A bridal shower tomorrow

Our 3rd DS is getting married to a wonderful girl on March 1 in MN. We are thrilled! They will live on the farm and (future) 3rd DDIL will have laying hens, pigs, rabbits and possibly sheep at some point. She is a Veterinarian lab tech assistant and loves animals.

But, I digress.

Since the wedding is in MN and there are some people that can't get there, I was asked if there was going to be a shower here. I had thought about it but being a procrastinator I'd put off doing anything. I talked to 1st DDIL and she agreed that we should go ahead and do this!

A few days ago I made heart shaped sugar cookies.

Yea.  Just look at all those hummers.  I knew there was a reason I was reluctant to use my mom's recipe.  Now I remember why.  It makes tons and tons of cookies!

There will be some lots to send home with family.

I did some dipped in chocolate.  Of the two they are the yummiest! 

Today I'm cleaning house and making my share of the rest of the food.

Tomorrow is the day.  Wish me luck!

Oh yea...I almost forgot...Happy Valentine's Day too!!

There's a vinegary smell in the air

A few weeks ago, I was at the Farmers Market and thinking about making beet pickles.  The people at the stand said if I came back 2 days later they would reserve for me either a 1/2 bushel or a full bushel of beets instead of buying several small bunches that day.

Assuming, (BTW, never assume.  It doesn't usually turn out.) that the beets would come with their tops on, I agreed to a 1/2 bushel of beets.  I gave them my name and my phone number.  No backing out now!!

Well, as it turns out, the beets came with their tops off.  Way more beets that way. 

If you have ever wondered what a 1/2 bushel of beets look like...here you go.

  

Yup.  A lot of beets.

 

 

I thought I was taking step by step pictures but I guess I didn't.  It probably wouldn't have been that interesting anyway.

 

 



I made a trip to the store and so did DH to get enough vinegar for the job.

Can you smell the beets, vinegar and spices? 

It's like a sauna in here!

So for future reference:  A 1/2 bushel of beets will make 14 pints and 5 quarts of pickles.  And take 3 trips to the store.  2 for vinegar and 1 for quart jars when you run out of pints.

They sure are pretty though...

And then maybe 2 weeks later, again at the Farmers Market, there are the last cucumbers of the season.  I've been trying to find a good Bread and Butter pickle in the store but haven't come across anything that is nearly as good as homemade.

I guess 2 weeks is long enough to have forgotten all the work involved and so I bought cucumbers, onions, green peppers.  And in the big box store right there, I got more pint jars.

Here we go again!

 

 

I was going to do step by step pictures again but didn't manage to this time either.  So here are the veggies sitting in salt for 3 hours.

 

 



And here is the finished product.  9 pints of Bread and Butter pickles.

Now we just have to wait a few weeks for them to get that good pickled flavor throughout.  They should be ready to start eating at Thanksgiving.

Yum!

Holupture update

Since I'm the only place on Google that has information about Holupture also spelled holupse (that spelling has more places to look for info), I decided to do an update since my last post about how to make it.



This year's holupture.  Wish I could share it with you!

I've learned a few things since I made it that Thanksgiving and it really made a difference in the taste.

One thing I learned is that consistency in size is quite important.  We have foreign workers from Moldova and we were invited to their house for an evening meal.  It was awesome.  So much food we couldn't even taste it all.  BUT.  They served holupture.  Yup.  It didn't really surprise me but they were very surprised that we knew what it was.  Anyway each piece of holupture was the same size.

Then I went to my own source of information on the subject.  DH.  He is the one whose family has this as a tradition and so he is the closest thing to a pro as I can get these days.

He told me that to cook it early and let it marinate in the sauerkraut for as long as possible is the best thing to do.

And so here is what was done.

2nd DDIL and I made the holupture on Saturday evening.  The recipe was the same as before but if the cabbage leaves were too big we cut them in halves or quarters to make the rolls more even in size.

We arranged them in my bigger crock pot and dumped 2 large jars of sauerkraut on top.  I started it out on high for a couple hours and before bed I turned it down to low. 

It cooked overnight until about 9 in the morning.  I tested the rice to make sure it was cooked through.

Since we live in ND and it's cold here, I put the crock pot in the garage to keep cold and not have to use up refrigerator space on the big crock.  I left the sauerkraut on top and didn't drain any liquid off.

