• Blog - Kitchen

    Home canned spicy beans

    August 11, 2014 - By 

    Between our CSA and our garden, we’ve had a plethora of beans. I was afraid we might not be able to eat them all before they were past their prime. My neighbor had made some spicy beans last year and raved about them. I borrowed her Blue Ball recipe book and got to work.spicy beans

    They look pretty…I guess time will tell how they taste. I modified a recipe from the book as far as the spices and such.  I used cayenne, garlic cloves and red pepper flakes to season the green and wax beans. Makes me want a beverage just thinking about it.

  • Blog - Kitchen

    Dry Ice Ice Cream

    July 25, 2014 - By 

    I’m not sure how but I completely forgot to share this with you.

    It was about a month ago… Our freezer was having an issue, which later turned out to be not a big deal. Thank goodness Mr. G is also Mr. Fix-it. In the mean time I totally panicked and sourced dry ice (and a lot of it) to keep our 200lbs of beef in the freezer from becoming the largest neighborhood BBQ anyone has ever thrown around here.

    Long story short…the freezer was back up and running in short order and we had 100lbs of dry ice to play with.  Since we weren’t throwing that BBQ after all, we had no need of a fake smoke cloud to roll from the garage.  Still was fun to pretend.

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    We searched out “fun things to do with dry ice” and found you can make ice cream. Sweet! No pun intended.

    We used my trusty Kitchen Aid mixer. It was the one thing that I wanted when we got married. Now 20yrs later…I’m glad I insisted we make that purchase…I use it all the time.

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    We weren’t really sure exactly how to make the ice cream and as you can see…we had a little trouble. The dry ice wasn’t crushed quite as fine as it should have been. This created very large bubbles as the solid carbon dioxide sublimated.  In the end, it turned out perfectly.

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    The yummiest vanilla ice cream we’ve ever had!!  In fact it was so good we decided to make more the next day…

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    We made another batch of vanilla, chocolate and my personal favorite…strawberry!  We had fresh picked strawberries from the my in-laws garden…oh yum!

    It’s certainly not an inexpensive way to make ice cream but if you’ve got some extra dry ice sitting around…it’s a great way to use it!

  • Blog - Kitchen

    UFO…finished

    July 6, 2014 - By 

    I was cleaning the closet the other day and came across a seriously old unfinished project. Something I started back in the 1990’s…at first house…when I had a strawberry theme in my kitchen. I considered donating the 6 towels and let them be a project for someone else. I have a hard time “throwing in the towel”…pun intended… on a project once I start. 20140706_5787Way back when I started these I finished one right away and started the embroidery on the second.  My trouble was that the fusible web I used was so darn sticky that I had a heck of a time getting my needle through. Frustration level high!!20140706_5788Machine stitching was my only choice even if it wouldn’t match.  I decided that my dishes really won’t care…so I won’t either.