is falling off the bones, remove from oven, let cool a bit so you don’t burn your fingers and remove the bones. Add the carrots,  prunes, chopped apricots, and optional honey and cook uncovered on top of stove until the carrots are tender. Add the fruit soaking liquid if the tagine has dried out too much. Simmer a bit more letting the sauce thicken as the liquid evaporates. The tagine sauce should not be too liquidy - you want it to have body and thickness to it. Add 2 more tablespoons of freshly grated ginger. Taste the tagine and add more cinnamon if you like. Continue to simmer over very low heat or in the oven while you prepare the apples.

Peel the apples and cut into thin slices. Melt 2 tablespoons butter in frying pan and saute the apples, taking care that they do not become mushy - you want them to remain crisp. In a separate frying pan, toast some slivered almonds, taking care not to burn them.

Cook basmati rice or couscous according to your favorite method. Place a scoop of rice or couscous on each plate. Spoon a few of the sauteed apples on top and then ladle some of the lamb tagine on top. Sprinkle with with some toasted almonds to add a crunchy texture. Top with fresh parsley or mint.

Print the recipe via GoogleDocs

Now for the Colorful Wooly Link..... Check this out, via Rene from Shades of Shetland. who just got back from a wonderful trip to the UK. Jealous? For sure. 

Julia and I are off to NYC for a Saturday speech on color at the Big Apple Knitting Guildon Saturday. We're bringing my mom so it should be a fun multi-generational Girls Day. Can't wait to meet all the knitters!

Zinnias in the Early Morning Sun

Nothing quite says the end of summer than zinnias in the early morning sun in a favorite blue and white Italian pitcher.....

with canning jars in the background......

Been crazily making dill pickles with the coaching of my friend Kay. I used this recipe.

I've got it down (thank you Kay)! It's super easy and only takes about an hour and a half to run a batch. So nice to learn something new. Dill pickles are a great snack for Julia after school. No sugar in this recipe - salt, yes, but no sugar. Julia is a juvenille diabetic so we are always looking for low carb snacks. I wish I had made more. Next year, I'll grow more cukes. Happy Autumn everyone!

Sunday Farm Chores

Our February-born lambs are growing and that means it's time for some of them to leave our farm and become part of our Farmers Market lamb product range. When we had 7 sheep, it was a hard thing to do - choosing which lamb left the farm to be turned into meat for our freezer. If you want to know the truth, I used to cry. Back then, the fate of a lamb was pre-determined. If it was a boy, it would become meat. If it was a girl, she would live her life out here at our farm. Now that we have so many lambs and ewes (and a couple rams), being a ewe lamb doesn't guarantee you are going to live here forever. Now, it's all about weight. 

Sunday afternoon, we spent the day as a family, catching lambs......

weighing them......

recording the weights......

marking the ones who were not heavy enough to go away.......

and loading the trailer with the ones who went away Monday. Lots of work got done that needed to be done. It was a good day - beautiful sunny weather with a bit of coolness in the air signaling the arrival of fall tomorrow!  The dogs love when we all spend the day outside with the sheep and them doing real work. That's what makes a sheep dog tick, for sure. Doesn't Nessie look like she is smiling?

Two Sides

The zinnias are making their last furious gasps in my cutting garden. How I will miss them. Every year I grow a few rows to keep my vases stocked with the bright and cheerful blooms. 

Even the backside of these simple garden flowers are designed incredibly well by Mother Nature. 

I love all kinds of flowers but zinnias and sunflowers are probably my current faves. What is your current favorite flower? Please tell.

September is Sunflower Month

It's been a tough year for farming here in western Massachusetts as in so many parts of the country. And still our sunflowers pulled through. Not as stunning as in past years, nor enough blooms to sell on the roadside stand..... but from these photos, you will never know. Happy weekend all!

 

Sunflowers in the Kitchen

Just looking at a bouquet of sunflowers makes me smile. What about you?

Another Fabulous Knitting and Stitching Weekend

I am plum tuckered out as the saying goes.... but I have to get back to my knitting anyway. We hosted another great group of knitters here at the farm. The class theme was Color and Flowers but the weekend morphed into Fair Isle and Steeking. These knitters were obsessed! They came with piles of pre-knit homework.

We picked flowers......

We learned about color.....

We knit and talked and laughed.....

We felted and embroidered knit and crochet flowers.....

We learned how to embroider on knits....

