Pesto

August 13, 2014 / Michelle Becker / Leave a comment

Pesto has always been a mainstay here. We process and freeze gallons of basil pesto in August. When the frigid Persephone months of December, January, March, February arrive, we are warmed with woodfires and our dinners are perfumed with the promise of a future summer with abundant servings of linguine with pesto, washed down with Cotes du Rhone. Alas, Andrew’s diabetes diagnosis changes this, and we look for meals in which we can substitute the pasta. Not so hard, as it turns out. Pesto omelettes are delicious. Pesto mixed with greek yoghurt makes a nice sauce to braise chicken breasts in. Basmati rice is more diabetes friendly than brown rice (believe it or not), and so fried basmati rice with pesto and scrambled eggs makes a nice entree. Pesto, as a spread or dip, in lieu of mayonaisse, makes even a cucumber sandwich delicious. Similarly, pesto mixed with no-fat yoghurt, easily becomes the mortar for chicken salad, tuna salad, salmon salad, even egg salad.

For those without dietary restrictions, there’s still the classic. ( I will do this when Andrew is out of town, or asleep) ,linguine dressed with pesto that’s been soothed and silkened with heavy cream (okay, or yoghurt……since there won’t be any cream in our pantry).

By the way, these days, I use toasted walnuts or almonds, in lieu of pine nuts. I cannot justify the expense in regards to flavor.

My Pesto Recipe: Throw all of the following into the food processor.

3 cloves garlic

4 cups Basil leaves

3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp. sea salt

1 cup toasted nuts (walnuts, almonds, your choice)

3/4 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Foodies will dissuade you from adding the cheese if you plan on freezing the goods. Follow your instinct. I, personally, notice no difference, and simply don’t have time to add another step of adding cheese after I’ve defrosted the pesto. I’ve got stuff to do.

The Beekeeper’s Garden

July 11, 2014July 11, 2014 / Michelle Becker / Leave a comment

It seems a bit presumptuous, to be writing about gardens for honey bees, as I am no authority. However, we do keep bees here at Stonewell Farm, and aim to keep them as healthy and well provided for as we can. Our gardens were well in the making long before we began keeping bees. For the sheer pleasure of having an abundance of blooms and color, we planted annual cutting gardens with cosmos, larkspur, china asters, sunflowers, zinnias, gladiolii, dahlias. In February’s dead of winter, I scattered millions of charcoal colored poppy seeds upon the blank,white canvas of snow, as if making a sketch for a richly colored painting that would materialize four or five months later; for our pleasure and stimulation, not the bees.

But now we’re gardening for the bees as well. Gone are the Plume Poppies (macleaya cordata), pretty, in fact striking, but also poisonous to honeybees. We’ve learned that the Agastache, which is invasive here, and which we’ve been trying to weed out, provides a great source of nectar and pollen for honeybees, and so we’ve adopted a cautious tolerance of it; leaving some for the bees, in gardens which are not so particularly “curated” (which just so happens to be in the environs of the hives), and tearing it out where it will create aesthetic and horticultural conflicts with us. We have never been ‘lawn’ people. We do have large, expansive stretches of “grass”, which means a green groundcover, but anyone can see that it’s mostly weeds cut short. Since there’s an abundance of dandelions and clover, both of which provide significant sustenance to honey bees, we’ve adopted an attentively diplomatic laissez-faire policy of allowing these plants to flower….attempting to mow when we think we’ve struck a balance, or compromise, between satisfying the bees and our neighbors. That means mowing before the plants set seed, and keeping the blades at the highest setting, to allow for the emergence of more blooms.

It just so happens that the plants we love are also plants that the bees love, and so now, the wheels begin turning for future garden plans and where we’ll put all these bee-friendly plants. Here’s a short list of plants that honeybees love, for those who would like to contribute to their welfare.

Agastache
Cosmos
Mint
Poppies (papaver orientale, papaver rhoeas, escholzia. papaver nudicaule)
Nepeta
China Asters
Clover
Dandelions

The Ultimate-ish Gardening Apron; Free Giveaway!

March 15, 2014 / Michelle Becker / 2 Comments

Producing a useful gardening apron is high on my list of things to do. I want to expand my apron offerings on Stonewell Cottage, to include the Ultimate Garden Apron. Many years back I had someone make a few artist/ craft aprons for me that were patterned on a sort of short, waitress style design. They were cute. When I moved to the country and actually tried using them for gardening, I discovered that they simply don’t function well. For the past couple of days I’ve googled gardening aprons and have found quite a variety, but surprisingly few will actually do the job they need to do. They look great on the real-life models who are standing erect and in a garden environment, tools nicely featured in generous pockets, and the more stylish ones are downright adorable and chic, not dissimilar to the ones I created years ago, but they just won’t do the job that I want my garden apron to do.

Here are my thoughts, based on real-life gardening work, and the criteria I will apply to designing the perfect gardening apron.

