Cooking for Halloween

Hi Friends,

Yes, that's Jacki serving the ghosts in the graveyard cake at a youth conference.

Throughout the year, our cooks find ways of celebrating the seasons. This blog will feature Halloween and yes, the two cakes will be in our new Cooks' Book.



At our fall work weekend last year, Tom Rothschild created faces on the ghosts for the cake.


The "litter box" cake was so popular with the youth, that we tried it in Pitt Hall with a few monthly meeting retreats. It wasn't nearly so popular!

Plan on attending our next fall work/contra dance/story telling weekend and try these cakes.

Our cooks

Hi Friends,

What's your favorite food at Powell House? As you can imagine, each cook is known for their recipes. Here are our current cooks at PoHo. We also have wonderful volunteers who help out as assistants and butlers. You know that if you are a butler in the ACC with Jacki during a youth conference, you'll work a lot harder than if you're helping in Pitt Hall.


Jacki Gray is our Food Service Manager and she keeps the other cooks in line ....


Chris Koster making cupcakes at a WinterSong


Edie Kramer is at the end of the table working away while the cookie bowl gets cleaned out!


Amy White, currently on Sabbatical from cooking here, is known for her granola.


Martha Gurvich took time off from the EarthSong kitchen to see her daughter, Sky, graduate.

Anita Thacker who now lives on Cape Cod manages to come over and cook a few times a year. I'll have a photo of her here, soon. Remember Anita's coffeecake?

Our newest cook, Soleh Nagbe-Greene, will be cooking her 1st conference later in May.

Powell House Cooks' Book coming soon

Hi Friends,

Jacki Gray has been feverishly checking 200 pages of recipes from our Powell House cooks. You'll be delighted with our "standard" fare (depends which Cook's standard). The Youth attenders have created wonderful drawings and sketches to illustrate the recipes e.g. zucchini bars (just imagine).

Here are a few photos to wet your appetite.



Martha's summer salad



Chris's gazpacho soup

Stay tuned for future photos and maybe even some recipes.
Ann

Growing, Eating, and Preparing Foods Locally

Healing the Earth,Nourishing Ourselves: Growing, Eating & Preparing Food Locally

August 21-23, 2009

We held an experiential weekend in August with Andrew Faust, pictured above. Andrew is one of the premier Permaculture teachers in North America, from The Center For Bioregional Living in New York City and Ellenville, NY. He shared his expertise with us in several sessions. We then went to work.



Here's Debbie Way slicing up a cabbage for kimchi or sauerkraut



More prep for the kimchi. Jotham Bailey and Mimi McGiver are in the foreground.



They're almost done with the preparation before canning. You'll see the finished product in the last photo.



They cut up apples, made applesauce and canned it as a model for preserving fruit.



Here's Andrew Faust sharing the sourdough starter - yes, the group made sourdough bread. YUM. You can see some of the jars of kimchi on the left side of the table.



Buffy Curtis shares her recipe for yogurt. It's Buffy, Andrew, Susan Corson-Finnerty and Mimi.



Here's the group with their bounty from the weekend.

Work weekend - Quilters finish 4th quilt for Barclay

Over 5 years ago, Liseli Haines, our property manager, put out a request across the yearly meeting -- we wanted quilt squares in order to make 5 quilts -- one for each bed in Robert Barclay.

The response was amazing. There were plenty to make all 5 quilts. Hazel Haines and Liseli pieced those 1st quilt tops together and then volunteers coming to Powell House began to quilt.

The 1st two quilts took one year each. The 3rd 2 years. At the spring work weekend, we finished the 4th in one year! Here are photos of some of the volunteers from this weeks work. Young and old; experienced as well as those who had never quilted before.



These young women worked long and hard.



A new quilter!



Anita Paul, in the middle, checks for dropped stitches. It looks great.



Anita at her sewing machine, beginning to piece the 5th top together. Nan Olsen took it home with her to finish piecing the top and then we'll begin quilting again. Goal: to finish the 5th quilt before the 50th anniversary of Powell House 2010-2011.

Spring work weekend - building community

Some of our most popular weekends are our intergenerational ones -- even the work weekends. We had over 100 attenders ranging in age from toddlers to over 80 years old. There were chores that fit everyone's ability, energy and attention.




The ice storm left us with lots of downed branches. Here are 2 of our willing volunteers hard at work.



Other jobs included cleaning out the herb bed



After most of the sticks were gathered, we had a controlled fire. We moved the leaves to be composted.



The ice storm of December '08 has given us lots of firewood.



One of our annual jobs is cleaning out the gutters. This year, Brandon & Tom Glenn volunteered for the job. Carolyn Heary is in the background raking leaves.



We kept the log splitter in use for the whole day.



Reminy, in the foreground, is helping move firewood to our shed.



Jacki's wonderful bread kept us going.



Along with Martha's wonderful matzo ball chicken soup.



We also moved some of the downed tree trunks from the campground to the downed beech tree logs. We'll have a sawyer come and make them into lumber which we will later use around Powell House. Remember the cherry and butternut used in the ACC renovations?



We moved wood from the campground to our wood shed and found that several passengers were "into" tractor rides, too. Mike loves to drive that tractor.

Constructing a Boiler

It's been a busy 7 days. A week ago, Anola Gowin primed the boiler room, painting over WHITEWASH, if you can believe it.



Sunday afternoon found Liseli and Buffy cleaning out around the edges of the concrete floor, so that the plywood would fit.



After a couple of tries, the plywood fell into place.



Now the room was ready for Buffy to paint. All this was in preparation for the new boiler, being delivered on Monday.



Monday: The bobcat made several trips to and from the truck; taking the 6 new sections to the basement and then picking up the 8 old ones. Here's the 1st delivery of the old.



and a wooden flat with 3 new sections.



Don't they look whole (refer to an earlier blog).



Now, putting it all together. Here's Ed measuring the space needed.



Tuesday afternoon the boiler looked like this.



Wednesday!



Thursday found Mike connecting pipes.



This is the "before" photo -- notice the hole in the pipe in the foreground as well as the space around the wall.



Here's Scott repairing the wall and replacing pipes outside the boiler room.



Back inside the room, Ed and Mike work together to get the connection good and tight. Ed's wrench weighs over 40 pounds!



Friday! Now we're waiting on tiny parts for the controls. Hopefully the manufacturer will actually send the right parts this time.