This was from one of the meals at Youth Conference! I sure do love me some cheese.
Category: Cooking
Watermelon
I believe I was mistaken
So, I was pretty convinced there were raccoons in my plants.
Until this morning when I opened the front door and saw two squirrels pulling on the bird feeder post. They had it bent clear to the ground and were eating the seeds.
I got mad! I told them I hated them, and never to come back; then I shook my fist at them. Mostly because one of them was digging in a flower pot that was barely beginning to sprout. They had better not have destroyed our flowers.
I went to Farm King and found squirrel repellent. When I pulled back into the drive, there was another squirrel digging at the base of the post. I will have to re-dig and re-place the post.
The repellent is a wolf or fox urine based product, 100% organic, and stinks! It won’t (shouldn’t) scare the birds away, and ought to not harm my produce. I hope it works!!!
I guess it is sort of an on-going project
As I sit on my porch, admiring the garden I have been working on, I figure I had better post pictures of the garden as much as I have.
Picture heavy!
View of front of house. I like to sit in those chairs and enjoy the warmth, and try to catch glimpses of the birds.
Here is from the west. The edges here are rain gutters that were taken off the house(they have been sitting on the ground for quite a while so I figured I can use them). I cut them and buried them as borders.
Same section, different view.
East section.
Sunflower-this is the first I had seen of it above dirt, it grows fast. These are the Mammoth Gray variety and will get heads about 20 inches wide and we will be able to eat the seeds, if the birds don’t get them first.
It is really cool-I think-to see the ground split from the pressure of the plants growing and breaking through.
Here are the beets once they broke through. I had to put the beets in a bigger pot, not pictured.
Here are blooms on the tomato plant (there are two opened, more not yet, one may be harder to see).
There was a furry creature that dug up in this flower pot. I think it must have a death wish!
Then I saw that it was digging up the pot where I had planted carrot seeds!
And if that wasn’t enough, it decided to dig into the unopened bags of soil that I hadn’t gotten to yet.
This picture was taken through the window. The birds like the food I put out, but must not be comfortable around me yet, because if I am on the porch they tend to stay away. Or if they do approach, they fly when they notice the camera.
However I was able to finally capture a few birds. Here is a sparrow.
And here is a Cardinal, we think he is still young and growing his red feathers yet.
We have beets, carrots, green bell peppers, big hamburger tomatoes, roma tomatoes, sun flowers, potatoes (white and red), and some strictly decorative flowers.
I started this post Sunday, so it gets that date, however I did finish it on Monday.
Great, now I have to try TOFU
Created by Recipe Star
I love bread
In pretty much any form. Except probably in a Ruben.
I decided to make some cinnamon rolls and bread yesterday. It is/was yummy.
Jacob and I had just watched an episode of Throw Down With Bobby Flay about sticky buns, so I decided while I was making cinnamon rolls to make a couple of them in the sticky bun style. It was delicious! And not at all full of calories. The sticky buns were about 333 calories each. Here are some pictures of the results.
Regular rolls and cinnamon rolls. I did make more cinnamon rolls than that, however this is what spilled onto the second pan.
The loaves of bread. I am so excited that I finally understood how to braid the bread!
Unfortunately, I failed to take a picture of the final product of the sticky buns. However, I did take a picture of the ramekin that I used to bake it in.
I started with a layer of buttermilk syrup (that we had left over from pancakes) and then a layer of almond slivers. I then placed the raw cinnamon roll in the dish and baked it just like the rest of the rolls. Upon removing from the oven turn upside down on plate. I learned the harder way, that if you let the ramekin set there for a while, the sticky bun keeps the “glaze” and almonds in place, and makes for a nice presentation.
Pear Apple Butter
I tried my hand at canning for the first time alone. I made lots of apple butter and pear-apple butter. It is all so yummy! And the jars all sealed properly, it is so fun to listen to the lids all “popping.” However it does bring up a question, why is it called canning when we use jars?
Souffles
We had the missionaries over for dinner (a couple times recently, kinda seems to end up once a week for periods of time and then once every other month other times). We like to ask if there is anything they have been missing or anything they would like to try out. Well, we found out that neither Elder Vance or Elder Naegle (pictures forthcoming) had ever had a souffle. Or, Chocolate Soup as some young people call it, it still tasted good!
Mallory’s Visit
Mallory came to stay last weekend with us*. We made her earn her keep. Only we wouldn’t let her wash the dishes.
We surprised her by showing up for her play on Friday night.** Then we went over to see Rick, Ginny, and Skyler for a little bit and played nerts. Being Martin’s birthday, we called to sing him “Happy Birthday”, but poor Ashley had to hear us instead. When we got to Macomb, I gave Mallory about 30 wipes*** to clean the stage make-up off of her face. We got up early the next morning so we could go be time/score keepers for the stake basketball tournament. That was fun, just ask Mallory
. She and I then left Jacob at the house and we went to the pet stores to get me some fish.**** Mallory had never seen Johnny Lingo so I had her watch that as we were trying to get up the motivation to make some bread. It was yummy. And we made some cinnamon rolls too-they were delicious. Good job Mal, I made her do a lot of the work.***** We made lemon-lime pepper chicken, homemade french-fries, and peas for supper. Mallory was in charge****** of the peas, and mostly the fries. And I had her be the taste tester for the Chicken. Oddly enough, all that was left-over were the peas. (I ate them the next day.) We went over to Jacob’s parent’s house and played more nerts. ******* Sunday Mallory helped out in the nursery because our regular teachers were out of town or sick. I hope she had fun in Macomb, even if she did have to sleep on the futon.
This is the yeast, rising for the bread.
Making fries.
Cooking Peas.
While they waited for me to finish cooking the chicken, Jacob gave her a lesson on cymbals.
*Not this last one, the one before it. I am just getting slower at documenting things.
**Martin’s Birthday-the real one, not the one we normally celebrate for him
***So she probably really only used 5 or 6, but you get the idea, there was way too much make-up on her face.
****Yes I finally set the tank up after all the fish died last summer. However, there are only 2 fish left. Sonny and Cher. They look like they will survive. I hope so, I am done with dying fish.
*****It is kind of hard to say we made her do it, she volunteered to do everything.
******We even had her wearing a Chef’s coat.
******You would think we like the game or something.
Yummy, Yummy, Yummy
Our friends Jason and Jessie had us over for steak tonight. It was good. Aiden referred to the dinner rolls as biscuits. So, I did the best thing I could think of doing, I started talking with an English accent. She gave me funny looks, but by and by, she started to pick it up a little too. You could mostly hear it in her “okay.” We laughed. We brought over dessert. I made little white chocolate mousse tarts again, however I used peaches instead of strawberries*. We stayed and talked for a while after Aiden went to bed. It was a good time.
Aiden is allergic to berries, and I still wanted to use fruit on it. I was a bit hesitant to use peaches, but it tasted nicely.