Garden Harvest.

The boys are at the club and my husband and I took a walk this morning on West Cliff alone the ocean, came home and hung some laundry and I picked a few thinsg from my garden. I love fresh peas so I figure I would make a salad for dinner tonight and throw them in.

A lot of people will pick zucchini from their garden and do a nice vegetable dish, I pick it and think right off, zucchini bread, so you know what is coming, pictures of zucchini bread.

Here are a few pictures of my small harvest.

Towels I am working on.

So I am going to try to have the whole set done for Christmas for one of my daughters. I also have Raggedy Ann and Andy ones I am going to try and work on.

We are trying to keep Christmas low key and low cost. We always buy so much and the kids only play with a few things or have no idea what we got the. We have talked about drawing names this year also. We will see.

Caramel Corn

Here is my one left over bag of caramel corn. This was the last batch and I did not make enough of the coating for as much popcorn as I made. I made a lot and it is all gone.

I have been trying to get back on WW and be good but for some strange reason I cannot seem to. With the holidays coming it will be even worse. But I will not start looking for low fat recipes to make. I do not use all that color lard in my cooking, it has got to be real butter or I will not make it at all. That might be a good idea, stop buying butter. :o)

Soon school will start again and I will do better.Well until I start teaching myself cake decorating. I am so doomed. LOL OK, I will just have to get out there and walk an extra 30 minutes. Better yet, just need to get out there and start walking again. LOL

I have been thinking about the holidays a lot these past few weeks, I guess with having a grandchild now along with my younger kids it gets me thinking more about the holidays.

We are going to try and keep it simple this year, my kids will tell you I say that every year. I think it will be fun just to do homemade gifts. I will end up doing homemade and store bought, I am always that way. I am working on a cross-stich for one of my daughters, also some towels with days of the week and I am sewing on them. I will try to remember to take some pictures and post them.

Well my it is almost midnight so I think I will get ready for bed, my hubby must have had to work a little later tonight.

David's 17th Birthday!

Today August 11, 2008 our oldest son turned 17 he wanted to have a game night for his birthday.
David wanted Gyros for dinner, Geggie from the Taste from Home name exchange, sent me some spices from the Spice house for the sauce for the Gyros, it was really good.
We had a lot of fun and food. My oldest daughter Brandi from IL called to wish David a happy birthday and everyone thought they would pass the phone along to all the guys before it got to David. A new victim for the guys to all pester. We don't fall for it here but Brandi does not know two of them very well. For the party boxes I made caramel corn and since it was a game night I got chocolate dice and chocolate money for the popcorn boxes also.
Well it is almost midnight so I think I am heading to bed, it has been a long day for me.

Sunday Dinner

The weather is so cold here this summer I thought I would get a head start on Fall and decorate with some of my Autumn decor. I love the fall, the smells, the colors..just everything.
My family alone is large, then we throw in Brandon every Sunday (he is like another son of ours) and my daughter Kristine's boy friend Ryan. This week we had John and Molly over and Brother Bob. I cannot believe we fit all those people in my small dinning room.
I made rice pudding for dessert. A pot roast, mashed potatoes, carrots, green beans, Kristine brought a salad and Kimberly brought dinner rolls and apple cider to drink.
It was a nice dinner and we really enjoyed having company. if I could afford to have people over all the time I think I would. Sunday is the day the house is open. The college kids will be back soon and we will have them over.
The rice pudding recipe is so easy and it is really creamy. My husband hates white rice but he really enjoyed it until I told him it was rice pudding. Men are so funny. I will list the recipe below for the pudding.









Rice Pudding

1 cup rice
6 cups milk
1 cup sugar
2 T flour
2 eggs, beaten
1 tea vanilla
1 tea cinnamon
1/2 tea. nutmeg
Raisins

Pin a heavy bottom pan add rice and four cups milk. Cook for 20 minutes stirring often. In a bowl add the other two cups milk, sugar flour, eggs and vanilla. Cook for another 25 minutes until thicken. Stir in cinnamon and nutmeg and raisins if desired. Cool or eat at room temp.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Well school starts soon and all my canning and baking will slow down. Maybe not too much since I will be teaching a cooking class on Thursday's.

I figured I would make cookies for the boys and for Jacob to take to his Basketball camp today, he is always so hungry when we pick him up and I pack him huge lunches. He is in basketball camp for eight hours a day. We paid for his first camp but could not afford to send him to the second one so he earned the money himself. I made caramel apples, brownies, lemon bars and cookbooks for him to sell. He earned the money in two days. Well I should say all but $20.00 and we paid that. Tomorrow is the last day of his camp and he will miss it. He will sign up for baseball and soccer this fall with the homeschool group and then for the winter it will be volley ball which he hates and basketball which is his life anymore. David my oldest son is into music (piano) but the college cut the music class this fall. Danny is everything art.

Well all the cookies are gone that I baked. I always make rolls and keep it in the fridge so I can just grab a roll and bake it when needed it.

My Garden

It has been so cold here for the summer that my garden is having a very slow start. But I have been able to harvest some stuff. My second to the oldest daughter Kristine has a boyfriend Ryan who brought me some tomatoes so I added them to the stuff I got from my garden. Peas, green beans, basil and parsley. It was pretty good. My boys hate tomatoes so they would not eat it.
The zucchini and melons as well as the corn should be ready by next month. We have pretty much been in the 60's the whole summer. It is nice in some ways but it is too cold to go swimming.
October is always our warmest time of the year so I guess I will swim after school.

