Christmas morning

 We had a brief snow flurry on Christmas morning.

Not enough to cover the ground, but it looked pretty while it was falling.

I was late getting my heated bird water bowl set up this year. It's only been out a couple of days.  These Eastern Bluebirds (below) were looking for a drink.

I know they are hard to see in the photo, but there are three at the bowl...there at the edge of the porch.  I haven't been seeing them around so I suppose they are passing through.

We had a quiet and relaxing Christmas Day.  Our dinner was chili and a ham braid and snacky type foods.   Of course there were cookies and 2 different candy and nut boxes we had received as gifts.

Usually, I'm the photo taker on the holiday so I 'm rarely actually in the photos.

I took a couple of selfies to make up for it.

Happy New Year to all!

candy fail

 

A few days before Christmas I wanted to make a couple more batches of goodies.  I had made a few half-batches of different cookies but we have been nibbling on them.

I think it's more fun to enjoy the sweet treats in the days leading up to Christmas rather than have them leftover afterwards...getting stale and making us feel guilty for continuing holiday indulgences.

I decided to make Buckeye candy. I haven't made it in several years and didn't even have a recipe anymore.  I found a recipe online and made up the peanut butter balls...ready to be dipped in chocolate.

That's when things went haywire!  The recipe instructed to melt the chocolate for dipping, adding a couple tablespoons of shortening for a dipping consistency.

I didn't have shortening so thought I could use butter.  WRONG!  The chocolate turned dull and dry - no way to dip anything in it.

Trying to figure out a way to save it and have something edible, I melted the chocolate again, adding sweetened condensed milk and poured that over the peanut butter balls, which I had arranged in a casserole dish. Sort of like a tray of fudge.

It seemed like it might work out so I refrigerated it overnight.  The next morning I sliced it and we all tried it.  It's okay but really overly rich and sweet.

I put it back in cold storage and later (in a few weeks) I might try melting some of it again and tossing with rice krispies or some other kind of cereal.  Or maybe it could be used for cake frosting?

I later read online that butter shouldn't be used in melting chocolate because it has water in it, whereas shortening does not.

I also want to say that I do not like the Walmart store brand of confectioners sugar (used in the peanut butter balls).  To me, it has a starchy taste from whatever they use to keep it from clumping.

This is a different cookie that I tried this year...Raspberry Thumbprints...

They were a bit tricky too...with the raspberry jam wanting to bubble up out of the thumbprint while baking.  

I'm finished with baking now for awhile!  

so scary!

A few days ago, Lonnie was at his desk and I was upstairs doing something.  As I passed by the stairwell, I smelled a burning odor and I walked down to see smoke streaming from an outlet that Lonnie had his ipad charger plugged into.

He was on the phone and hadn't noticed it.

I squealed out, "Lonnieeee, LOOK!" and headed to the basement to shut off the breaker. 

Before I got down the steps he had pulled out the plug and apologized to the person on the phone and finished his conversation.

That did it - the burning stopped. 

Pretty scary though.  many times we leave devices charging overnight or even when we aren't home.

That's all the damage there was and the Sasquatch put in a new outlet for us.

 I have to laugh at this photo, though.

The top of the burned outlet looks like a scared face with his mouth in an "O", and the bottom one has a serious frown because of his injury.

Am I the only one who sees this?  Maybe too much smoke inhaled!

The Sasquatch makes a tart

 The Sasquatch recently got interested in doing some baking.  He knows how to cook things that he likes but I don't think he has really done much baking.

First he made a sweet and tangy lemon tart.  Then he tried out this recipe for a Bittersweet Chocolate and Caramel Tart.   Recipe HERE

He brought some to share with us at Thanksgiving. Delicious! Each bite like candy!

The recipe has a lot of steps and parts of it look tricky...but he said "it's just following directions".

He took photos while making it and wrote about it.  

"The Sasquatch makes a Tart"   (in his own words)

Flour, sugar, and salt. The salt is pink, all I had was Pink sea salt

Add in butter

Wrap and chill for one hour

Roll it out in a perfect round shape like I did in the picture above

Roll it over the rolling pin to transfer it to the pan. Make sure you DON'T put enough flour down when rolling it out. This way you get to use a spatula to try to pry it off the table. This also gives you an opportunity to poke a few holes in it, these holes add flavor.

Use the leftover dough to fill in all those 'flavor holes' that appeared earlier

Cover with foil and add baking weights (rice)

Baked pastry. I used some of the left over to make a small personal size tart in the green ramekin

I used three if these for the filling

Whole milk and heavy cream. Bring to a boil, remove from heat and add the broken up chocolate bars.

Mix until smooth. Pour some of this into a small bowl and add the eggs and mix, pour that back into the pan and mix some more. Pour in to the pastry shell and bake again, make sure to leave enough room for the caramel

Do all the dishes so you can get them dirty again making the caramel

Melt the sugar, never stop stirring it. Be sure you have the butter and heavy cream pre-measured and handy since you can't stop stirring to do anything else.

