Tis the Season

Wow!  I knew that I had a few pictures that I wanted to post, but I didn't realize that it has been a month since I last posted anything!

We have stayed very busy, that's for sure!  JP has been baking a lot.  

He also started his own sour dough starter, so we have been using that for pancakes, bread, biscuits, and crumpets:

I've been baking too - pies and tarts for Thanksgiving, an angelfood cake (to use up the egg whites after making Keto Egg Nog for JP) and birthday cakes for JP and J (who is now no longer a teenager!)

L helped me bake soft pretzels.

On a rainy Saturday evening, L and her friends attended the Cinderella Ball, and were transported in a Hummer/Limo.

On the next weekend, which was COLD and ICY, the library held its annual Turkey Trot 5K fundraiser.  L ran this year, and won a silver medal in her age category.  Stella walked in the pet walk and won "Best in Show."

Right after Thanksgiving, we had a big hail storm.  Nothing was damaged, although a couple of dead trees and limbs came down.

Now we are quickly approaching the granddaddy of them all, as far as holidays go.  Christmas is just around the corner.  The girls and I got the tree up last weekend.  I got most everything wrapped yesterday (still waiting for a couple of things to straggle in and I have to finish sewing a project as well.)  We have supplies to make Christmas cookies, so we'll start on that any time.  J came home on Dec 6th, and will be here through the first week of January.  L has a half day on Thursday this week, and will be off for the same time.  Hooray!  Christmas here we come!!

Priceless Autumn Feast Part 2

Tonight for dinner we prepared the rest of our Priceless Autumn Feast.  We had the Steak, Creamed Spinach and Potato course

It was delicious, and we still have leftovers!

Priceless Autumn Feast Part I

JP and I were invited through our LLBean membership to partake in a special "Priceless Autumn Feast."  This consisted of a curated box of fresh ingredients to make a several course meal with instructions to prepare such feast.

This is the box we received:

And this is the bounty I found inside:

When we started to prepare the meal this evening, we realized that it was way too much food for one meal.

Instead of preparing the entire menu, we just made the drink, the appetizer, and the dessert.

Fall Feasting

When I pulled all of the tomato plants out of the garden a couple of weeks ago, I was left with a BUNCH of green tomatoes.

So we did with them what anyone should do with green tomatoes, we made fried green tomatoes!

Served with Remoulade Sauce

I dried some more of my herbs, this time Rosemary.

I went ahead and pulled the pumpkin plant out because it froze, so the garden is now empty, but my counter is full of white pumpkins - I actually gave another good sized one to my parents!

A friend gifted us with an enormous maitake (hen-of-the-wood) mushroom.  I froze 2 lbs of it, and after one meal of delicious friend shrooms, I have another mess to fry up left in the fridge.

After a couple of days of rain, most of the leaves have fallen, so it's becoming more sad looking around here.  Now we just need some snow to cover up the ugly bits!

Asia Flew

I'm sipping my mug of peach tisane (we are trying to insert this word into our vocabulary when having herbal "tea",) staying warm inside and knowing that the temperature is dropping outside (and there might even be snow on Wednesday!)  I'm ready for it - we got our firewood stacked over the weekend, and I finished taking everything out of the garden today.

All that's left in there are my blueberries and strawberries, and a pumpkin plant.

I still need to finish cleaning out my flower beds, but I thought that the Solomon's Seal looked beautiful in the sunshine yesterday!

The trees lining our driveway have so many colors this year, it's gorgeous!

The one thing that I can't stand about Fall is the return of the Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs (I refer to them as THE MINIONS,) an invasive species from Asia.  This Fall has been particularly bad - when it is sunny out, the sides of our house and the soffits are covered with literally thousands of them.  Typically they find their way inside the house as well, and are loud and annoying when they fly around, but so far (knock wood) they haven't been bad in the house.  We have been super diligent about checking all the doorways when we go in or out lately to try to keep it this way!  This year, JP found a spray at Walmart, which seems to be significantly reducing the number of these nasties crawling around.  DEATH TO THE MINIONS!

Right before the weekend, I got hit with the bad cold that L had last week.  Numerous COVID tests have been negative, so this seems to be the garden variety corona virus, but it hit when I was not yet back 100% after surgery, so I'm still feeling pretty tired and congested.  Ugh.  Stay well y'all!

Swiss Miss

The rainbow swiss chard in my garden did amazing this year.  Since we had some frost here over the past 2 nights, I harvested most of it before the weekend.  I actually got a kiddie pool full of chard (this is only half of it!)

This stuff grew to massive proportions!

I have already blanched and frozen 5 lbs of it:

John cooked 4 lbs of it southern style with onion, garlic and a ham bone.

Last night we ate a bunch in this delicious pasta that I adapted from a NYT recipe.

Creamy Linguine with Swiss Chard

16 oz linguine

5 T butter

1/2 c panko crumbs

3/4 lb of swiss chard, stems sliced thin and leaves cut into smaller pieces

2 leeks (I used one large onion, sliced thin)

4 cloves garlic, chopped

1 tsp fresh thyme

1 filet anchovy, chopped

2 c broth

1 c heavy cream

3/4 c parmesan, grated

Italian seasoning, salt, pepper

-Melt 2 T butter in a skillet and add panko.  Season with salt, pepper and Italian Seasoning and toast until golden brown.  Set aside.