We talked about dogs and cats and sheep and chickens.....

We ate great....... (Thanks to Cathy and Cynthia!)

We rode on hay bales 

behind the giant tractor.....

We watched the sun go down.....

 

We told stories.....

And that was just the first day! Here we all are just before we went our separate ways on Sunday.... To knit alone but remember each other, our individual stories, our collective laughs. I miss you all!

One more chance in 2012 to join the fun Getting Stitched on the Farm here at Leyden Glen Farm! I have two spaces available. The leaves should be turning gold and red and orange. Fall will be in the air. Check it out here.

We are Getting Stitched this Weekend!

I'm anticipating the arrival of my new students on Saturday morning at 9 a.m. This thing I do - the "Getting Stitched on the Farm" knitting retreats is great fun if not a whole lot of work. First of all, I am opening my family's home to strangers. That in its own is quite nuts, if you ask my sisters and Mom (and me, depending on the day). But the guests are knitters and knitters are always kind and wonderful folks. The more times we do this, the easier it becomes. Each group of knitters that comes is full of individuals with different skill sets, different knitting goals to takeaway. Some students come as a group, some as a couple of friends, and some just by themselves as a special treat for their knitting self. As the first day goes on, everyone become friends and there is a certain rhythm to the conversation and interactions.  Stories start flying, laughing happens.

The most rewarding part of each class - for me, at least - is seeing how each knitter grows as a knitter..... how their skills increase.... seeing their "ah-ha" moment.... I love seeing that - seeing the light bulb go on, knowing they are leaving with more knowledge of knitting and design and color. Leaving more confident in their skills. Less fearful. More empowered to create on their own, break the rules, not worry about perfection.

These classes are a money-generating proposition - part of our farming enterprise. Part of the total package of who we are as a farm, as a family, me as an artist. I put a whole lot of effort into the classes and if you ask The Farmer, there isn't much profit in it at all. But it is one more way for me to share my skills and help add a bit to the farm income. It is either this or look for an off-farm job and that is not where I want to go with my life right now. Who knows, that may change but for now, I'm staying put - trying to make this work.

 

I also see the "Getting Stitched on the Farm" Classes as part of my passion of sharing my love of color and knitting with other knitters who perhaps might be fearful of combining different colors together... who need to know that they CAN do it themselves.... that they just have to find the confidence to put 2 or 3 or 4 shades together and it can all work.

The photos in this post were sent to me just the other evening from Ann MacDonald Kelly - one of the students from my July 2011 class. She finished her projects that she started here and I am so amazed with what she came up with! Ann is a teacher at "Black Sheep Yarn Shop" in Maryland. She also has just had her first design published in Interweave Knits Magazine. You can see it here.

So here's to the new students arriving in a few short hours. It will be a fun two days for all of us. If you are interested in coming to the "Getting Stitched Workshops" at our farm, there is one more left this year - October 1/2. I have two more spaces available in the workshop. Check it out here.

If you can't get to the farm, here is the link to the Sunflower Pillow Pattern on Ravelry where it is for sale. It is also for sale on my website on my shop page here.

Early Morning at Our Farm

First day of middle school for Julia last week. The bus comes at 6:50 a.m. It's a new life for all of us! 5 days and she hasn't missed it yet. All dressed up in her Pioneer sweatshirt.

Do you remember this photo? And this one? 

Early mornings are good for my photos. After making sure Julia was on the bus safely, it took a walk down to the sheep pasture. The sun was just peaking over the mountain. You can't beat that early morning light, can you? 

Water, Wool and Peaches

I have my second "Getting Stitched on the Farm" class this coming weekend. It is the "Celebration of Flowers and Color" theme and I am really excited to meet the students. (Still 2 spaces available if anyone is up for a last minute trip!) A lot of cleaning up to do. Going to be tough to get much done outside with all the rain we are expecting this week! Yes, more rain, on top of Irene.

My garden is so waterlogged. Doesn't look like I will have too many tomatoes. Most are green and the ones that are turning red are splitting at the seams. I have nothing to complain about though. All this news about the damage caused by Hurricane Irene just a few minutes from our farm. It's hard to believe that just a mile down the hill from our house, the only covered bridge in Greenfield is dangling. The Green River made a new path..... as seen on this video. So many farmers have lost their entire crop. This video from Evening Song Farm in Vermont is unbelievable. Their farmland literally washed away down the river. The stories keep on coming. On the other side of our small town, a house was picked up off its foundation and swept down the river. I went to have a look the other day and took this photo of the river which has widened its path. The only thing left of the home was the shed.

