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Showing posts from July, 2008
Back again. It has been a busy past few days. Let's see. Thursday afternoon I got one of those rare moments of inspiration to actually do a deep cleaning vacuum job. (Not that I DON'T vacuum, it's just rare for me to be inspired to do so.) I had no sooner began than I was scared out of my wits by my husband coming in behind me. As per usual; when I get inspired to do something, something else always come up to interrupt it. A cow up the road needed help calving. So I was called on to act as nurse. I will spare the details; but the short of it is that the calf was in the wrong position and was dead when hubby finally got it out. The cow is doing OK though. I always hate it when that happens; it's depressing. Friday I went shopping then came home and did another batch of those garlic dill pickles. I sure hope they turn out. They smelled so good, I will cry if they are icky when I try them in a few weeks. Sat we did an all day trip to Marshfield to get a couple

Forty Reflections...well, not quite that many

Sorry for the silence the past couple of days here on the dairy. Things have been busy, as you might have expected. Plus the computer has not been cooperative and the weather has been having fits every time I had a moment to be on line. So. Here I am. At the moment I am in the process of pickling beets. Our beet crop didn't do so well this year, for which Iam actually eternally thankful. But I will probably get 2 or 3 quarts out of what hubby brought in. I dislike pickling beets because of the mess they make. I am not the most prim and proper of cooks, so by the time I have finished pickling beets it looks as though some large creature met it's fate and was slaughtered in my kitchen. But since I am only going to have one batch, I am not too resentful of them this year. Day before yesterday I did a batch of sweet cuke pickles. I have enough cucumbers to do another batch of one kind or another, but not today. I will keep them in the fridge until tomorrow and perhaps do

Food for thought...ducks and monkeys

Lately I have been thinking about ducks. Not as food though. I have tried duck before; some duck hunter brought our family one of his ducks way back when I was a kid. I still remember biting into the birdshot and how oily/greasy the meat was. URGH! Just not my thing. Maybe if it was fixed better I might like it. What got me thinking about ducks is the fact that they seem to play such a major role in babies lives; cute little duckies are everywhere, seemingly, when you go looking at baby things. They also feature in songs. A couple of weeks ago I got one of those little CD song books for the baby, with different animal songs in it. Two of the songs feature ducks. For some reason one of them just quacked me up, it is sung to the tune of Star and Stripes Forever and starts off "Be kind to your webfooted friends, for a duck may be somebody's mother..." Listen to it at this site: http://www.boyscouttrail.com/content/song/song-1499.asp Monkeys are also prominent in kiddy lyric

Up the tree on camo day

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Today was the last day of VBS, which always involves a barbecue and some kind of entertainment for the kids. I slipped off to home early to put the baby down for her nap, so I don't know what exactly the entertainment was. Yesterday was "wear camouflage" day; something that one of the teachers and his class of boys came up with. I don't own a stitch of camo so I ended up borrowing a camo T-shirt from a friend there. Some folks didn't bother with it either, including the pastor's wife. The pastor is big into hunting and owns lots of camo, apparently his better half could care less. This is a picture of him up a tree in the parking lot doing a lesson on Zacchaeus. It was hard to get a good shot of him because the sun was behind him, but this turned out pretty well; keeps him anonymous. He stayed up the tree for at least 2 hours; from about 9:30 AM 'til 11:30 AM or so. For a couple of the classes it was a fun surprise, but the older ones had caught on by the

More cukes today...

Today I made a batch of the freezer dill pickles after I got home from Vacation Bible School. I have enough cukes to make another batch, but I don't have enough time or energy. Today's snack at VBS for the kids was Rocky Road Cups: a cup of chocolate pudding with two graham cracker sections pushed down in it and a few mini marshmallows tossed on top. Voila. Ellen had a couple of the strawberry newtons left over from yesterday. I wasn't going to mess with chocolate pudding for her. Nope! Tomorrow the topic for VBS is Zaccheaus up the tree. To illustrate this the pastor is going to climb a tree in the parking lot and teach it from there. I am going to bring my camera; this is going to be too good to pass up. He is going to give this lesson to 5 different classes, so he has plenty of opportunity to injure himself, pick up lots of ticks and mosquito bites and such. He's such a good sport! Moe observed in a comment on a previous post that the kids go home and te

Kids Snacks

Here it is just the middle of July and I am running out of ideas for food blogging. Well, maybe it's because I don't have the time to really sit down and think. Here are the two snacks they have prepared for the kids at Vacation Bible School so far: Monday's snack: Butterfly Cupcakes Down the center of a cupcake place a section of one of those nasty-tasting fruit-flavored licorice-like ropes, on either side of which place a Nutter Butter cookie. Tuesday's snack: Friendly Fig Bars On a fig newton, or strawberry newton, or whatever flavor you might prefer; using vanilla frosting attach two mini marshmallows upended on one end, then place an M&M candy on top of each marshmallow-these are the eyes. Under the eyes place half of a gummy LifeSaver candy. Tah-dah! A smiling friendly fig bar! Each child got two of these and there were 51 kids. It was quite the production line assembling these.

