The kitchen smells awesome!

Check out the look on Patch's face, he's so fixated on that batter on the beater.
Patch and Miranda love licking the beater when I make Pumpkin puppy treats for Halloween.

Then I made a batch of Butterscotch cookies with butterscotch chips. Here Patch is eagerly waiting for me to request a taste-tester. Sorry Patch.
Dinner this evening is simmering in the slow-cooker. I'm making a Caribbean Peanut Curry Chicken. Every time I open the lid of the slow-cooker, I want to drool. This recipe was a bit more time-intensive than I expected. Every hour I had to add something.

Back in MN...again

My last trip home was unexpected and not 100% fun. My Dad called me on Monday to inform me that one of my best friends' mother had passed away and the service was to be held on Tuesday. Panic! I got in my car at 2:00pm and drove until I was almost into Cleveland. I stopped at an interstate oasis and slept for about 2 hours. I had Spinner and Blayze with me. They slept for most of the trip. I arrived in PA at about 10:00am. I unpacked, got the dogs settled and took a shower and got in my pajamas and was ready to crawl into bed for a nap when I realized that I had left my contact lens solution at home. I had to get dressed and go to Wal-Mart before I could get any precious sleep.
That evening was the viewing. I saw so many familiar faces. When I got to my friend in line, he was absolutely stunned. He said, "Oh, I can't believe it's you! Now that you're here, I'm going to cry. " And he did. I felt so bad for him and I really hope that being there for him helped him through a bit. I spent lots of time with him and his brother and his brother's friends. We went to a soccer match where his Dad is a coach. It was so fun to hang out with old friends and I really wish we could get together for different reasons. The above photo is of the entrance to Tioga Point Cemetery. It was a powerful experience to drive through those trees on such an emotional occasion.

While in the area I took one morning to go to Corning and visit my friend Hazel and see the new display at the Corning Museum of Glass. Hazel and I went to the Indian Restaurant for their lunch buffet. They have the best Chai there. Then we walked along Market Street and found the farmer's market. I got 2 heads of gorgeous garlic and I am still kicking myself for passing up an incredible garlic braid. Hazel got some huge green peppers and a few Thai hot peppers. The guy selling the peppers loved talking about them and told us a few stories about some customers reactions. I love the Corning farmer's market. Everything there is grown and sold by people passionate about their wares, not by exploited migrant workers like you see so much of out here.
I left on Saturday at 4:30am(3:30Central) and got home to MN by 9:00pm(8:00Central). This is Blayze's subtle way of asking, "Are we there yet?" Mike's nephews were spending the night on Saturday so their folks could go to their friend's annual Halloween party.
Here you see Patch along with CJ, CM and Mike carving a pumpkin. We also made Hershey brownies and dog biscuits. Mike took the boys to the dog park with Patch and Miranda on Saturday before I got home and they went again with all four dogs on Sunday.

This morning I had a job interview with a temp agency for a job in White Bear Lake. I think it went well and I should know the outcome by Wednesday. I like the idea of a temp job, because Michael and I have been trying to get pregnant, and if we are successful within the next few weeks, I could leave the job without any hassle.

Bread machine trials

Well, the second batch with the better yeast proved to be no better. I even took it out of the bread machine for the final rise, hoping that a loaf pan would give it more room to expand. I think the small paddle in the bread machine just doesn't work the dough enough to let the gluten do it's job. Both loaves were dense and chewy and didn't have a strong flavor. It wasn't bad bread, it just didn't suit my preferences. I don't think I'll throw away my bread machine, but I will lean towards my stand mixer much more.This is one of my favorite fall plants. I have to plant a new mum each spring because our winters are a bit too cold for it, but I don't mind. I was able to pinch back the plant enough to get a great shape and lots of showy blossoms this fall. The photo doesn't do it justice because the poor plant had been battered by a few successive days of rain. Normally it's much more perky. I planted silvery plants around it because I thought they would accent the burgundy blossoms and I think I got the effect I was after. I have licorice plant on the right and a groundcover on the left. The groundcover also serves a purpose as it keeps the mulch in place during a heavy rain when the water from the downspout washes out over the flowerbeds.

