Monthly Archives: January 2018

quilt repairs and flu days

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I have had the flu since December 28 when I felt that first tickle way in the back of my throat.

Seriously.

This was the year I forgot to get a flu shot. And I got full-on flu. Including the scary nights you are afraid to sleep in the middle of the night because you can’t breathe. Last year when I got the flu shot it made me as sick as a dog (but ironically not this sick), so this year I kept procrastinating…..so next year? Back to flu shots.

As someone who was treated for breast cancer, I do live with a slightly compromised immune system. My husband, however, attributes this lengthy flu to not resting properly. Or, I haven’t stayed in bed enough. Now I hate to admit it, but since I have been getting in bed and staying in bed I am starting to feel better.

But who has the time to stay in bed, I ask? (And by the way I am writing this on the WordPress app not my computer.) I for one have learned the hard way that one has to make the time.

Staying put is a hard thing for me to do. So what have I done besides read and watch TV? Sew. I have a bunch of quilts to repair and restore.

I have written before about my love of old handmade quilts and re-making them when repairing them.

I love hand made and vintage pieced at patchwork quilts. Although I can repair and reimagine them, I am not a quilter and would never presume to call myself one. Real quilting is such an amazing art form.

I have now repaired and reimagined several vintage quilts. And then I add my own touches. Ribbon, lace, quirky odd pieces or fabric, and even embroidery are my touches. Hand sewing as I don’t have my mother’s talent with a sewing machine.

Some people only display their quilts and afghans, but I use them. I love them and to me they are among the things that make a house a home. To me it is home to have these quilts.

I am almost finished reimagining this blue and white one. It’s fairly large and has some weight to it. My friend Sara who is a real quilter had given me some odd lots of fabrics, and the one I am using is just perfect – a fun dog pattern on a blue background.

I don’t make the patches that necessarily mimic what the original quilter did. I stick to basic shapes I can cut out and stitch evenly.

This is a fun way to make myself relax…and stay in bed. Seriously, those are two things which are very hard for me to do.

When I finish the blue and white quilt, I will move onto an old Maine-made patchwork quilt. Maine if anyone is interested is a place where I think some of the most amazing handmade quilts come from. And a lot of them are flannel backed. And this certainly is a winter where you can appreciate flannel- backed quilts.

Thanks for stopping by!

chester county 2018: ask not for whom the bell “tolls”

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Yo so maybe the Chester County Commissioners and the Chester County Planning Commission should put all of us out of our misery now and just rename the county Toll Brothers County?

deconstructing christmas

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“Oh goody! Let’s put away all of the Christmas decorations immediately!” SAID NO ONE EVER.

Sad but true. I love Christmas. I love decorating for Christmas. But taking it all down is a real chore. And usually it falls on one person and in my house that’s me.

So….since I pretty much got the flu a couple of days after Christmas, and have been sick since, getting Christmas squared away and back into all of the containers is not happening quickly.

I remember when I was a kid, my parents used to spend weeks pointing fingers as to who was putting what away when. As a result, one year the Christmas tree was still up at Valentine’s Day. And it was a fresh cut tree so by Valentine’s Day it was dry and brittle and a fire hazard waiting for Miss Havisham’s living room (that’s a literary reference to a Charles Dickens’ character in Great Expectations for those unfamiliar.)

I try to be systematic about putting things away and usually all my ornaments and decorations stay up through Epiphany.

Epiphany falls 12 days after Christmas, or January 6th this year. Also known as 12th night it is the end of the Christmas season. Now I could stretch it out to Eastern Orthodox or Russian Christmas but when New Year’s Day rolls around I am generally ready to deconstruct Christmas as all eyes from the Nutcrackers, elves, and Santas seem to stare off their various bookshelves and tables.

As far as storage goes, I have graduated to plastic tubs of various sizes at this point. My parents used to keep all the decorations in giant cardboard boxes, and I did that for years until I realized how much easier it was to be able to see things. Also, because a lot of my ornaments are vintage, I prefer sturdier containers for storage.

Every year I start with good intentions of making everything super organized so I will never forget where anything is. And every Christmas that follows I still can’t remember where everything is!

I have collected a lot of ornaments over the years, so this is the time of year where I also periodically evaluate things that I am not using to free up storage space. This year, the things that are going to go away are the vintage metal ornament trees. They are wonderful for displaying ornaments, but I have ultimately decided I prefer little tabletop feather trees if I am going to display ornaments on smaller trees.

I have found over the years that the easiest way to deconstruct and clean up from Christmas is to do it a little bit at a time. So day by day something else gets put away until it’s all put away.