A day of kids and corn...

Today was the first day of Vacation Bible School at church. Attendance is down somewhat this year, most people attribute it to the price of fuel. Dunno. Maybe so. At any rate I am team teaching with the pastor's wife, the 3rd and 4th graders; we had 8 students, but the "older" class ahead of us only had one so she joined ours. It was a good day. They are impressed by the fact I speak Spanish, so they want to learn part of their memory verse in Spanish. This should be fun. A couple of years ago I taught one class how to sing "Jesus Loves Me" in Spanish. They drove their parents nuts at home singing it. One thing I learned long ago from my mom, who was a teacher's aide in gradeschool, is that kids are so honest and you learn the beatin'est things about their family lives from them. Things you don't really WANT to know. So far they haven't divulged too much personal stuff. But one Wed night (I teach the Wed night teen class) one student w

Hey, Grandpa...what's for supper?

Hubby says I ought to blog about what we had for supper last night. So I will. I baked some chicken breasts; just sprinkled a bit of onion soup mix over them and chucked them in the oven 'til done. It's a quick meat dish when you don't want to fuss. Then I tried something new; a wax bean soup. It's easy and turned out pretty good. I will attach the recipe at the bottom. I grew some wax beans this year, unbeknownst to hubby. He seemed to like the soup, but said the wax tasted funny. *sigh* He has a sense of humor that must be endured rather than enjoyed at times. He's been hauling hay off and on this past week, so yesterday he comes in with some tomatoes and green peppers the hay guy had given him. I sliced them up. We also had sliced cukes and onions (also homegrown) in salt/vinegar water, which is how hubby likes them served. Oh, and at the last minute hubby brought in some corn on the cob he'd just picked from his mom's garden. Hubby was pleas

NaBloPoMo is blown...

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I missed yesterday...but I will persevere throughout the rest of the month. I had two trips into town yesterday, plus a batch of sweet pickles. This picture is another one taken while I was in Malaysia. I felt it was an appropriate pic to share on a sweltering 90 degree day. This is starting to degenerate into a pickle/cucumber blog instead of a dairy blog, but stick with me. Cuke season will be over with eventually. Yesterday I tried a new pickle recipe. This time another recipe I got from an Amish cookbook. ( My in-laws like to travel to Amish country and pick up copies of their cookbooks.) This particular recipe is called Garlic Dill Pickles and was relatively easy to do, however you have to keep in mind that I had to use artistic license with some of these recipes because I think the authors or cooks who submit them assume you know what they are talking about. For instance in this particular recipe it doesn't tell you the amount of cukes to slice; it just says to soak slic

A Cucumber Day

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Yesterday morning hubby said his mom had some extra cucumbers; would I like them. Since our patch isn't yet producing mass cukes, I said yes. So here he comes later with a bucket of cucumbers. This is what it looked like when I added our few to the top and sides: So yesterday I sliced cucumbers for the Amish Sweet Pickles recipe my mother-in-law gave me. It's not hard, just kind of gross to start out with. Here's the recipe: Slice up one gallon's worth of cucumbers and soak in a solution of one cup of salt in one gallon of water in non metallic bowl. ( Does that make sense? ) Let soak for 3-5 days. ( This was the gross part...they smell rather strange after just 3 days, but remember that salt is a preservative and in the end the pickles are really good. I made a batch when I was expecting...that was rather a mistake, but I won't go into that here...hahaha ) Drain and rinse with cold water about 4 times to get off all the salt. Boil in alum water for 10 minutes. (

Food from the Past

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I don't remember if I've posted this picture before or not. I think I have, but it never hurts to post it again, does it? Is that cheating? I dunno. Anyway. This is Lobster Thermidore, I think, and was served to us (a group of friends) at a restaurant in Malaysia. Yum yum.

Zucchini Brownies and Grass Seed

Here's a recipe to use up any extra zucchini that you may have on hand this time of year. Zucchini Brownies ¼ C margarine or butter 1 ½ C sugar 2 Tbs cocoa 2 eggs 2 C flour 1 tsp salt ½ tsp soda 2 C peeled, ground or shredded zucchini 1 C chocolate chips ½ C nuts-optional Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs, cream; add zucchini and beat again. Add flour, salt, soda and cocoa. Place in a greased 9x13 inch pan. Sprinkle with chocolate chips and nuts. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, or until it tests done. Grass Seed There isn't too terribly much going on in the dairy department. Last week hubby happened across a fellow who was combining in a neighboring field to get the grass seed. Hubby told him to come and try the dry cow field if he wanted. The Seed Guy does this on shares; 50/50. So he came and tried it.. In a field of about 20 acres he got just a wee tad over 1,000 pounds of seed, 700 pounds of which were good grass seeds. That blew me away. How could grass seeds

Speaking of cucumbers...