I got a note from one of my readers named India who happens to be the aunt of our friend Addie. Addie's family home in Vermont was totally flooded and many family treasures were lost forever down the river. Her family, like so many other families in Vermont and western Massachusetts, is living with family members until their home can be repaired. India, Addie's aunt and a passionate knitter (besides being a loyal blog-reader) is spearheading a campaign for handknit donations for the flood victims of Vermont. (And we all know how cold it gets in Vermont in the winter!) From her Press Release:

"On August 28, Hurricane Irene visited Vermont. Although my town was spared the worst, many towns throughout the state suffered devastating flooding. My husband’s brother, sister, and mother narrowly escaped the rising waters of the Mad River, which inundated their home and their village, soaking everything in its path, taking out roads and bridges, and leaving behind inches of muck and piles of debris.

My family was lucky. Many of their things, including their clothing, are salvageable. But many others are not so fortunate. Though it is still quite warm here, we all know that soon the weather will turn much colder, and people will reach for that favorite sweater or scarf, only to remember that it’s gone.

I’m collecting donations of handknit hats, scarves, mittens, sweaters, socks, blankets, baby items, and knitted toys, items for anyone from babies through adults, to distribute to flood survivors in Vermont and upstate New York. If you would like to ply your needles for people in need, please contact me, India Tresselt, at warmhearts2@gmail.com. Thank you!"

I find knitters to be such generous people. I wish India luck. Maybe you have a wool hat that doesn't fit you? I'm sure someone in VT might like to wear it this winter! 

Not to get you all too depressed, check out this fun project being done in the UK to celebrate wool. Get a group of knitters together and make a pom pom sheep or two! It's Wool Week in the UK this week. Wonder what they have cooked up.

And speaking of cooking. I made this recipe from Food52 and it sure was delish! 

I added 1/3 cup of almonds (pulverized in my coffee grinder) to the crust, and it added a nice crunchy texture. (Also used all veggie oil instead of Amanda's use of part olive oil.) Really quick to do. It was hard not to eat the whole thing! Think it might be great with plums too.

Fall is Approaching - The Fall 2011 Vogue Knitting Arrives and More

The new Fall issue of Vogue Knitting is out. What a beautiful collection of patterns. Here's a Fair Isle design I did for their black and white story. Isn't this shot gorgeous? I just want to be there on those rocks with that walking stick looking out to the sea!

 

The pullover was knit in Rowan's Creative Focus Wool/Alpaca. Kind of funny VK asked me to do a black and white sweater, don't you think? The whole time I was swatching the lovely single ply yarn, I kept thinking about how gorgeous it would be in a real color combination. Lots of times, I have to design what the magazine wants and so I keep my mouth shut and swatch on. I knew Trisha would get a good photo of it but I kept thinking about colors.

After I sent the sweater in, I couldn't help but voice my color-starved opinions to VK. And lo and behold, they asked me to write down my thoughts for an article for the Fall issue. Then push came to shove and Doreen sold too many ad pages. My article got moved to their website. Actually, that's a good thing because now I can reference it forever here on my blog. Read my COLOR YOUR KNITS article here.

I always anticipate the arrival of the new fall knitting magazines in the mailbox. Vogue Knitting, Knitters, Interweave Knits ...... love them all. I know that so many magazines are going digital now but there really is no substitute for going to the mailbox and actually lifting a plastic wrapped glossy magazine from my actual mailbox, not my virtual one. Thank goodness the physical magazine business model still seems to be working for the knitting magazines. Fingers crossed.

So today, I open up the comments section to all of you.... What do you think about paper magazines and virtual magazines (like Knitty, Petite Purls, Twist Collective, Knit Circus). I know there are many more virtual magazines out there. If you know of one I might be interested in, leave it in the comments. Thanks. Which do you prefer? Paper or Virtual.

FYI..... Last weekend for the discount on my new Kristin's Creative Christmas Stocking Pattern. See this post.

And lastly, CONGRATULATIONS to Clara Parkes on the 11th Anniversary of Knitter's Review! What a wonderful addition Clara has been to the yarn business, don't you think??? I don't know Clara well at all but I have met her a couple times at TNNA. I admire what she does from afar and look forward to her weekly newsletter every Thursday a.m. Write on Clara!