Friday forecast

51 degrees and windy windy windy. I'm watching my bird feeders bob and sway.
I missed a few days of posting, sorry about that.
I'll start with Wednesday, 'cuz that was fun. As you may remember, Mike is on a flag football team at a local sports bar. It's not a terribly organized activity, it's played on a crappy half field and the ref is some local guy who gets paid in beer tokens. We're lucky if he shows up. There's one small set of aluminum benches and most of the illumination of the field is provided from the lights for the adjoining softball fields. There are three or four very nice softball fields and some volleyball courts and a batting cage. The other sports have much more participation and the flag football league is the rag-tag band who gets the scraps, and that suits us just fine. Mike's team is filled with either khaki or suit-wearing businessmen who get one day a week in the fall and winter to take out some frustrations on a drunk loudmouthed jerk on the opposing team. I love going to watch the games. I've sat through snow, rain and freezing temperatures. One day, it was actually nice out. There's not supposed to be any tackles or roughness, but it sometimes happens. The team they were playing against on Wednesday was particularly brutish. At one point when Michael ran into the endzone to receive a pass for a touchdown, someone hit him so hard he tumbled out of the endzone and rolled a few times until he slammed into a fence. He got right back up and started yelling at the guy, but the guy said he was pushed by a block into Michael. He was lying, but the ref sided with him, and no one felt like arguing. Michael had scored the touchdown anyway. They won that game. (Michael now has a big purple bruise on his right side from where the guy hit him.) After the game everyone goes inside to either cool down for the players or warm up for the spectators. There's a few pitchers of cheap beer thrown back and everyone talks about the game that was just played or digresses into relaxed barroom conversation. Michael and I sat next to Fergus, who was married the same summer Michael and I were. He happened to mention that of all the wedding gifts they received, he'll never forget the one from us. We gave them a card and a big batch of cookies. He then also mentioned that the batch of cookies I brought to a game last year were well appreciated and would also be well appreciated in the future if I wanted to bring them again. (I got the hint) So that started us talking about baking and we got on the topic of bread. Here, Michael and Fergus got into a heated debate about bread machine vs. artisan bread. Fergus brought up a good point, that immediate gratification can have it's place in bread making, so yesterday I broke out the bread machine to give it a try. The bread was chewier and denser than a traditional loaf, so I gave it another try today with a different yeast. Today I'm using instant rather than active dry. I'll let you know how it turns out.
Tuesday I finally made my first batch of blended preserves. I made apple mint jelly. It's a beautiful shade of pink from the apple peel and it tastes just like candy. Surprisingly this was really easy to make. I just quartered the apples, added a bunch of chopped mint, a little water and simmered everything until the apples were almost mush. Then I smashed everything up, put it in a cheesecloth and hung the bag over a big saucepot overnight to catch all the juices. The next day I added sugar and boiled to the gelling point then canned the jelly. The leftover apple and mint mush in the cheesecloth, I processed through a food mill and got mint infused applesauce. Score!

Cloudy, cold and drizzly out

Just a little weather update in case you were curious. It's been cold and drizzling for the last 2 days now. We whipped up some awesome comfort food last night. Mike made venison parmesan:I made corn chowder from the Farm and Home Journal Cookbook. (My new favorite cookbook) The recipe is so simple it amazes me how good it tastes. The more I delve into cooking as a serious hobby, the more complex and exotic the recipes get, so this was a real eye-opener. I did learn one lesson though: when using salt pork, cook it longer than you're comfortable with. It imparts a great flavor, but when you take a bite of soup and get a chewy chunk of pork fat, it's not a lot of fun. Here's a photo of the salt pork and onions. This smelled sooooo good. All I added after that was diced potatoes and some frozen corn (leftover from a party this summer) and some milk. Simple and delicious!
I've also been working with those pumpkins. We wanted to do a trial with field pumpkin vs. pie pumpkins. The pie pumpkins are much smaller than the field pumpkins. We were trying to see if it was worth going through the effort of cooking a lot of little pumpkins or if we could just get a bigger batch of pumpkin puree from one larger field pumpkin.The above photo shows the pie pumpkin cut and partially cleaned. It's a beautiful orange color. The other is an uncut field pumpkin of relatively the same size (to get a decent comparison).
The finished result was obvious. The pie pumpkin might have been smaller but it yielded 4oz more puree than the field pumpkin. The color is more pleasing and the taste and texture were more what we wanted. We'll be making a return trip to the pumpkin patch for more. I have many pies, cookies and soups to make over the winter.
On another note, Mike spent some time yesterday repairing the damage to our roof from the big wind storm we had this summer. It ripped some fascia and drip edge off over our front entrance.As if that wasn't enough, I went and clogged the disposal again. He decided to get into the root of the issue and he found an undesirable decrease in size in the pipe between the disposal and the trap. He took the whole thing apart and changed the way the water flows from the disposal to the trap.You'll notice that in the above photo his pants are soaked from the knees down. That's because he was working on the whole system while the dishwasher was running. During the dishwasher drain cycle, it sends the waste water through the disposal and Michael underestimated the pressure of the water. It showered him and parts of the kitchen with hot soapy water. I guess not every repair job goes off without a hitch. Sorry Honey.

