Domestic Goddessing

Can you even read this? This is the recipe I use with the exception of using a cup of sugar rather than a cup and a half. My mother got the recipe from someone who was on the staff at the school she taught at in Winter Haven as is indicated at the top there. She had always made her own cranberry sauce with the recipe on the back of the Ocean Spray cranberries bag but after this recipe came into her life, we started eating it instead. I think instead. That was about the time I was moving out and doing my own Thanksgiving. I've always made both types of cranberries and honestly, I mostly make the traditional type because it's so damn beautiful. Like rubies in a bowl. But this year, the relish type will do. 

There's my cranberries, all ready to rock and roll in the food processor which is what I use to chop up all the fruit and nuts. 
I love my food processor. I use it all the time. 

I've had a most domestic day and that made me happy. It's been what we call chilly all day here and the sky was again as blue as a bluebird's wings, and the light was that coming-on winter type of light that is as golden as honey. I hung the laundry out and of course Maurice came and joined me. 

Why she decided to have a little lie down on the patch of concrete that the clothesline post is anchored in is beyond me. But she did. A little while later when I watered the front porch plants, I looked up and she was stalking the front yard, again keeping on eye on me. 

So the sheets got hung on the line and now they smell so good. So does the soup I'm making but in an entirely different way, of course. I've been meaning to use the lone butternut squash that came out of the garden this year in the lovely recipe I got from the NYT's cooking app that calls for that particular vegetable. It's their Creamy Cashew Butternut Squash Soup but I have made it with acorn squash and I always use sweet potatoes in it too because sweet potatoes are sweet and sturdy and criminally underused in soups and stews. 

You may recall, although why in the world would you? that the butternut squash in the garden last summer was a volunteer, meaning that I did not intentionally plant the seeds but they got planted in the garden via compost in which I had dumped some seeds of squash I had bought, no doubt to make this same soup. 

So knowing it was martini night and knowing that this particular soup takes quite a bit of prep due to the peeling and cutting up of vegetables and all that stuff, I decided to go ahead and get it going, which I did, and that's why the kitchen smells so good. Cumin and coriander and turmeric and all those beautiful spices that our exceptional fellow blogista, Boud, is so good at. She makes her own curry blends! I should do that too but I don't. 

Mr. Moon is not overly fond of Indian food or fake Indian food either but I always make naan to go with the soup and that takes the sting away. I do remember the last time we ate something Indian-inspired he loved it and thanked me for introducing him to foods he never thought he'd try, much less like. 
A girl remembers things like that. 
I've made my naan dough but it is just not rising. I think my yeast has lost its life force and dammit, this will not do. I buy a largish bag of yeast at Costco and keep it in the freezer in a quart mason jar but I guess that even if kept in a freezer, yeast does have it's lifespan and that is that. I have no idea how long that yeast has been in there but years, at least. 

And tonight- needs must, and I will just roll out the unrisen dough and cook it on a hot skillet and hope for the best. And I will be buying new yeast. 

The food processor will get another work-out when I puree the vegetables and cashews in the soup to make it creamy. I know, a hand blender would work very well for this but I don't have one and I like the food processor anyway. It's fast and furious when it comes to getting the job done. 

I never know how to end my posts which is probably why they are so long so I'll just give you my usual...

Happy Friday, y'all. 

Love...Ms. Moon