Simply Saturday

This was the first Saturday in four weeks that I came home at noon ... no extra classes or events in the parish ... just the normal Saturday morning classes for Grades 1-6. Sweet bliss!!!

I actually had time to make a scrumptuous lunch of potato pancakes and applesauce. I had some cooked potatoes leftover from a corned beef and cabbage dinner I had for the ICS Faculty reunion earlier this week and used my mother's shortcut recipe for potato pancakes. No precise measurements ... more a method than a recipe. Peel leftover boiled potatoes, mash with just enough boiling water to make mashing easy. Add two or three large eggs, well beaten ... the number of the eggs dependent on the amount of potatoes. Today I had 8 large potatoes and I used three eggs. Stir well. Then add between a third to a half a cup of sifted white flour to bind the batter. Finally add either 3 heaping tbs of parsley or chives. Stir to distribute evenly. Fry batter in olive oil till brown on both sides. I served it with unsweetened applesauce and made a large pot of Earl Grey tea. Dessert was a rare treat: Edys frozen juice bars: Tangerine. It was nice to be cooking in my own kitchen after spending so many weeks depending on take-out, frozen dinners and dining out. Healthier, too.

I even got to spend some time stitching on my Day 3 project in the Crazy January Challenge Homespun Elegance's The Stitcher. This chart dates from 1995 and uses only five shades of DMC floss, in very muted colors, I might add. Very simple and very plain, in the Quaker sense of the word.It will be interesting to compare it with my Day 4 Crazy January Challenge piece, Homespun Elegance's Witches Stitch, Too. The witch is seated is much the same posture as the stitcher and the alphabet is arranged in similar fashion ... but the more current piece uses overdyes and a broader palette. I am playing with the idea of finishing the two pieces as the flip sides of one wall-hanging or pillow. The witch was clearly meant to be a companion piece or an homage piece to the stitcher so such a finish makes perfect sense to me.