Before I go I am going to share one last photo. It’s a little VW bug and a Christmas tree Christmas ornament. It is my new favorite ornament and it came from the Christmas open house for Life’s Patina at Willowbrook Farm. Meg buys the best ornaments!

Thanks for stopping by.

will 2018 mark the year of history at risk at the ruins of ebenezer on bacton hill road, frazer in east whiteland?

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Veterans at Ebenezer on Bacton Hill Road in Frazer PA in November, 2016

It has already been a year since my friend Al Terrell left this earthly plane. And almost two years sine Ann (A.V.) Christie has died. I am glad both of them are not around to find out what I discovered this morning.

I have been home with the flu, so I have been playing catch-up with municipalities. I started with East Whiteland.  They have a Supervisors’ Meeting this Wednesday, January 10.  

One of the things there of note, is a couple of more resignations from within the township building.  One resignation is the guy who has only been there a short amount of time but came to East Whiteland from the Montgomery County Mall Township known as Upper Merion.  Scott Greenly is leaving.  He was/is East Whiteland’s Planning & Development Director. But I digress.

BACK to the reason for this post, only it actually what worries me was from RIGHT before Christmas (always have to pay attention before major holidays or in the dead of summer or stuff sneaks on it, right?) as in the  Planning Commission December 20, 2017:

Sketch Plans
1. HP Flanagan, Inc.: Sketch plan proposing a 6 lot subdivision and associated improvements. The property is located at 100 N. Bacton Hill Road, is zoned R-1 Single Family Residential and is approximately 6.6 acres in size.

 

(Deep breath)

This is proposed for right on top of and across the road from….wait for it….the ruins of historic Ebenezer AME Church and Cemetery.  When I last wrote about Ebenezer, it was late November, 2017 and it was about an oral history.  Before that, you know all of the posts about the history and the various articles from 2016 (click HERE and click HERE for two of them.)

Well shame on me for not paying closer attention in December 2017.  Here is what it looks like (100 Bacton Hill Road Sketch Plan):

Here is a close-up so you can see (right or wrong) why I am alarmed:

These houses are right on top of Ebenezer on one side.  A  concern I have is a lot of us have always wondered if there were more graves on each side of the fences (See blue arrows). A new development right on top of this site of ANY size puts this historic site at risk, in my humble opinion. Which is why a lot of the conversations concerning this development have to also include protecting this historic site, right?

This is a historic site that East Whiteland has never seemingly wanted to deal with (except for the historic commission as they have wanted it better preserved only how do we get there?), and the AME Church always seemingly wants to pretend it never exists. (I mean remember that promise Bishop Ingram made the Inquirer reporter Kristen Holmes to check this all out? And what do you bet he never, ever did? (Sorry I don’t see slick city bishop walking through the mud at Ebenezer, do you?)

Do we need to worry that if the AME Church finds out about development they will try to sell these old souls to the highest bidder to make a buck or two? (It’s a valid concern, I think.)

Here is a close up of general notes on the plans so the players and potential need for a variance are made plain:

Doug Buettner still owns the land now.  I have met him.  A nice guy. He actually helped with Al’s clean-up of Ebenezer in 2016. I have also been told that owns Malvern Court the mobile home park on the other side of Ebenezer.  The developer is listed above at HP Flanagan in Malvern.  They are an unknown to me.

I have been told that Mr. Buettner has wanted to develop some of this land for years.  I seem to remember he mentioned it to me in conversation the day I met him cleaning up at Ebenezer.

My largest concern is how close this all is to the ruins of Ebenezer. This is not a big plan being proposed, mind you, and it would have escaped my radar except for the fact it is next door to our beloved Ebenezer. And well a development could detrimentally impact this historic site as I feel the site is fragile to begin with. I have fears that once construction vehicles move in to start construction if this plan is approved that it will cause the remains of the church to crumble from vibrations.  When Al Terrell was alive we had wanted to try to get the AME Church to give permission for funds to be raised to stabilize the ruins.

A development of a 6 lot subdivision like this adjacent to a historic resource and a mobile home park is one of the ways Chester County Zoning is so strange to me.  None of the things go together.

I still feel the pace of development is staggering in East Whiteland .

When does it stop? I have to ask if Mr. Buettner owns clear to the corner as I was told, would it be possible to shift those houses down? Or eliminate one from the plans to create a buffer zone next to the old souls of Ebenezer?  After all, it is not generally considered good karma to disturb a burial ground is it?  Freed slaves, member of a once vibrant early black community and black Civil War Soldiers matter, don’t they? Shouldn’t they?

And you see on the plans they also want setback variances? Bacton Hill Road is a speedy road.  So no new development anything should be perched right on the edge of the road in my humble opinion.

