• Blog - Kitchen

    T Tuesday: catching up edition

    September 30, 2014 - By 

    Welcome to T stands for Tuesday.T stands for Tuesday_200

    Do I dare say that I think our internet troubles are finally over?  We haven’t had a reboot in almost 3 days now.  Of course, we’ve hardly used the computer either since we’ve been so busy.  Where shall I start?

    Apples….Phil and friends

    We helped with the annual harvest at our neighbors house on Saturday. We brought home 6 grocery bags of apples to be processed…a fraction of the total haul from their 7 trees.

    Later that evening I went to a new neighborhood edition of craft club, where I made these 4 cards as well as got my stamp on the backs of a huge stack of previously made cards. I was pretty tired from the day and didn’t really have my craft mojo going.

    craft club cards

    Sunday was spent with Little J in the garage processing through the apples.  They are organic so they have spots and holes so most need some trimming after being run through the peeler/corer/slicer. BIG JOB! So glad I had help this year. We ended up with about 15 gallons of apples ready for the next step.

    applesauce

    So far I’ve made 7 quarts of sauce…

    apple pie

    One pie…dehyrator

    An overstuffed quart bag of dried apple slices and three 8×8 apple crisps are in the freezer at the ready for future desserts. That was only about 1/2 the apples. More apple-ing today…

    Last night I had a well deserved glass of wine.relaxing

    Last week I finally got around to doing some creating…here’s a work-in-progress shot of a painting.

    WIP

    I’m a little late with my post today as I went for a walk with a friend around a local lake this morning. 4.25miles.  It was a little brisk at times but as long as you keep moving it helps keep you warm.

    What are you doing today?

  • 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.

    20140621_5368

    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!