Pork On Pork Please!

I didn't get a picture but I'll describe it for you. I took 2 fat pork chops, wrapped them in half cooked bacon, and then poured the cheese sauce I made over them. Toss em' in the over for an hour, and they're done.

This was so fattening I decided against making anything but a giant salad drizzled in oil. Simple as that.

I've been getting ready for Thanksgiving. I went through my menu last night and made a list of last minute items I need to pick up today. So something had been nagging at me for the past couple weeks, like I was forgetting a dish or something. I figured it out, I completly forgot about the cranberry chutney sauce! Could you imagine the disaster that that would have caused? No cranberries? Glad I figured that out. Phew!

I've also been roasting a lot of pumpkins, and still have 2 more to do. Although I'm sure I'll pick up a couple more pumpkins because I noticed I hadn't made pumpkin bread yet, and we love pumpkin bread around here. Yes, more sugar's please!

The Taste Of Osha

Osha root - the root of a flower (from the basil family) that generally grows in the Southwest regions, has been used for thousands of years by the Native Americans. This powerful, and strong smelling root is used for colds, flu, pneumonia, TB, congestion, wards off rattlesnakes, naturally purifies the air, viral infections, bronchial inflammation, difficulty breathing, allergies, asthma, indigestion, promotes productive sweats which in turn expells toxins from the body, and has strong antibacterial properties.

Simply warmed up it beneficially affects upper gastro, cardiovascular, and central nervous systems. It's also beneficial for reproduction, stimulating the the uterus, kidneys and is good for circulation. Why am I talking about Osha root?

My youngest daughter, 15 months, has been fighting a nasty viral infection for almost 2 months. As you know there's no westernized cure for a viral infection. Also, my husband, my 3 year old and myself have been passing back and forth colds and all around ickyness. Sick to death of this, a good family friend who is very familiar with natural medicines, told us to try osha. So I made a trip to the herb shop in hippyville Bellingham and bought my first ounce of Osha root.

For Bel's sake, I made her some tea and put it in her bottle, followed by a bit of honey to help the taste and then mixed it with milk. The very next morning, she looked better, she sounded better and the drainage from her little nose was cut by about 80%. I steam her room with the hot pan to help cleanse the air, mixed with her normal humidifier, she is already all around much healthier.

Wow, I'm so done with medicine in a bottle. I'm not sure why I hadn't really picked up on this form of treating, I grew up with it. My parents are excellant gardeners and can grow anything. Along the way, my mom started getting into natural remedies and always had an herb garden filled with something that tasted aweful in one form or another, but they worked. Ding dong ping and a light goes off.

A Breather At Best

So I took a breather. It was kinda nice, although my time was filled with a thousand other things, it was still nice to not feel an obligation to write. I figured when I started thinking about it again, then it would be time to start. This time I don't expect myself to write everyday, but will learn to enjoy my writing, baking and taking pictures at will.

This past month has been almost disastrous. We are going on 39 days of at least one person being sick, and at times there were 3 of sick at the same time. I've missed a wedding, a dinner party, and a few holiday festivities here and there. I've been holed up and held down. Mia has missed a few days of school, and I've missed teaching days. Remarkably, no matter how terrible my girls have felt, they are remarkably upbeat.

All that said, Halloween still went well, and we managed to do some trick-or-treating. I have 3 sugar pumpkins to roast and a pie to bake, and Halloween decor to put away. I've been deep cleaning a lot of things in prep for Thanksgiving with the Johnson's - I'm pretty excited about this!

So this morning I woke up pretty early (really, what's new?) and immediatly started my coffee cake muffins. I doubled the recipe because it was suppose to be for the kids at the preschool - today was my work/snack day. Five minutes after I pulled the last batch out of the oven, and carefully wrapped my cut veggies, I got a call that school was cancelled. Great, what am I to do with all these extra muffins? Good thing we have neighbors.

Last night I tried this very different recipe for chili. I found it on momswhothink.com. It had things like ground cloves and red wine. Hmm, different - so lets try it. Didn't think to take a picture but it looked and smelled amazing! Mark and the girls ate it right up, but I had some reservations.

