Feelin’ Foggy

Hello friends!

I’ll be honest, this week is all just building around my wanting to share some photos. I decided to try my hand at some weather based photography and the results came out pretty good for my first real attempt. Fog is a weird one, and especially hard when you weren’t prepared for it (it was a last minute decision to go out and get cold soaked) and are down in the thick of it. But I think it made for some creepy photos.

The fog made everything super creepy and cold, I got this photo of Ro having a lovely snack out in the pasture. To be honest, it took a lot of convincing to let them out, I usually don’t like letting them loose when I can’t see them from the house. I’m the definition of a helicopter horse mom.

This little plant was holding it’s own in the fog, and I snapped this photo when it had burned off just a little. The fog rolled back over us in waves for most of the day, so I didn’t have to wait long for the mood to return.

The old bridge across the canal, allows access to the wetlands and my neighbors fields, it’s on my property but one particular neighbor (who’s land is nowhere near mine) seems to think I need permission to be outside the fencing and likes to police the bridge. Oh well.

This is more canal road, although you can see the canal is officially dry for the year. They usually open in about April and close it down around late October, early November. It’s beautiful in all seasons, and magical in the fog.

I have so many photos of old barbed wire, but it’s just a weirdly fun object to shoot. It always has unique shape, changing the backdrop can completely change the vibes, and honestly, it owes me some cute photos for all the clothes it’s torn and skin it’s shredded. Not very forgiving stuff.

After I got back in, I was, quite obviously, frozen to the bone, so some split pea and ham soup was in order. Luckily, I had made some a little earlier on in the week, so it was easy to warm up, but that was a pretty interesting experience in its own right.

I tried modifying my very simple stovetop recipe to work in the slow cooker, and I’m still convinced it would have worked if I used smaller batches and a different plan, but after 24 hours of soaking the peas per internet instruction (I soak mine overnight anyway) and 8 hours in the slow cooker, I had warm ham and cold peas. So, as starving as I was, I called in a tall person and emptied the contents of the slow cooker into my giant Dutch oven, voila, soup in about two hours. I needed a tall person because otherwise I’d be holding about 5 pounds of soup and easily a couple pounds of crockery at eye level, which sounded like a good way to drop my soup.

Anyways, we finished it stovetop, which is not bad at all, but for some reason split pea and ham requires constant babysitting on the stovetop and no matter what I do, I end up with some sticking to the bottom of the pot. I don’t have this issue with other things I cook in my big ole butch oven, just the split peas soup. If anyone knows why that happens, please let me know. I also have to stir it about every two minutes, so it’s not really a “make while at work” kinda dish, which is why I was hoping for a set it and forget it option. 

Oh well, more testing is needed, trial and error and all that.

Anyways, this post is getting a little long, and I’m now thinking about leftover soup, so I’m gonna sign off here. Have a great weekend my friends, I’m not sure if I will get the next post up before or after Thanksgiving so if I don’t see you, have a wonderful holiday!

Until we chat again my friends.