March

March is an erratic month, as fickle as human emotion.  It embraces us with the warmth of spring, coaxing flowers to bloom and spirits to soar with its gentle breezes and abundant sunshine.  Yet, just as quickly, it turns cold and tempestuous - unleashing its wrath in sudden storms and icy gusts that chill our bones and dampen our soul.  Much like navigating the ebb and flow of our own feelings, March requires resilience and adaptability.  It teaches us patience. 

After last week's sublimely warm temperatures, the weekend turned sharply colder - delivering to us yet another inch of rain, fierce winds, and a snow squall.

I had hoped to work in the greenhouse as the new roof was to be finished on Friday.  However, as life would have it... there is more work to be done on the greenhouse early this week. 

 Rather than put my tiny pots of soil and seed at risk for being disturbed or worse, stepped upon, I edited my to-do list, pushing seed-starting into the coming week.  Instead, I stayed indoors and enjoyed working on some embroidery by a roaring fire - one of the season's last, I imagine.  And at the end of the day, I treated myself to a mineral soak. (To answer a question from Friday.... the herbs are all dried herbs - dried and chopped fairly fine)

Baking bread, roasting chicken (protein for the coming week's salads), making mushroom risotto, homemade spaghetti sauce, a spinach and tomato frittata (to use up some wilting tomatoes) were a few of the kitchen activities of the weekend.  Back to the mushroom risotto....  I found these types of mushrooms in a fresh, organic variety pack at Costco last week.

  It's the second week in a row that I have purchased them because they are absolutely delicious.  The first week, I simply roasted them in the oven with other vegetables, seasoned with my rosemary-garlic sea salt (I keep this "from the garden" salt on hand for seasoning just about everything).  This week, I decided to use them in this risotto.

As for the sourdough bread... I replaced 40% of the flour in the recipe with home-milled flour.  The recipe calls for 20% whole wheat - so I swapped that with home-milled whole wheat.  Then I also swapped out another 20% of the total flour weight - substituting another 100 grams of the bread flour with home-milled wheat that I sifted to remove the outer bran.  Part of the reason that a whole wheat loaf of sourdough bread can be so very dense is the fact that the bran (after milling) ends up very sharp and cuts the gluten fibers (the gluten holds the dough together and allows it to become stretchy, so that the carbon dioxide that is given off in the fermentation process can give the dough an airy rise).   Sifting out that bran helps to reduce this problem.  However the bran is a very healthy part of the wheat.  So, instead of tossing the bran, I then sprinkle it on the outside of the loaf before baking.  I have also begun baking smaller loaves - dividing the dough of a single loaf into two boules.  One can then be frozen for later use.

I mentioned lately how rotund Pete has gotten.  This photo might give you an idea of what I mean.

 He is a very long cat and he's a chubb!

In spite of the weekend's rain and wind, we did our daily woods walks.  It is seriously the only way we can get Forrest to keep from bouncing off the walls.  At 11 months now, he remains a very high energy pup.  I am hoping that perhaps he might settle down with age. (Please assure me he will!)

I do have to say... besides keeping us active, Forrest keeps us laughing.  Rearranging hay piles is one of his favorite games.

My heart just about bursts when I see these two together...

As you can see, the grass is incredibly green now.  

The pasture has not yet caught up to the rest of the farm, but then, quite a bit of it is under water!

If nothing else... March is synonymous with Mud!