Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

Zucchini Pie This happened just about 2 weeks ago. I decided that I would use up some of the zucchini that I so painstakingly peeled, deseeded and sliced back in early summer. Mostly I use it for this zucchini pie recipe that we like; once it's all done it tastes almost exactly like apple pie. (I very much miss having apple trees.) So happily humming to myself I make the crust, thaw the zucchini, measure the spices, stir, stir, stir it all up and assemble; confident in my ability to cook this simple dessert. At the appropriate time I take it out of the oven; sniff, sniff, ahhhh the aroma. Time for dessert after supper; I slice it and put a generous serving on my husband's plate. A piece lands on my hand, I taste it. EEEEEWWWWW!!!! BLEEEEECH!!!! "Dear," I say. "I think I did something wrong." "What?" he asks. "Did you forget the sugar?" "Ummm, yes, I did." Well, ever the optimist, especially when it comes to dessert, my ...

This unfortunately won't be as amusing as my gelatin caper story. It has taken me so long to post this because I wasn't able to make it into a funny story, mostly it is just odds and ends. More blunders: My mother says I have always been the type of person who wouldn't try to do anything unless I was sure I was doing it correctly. I guess that is true. I haven't really made too terribly many blunders in cooking, but then again I am only a bit less than 3 years along in my marriage and cooking career. So, I am sure there are more blunders on the way. Here are the ones that stick out in memory. Pepper About 2 years ago I was making scalloped taters and read the recipe wrong. Please note: a whole tablespoon of pepper will totally ruin your scalloped potato casserole. Vinegar My mother in law has this apple salad recipe that she makes. It involves chopped apples, raisins and mini marshmallows. The dressing is Miracle Whip style salad dressing with sugar and a tad o...

Here's a cute picture; a nice break from all the stories. Ellen and the calves were fascinated with each other while I did my little walk along the fence line.

This will be an interlude from dairy cooking while I cook up another story about my kitchen adventures. I actually wrote this well over a year and a half ago and friends found it entertaining...husband did not find it so entertaining for some reason, so if you know him and see him, just keep mum about it. Thanks! Ha! It all started about 2 1/2 years ago when we realized that this modular home was not designed with any type of storage in mind. Down on the back of the ridge, built on a slope, my DH had a small 8'X10' building that he had constructed about 20 years ago, back before he had the sawmill or dairy. He'd hand sawn all the boards from oak and built it as kind of an office/hangout back in the woods. He had a small old sofa and dresser in there. Well, he figured he would move it up here for us to use as storage, though he was nervous about the whole process and kept putting it off. But he finally bit the bullet and moved it; quite a process involving the bulldozer, the...

This was going to be just one post, but I got bogged down with trying to tell everything all on one page, so I am going to make several posts out of my cooking stories. Here is the beginning: When you are 36 and have been a never-married bachelorette for so long, you don’t really prepare the meals, they just kind of happen; soups, sandwiches, fruit, cereal and milk…etc. I rarely ever ate out, but at the same time I didn’t ever see the point of preparing full meals for myself either. Sometimes I would fix a casserole and freeze most of it to be taken for lunches at work, but for the most part I didn’t bother much in the cooking department. Also, for much of the 12 years I was in Portland, OR I didn’t live where I had access to my own kitchen, I either had to share with a bunch of others, or I only had a microwave and a stove top burner. So when I got married back in the fall of ’04 I was pretty green in cooking to please myself, let alone someone else. I had visited my future in-la...

For the past 26 years; even before my husband started the dairy, he has driven the school bus for the local school district. Yesterday he officially retired. This will mean many things for us, but uppermost on my mind is that we get to sleep in an extra 50 minutes in the mornings. You see, in order to get the little kiddies to school on time he had to do the milking pretty early. For the past 26 years he has been eating his cornflakes at around 3:15 AM every morning on school days! When I came on the scene about 3 years ago the concept of a 2:55 AM arising was daunting. But I eventually adjusted; however groggy I was during the day. I take the occasional nap, but I never know when he might pop in and have me do something; oh, like drive the tractor to tow him on his motorcycle to get it going, or chase a wayward calf or whatever. There are no end of surprise chores on a dairy. On the weekends, during school vacations and over the summer he still prefers to get done early with th...

(First off...thank you to everyone who has visited and commented. I appreciate it so much. Someone asked for more about the baby and DH. I will start with the beginning of baby and go from there...ha. You will get some of DH in the story. Usually I write these first in Word and go back and edit, but I am just going to put this in off the top of my head and maybe edit later. Here goes...) The whole thing began with DH asking me a question: "Had any deep thoughts lately?" I told him we had best be thinking about whether we wanted to have a baby or not because the biological clock was ticking pretty loudly. This threw him for a loop. See, he was 47 at the time and I was 37. We had only been married for just over a year and THAT was a huge leap for both of us since we neither had been married before. At age 44 his sister was the youngest in his family and so he had no exposure to babies and their ilk. He wasn't sure what to say. But suffice it to say and to make a long story ...

As the years go on I keep learning new things here; not all of it has to do with bovines. Here are a few more things. I will keep you posted as other things come up. 1) Cows can walk up stairs. 2) With the right motivation cows can walk backwards down stairs as well. 3) A pack rat is a very large beastie; close to the size of a squirrel. 4) An agitated pack rat running straight at you takes on the dimensions of a VW Bug. 5) A 24 hour old calf can outrun a 40 something year old male and leave him in the dust. 6) A 24 hour old calf can contain a lot more poo than you would think. 7) A 24 hour old calf is already an expert at sharing its poo; and is very generous at spreading it around. 8) Training a calf to take a bottle is a task to be dreaded. 9) A bull is an obnoxious, ornery, ungrateful, unpredictable, dangerous (...etc) wretch. 10) No matter how you shout, wave your arms, rev your 4-wheeler and otherwise make a fool of yourself in public, a bull in the middle of the highway will not...