Firstly, the apron must have a slit through the front. Of course you want plenty of pockets for tools, seeds, etc..and these must be included, however, they will be positively useless if you cannot access those pockets in a crouched position. Its akin to keeping your tools in your front pockets…you simple can’t get to them, or worse, they’re jabbing you in the solar-plexis.
The apron needs to be more like a toolbelt, but not exactly. I have something like that and it presents problems for me. This takes me to the part that I think might be a hard sell because it seems so weird. I garden in a close fitting long-sleeved T shirt and sturdy jeans (baggy clothes catch on things, like rose thorns). In the classic crouched weeding or planting position, the T shirt rides up and the pants down, exposing a crescent of my lower back that gets sunburned. My garden apron idea is to have the apron tied on in the opposite way that it would normally be worn. In other words, a back panel would cover the lower back, preventing sunburn, the tie would be in the front, in my case, enfolded in belly fat, and the utility pockets would hang accessibly from the sides of ones outer hips, where they can be readily accessed.
The majority of people are right handed and so the narrow pocket for a writing implement might be on the right, but a similar pocket could be on the left, for lefties, or equally serviceable for plant markers. The heavier hand tools; the trowels and cultivators, would best be located as close to the vertical hipline as possible, so they work in harmony with gravity and our most durable and padded anatomical parts. (Sorry supermodels…talk to me about doing a padded couture version just for you!).

So I want your input and experience….pros, cons, all of it. There could be a bibbed version of the Ultimate Garden Apron. I suppose a bibbed version would provide additional storage for small items, but I think the pockets on the bib would have to be placed somewhere mid-chest and they would have to hang freely for easy accessibility, which means they can’t be very deep, otherwise they would block your field of vision. (Sometimes bibs can ride up and choke you a bit).

Oh, I forgot to mention…..my ultimate gardening apron must be durable and good-looking. I’m planning my apron around 100% cotton ticking fabrics, made in the USA.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a contest / giveaway. Totally subjective (but nepotism and familiarity free). You MUST comment. Include details regarding what you want a Garden Apron to do for you. Based upon the seriousness and depth of you comments, I will select a winner, and he or she will receive one of my Ultimate Gardening Aprons within a months time.

Deadline for Comments is: April 1, 2014!!! I look forward to hearing from you!

Totebags – Franglais Chinois!

November 6, 2013November 6, 2013 / Michelle Becker / Leave a comment

You know, we all seem to have a dozen or more totebags but few of them are chic or stylish. In an attempt to change that ethos I’ve come up with a stylish, chic and utilitarian version of a Totebag, smart enough to double as a handbag. The fabrics are chic, honest and rooted in traditional textiles. The main body of the bag is a heavy-weight cotton ticking made in the USA. The exterior pockets, the lower part of the bag, are in a polyester ultrasuede made in China, trimmed and lined with the charming Provencale fabrics that we’ve imported from France, which also line the interior of the tote, which features an interior pocket for a cell phone or, whatever… The straps combine the durable ultrasuede and the yellow ticking fabric.

The ‘Avignon’ totebag. The bold, stylish, and infinitely useful ‘Avignon Tote’.

These cozies, in authentic provencal cotton fabrics fit over a french-press style coffee maker to keep your brew warm.

I’ve been working on a number of projects, most notably a series of tea and coffee cozies. It’s odd how all of this has come about. A friend admired a tea cozy I’d made and asked if I’d make him one for his 50th birthday. I did. I made a few, tweaking the pattern, experimenting with remnants of some very expensive and very luxurious fabrics that I’d had acquired through my interior design business. Through word of mouth, I was approached by someone who asked if I would make a large tea cozy to fit both her teapot, as well as her french-press coffee maker. (The glass on the french presses is thin, thinner by far than a ceramic teapot, and no sooner is the coffee ready to’press’, than its barely warm.) I thought about it and said I’d make a coffee cozy to fit the cylindrical shape of the french-press, and a tea cozy to fit her teapot.

I tried several different shapes but finally settled on the triangular tower, which looks a lot like papal headgear, as it accomodates the handle while still fitting snuggly around the glass cylinder. At some point in the process, I remembered my treasured stash of french, provencale fabric. I’d purchased it in 2001 in order to make a wedding quilt for my future husband Andrew, as well as a bedskirt. These brightly colored prints are a tradition in the South of France, which was my home for a number of years, and their charming patterns and crisp finish are cheerful, vibrant and perfect for accent pieces and tabletop furnishings. A few people had seen them and the next thing I knew two forces were at work. Requests started rolling in for similar objects, or, as the french would say, ‘confections’, and several people suggested that I open an Etsy shop. I started to give it some serious consideration and knew I needed help. Enter Sara, long time friend, computer maven, seamstress, former pattern-maker, sculptor and general renaissance woman. I hear the seraphim sing.

We’ve opened a storefront on Etsy called the Stonewell Cottage Shop, but there’s a lot to do before it’s fulled stocked and properly organized.

We’re getting ready to launch the Stonewell Cottage website (presently under construction). We’re sewing, tweaking patterns, designing a logo, ordering fabric (finally there’s a reason to use our french), having labels made, photographing finished products, reorganizing the studio to more suitably accommodate sewing, and designing an expanded line of goods that will include kitchen appliance covers, table linens, handbags, totes, and some gardenwear.

It’s an exciting time