For starters, I was 1/2 cup short of a batch of cornbread to go with it, by the time I figured that out, the chili had been on the stove simmering for almost 2 hours and I wasn't going to go the store. So I had some other garnishes that worked just fine. The flavor that the cloves added was different, but good, just not outstanding. The red wine however, was far to overpowering. I really thought it could do without. Anyways, I'll file the recipe away in my box with a sticky note of what not's and see if it see's the light of day again.

Update on my grapes - they still aren't sweet enough to make jam with. By this time, the family of racoons and various birds are eating up what I left behind. This year, they will definitly be feasting. I still test taste in hopes that I'll get enough to make a batch or two, but for sure for sure will NOT be getting my 12-15 batches. 100% the weathers fault. Thanks. Now to start planning Thanksgiving!

An Outlet

I know, I know. I said I was going to take a break. But wait, I need an outlet to pour out my frustration and disgust. About a month ago, my in-laws house was broken into and among many other things that were taken, they stole all of the spare keys to all the rental houses. So we went on a little frenzy to change locks to at least do our part of "protecting" tenants belongings.

Last night we got a call from our best tenant living in the house that Mark and I renovated, aka- my baby. Any wrong doing of any kind to it in any way throws me over the edge. What I'm really leading up to is this - they also have what they think is a spare key to my house. When we moved in, we pretty much changed all the locks anyways and we have chains and such on all the doors. We have hard locks on the gates, deadbolts and chains throughout, high windows with bars in every single one (can you tell we've been robbed before?) and motion lights.

Although I do feel pretty secure, I still have the little train of thought that one day - or night - they may try to get in and then unfortunatly I will be forced to instigate the Second Amendment and inevitably, the Castle Doctrine. I now know that these people (or person) has a .45 and a multitude of knives - that's what they stole from my tenant. So I have every reason to believe that if they weren't armed before, they should be now.

As much as I would like to think that this all pure coincidence, I just can't assume that anymore. From this day on I feel like my house is a sitting target, and although my husband trained and armed me well enough to defend myself should I ever find myself or my girls in any situation, I really want to go through my life knowing I didn't have to shoot someone. These crack head bastards are making me think differently. I almost invite them to break into a house full of loaded guns and an overprotective mother. Maybe then I'll get better sleep.

This just strengthens my distrust with 99% of the population and that makes me sick.

A Time Out? More Coffee Please!

Time is slipping away from me. I've been so freakishly busy, I hardly have time to breath sometimes. Between preschool, house chores, Aikido, doctor appts, dentist appts, and various other things that pop up randomly, I have little time to plan new dinners.

I actually haven't tried any new recipes lately. I've been making a multitude of things that I've made in the past, so what fun is writing about the same thing? It's not. I've hardly done any baking lately either, just some breads, but nothing I haven't made before.

I also have some discontent with things. My grapes were looking good, but I keep taste testing and they are way too sour to do anything with, even with a large amount of sugar, they wouldn't make a good jam. At this point, I think I may be buying jam by January. Large sad face here please! Also, I wasn't able to make it to my blackberry picking party I planned for forever. The berries were good for about 2 days (literally) and during that 2 days, Mark was away on his hunting trip. Definitly wasn't going alone on that trip, so I missed out completly. No blackberry jam either. What a bust!

I wondered if I should buy blackberries just to avoid having to buy jam from the store - then I saw the $12 for 1/2 flat price tag at the Farmers Market - really? I looked at their berries, and secretly wondered where the berries came from because no berries in this county looked nearly that good. Pass.

So with the little time I have, which is just enough time to make what I'm already familiar with, maybe I should just take a break from writing. Hopefully it won't be for too long. I feel like I need to take the pressure off a bit.

I am however starting to plan for Thanksgiving. I have finally managed to get the Johnson side of the family together and I honestly can't wait. I am also getting a bigger, better and longer lasting dining table. It's 8 feet long! I was given one earlier this year that was suppose to fit 10...wrong, it comfortably fits 4 with elbow room. Fail. Anyways, I am confident that this table will be my table for many, many years to come. Godda run for yet another appointment time I need to make.

Sunday Football

Mia and I made some pepperjack nachos and enjoyed them while we baked our pie that we made. Nachos go good with football.

Apple pie for breakfast anyone? Anyone? Sold! To Mia and her mommy.

Pumpkin Scoopin'

My first sugar pumpkin for the season. Finally cutting it up.

Clean it. Chop it up as desired. Drizzle with good extra virgin olive oil. Bake for 90 minutes at 350.

Take out. Let cool.

Scoop every last bit of pumpkin out with spoon. Put in bowl. Cover with plastic wrap. Put in fridge and let sit overnight to draw out moisture. If you use this right away, you'll have an overly wet pumpkin pie and let's face it kids - nobody wants that.

Then when your done - take a picture from inside the house because your too lazy to step outside in the cold rain and take a picture of your grapes that are turning beautifully. They're really only about 2 weeks behind, that last blast of heat helped them a ton. I should be making jam right before Halloween.

Ginger Chocolate And Swedish Meatballs?

So I planned on making Swedish meatballs for dinner. I've always had a hard time finding the lingonberry anything which is what it's suppose to be served with. So I went to the Food Co-Op, and found it. $8? Really. I'll pass. If this were a special occasion of just about any kind it wouldn't be a problem, but for Tuesday night dinner? Pass. So I went with their cousin - the good old cranberry and ended spending my difference on a crystalized ginger chocoate bar. Well worth it, but still different.
My meatballs. Last time I made this, I managed to only get one picture of them. I did it again - just this one lone photo. Anyways you make the gravy with the drippings from the browning, pour it over the balls in your baking dish and toss in oven. Serve with mashed potatoes and for today - cranberry sauce.

Food For Thought?

Pumpkins have been on my mind. If tomorrow turns out to be a fall day, maybe I'll roast my sugar pumpkin and make the first pumpkin pie for the year! Wouldn't that go awesome with Sunday football?

This past week has been a food rollercoaster. Up's and downs everywhere! From having venison chili, to KFC (eeek!), to fried chicken topped with peach salsa, wild rice pilaf - crap that reminds me I'm almost out of pure wild rice. Suppose I'll need a trip to the Food Co-Op. For breads I've had KFC biscuits, a different recipe for cornbread due to being out of whip cream, to cheesy, buttery drop biscuits that we never get enough of. I made those twice this week, Mark loves them and Mia likes them too because her and her daddy drizzle honey on top.

I fought the fastest head cold in history yesturday and I'm thrilled to have surpassed a week's worth of being sick. I was all ready to make a pot of chicken noodle soup and get all doped up on cold medicines just to get through my day. Now I really get to enjoy the ideal weather. No direct sun, LOTS of heat, and warm wind. Made me in the mood to grill, have a beer or, Kahlua. Maybe wrap jalapenos with bacon after stuffing them with cream cheese. Definitly Kahlua!

Speaking of food, if I roast my sugar pumpkin first thing - I forgot it has to sit in the fridge for a while before you mix it with the rest of the ingredients. I don't think I'll have enough time to make it for football. Pie on Monday, anyone?

I'm going to go enjoy a guilty pleasure right now. Dr. Pepper.

Venison Stew - A First For Me

This is the picture off the recipe I found online. It almost looked the same, mine came out a bit thicker.

My port to upload pictures has died after 5 long, wonderful years. So until I get another one, which I can't imagine would be more than a few days, I won't be able to upload pictures. I didn't even bother with today's food.

It's so fall like out side; wind, rain, grey. So I woke up and decided it was time to make venison stew. Found a recipe online and after one small tweek, we had a pot of stew. We ate it up and had the perfect amount of leftovers. I spent most of the morning making egg bread and all in all had a well rounded, homemade and killed meal. Husband is happy, as am I.

Venison

Well, for some reason I can't seem to get my pictures to upload. I'll have to have Mark look at it later. So he came back from his hunting trip with his deer! It was really exciting, even more so to see him with his deer. We went up to my parents house so they could teach us what they knew about cutting up and packaging.

It was actually kinda fun. To see what would be filling my new full size freezer and thinking about how I would cook these cuts, excited me. My mom taught me how to grind the meat to make ground deer. You go to your local butcher, get pounds of beef fat and add it to the grinder and it helps with the whole process. It will also help create a little bit of fat for cooking, deer are so lean, it would just completly dry out if you didn't add the extra fat.

Well, we came home after another long exhausting, but good day and I was just too tired to cook, so I went to Burger King. Yes I did! The next night I thawed out a tenderloin. OMG! This was by far the best piece of any meat I've prepared. I followed some advice, and did the following:

1.) thaw, and place meat on paper towel on plate to soak up all the extra blood. let sit at room temperature.
2.) Cook a piece or 2 of bacon and reserve the grease. ( I already had this from breakfast, so I saved it from the morning)
3.) Heat grease on high, add salt and pepper to meat and toss in the pan. Cuts like this will do better on really high heat, therefor it will cook fast AND never cook it past rare. It will dry out within seconds of passing that temperature.

Once I got it to rare, I pulled it out of the pan to rest for just a bit. I cut off the pieces for the girls and cooked those just a tiny, tiny, tiny bit more and saved the big pieces for Mark and I. Wow, hands down best cooking tip/advice I think I've ever recieved. This cut was amazing. Now I know why people pay so much money for venison in restaurants, if I can do this at home and within minutes, who knows what a real Chef could do.

It was so succulant, it had the slightest hint of bacon flavor, there was no game flavor or after taste, it practically melted in your mouth. The thought of having a freezer full of the stuff made me a happy girl.

Time Alone And Things To Learn

My husband has been gone hunting all week. When he is gone, I really don't cook at all. I make what I need to make for the girls to still eat a balanced diet, but we do indulge on things, like cake. So Mark called me yesturday with the news that he got his first buck, all with his bow and arrow! Now, what do I have to learn? I need to learn how to cook with it. To those unfamiliar, it's much different than beef, gamey, but so much more lean. It will be fun to experiment with different cuts and so on.

So, with a buck in a meat cooler, he's out for the big boys. Elk. This is an animal that would definitly be filling the freezers to a max. Looks like I'll be getting that full size freezer sooner rather than later. Probably sometime tomorrow.

Fruit And Fear Of The Earth

My last batch of blueberries (at least for jam). I've found that it's easier to hide certain things in the fridge these days because we recently put another fridge in the garage. So handy! When Mark does his fish, it takes up so much room and when I go to Costco every 2 weeks, my fridge is bursting at the seams, and my fridge is bigger than average so it's been made clear, we need a second fridge. Now all we need is a second, full size freezer and we should be golden for storage.
Another batch of bluberry jam. I adjusted some things from my first batch. #1 - 1 1/2 cups LESS sugar. #2 - MORE blueberries. #3 - more spices. #4 - a different brand of pectin - my last batch is totally spredable, but still not as "solid" or "set" as I prefer it to be. I think we are finally going to be blackberry picking next weekend. I'm excited and nervous at the same time. We plan to go up to the Marblemount area - about 50 minutes from my house towards the wilds.

I guess there's been rumors in the past, but just recently there's finally been proof that there is a grizzly bear in that area. Bringing the total number of grizzly bears in Washington state to 75. I have a deeply embedded fear of bears, mix that with my love and desire to collect mountain blackberries for jams and pies...and we have a trip fueled with: no less than 3 loaded guns - a 9mm, a .40 and a high powered rifle, a hunting permit, a camera, gloves and clippers, and a diaper sized box to fill with berries. The kiddo's will for sure be missing out on this one.


My steak sandwich dinner. Marinated steak grilled, put together with a gorgonzola and sour cream mixture, baby spinach (or arugula), salt and pepper and a full belly. Mark really enjoyed this.

Brrr, Soup Anyone?

Well, yesturday was in my opinion, cold. It sparked my mood to make a pot of potato soup. I'd made this a million times but still planned on taking pictures. Isabel had other things in mind.

I am not going to dish ALL the details here, but lets just say that taking her diaper off to get air for as long as it takes for me to walk back into her room and grab a fresh diaper - is no longer an option. It quickly turned into a shitty situation. 45 minutes later and a lot of cleaning on all levels, I finally made it back to my soup. I was willing to put money down that I had burned it. It didn't!
Yes! We will have dinner afterall!

P.S. Thank goodness I have no crappy carpets to scrub! Now off to battle a few grocery stores, clean the kitchen, make dinner and head off to Aikido.

Cuba Meets The Northwest

Sweet yellow corn. I love melting butter on hot corn and sprinkling with pepper. It's just to die for.
2 fish from Mark's fishing derby. The one on the bottom was placed 2nd in weight for a while before it was booted by a beast. That's ok, it was still fun to participate. I think we ate that one for dinner. The other was tossed into the brink for the smoker.

Papas Con Tocino. Potatoes wrapped in bacon, then baked. Take em' out of the oven, drizzle with olive oil, salt & pepper to taste, and add fresh cilantro.

The beast that went into my belly. Thanks, you were tasty!

The Sweets

Fresh bread and the world's best honey.

The Goods

Mia and I harvested our potatoes. 4 varieties. She planted the purple one's and I believe some red ones. I also have Fingerling and Russett. (I think)
All the stash! I was kinda surprised.

An authentic Italian dish. Spaghetti with a clam based tomato sauce and herb. No cheese anywhere! It was light and kinda refreshing but it took all my inner strength to not grate some parm and toss it on there. I wanted to taste what the dish was suppose to taste like. It went well with fresh bread. Next time - bigger clams and fresh parm please!

Mark left for work earlier today so the girls and I cranked up the blues and baked blue cookies. It was fun. First time I've ever made sugar cookies. I love them, but they're usually so sweet that I can only have just 1. So why make a whole bunch? Well, I follow this blog called Heidi Bakes, she's here in Seattle, and she put this recipe up and they looked sooo good. So I wrote it down and tried it. They're good, but pretty sweet as expected. I tried to make them nice n' thick so I dont have 30 of these to deal with. I have a sweet 15 or so. Anyone want a cookie?

I've Decided

I've decided from now on to make my own tortillas.
I've also decided that I love my husband just a bit more these days as he continues to show me his talent with Salmon. Here, he's getting ready to smoke up a batch.

I've also decided that he has the best recipe in town and the lady who sells smoked salmon fillets at the market for $9 a piece is dreaming. Mark's is way better.

I've also decided why my blog has suffered and why I haven't been doing a whole lot. I needed a break. A long break. I can only be a 50's housewife for so long before I need a few drinks, and a visit from my Harvey roots.

Slowly I'm feeling the urge to come back and start baking and cooking an assortment of stuff. I made and baked bread for the first time in a long time yesturday and have cooked dinner 3 nights in a row now. I made a creamy smoked salmon pasta dish that was rich and sinful. Crusted hamburger pie. I cleaned a rotisserie chicken and made a good casserole with it.

My yard has also severly suffered as a result of my "absence". I feel embarrased by it. I need to harvest my potatoes soon and today feels like a good day to do that. My grapes did well with the recent heat and I have way too damb much rhubarb.

Blueberry Jam

Spices & blueberries

My pots. Sterilizing jars and watchin' the clock.

Almost to a full rolling boil.

The product. I put a bit on a plate and put it in the fridge so I could taste it soon, it came out a bit sweet. Next time I'll adjust the spices and sugar. Less sugar, more spice. I had the same problem with my grape jam. That first batch was SOO sweet, I just poured it out. We will definitly eat this, but for sure will be changing.

Berries, Berries & More Berries

It's time for freezing blueberries. At first, I could only pick enough to make muffins, or pancakes, or just a small bowl to snack on. Now, they're so abundant that it's time to freeze. I just lay them flat on a baking sheet, freeze for a few hours at the very least, and foodsavor them. This is batch number 1. This will be a constant for usually the next 2 months. I say usually because I'm not sure what to expect this year with all this cold weather and lack of sunshine. Also, I plan on trying to MAYBE make a small batch of blueberry jam.

My grapes on the other hand seem to be doing ok. I do worry about them because they certainly got too much rain. They hate that, and even showed some signs of a struggle. That seems to have disappeared, but they need a quad dose of sunshine...like yesturday!

Potatoes are doing great. I'm waiting for the plants/flowers to start dying off a bit them I will slowly start to dig them up. I planted a few varieties so it will be fun to see what I dig up.

As for my all around gardening that I had planned this year, I get an F. The crutial time when I should have been doing things, I was renovating a house. It seemed there was one thing after another keeping me from doing any major work. I sort of gave up in June and decided to just keep what I did have going the best that I could. Apparently when I learn to keep the yard and gardens better, I'll be able to bring home a puppy. Yes, I planted that seed last night.

Two weeks and counting, I should be no less than an hour into the mountains filling my big box with blackberries. Definitly with a few loaded guns as the bears desire this area heavily. I can't wait! I've been dreaming about blueberry and blackberry pie.

Isabel's Party Supplies

Well, this was MY party supply. Chilled vodka.
I started my enchilada sauce at 4a.m. Slowly cooking, at this point it was almost 6am. This was no problem but intimidating being the big secret family recipe n' all. Also first time I'd made it.

All the cakes baked (sorry a bit out of order) At this point, I was sighing with relief.

My challenge. The cake batter. This recipe is for white butter cake. It's very

complicated, time consuming and requires detailed temps. I also took a huge risk of not just doubling, but doing it x5. I know there's a lot of recipes that can't even be doubled, so the risk was do I save myself an entire day OR do it x5 and maybe have to run to the store and buy boxed cake? I'll run that risk.

I did however ruin my egg whites the first time around. Those are always kinda challenging for me. It's such a delicate balance of warmed egg whites, baking powder and sugar. Any of the latter not added correctly or clumping together will break your whites, or cause them to seperate. Adding the sugar too fast will cause your whites to not form stiff peaks. Not paying attention to this will cause your cake to deflate. Again, having all this x5, big risk.

So I started my egg whites again which put me behind a bit. They have to be a perfect room temp and so waiting for these to be ready set me back about an hour. I also ran out of frosting right before midnight. I didn't want to run the blenders that late so I called it quits for the night and went to bed. I was up at 3:30a.m. the next morning and started on my sauce, my tortillas, and the building of the cake.

The tortillas were easy, but time consuming as this was a recipe that could not be doubled. I was only get about 6 tortillas out of each batch and did about 12 batches. I had a hard time rolling them to be large, so had many different sized tortillas, but hey, they rolled just fine and were just as good.

Isabel's little cake.

One of the many dishes of rolled enchiladas. I also made Spanish Rice with probably the easiest recipe ever, only taking 23 minutes per batch. I felt these went well and am glad I didn't ruin any of it.

Isabel's main cake. Constructed carefully with straws. This had a strawberry puree filling mixed with buttercream frosting. It was very rich, and very moist. There was plenty of cake to go around and had a ton of leftovers.

Salmon Salmon Salmon!

Fresh caught Salmon. One of many and many more to come.
Ready to BBQ. I've gotten a bit of break thanks to my wonderful fisherman
of a husband. The rivers just opened up here and he's been out everyday and
brings me these babes. He tosses these on the grill and we eat this til' our little
hearts desire. Salmon and potatoes, salmon and wild rice and all with
sweet corn on the cob. I love these seasons!

Ramsay Fajitas

Special blend of spices to coat my peppers and meat with. Not as spicy

as I had hoped for, but smelled amazing!

Sliced and seasoned/marinated in a dry rub.

Guac. His recipe for this is amazing! It was sooo good. I was too caught up in

eating that I didn't take any pictures of this all done. I was pleasantly surprised BUT disappointed in the spice level. Next time I'll be heavy handed on the

chili powder. Still yummy!

A Piece Of Work, Definitly Not Cake.

So this is the top half of the hutch that I recently found in someones garage. My neighbors were having a 5 family yard sale, and I saw them organizing all the stuff they had been collecting. So I got tastfully nosy. 3 days before their actual sale, they let me look through everything that they had. I saw it, and had to have it. I showed them the amount of work it was going to take to get this lookin' good again and was able to talk them down and got what I felt like a steal.

This is the bottom half, almost completly sanded. This wood in the buff is beautiful! Of course there are doors that go in those spots, but they're staying off until I can get all new hardware. New knobs, new hinges. This much sanding took me over 2 hours. It's a solid, well built hutch and I cannot wait to see this finished. Will I get it done before Saturday? Probably not. At least it already looks better than it did!