They're Back!! And A Recipe

Wednesday morning's visitors caused a panic!  It was the first truly cold morning this fall and as I walked into the kitchen I could hear a lot of birdsong and twittering outside the windows and to my horror, several birds were pecking at my empty bird feeders looking for food.  Over the two winters we have lived here at the Rye house, I have put out feeders with a variety of seeds and just sat and waited for them to eventually find us.  And now here they were waiting for us!  I panicked, worrying that if they didn't find food right away they would go elsewhere and not return.  Immediately after my hot chocolate I headed to Ace hardware and bought many bags of seed, got the rest of the feeders out of the garage, cleaned them and then filled all eleven feeders.  I expected the birds to descend immediately on the feeders once they were filled but no, it took them three days to return.  And this morning there they were, dozens and dozens of them, all different kinds of birds at all the feeders; outside the kitchen and the two on the back porch.  Hooray!  Bird feeding and watching is one of the great pleasures of winter for me.

 I filled the feeders Wednesday and Saturday they showed up again.

 The blue birds are my favorite.

Now for a fabulous recipe that I found on Susan Branch's blog.  It's a crispy salmon and takes just minutes to make and it is the best salmon I've ever eaten!  Here's is what you do:
Crispy Salmon Steaks
Take your steaks and cut them into serving sizes.  Slice the skin off.  Salt and pepper them.  In a medium pan over medium high heat add 2 teaspoons of olive oil and heat until shimmery.  Add the salmon steaks and cook the first side about 8 minutes until they are golden and crispy looking.  Flip over and cook 4 minutes on the other side.  That's it!  They are so so delicious - tender and moist inside and crispy/crunchy on the outside.  I served them with a salad made from the last of the garden butter lettuce picked today topped with cold roasted vegetables and a balsamic viniagrette.

 The final harvest - butter lettuce, thyme and sage.

 The salmon - doesn't it look wonderful?  It is.  And we ate the two leftover steaks the following evening cold over more garden lettuce, nuts, feta, cold roasted vegetables, peppers etc - yum!

Yesterday I did the final yard clean up - all pots are emptied, all annuals pulled, all perennials cut back and now we just wait another week for a landscape company to come suck up all the leaves left on the property.  Here are some pretty garden things I brought in and some still outside doing their pretty thing.

 Oak leaves on the mantel

 Okay, I didn't grow these this year but I have for years prior.  I put white ones on that table every year and they last until early spring and then they are replaced with whatever I can find in the grocery store until fall comes again.

 I dried and pressed these and now they are Art.

 The last ones to go.

It's late November and these huge aster plants are as fresh looking as can be.  On another note, Dan and I are off to the west coast tomorrow to the San Francisco area to spend Thanksgiving with Dan's daughter Kara and her family, to visit our old stomping grounds and see old friends and then for a few days after we will be roaming up where the giant Redwoods grow.