Look, I wish this proposed plan, this sketch plan, wasn’t on top of Ebenezer, but it is.  And Hiram Woodyard, Joshua Johnson, the Reasons and the other dear old souls here deserve respect. (See Daily Local article November 2016)

Bacton Hill is the location of some of the richest black history in Chester County.  It was an early settlement of freed blacks among other things.  This history here just keeps getting erased. I don’t think that is right.

Here is my wish list:

  1. NO development (which I doubt will happen as it is East Whiteland, after all.)
  2. More realistically, REDUCED development to protect the cemetery with a good buffer.
  3. As a condition of approval the developer gets permission to stabilize the church ruin and put up a better and more proper fence with a gate and a couple of pebbled (drainage is a problem over there already, right?) parking spaces in the buffer zone so people can visit Ebenezer.
  4. And developer also helps with maintaining the grass and weeds going forward

Here is hoping if something comes of this, the dead are respected, right? Ebenezer has been around since what? 1831 into 1832?

Ok signing off now.  My thoughts are simple: Ebenezer should be and needs to be preserved.  It is history that matters.  And more people need to care. (For more on East Whiteland history click HERE.) People, this is a sketch plan, but it is under active review.  If you have an opinion, please voice it to East Whiteland (politely.)

Ebenezer AME and her ruins are just something which should be saved, right?

mmmm, that smells good!

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I have never had the flu eight or nine days before… before now, that is. And I have had enough chicken soup to cluck. And yes, I make my own soup and bone broth (thanks Instant Pot!) so I know what is in it. Needless to say, I have made a serious dent in my freezer soup supply.

I need to eat something different for dinner, so since the Giant Peapod delivery got through yesterday’s snow and this morning’s roads (yes I do treat myself to this once in a while, no judging), my version of beef stew/ boeuf bourguignon is in the oven now doing the low and slow for a couple of hours.

This recipe will probably seem a little disjointed to some because it’s more like a guide to creating your own version versus a hard and fast recipe that is written down with precise measurements. Sorry, but it’s like when I am making fresh pasta – the measurements of flour I use depends on how the dough feels to me as I put it together.

It’s not hard to make this. It’s a 2 lb pack of stew meat, veggies, one can of crushed tomatoes, half a container of cooking broth, wine, herbs, spices, garlic salt and pepper. I used Herbes de Provence primarily. The fresh vegetables I used this time were mushrooms, two onions (one red and one sweet white), parsnips, small red potatoes, carrots, celery.

I tossed the beef cubes in a bowl with Wondra flour (yes the stuff that is the trick to a less lumpy gravy is also tremendous when you need to toss meat or chicken in flour for browning), Herbes de Provence, garlic, and a little kosher salt.

For this recipe I brown the meat in a combination of olive oil with a little added walnut oil. You go lightly on the walnut oil or the taste will overwhelm your dish. It’s just a couple small dashes and it adds a different flavor layer when you’re cooking.

I browned the beef for like 10 minutes in my big vintage Dansk stew pot or Dutch oven whatever you want to call it, and then added herbs and spices. The additional spices I added included cumin, sweet Hungarian or Spanish paprika (I keep both in my spice rack so it really just depends which I grab at the time), fresh black pepper, a little additional dried rosemary, and a nice pinch of the red chili pepper blend I get from Los Poblanos in New Mexico.

Then I add the onions, followed by the celery, parsnips, carrots, potatoes, mushrooms. I add a little more salt and pepper to the vegetables. Everything browns together for a little bit (like 10 more minutes) and then I add the tomatoes (1 28 ounce can of crushed) and a half of a bottle of wine. Only a couple of gifted and too upscale reds for stew were in the wine rack so today I used the Rioja Rose I keep in as a Sangria base. And a couple of dashes of Worcestershire Sauce. (I almost forgot!)

I let the alcohol cook off the wine slightly and then I added half a container of Swanson cooking broth. I also add a couple of pieces of orange peel (2″-3″ each- no white.)

I then turned off the stove and put into the pre-heated oven (covered and at 300°.)

It’s now in the oven for a couple of hours on a cook time timer which will shut the oven off completely when it hits two hours. This dish cooked covered in a slow oven, means flavors will meld together nicely.

I love stews and hearty soups in winter. Thanks for stopping by!

winter woods

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vintage cookbook sacrilege

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On page 26 of the latest Country Living Magazine (Jan/Feb 2018) they have picked up on a new trend I find to be vintage cookbook sacrilege .

Basically you take cookbooks, tie them together with twine or a cord and jam knives in them.