Butter added

Heavy cream added

Done with the second bake

Add the caramel. Be sure to overflow it in at least one spot, this makes it a lot more fun and interesting when you try to remove it from the pan and the caramel has cemented itself to the edge. Eat your miniature sized tart while it's still warm and gooey and the other one is chilling in the refrigerator. Do the dishes again.

strange things out by the road

 warning...photo of a dead animal carcass below...

My apologies to my brother, John, if he reads this. He has already heard the story twice before.

One day when pulling out of our driveway I was unpleasantly surprised to see this....

A headless deer carcass by our other driveway.   I thought maybe it had been hit by a car, and a "trophy hunter" stopped to get the head for a taxidermy mount.

That  has happened in almost this same spot years ago. We saw two guys stop and cut the top of the skull with antlers off of a deer that had been killed on the road. 

But I also had a suspicion that this deer had been shot and killed elsewhere and someone only wanted the trophy head and dumped the body here.  Look what a tidy and bloodless cut that is.

That really made me mad to think about.

I called the road department to remove it but since we live on a state road they told me to call the State Highway department. I left a detailed message but no one ever came out.

The Sasquatch thought we'd better drag it back to the woods before it decayed too much to be moved.  He was able to get it most of the way pulling it with his vehicle but then had to finish up dragging it by hand (with a rope of course).  He said he didn't see any thing to indicate that it had been shot.

At least it provided food for some vultures and other scavengers.

Gosh, if I had seen that headless deer as a child it would have been so scary. I would have been afraid it would jump up and chase me!

On a lighter note,  this by our driveway....

A toilet tank.

 I guess I have no shame.  I put it there thinking someone might be able to use it, although I know not all tanks and bowls will match up.

Sure enough though, it was gone the next morning. Maybe kept it out of a landfill anyway.

Austin's Drive In - Whopper Sandwich

My husband grew up working in his father's drive-in restaurant (Austin's Drive In).

He and his brothers started out with jobs like swatting flies and picking up garbage from the lot, then progressed to the position of  "soda jerks" and eventually to knowing the business inside and out.

One of the stories they like to tell about those days involves preparing pork tenderloin cutlets for a sandwich that eventually was re-named "Whopper Sandwich". It was a best seller.  (This was long before Burger King so no problems there).

I think they each had a different experience making those sandwiches and a different story to tell.

The process involved tenderizing the cutlets with a mallet, then dipping them in egg, then in cracker meal, then later fried to produce a beautiful golden patty that stuck out the sides of the bun all the way around.

Lonnie's story is that as a pre-teen, he started challenging himself to see how big of a patty he could make from those small pork cutlets. I guess he kept dipping and working in those cracker crumbs until the patties were coming out as big as saucers!

His Dad had to tell him to hold back and not make them so big.

Then there is the story of one of the younger brothers assigned to the breading task... each time he did it, he ended up with such a thick coating of the breading on his hands that he couldn't close his fingers!

Fun memories for them!

So, a few months ago, one of the nieces, sent out a group family email, saying she wanted to make Whopper Sandwiches for her teenagers and wanted to know the original recipe for them.

The brothers described the ingredients and the method, but in the end, she couldn't find cracker meal in her area, so she had to make substitutions.

Her family loved the sandwiches and she had fun with her daughters making them.

With all the talk of making Whopper Sandwiches, Lonnie started craving them too. Of course I had to try making some for him.

I bought thin boneless center cut pork chops but I couldn't find cracker crumbs in any of the grocery stores around here either.  So, I spent forever crushing saltines to use.

I don't have a tenderizing mallet so I scored the chops on both sides with a knife...

...then used a potato masher to flatten them.

I did the egg wash and crumb coating twice, added salt and pepper, then fried them (about 1 inch of oil) in a skillet.

They came out pretty good.

I stirred up a simple version of 1000 Island dressing (tarter sauce and ketchup) and grilled the buns.  Lonnie added lettuce, tomato and onion to complete the sandwich as he remembered it.

He enjoyed it and said it was close to the original.

Next time, I'm going to get him to do the breading and see if he can come up with some saucer sized patties - just like old times!

And, I should add, I have since found cracker meal...it's stocked near the seafood department at the grocery, and labeled as fish fry mix...but the ingredients list is just cracker meal.

More indoor blooms

 I have been keeping an eye on one of my succulents that sent up a bloom stalk not long after I repotted it a couple of months ago. It surprised me with these sweet little orangey blooms.

I've only had the plant since last winter so I had no idea that it would bloom. It has been a vigorous grower and spreader, though.

The bloom stalk is so long that it tipped over and is resting on an aloe plant.

The blooms actually lasted a couple of weeks. I would have liked to have moved it up off of the floor...somewhere more visible...but I was worried the stalk would break.