-Melt 3 T butter in the skillet and add onion, chard stems, anchovy, garlic and thyme and sauté until soft and onions are translucent.

-Add broth and cream and bring to a boil, and then reduce to a simmer for 10 min.

-Cook pasta and drain, then return to pot and add chard mixture.  Slowly stir in parmesan until creamy.  Serve with toasted breadcrumbs.

This weekend I also made some of my secret ingredient apple sauce to freeze.  It feels amazing to put food away for the winter months!

Enjoy your food adventures!

If I Could Save Thyme in a Bottle...

 Oh wait, I did that!

I harvested, cleaned and dried a bunch of thyme from my herb garden, along with more oregano.  I also counted - I have frozen 15 pints of corn from our garden, canned a couple of jars of tomatoes, frozen 3 quarts of tomato soup and 4 quarts of asparagus soup, as well as 6 pints of pasta sauce and numerous gallons of blueberries.  I also canned blueberry jam and pears.  I didn't do all this in the past couple of weeks - this is the accumulation of the season's harvest so far.

Actually, all I accomplished over the past week was having surgery!  I woke up around 2 AM on Wednesday morning with severe belly pain that landed me in the local ER (for 30 hours) with a diagnosis of acute pancreatitis, got me an ambulance ride to the tertiary hospital north of us, and gallbladder surgery on Friday.  I'm still pretty sore and tired, but at least I'm home and have been able to eat (in all that time in the hospital - Wednesday at 3 AM until Saturday at 11 AM - I was only given one meal although I did get some jello and ginger ale the night before surgery) and actually get some uninterrupted sleep!  I actually also read 2 books and did 3 hours of continuing education while in the hospital - that's pretty good, right?

When I feel like I can lean over comfortably, I will have to go see what's left in the garden - I'm sure we have lost a bunch of over ripe tomatoes, but the chickens will enjoy them.

J and her friend are coming home from college for a long weekend starting Friday.  Here's looking forward to a pain-free weekend with them!

Back to School and Fall Begins

Last week L started back to school.  First day of school traffic up the quarter mile hill to the schools has always been nuts, but it was particularly bad this year (and even worse on the second day of school, believe it or not.)

1st day of 11th grade

In the days leading up to the start of school, I noticed a couple of ending-type things:

The beautiful end of a day...

The final bloom fell off my orchid

It is always bittersweet to end the summer and head back into the busy days of school.  Sadly, the first day of school brought the sad news that the Theater Director, as well as the Costumer resigned, leaving no one to direct the amazing musicals that our HS has become known for.  It was devastating for L and her theater-nerd friends.

The garden doesn't seem to recognize that summer is basically over.  I have to pick tomatoes about every other day.  I have made numerous pots of pasta sauce that are languishing in the freezer until I use it this winter.  Likewise, I have frozen several containers of (copycat) Panera Tomato Soup for later use, and also canned several jars of tomatoes.  It is not uncommon for me to have an open-faced tomato sandwich on toast daily as well.

I have frozen several pints of corn from the garden over the past couple of weeks also.  And I am just waiting for the perfect moment to pick this lovely watermelon,

I harvested my potatoes last weekend, hardly worth mentioning.

JP and I harvested the pears from our (not just) ornamental pear tree yesterday, and I spent several hours last night and today drying and canning them.  These are the most delicious little pears!

The pears I canned today came out bright pink when compared to last year's pears.  I googled "home canned pink pears" and discovered that the extra high heat with pressure canning (which I did today) makes a natural chemical turn pink, whereas the ones that I canned with the water bath method last year stayed nice and creamy white.

Go figure!

Everything and the Kitchen Sink

Well, summer is essentially over.  The girls and I were able to take one last outing together - we went out for tea and thrifting.

We took J out to Bowling Green State University just over 1 week ago.  Her room is TINY, but we shoved all her stuff in there.  She declined assistance in unpacking, which means that she ended up keeping some stuff that we should have brought back home with us.  I have asked her for pictures of her room and her first day of school, and I'm still waiting.   Apparently, I'm not the only one (this is from the BGSU parents facebook page):

From Bowling Green we went on to Chicago (it took 2 hours to get through the city.)

The Sears Tower

Our destination was a storage unit about an hour west of Chicago.  There we picked up this desk that JP has wanted since 1995.  It has Norman Rockwell's "Four Freedoms" on the front.  He found it on eBay in the Spring and the sellers agreed to keep it in storage for us until now.

We were able to order a Chicago deep dish pizza that night.  It took us 12 hours to drive home the following day - exhausting!

Since we've been home, J has gotten through her first week of classes.  I have been kept busy in the garden.  I've frozen 6 pints of corn and 7 pints of pasta sauce.  While picking tomatoes the other day, I found this nest in my tomato plant!

Finally, this weekend JP and I replaced our kitchen sink.  The builder installed one that we picked out that was made of some sort of composite. We have never been able to keep the drains from leaking for longer than 9 or 10 months.  I have replaced the drains twice without success, so we decided it was time to try a whole new sink.  So far, no leaks (fingers crossed.)