New uses for old sewing machines

A few months back, i helped my grandmother move.  She was moving to a smaller place, and one of the many things she planned to leave behind at her old house was her ancient Kenmore sewing machine.  Now, i'd never sewn on this machine, but it was in the room i'd stayed in when i spent summers at her place as a kid.  I kinda liked the cabinet.  And she told me she'd bought it with the first money she'd earned from her first job, sometime around 1939.  (Now, from the model number, it looks like it was probably manufactured a bit later, something like 1947, but Grandma is 88, so we'll cut her a little slack on the chronology... and maybe that was a different machine.)

Anyway, i wasn't about to let it stay behind.  So we had it loaded onto the moving van, and then it went from her old house to her new apartment to my parents' place, and eventually back down here, the heavy old machine having been removed from the cabinet and wrapped in an old blanket for protection on its travels.  I'm still trying to create a spot to wedge it into in the sewing area, and as the machine has waited for a permanent home, the cats have found it a prime sleeping location.  Eliot demonstrates:

 

And Winston does likewise:

 

The CSA report, week 1

We signed up for a CSA (that's community supported agriculture, for those who haven't encountered it before) membership this year.  This is a good thing, because as much as i'd like to grown my own, i'm not very good at it.  Also, there's that living-on-a-wooded-mountain thing: i have little sun, but lots and lots of rocks.  Big, honkin' rocks, in fact.  So it's a good thing that Stoneybrook is close by with their CSA program (nice folks - i play music with a few of them from time to time).  Last Wednesday, we got our first weekly box of veggies: red leaf lettuce, kale, chard, garlic scapes, collard greens, yellow squash, and zucchini.  I've been racing to use it all up - and make room in the fridge - before Wednesday, and our next box.

So the chard and some of the garlic scapes went into some fried rice, i made kale chips (promising, though the recipe i used was too salty), and the lettuce was easy to go through in salads and sandwiches (i have a little left, but i had some from the farm market on hand when i got the CSA lot). I used more garlic scapes in place of green onions in a marinade, and grilled a little more than half the squash and zukes with some local beef tonight.  The collard greens still need to be used, but at least they're not too bulky.  The remainder of the kale will probably go into a revised version of those chips, and i'll figure out something for the last of the squash... there's at least hope for getting the refrigerator closed when i bring home tomorrow's box!

Summer frocks

A little inspiration from the July 1940 issue of McCall's: