Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary...How does your Garden Grow???

Well, it goes from this....

to this...

to this! All that weeding, watering, insect smushing, picking, shucking, boiling, cutting and finally freezing for a taste of summer in January! It is soooooo worth it!

The garden has been plentiful this year again...but not so much with the tomatoes as we had hoped. That's okay, there are other years for that. The grape tomatoes are always abundant...

As well as the green beans and peppers. The peppers are being dried. Cucumbers did not do so well, but I combined what I had with some from a Mennonite family to make a crock of Aunt Mildred's sweet pickles.


The green beans have all been canned. I think it was about 17 quarts this year, in addition to what we ate right out of the garden for dinners.

Lima beans are on their way, and the corn is just starting to come in. Raspberries are crazy everywhere. We have picked quarts and quarts daily, and most of them get frozen to be turned into jam later. Some get put in pies (12 cups at a time!) and some just get eaten. We are bursting with parsley and basil too.

I have always had a love/hate relationship with the garden :) It requires so much work, but the rewards are so great. Happy summer in my kitchen!

Hooray for Freecycle!

I recently got new pots and pans for my birthday. But my current cabinet space will not hold them, so I was on the lookout for one of those hanging pot racks. Since I didn't really want to shell out any large sums of money, I took a chance and posted a want ad in our local Freecycle group. Good thing I did...I got a reply of someone who actually had just put hers in the back of her truck headed for the dump, but I could come get it. When I picked it up, it was white, very dirty and the metal needed a major cleaning, but it was functional and not too big or fancy. So I cleaned it up, painted the white metal black, and polished the stainless grid. We picked up some chain and "S" hooks at Lowes for it last night, and Dennis put it up for me. It holds all of my cookware and looks great too! I am so tickled that we got it for free!

Pancake Recipe

Today is fat Tuesday...otherwise known as Pancake Supper at your local church night. Up until recently, I never went to a church that did any kind of pancake supper, but it seems that on every corner around here there is a sign for Pancakes this week! Well, we did not go to our church's pancake supper tonight. We took advantage of a rare evening where no one had to go anywhere and had our own pancakes/egg/sausage gravy/biscuit supper at home together. And then we played games together. We are all for fellowship at the church, but sometimes fellowship with our own family is more important.

So when I talked to my friend Sarah tonight while I was making dinner, she asked me if I ever made pancakes from scratch. Of course! said I!!! How else would one make pancakes??? Well, she asked if my recipe was any good (hers always come out blah) so I thought I'd just share with everyone. Actually we have tried many pancake recipes (this is usually Dennis' forte-he's the breakfast guy) and the one I always come back to is this one...it is simple and basic.

Half of my family likes plain pancakes, and half like banana pancakes, so I will give you the ingredients for both.

Buttermilk Pancakes (buttermilk is great but not necessary)
2 cups flour
2 T. sugar
2 t. baking powder
3/4 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
Mix dry ingredients thoroughly with a wisk or something like it.

2 c. buttermilk (or 2 c. milk mixed with 1 t. vinegar-any type-added to sour the milk-this makes a huge difference in the taste)
If you are making banana pancakes, instead of using 2 cups milk, mash 2-3 ripe bananas in a large measuring cup and then add milk to make 2 1/2 cups total liquid/banana volume
2 eggs
1 t. vanilla

Mix these ingredients together in a separate bowl.

Melt 1/4 cup butter and set aside.

Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour in the wet. Mix slightly with a rubber spatula. Before everything is incorporated, add the warm butter and mix just until ingredients are combined. Be careful not to overmix or you will have tough and rubbery pancakes.

Ladle onto a buttered hot skillet....and so on. You know how to cook them I'm sure :)

Let me know if you try these and how they turn out!

The Verdict is out

The verdict is out on the egg nog recipes:

Scones: yummy, but only Eric, myself and my mom ate them. I think the rest of the family just isn't too big on scones.

Fudge: Well, it didn't actually turn out to be fudge at all, more like caramel...which I love! I must not have cooked it for long enough, or beat it for long enough or something. Anyways, I turned out the cooled (in the refrig) "fudge" onto a cutting board, cut it into small rectangles and wrapped them individually in wax paper. They are perfect caramel consistency, but still have to be refrigerated. But I have given a bunch to many people since we couldn't possibly (or wouldn't want to possibly) eat that much caramel!

Bundt/pound cakes: Delicious. I had mine drizzled with chocolate sauce. The kids had theirs with confectioner's sugar dusted on top. They are also excellent as coffee cakes at about 10:30 in the morning when I finally got around to drinking my morning coffee and having breakfast yesterday!

Egg Nog Recycle

Do you have any of this leftover from the holidays???

I had an entire quart that we never opened and still had a sell by date of January 17th, so I figured I could use it instead of throwing it out! So I did a little google search on recipes for leftover egg nog and came up with quite a few. Here are the 3 I tried, though there are only pictures for 2 of them!

The first I tried was egg nog scones. These have been a huge hit...only mildly tasting off egg nog, and we love scones anyways. Sorry, no picture, they were attacked before my camera made it to the scene! If you'd like the recipe, click here.

Secondly was egg nog fudge. The jury is still out on this one. It cooked up just fine, but didn't set up quite like I expected, so I put it in the fridge to see if that would help. If not, I'll scrap that recipe.

Below are the ingredients in the pan...egg nog, sugar, corn syrup, butter...

You are supposed to boil the mixture until it reaches the soft ball stage, or 240 degrees. If you don't have a candy thermometer, I highly reccomend getting one... this metal one is wonderful. I used to have a glass one, but I was always afraid of breaking the glass, and eventually I did!

The last recipe, yet to be tasted, are egg nog pound cakes cooked in my new Pampered Chef stoneware mini bundt pan (Christmas gift!). Very easy to whip up....essentially the egg nog replaces the milk/cream in a regular recipe. The only thing I really changed from the recipe was omitting the currants. You could just as easily make a large bundt cake or a loaf cake with the batter. I just really wanted to try out my new pan!

They came out beautifully and are wrapped in plastic awaiting glazing and eating.