Porch decorations

This is my front stoop for the fall. The 5 biggest pumpkins, the white pumpkins, the little decorative gourds and the tall oval shaped gourds (what the heck are these things anyways?) came from our own back yard. The sorghum and the small pumpkins under the table are from Lent's Pumpkin Patch. The pile of rocks are the purple shale that I have to polyurethane before they start splitting apart even more.
I love autumn. The pumpkins, the harvest, the colors of the leaves and especially the cider. Mom bought us a half gallon of cider from the place we used to get apples pressed when we grew them on the farm. We brought it back to Minnesota and put it in the fridge. Yesterday I was reaching into the fridge for something when I passed over the cider, but the jug was tipped over and a little had leaked out. I grabbed the jug, afraid that it had been punctured by something in the fridge, but it wasn't, and the seal wasn't broken. I brought it over the sink and started pulling off the safety seal when the whole top blew off the jug and a shower of foam came pouring out of the jug. It fermented! I yelled, "Look honey! Hard Cider!" Mike said, "That's rotten apple cider. -And you're drinking it?!" It was the tastiest hard cider I had ever found. All those years of buying apple cider and trying different methods for coaxing a natural fermentation, and it happens all on it's own when I wasn't even trying. Just another treat in the fall.

Blogging about Blogging

72%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?
Yeah, this just proves how hooked I am.

Pumpkin Patch

No, we didn't take Patch to the Pumpkin patch, we went to the Pumpkin patch by ourselves.


It's an annual tradition in our house to go to the Pumpkin patch and heave a few soft pumpkins into the air so they can rest in pieces. It's a tricky process. You don't want to get caught so you have to wander off away from the crowd of pumpkin pickers. You want a pumpkin that is intact so the guts don't fall out onto your shoe when you pick it up. And finally, you want to throw it both high and far so you don't get splattered by the pumpkin goo.
We also picked up a few small pie pumpkins and a cute green gourd as well as a bundle of sorghum for decoration on our stoop. We'll be freezing fresh pumpkin puree this weekend.
We thought we'd check out some other area pumpkin patches and orchards while we were out on such a beautiful day. This was when I really felt that it stinks to live close to a big city. One pumpkin patch charged 7 dollars per person as admission. (We turned around as soon as we saw that.) The orchard didn't let you pick your own apples and they charged 3 dollars to go through the corn maze. Then the line to get into the barn to see the bakery and buy some apples was over 100 people long! Ugh!
I have been cooking, honest I have! I just haven't been taking pictures. I've been making some rather tasty but unattractive dishes lately. I made a scrumptious tuna noodle casserole with fresh pasta and home made cream of mushroom soup. It was delicious and disappeared very quickly. Tonight I made a shrimp alfredo, again with fresh pasta and homemade sauce. I think I have the cream sauce mastered.
Last night Michael made chicken caesar salad with dressing he made from scratch and a recipe that substitutes tofu for the egg yolks. It's surprisingly tasty, despite having tofu in it. We try to keep up a decent protein intake. Occasionally we overdose on the fat, so we'll make a tofu meal to balance things out. (Hence, the alfredo tonight)
As far as baking goes, last night I made fruity protein bars (Alton Brown convinced us they were much better and much much cheaper than the ones you buy) and today I made a batch of butterscotch cookies from the Farm and Home Journal cookbook that Mom handed down to me. I already love that cookbook. It has a recipe for a lard cake. How cool is that?!?!