To me it looks like messy loving hands at home crafting. Also doesn’t make sense from a practical standpoint for a kitchen you actually cook in.

But where I find this to be true vintage cookbook sacrilege is check out the cookbook second from the right above (screen shot of my magazine). One of the most famous and collectible cookbooks of the mid-twentieth century: Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, first published in 1961 (and the Volume Two sequel was published in 1970).

O.k. that is just dumb. Forget about the fact this is a cookbook bible that every home chef should have in their cookbook collection (more so than The Joy of Cooking in my opinion), the earlier editions as I previously said are highly collectible….which means if you don’t use it, don’t love it — SELL IT!

As my friend Shirley said, Julia Child’s most famous cookbook should be open on the counter…in an altar setting.

Now I saw this idea before in 2017 and was horrified! It was this past August on a blog called Town and Country Living. The author was inspired by something she saw in Flea Market Style Magazine. (See other screenshot)

The author pictured one of my favorite novels, Lalita Tademy’s Cane River. Another book was by an author of the early 20th Century, Inglis Fletcher. The book pictured was Raleigh’s Eden. Which I read years ago along with many of her other novels.

I love books. And I love to read them. It’s nice having them on my tablet but it’s not the same as the feel of the paper. And I use my vintage cookbooks all of the time.

I am all for adaptive reuse, but please show the old books some love. Go score yourself an old knife block and clean and oil it up, or do what we do- hang super strong professional magnetic knife strips on the wall and free up some counter space.

I am sorry but I do not see a true home chef or professional chef embracing this unfortunate fad.

#SaveBooks

tigue farm in west chester to bite the dust

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At 945 Tigue Road, West Chester, PA just below the Stadium at West Chester University -between the stadium and Route 52 – actually the other side of the stadium- is this gorgeous farm you see in courtesy photos from my friend Robin Ashby.

And it’s yet another farm which will soon be plowed under for yet another development of plastic houses. I am told the actual farm is on the northeast portion of the parcel. The open land is Tigue Road and Route 52 looking north.

According to information found on the Internet at RealtyTrac.com:

945 Tigue Rd is a farm, crops located in West Chester, PA 19382. Built in 1750, this property features 7 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, 58 acres lot, and 3,999 sq ft of living space.

This is East Bradford Township. And oh yeah, it’s Toll Brothers….again:

TOLL BROTHERS SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT

During their Regular Meeting on December 12, 2017, the Board of Supervisors approved a settlement agreement with Toll PA VI, L.P. for the development of the Tigue Farm (Tigue Road and Lenape Road) to be known as “Darlington Ridge at West Chester.”  Minutes from this meeting are available on the Board and Commissions page.  The next phase of the development will involve submission of land development plans and Township review during 2018. This application may be prominent on the Township Planning Commission agenda during 2018.

Does everyone realize that acre by acre, what made Chester County Chester County will literally cease to exist at some point in the not too distant future?

How is this crazed thirst for development sustainable? How many times can we expand our schools and/or redistrict until we’re out of room?

It’s time for the residents of Chester County to have their eyes on the prize that is our home county and not just the developers.

Our agricultural and equine heritage are about to be lost forever along with the architectural heritage of Chester County farm houses, outbuildings, and barns. Once the farms are gone, they are gone forever.

Also don’t forget, that a lot of these farms were also proven or potential battle sites during the Revolutionary War. So in a lot of cases our nation’s very history is getting plowed under. And well Tigue Farm dates to the 18th century, doesn’t it?

Are we all to have “green roofs” and grow our food and put animals out to pasture that way? I find that doubtful since all these developments come with homeowners association’s and lots of rules don’t you?

Farming is often a brutally hard life. When did we stop caring about our farmers in this country? We must’ve stopped caring because they’re all selling to developers, right?

I don’t pretend to have all the answers other than restating the obvious which I keep saying, and that is the pace of development must slow down.

happy new year!

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Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future ~ Steve Miller Band

January 1, 2018 and what a long, strange trip it has been. Like every year before it, 2017 had it’s highs and lows. But here we are at the dawning of 2018, and we are all still standing, right?

In my house, we have ended the year with all of us having the flu…Influenza Strain B to be exact which means it is confined to humans. Ironically, this is the year I forgot to get the flu shot. We are on self-quarantine as we would not wish this on anyone. (And boy am I glad I had a stockpile of homemade soups in the freezer!) I was seriously bummed to have the flu because last evening we had the first New Year’s Eve plans in years to have dinner with friends. And had to cancel.

Anyway, this too, the flu, shall pass….

Wishing all of you a happy and healthy 2018, and from our home to all of yours out there, HAPPY NEW YEAR!