April's Home cooking: Taste Like Home

April's Home cooking: Taste Like Home

Taste Like Home

The candy is missing because my husband and oldest son got ahold of them. :o)

One of the blogs I belong to had a name exchange.
We signed up and were given a name from someone
in another state. I got
Geggie and her blog is http://www.geggieblog.blogspot.com/
It was so much fun. I was trying to think of things that my town is known for plus some homemade goodies. I got my box in the other day and it was full of so many goodies. I had toffee that my oldest son thought he would eat to save me from gaining an weight. My husband ate the chocolate cubs bar from Fannie Mays, we do not have a Fannie Mays out here. I cannot believe I did not think about sending Geggie candy from See's Candies here. I got face creams, lip balm and lip gloss from Burt Bee's, I also some GiardinierA, I have never tried this before I can't wait. I also got a jar of salsa...mike Ditka's hall of Fame Salsa. I will be using that for my son's game night Monday. Now I have to tell you the Spice House is one of my all time favorite places to go when I am in WI. Geggie lives in Chicago and this year they got a Spice House and I knew she would love
it so I told her about it and I was right. She got me some wonderful spices from there that I cannot wait to try. She got me some Billy Goat seasoning that I have never tried before, it is for making Gyro sauce and we like Gyros so I will have to make some, also some salmon Seasoning...another can't wait to try..Chicago deep Dish spice which I will use for Monday's Game night and some Chicago Steak Seasoning, I love this stuff and is the one thing I go right for when I go to the shop. It is also great on Chicken. You need to check out the Spice House on line,
I started ordering from them on line about 18 years ago and I still
remember the smell when I opened the box. I had forgotten about them for many years and then my oldest daughter moved to WI and she took us to Old Town and I seen a Spice House so I have to check it out. Once I walked into the spice House it brought back all those memories.. Geggie you need to check out Garret's Popcorn, it is right next to the Starbucks. (that's funny because there are so many Starbucks) It is easy to find.I can't wait until Geggie gets my box, it is due to arrive today. I should had shipped it UPS it would had been faster. This was a lot of fun and I hope to do it again some day.
Thanks Megan this was a blast.

Jam

Last month our new peach and Apricot got some fruit on it and I did not want to freeze them so I decided to make some jam and syrup. Then I decided to make some salsa.
Well one of our church members brought me over a ton of canning jars and then the next day he brought me over a huge bag of plums, so you now what I did, I made plum jam. Yesterday I was in my back yard and the apple trees we planted about six years ago that at the time our new dog chewed to the ground. We ended up pulling one up and just left the other one there. Well our three foot apple tree was full of some small to medium apples, so I decided to make some apple-butter with half of them also.
I would love to live on a farm some place out in the middle of nowhere and just grow all my own food and do a lot of canning, we are talking about getting some chicken to raise for eggs, I am a little worried about our neighbors and the smell. All the time I have been around chickens there was always a horrible smell. I should read up on how to keep chickens without the smell. LOL
. I enjoy canning it is very relaxing. Sometimes I think I was born at the wrong time.

Pears

We had a great sell on pears $0.57 a pound so I bought tons, OK not tons but a lot. There were about ten left and they were getting too soft for my family, they like to eat them when they are as hard as an apple. So I decided to make pies with them. I don't like really like pie crust but crumb topping is OK. Well one of the pies fell a little short with the filling so I seen one Granny Smith apple the boys had not eaten and I decided to add that to the one pie.
The pie was a hit with my family. We had it with vanilla ice-cream.
All I did was slice up the pears, add brown sugar, cinnamon and I love nutmeg so it goes in all my baked goods. For the crumb crust it was just four, brown sugar and butter.

Granola

Well I am at it again. You want to know something funny? You would think I really love granola with as much as I make it. I like it on vanilla yogurt and that is about it, I don't eat it otherwise. Why do I make it so much you ask? Two reason...one is I really love making granola and number two everyone always ask me to make them granola. So here are some pictures of my new batch of granola. This one has almonds, pecans, sunflower seeds, orange flavored cranberries, raisins, banana chip, apricots, dried mango and real maple syrup, not that fake color sugar water. I think I covered everything that is in it.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Bars

One of the blogs I really enjoy reading is Bake or Break, you need to check it out, I have made a few recipes off of hers already.
I have been wanting to make these for awhile and figure tonight would be a good night to try it. I doubled the recipe since I am going to mail some of to the Soldiers we adopted and my oldest daughter. I used Raspberry preserve on one half and the Peach/Apricot jam I made. I have not decided which one I like better yet. I tried them while they were hot out of the oven. I will try them tomorrow after they have cooled and after my WW meeting, got to weigh in before I eat junk. LOL

Here is the recipe...

1 cup butter, softened, plus more for preparing pan
3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for preparing pan
1 & 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 & 1/2 cups smooth peanut butter
1 & 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 & 1/2 cups strawberry jam (or other flavor)
1 cup salted peanuts, roughly chopped
Preheat oven to 350°. Butter a 9″x 13″baking pan. Line bottom with parchment paper. Butter the parchment and dust with flour, tapping out the excess.
Beat butter and sugar together on medium speed of an electric mixer. Mix for about 2 minutes, until fluffy. Add eggs and peanut butter, and beat about 2 minutes or until combined.
In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, salt, and baking powder. Add to butter mixture and beat on low speed until combined. Add vanilla and mix.
Transfer two-thirds of dough to pan and spread evenly. Spread jam on top of dough. Crumble remaining dough on top of jam. Sprinkle with peanuts.
Bake for 45-60 minutes, or until golden. Rotate pan half-way through baking. Tent loosely with foil if bars are getting too dark.
Cool on a wire rack. Run a knife around the edges to loosen. Refrigerate 1-2 hours. Cut into
bars and store in an airtight container at room temperature.