Dog on Steroids

The photo was taken on our trip back home. Patch's allergies were so bad he had developed an ear infection, his paws were hurting very badly and he was miserable. Normally I don't let him sit on my lap, but when he's not feeling well, he seeks me out for comfort. How can I say No?
Yesterday I took Patch to the vet for his appointment. We got there about 5 minutes early, so we got to meet a few other dogs in the waiting room. One was a docile 85lbs Collie-Shepard mix named Fletch. I liked Fletch, he a was a big lovable goon. The other was a 18 year old terrier mix named Scruffy. Scruffy was on his last legs but his owner said it wasn't his day to go to doggy heaven so he was there to pick up some things to help make him more comfortable. Patch cordially sniffed each dog and stayed right by me. I was surprised at how well Patch was behaving. After Scruffy and Fletch left, we were waiting for our exam room to open up when out comes this enormous white husky with dazzling ice blue eyes. Those eyes locked on Patch and instantly conveyed a message of "KILL!" I tightened my grasp on Patch while this recalcitrant Husky lunged and pulled his petite owner forward toward Patch. She somehow managed to wrangle her beast out the door and after one obligatory bark in response from Patch, all was calm. I kept assuring Patch he was doing a great job, but the real trial was yet to come. The tech led us into an exam room, took some information about his allergies and his ear infection, swabbed his ears and then we waited for the results. By the time the Vet arrived, there was a very nervous 60-lb puppy sitting on my lap. We hoisted him onto the exam table and I held onto his collar while the Vet checked him over thoroughly and asked me several questions. He and the tech then cleaned his ears and put medicated drops in them. At one point during the ear cleaner step, the Vet said, "You might want to step back, he's going to shake." Patch then showered us all in ear cleaner and goo. The poor tech got the worst of it. In all, through the whole thing Patch was quite the trooper. he didn't flinch or fight us one bit. His back legs trembled, but that was the only indication that he was not comfortable. The Vet actually said, "I'm just agog at how well behaved this dog is." (I'm not kidding, he really said, "agog") Oh, how my heart swelled with pride at the flattery. The Vet put him on a course of Prednisone for his allergies and I have to give him ear drops once a day for 2 weeks.
Even though Patch is often the hyperactive mischief maker at home, I really do love the big lug.
See folks- you really can take an unwanted troubled dog and turn it around to be a great member of the family.

Busy Wednesday

Dinner last night was sausage stuffed peppers. I stuffed them much more full than this, but I stopped mid-preparations to take a picture while the dish still looked pretty. I used mild italian sausage rather than plain ground beef and that made all the difference between a plain spanish rice tasting dish and something flavorful and able to stand by itself.
This morning I joined my MIL, SIL and her daughter to visit Michael's cousin's new baby girl. We brought over some cute baby outfits and spent the morning chatting and drinking coffee. Then the four of us went out for lunch. I had a half sandwich and Cowboy bean soup. (Apparently Cowboy bean soup = franks and beans. Who knew?)
Right now Michael is out playing football while I'm slow simmering a chili. I added chipotle peppers and some dried cayenne peppers. It's pretty hot stuff. I normally watch every one of his games but because I had the dogs in their kennels all day, I felt guilty about leaving and putting them right back into their kennels.
Poor Patch is miserable. His allergies are so bad he's developed an ear infection. He has an appointment at the vet's tomorrow. His allergies have gotten better since we got back home. They were really bad in PA. Here we have central air and he breathes filtered air throughout the day and only goes out for potty breaks. In PA he was breathing allergens 24/7 and they never had the killing frost like we had several weeks ago. His paws itched him terribly and his skin got really dry and nasty. He's slowly recovering. The vet told me to put him on Benadryl. It's crazy the things we do for our dogs.