With all this excitement about early spring farming, we’ve been falling behind on the recipe posts!  So I thought I’d tell you about our Valentine’s Day dinner.  Like every other day, Marty and I decided to show our love for each other by cooking a meal together.  We made venison with roasted winter vegetables and steamed beet greens, and a Shaker Lemon Pie.  The venison, Marty seasoned with salt and pepper, pan-seared in our cast iron, and finished roasting in the oven.  The beet greens we just steamed in a vegetable steamer for a few minutes.  The other two recipes are on the following two posts, scroll down to see them.

I also made Marty a homemade Valentine. (And he brought me a flower!) He tends to like cute homemade things, and I have a new sewing machine and had been wanting to make something out of felted wool.  I’ve been into sewing projects made from recycled materials lately, and had seen some cool photos and examples of felted wool projects made from recycled sweaters.  I decided to give it a try.  I googled how to felt wool, and found out that you basically just wash it in hot water in the washing machine, then dry it in the dryer.  I used a couple of sweaters from the thrift store and a couple that I wanted to get rid of.  The results were pretty mixed, some of them didn’t change much, which made me doubt whether they were actually made from wool.

Then, when you cut them up, you have a nice thick wooly fabric that doesn’t unravel the way it would if you just cut up a sweater.  I just made a little zippered pouch with a heart on it, for Marty to keep his oversize business cards in.  Not bad for my first attempt and it didn’t take long to make, so I might try some more little dittys like this in the future.

The other awesome thing that happened on Valentine’s Day was that we got our first piece of fan mail!  In the actual US Postal Service Mail!  My old friend from high school, Kelley Hoffman, has been following our blog, and sent in this very special valentine in bumper sticker form:

Needless to say I loved the sticker and stuck it on the garden truck immediately.  I suggest you follow it’s advice, on Valentine’s Day and every day!  Thanks Kelley!

Additional fan mail for Cast Iron Idaho can be sent to 410 21st St., Boise, ID, 83702.  I also got some e-fan mail recently from Paul VanSavage, a cousin of my mother’s, and fellow foodie, who I’ve never met!  Thanks, Paul!

–Katie