• Blog - Outdoors

    T Tuesday: harvest edition

    September 9, 2014 - By 

    Hello, hello!  I finally made it for T stands for Tuesday! I’ve been MIA here in blogland lately but hopefully things are settling down and I can get back into my routine.        Create–>photo—>blog. 20140909_6923

    I found this mug at a garage sale last week. There were actually two but I only took the one. Why the significance? We got married in the Canterbury Wedding Chapel inside the Excalibur Hotel a little over 20 yrs ago. We also attended the Fantasy Faire show while there. I just couldn’t pass up the mug.

    On to the harvest….20140909_6921

    Most of the tomatoes came from the plants I have in the ground at my in-laws house. My garden is really poor this year. Between the deer eating the tops off my beans and the squirrels snacking on the tomatoes…it’s been a little disheartening.20140909_6922I’m planning to make a spicy jam with these little babies.  We’ll see how that turns out.

    Otherwise…I have been crafting some. Listing cards in my etsy store, getting an inventory built for the craft season and finding more ways to upcycle.  I’ve found that my back bothers me when I sit at my computer so I’ve been trying to stay away from it…besides I get more accomplished when not lost in cyberspace. 🙂

    I’ve got some shopping and outside chores on my list today. The weather is supposed to turn colder tomorrow so I better get it it!!

    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.

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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!