Here you can see the actual plant better. There on the right with the grayish leaves.

Isn't that a good color combination? Next fall, I'll try to remember to give it a dose of fertilizer to encourage more blooms.

And below you see the last of our cherry tomatoes as of November 6th.

Husker Cherry Reds.  Grown in a large pot on the back porch...making it easy to remember to water.

I will look for this kind again next spring.

A last little blast of color before winter's gray days.

Quilt of Valor

 I think I have mentioned here before - a program called Quilts of Valor.  It's an organization that collects quilts donated by quilters and presents them to retired and currently active military service men and women...as a token of appreciation for their service to our country.

Our quilt group, Crazy Quilters, has a member who has served in the military.  We wanted to surprise Wanda with this special quilt, to show our appreciation for her service.

It wasn't easy keeping the whole thing secret and COVID made things even more difficult.

Way back over a year ago, we started making our plans when Wanda left the meeting early one night.

Isolde had the pattern and the background fabric, but she couldn't be at the next meeting because she had an extended trip planned out of the country. 

So she handed off the supplies to another group member who works at the library.

At our next meeting, after Wanda left, we divided up the background fabric and all members got a copy of the pattern to make two squares, adding their own fabric. One star square in blue and one 9patch square in reds.  Lots of variety to make it interesting!

At the February meeting, the member's completed blocks were turned over to Isolde, who assembled them into this beautiful quilt.   She also provided and attached the striped border fabric.  I think that really makes the quilt sing.  And the corners are mitered too!  Perfect!

Then COVID struck and there were no Crazy Quilter meetings.  Like everyone else, we had no idea how long the restrictions would last...but we knew we wanted to get this quilt finished for Wanda.

So in June, Isolde and I arranged for me to pick up the quilt top at her home so I could do the quilting. 

(I also have to mention that I had a tour of Isolde's flower beds and vegetable garden.  Wowzer, beautiful flowers, trees, shrubs, vines and plants in an idyllic setting,. She has such a green thumb!  Bonus...she sent me home with several plant starts and a type of lily I had never seen before).

But, back to the quilt....

The blocks are 10" square so the quilt is roughly 60" x 70".

Here is a view of the back.  Since there was a lot of white on the front, I didn't want to take a chance on any sort or color or pattern showing through from the back, so I chose to use solid white muslin for a backing.

I did a swirl design. My swirls are all a bit different in size but okay if you just look at the overall design (I think?).

And the lines you see here are just creases in the fabric...not accidental pleats!

Originally we planned to have a little party with refreshments and so forth when we presented the quilt to Wanda.  But when we found out we could start back with our meetings we wanted to get the quilt in Wanda's hands in case things go under strict lockdown again.

 Wanda with her quilt...mask off just for photos.

We really did surprise her...by pretending it was just a show and tell quilt made by our group for a service person.

She kept asking why she hadn't heard of this group project or been asked to participate in making blocks.

It was fun seeing the look on her face when she found out it was her name on the label as the recipient!

Thank you for your service, Wanda!

relaxing fall evening

 It's close to a deadline for finishing up this top secret quilt.  It's a group quilt and I am adding the finishing touches.

I took advantage of this lovely fall evening to sit out back and finish sewing down the binding (the dark blue outer edge).  For my own quilts I always sew it down on the machine, but hand stitching the last edge is really the correct and nicer looking way to do it.

It's hard to see, but I have the quilt folded in a plastic bag...only pulling out the edge I'm working on in an effort to keep it clean.

Well, what's this?   I am wearing two different color shoes again. At least I haven't left the house today.

I'm going to have to get better lighting in my closet, or maybe just keep my shoes better organized.

As usual, Puss is by my side.  It's lucky she doesn't like to sit on my lap or she would be trying to sleep on this quilt I'm finishing.

I'll be able to show this quilt in a few days and tell all about it.

new door installed

 Our new door for the bedroom finally came in and was installed by the same Pella crew that did our front windows.

This is the old door. The door wasn't bad but the frame was wood and rotten on the outside.  We'd had it worked on in the past but the repairs didn't last long.  Plus, it wasn't a tight fit and seemed a bit drafty.

The Pella crew was great. They used the outside steps rather than tromping through the house. They brought up the new door and all their supplies before removing the old door... to minimize the time that the opening was open.  They were finished in just over two hours.

Here is the new door. It's an all-vinyl slider.  Lot's of glass!

On winter days the afternoon sun shines in this room and makes it so nice and bright. It's a shame we're mostly only in here when it's dark outside.

Wonder if I could talk my husband into agreeing to let me swap out this room with my sewing room?

Lot's of good light, plenty of space, closets for my fabric and shelves for my quilting books!

Nah, I won't even mention it. It would put the bedroom further from the bathroom and it would be too big of an adjustment for both of us after living here 34 years.