here's a great recipe I stumbled onto last year. When I get the time I visit Homesteading Today and pick up some great tips and recipes from their cooking and recipe forums. They are a nice bunch. Freezer Dills: 6 cups thinly sliced cucumbers (I sliced mine paper-thin last time...will make thicker this year) 1 large onion, sliced thinly 3 Tbs. pickling salt1 cup sugar 1 cup white vinegar 3 cloves of garlic, minced 3 Tbs. dill weed 1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper (optional-I didn't use it because we don't like spicy stuff much.) Mix cukes & onion together and set aside. Combine sugar, salt, vinegar, garlic, dill, and red pepper. Stir until all sugar is dissolved. Add mixture to cukes. Mix well. Pack into freezer bags, squeeze out as much air as possible. Place in freezer. When ready to eat – thaw in refrigerator. Last year I packed them into pint sized bags, then when I took a bag out of the freezer, I let thaw and then emptied into a pint jar and kept it in the fridge. Hubb

Here's the cuke...and a recipe

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Since he didn't download in the previous post; here is Larry the cucumber, as jel dubbed him. But I don't think he's really any relation to the REAL Larry the Cuke from Veggie Tales. Well, maybe a very distant cousin. I did 7 more quarts of green beans yesterday, bringing my total up to 21 quarts. There is still more out there in the patch, I am thinking I will probably be able to get another canner full this coming week. Funnily enough I haven't much felt like having green beans for supper for the past few days, I can't imagine why.... The following is my favorite cookie recipe. I have only tried it once, but it won my approval from the first bite. Hubby loved them too. If I have one weakness in the cookie department it is for the good quality shortbread cookies you can sometimes find around the holidays. These, made at home with no preservatives, win my vote hands down; especially because they are so easy. Also, I intend on varying the toppings the next time I

Food from the recent past...

I was elated to find this cucumber out in the garden patch back when I took a photo of the dearly departed Luke. This cuke didn't last any longer than Luke did. I picked it and ate it on the spot. Well, it's almost 9 PM, the baby is squalling and I need to get to bed. I will try and read your comments, if any, tomorrow.

Busy 4th of July

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Happy 4th everyone. No plans for major celebrations on the dairy. When you get up at 3:45 AM, you kind of care less about staying up til dark and shooting off fireworks. Anyway, here's a happy birthday salute to hubby's granddad; he turned 93 today. Here is a pic of my hard work. The back jars of beans I picked and canned on Wednesday. The front jars I prepped today, hubby helped snap them; they are ready to be capped and put into the canner. I did that earlier, I think they all sealed, that's always a welcome sound; the popping of the lids sealing. Yummy.

Sad food news...good food news

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Bad news: As I stated in my comments in the previous post; Luke is a goner. The plant he is on was demolished by squash bugs. Yesterday when I went out to take his pic I noticed he was turning yellow. Another good idea gone bad. Good news: Here is a picture of more of my future food. Yesterday I picked and canned 7 quart jars of green beans. I took a picture of them, but am too lazy to download the photo. I did it all by myself this time; pick, snap, wash and can. It's time consuming but not hard; just hot and sweaty work. Not bad for my having been scared spitless of the pressure canner 4 years ago. Now it's a breeze. We have another larger green bean patch to do, hubby and mother in law will likely help. We will go down and help MIL do her beans sometime next week. It's more fun when you work as a team. The other day I went out to take photos of the calves to update my heifer records. I photograph them for ID purposes. I went into the pen with two of the bottle calve

Luke the Zuke...

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...or Future Food from my garden. Isn't he cute? He hasn't even bloomed yet. I took this picture on July 1, no matter that my camera date was messed up and says two days earlier. I am going to try to take Luke's photo every day and then pick him when he's ready. Should I pick him earlier when he is of slicing and frying size, or should I wait until he's bigger and make him into a zucchini pie? I dunno...we shall see. I probably won't be able to post a pic of him every day, but I will try and get them all posted one way or another. He isn't going to last all month, but I am going to post about other things too. The past week or so I have had a problem with wayward animals. I think it was last Fri or Saturday my husband turned two cows dry, took them to the dry cow pasture up the road about ¾ mile. The day after I went up to feed them as usual. I opened the gate and drove the 4-wheeler up to the corral. As a general rule I leave the gate open simply

July NaBloPoMo Theme: Food!

This should be a fun one; I can't wait to visit other blogs and see what they are blogging about on the subject of food. I plan on blogging on different aspects of food; different foods on the dairy and such. This will be a great challenge to blog every day and there is a great probability that I will NOT be able to blog every day. I haven't figured out how to do the cheater thing with regards to messing with the dates. I just don't have time. This week I am going to have to can green beans (highly appropo for this month's theme though) and I am gearing up to teach the 3rd and 4th graders in Vacation Bible School the 14th-18th of this month. Summer's are busy around here. Anyway, here is my quick food offering for today's blog, a short but pithy poem from Ogden Nash: Reflections on Ice-Breaking Candy Is dandy But liquor Is quicker. Not that I sanction boozing it up to break the ice and get to know a bunch of strangers, but I like Nash's way of cutting t