The holupture stayed in the garage for 2 days and on Tuesday I removed the sauerkraut and put the crock pot back in the heating unit to warm it up for dinner.  

It was delicious.  DH said we could have even put another jar of sauerkraut on top.  He remembered his gramma's being stronger tasting but he said this was a very close second. 

And now I know how to make the holupture as tasty as possible.  Start early.  Let it sit and marinate for a couple days after cooking it and use lots of sauerkraut.

It was so good tasting and also heartwarming to have hit on the right combination to get the end result as close as possible to Gramma Lora Stein's recipe.

The Sweetest Sound (in canning season)

A trip to the Farmer's Market yielded several bunches of beets.

And my plan to can Beet Pickles was set into motion.

Boil the whole beets and then put them in cold water and the skins will slip off easily.

Then slice them and boil again in the pickling syrup.

Put into jars and tighten down the lids.

And wait for the sweetest sound in canning...

Ping.

Ping.

Ping, ping, ping!

Pie Social and Bake Sale

The ladies group in our church is having a Pie Social and Bake Sale.  It's an annual event and a pretty good fund raiser.  Everyone makes a pie to be cut and served/sold and several other baked goods for sale.

This year these are my offerings....

A cherry pie.  I put all my efforts into looking pretty.  It's made from canned pie filling and a ready to use crust.  It'll still taste ok but I think it really is quite attractive!  (That's me patting myself on my back!)

This is a chocolate pudding pie on a graham cracker crust.  The pretty part comes from the white chocolate that I made into a lacy design. 

It was easy to do but I had to break off a few of the loops to make it fit on the pie.  So it's kinda just so so.

These are Combining Cookies.  Butter, sour cream, coconut, oatmeal, chocolate chips.  Yummy.  Nothing really pretty here but they are a family favorite.  Especially because the recipe came from this little lady.

Grandma Lora.  DH's paternal grandmother.  I've had her knitting on here before.  And now here are her cookies too. 

I mentioned before that she raised a big family and this recipe was made to fit that family I'm sure.  It calls for 12 cups of flour and yesterday when I made a 1/2 batch, it still made 6 dozen cookies.

I'm not taking all of them to the bake sale though...we love them too much to part with all of them!

Happy Thanksgiving to you!

The first pan in the oven today is the holupture. And what is that you say?? Why it is a family tradition in DH's family. One that I've learned to appreciate and love also. It is supposed to be cooked in a old fashioned Red Wing crock for hours and hours on low heat but I'm trying to bring the dish into our fast paced world. And so a 9X13 pan on slightly higher heat for a shorter time. I really hope it turns out.

The recipe comes from the same Gramma that knit these slippers. She was a strong force in our family and we miss her and all the other grammas in our lives, especially on days like this.

Ok. Now for the recipe.

You start out with a nice sized head of cabbage. Core it and then wilt the leaves in a big pot of hot water. Cut off the heavy stem that runs down the back of the cabbage leaf so they are easier to roll.

Mix together 1 cup uncooked rice, 1/2 cup finely diced ham or bacon, 3 tsp salt and 1 tsp pepper. Put a spoonful of this in each cabbage leaf and fold over the edges on all sides to form a roll that the rice can't escape from.

Place cabbage leaves on the bottom of the pan. Arrange the cabbage rolls on top. Add another layer of cabbage leaves and top everything with 2 large jars of sauerkraut. Add enough water to cover the rolls and bake for several hours at 325 degrees.

The first holiday that a newcomer to the family was at, was the test to see how well they would fit in... They were given the holupture test. First to see if they would taste it at all and then to see if they would like it. I think I passed the test all those many years ago. I both tasted and liked the holupture! And now I'm cooking it for my family.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Trip to Dairy Queen!

DH has been wanting to take the grandkids to Dairy Queen for awhile now. This past Sunday turned out to be the day.

It was a last minute thing but worked out wonderfully. The kids were bathed and clean...they live on a farm and tend to be just a bit grubby (just like our boys when we were living there). And they were hungry.

1st DS moved all 3 carseats from his pickup to our car. Everyone got strapped in and away we went.

They ate like they hadn't seen food for awhile. 1st DGD had a cheeseburger and fries. DGS had a hot dog and applesauce. 2nd DGD had a grilled cheese and a banana. And, of course, afterwords they had Ice Cream! The older 2 had cones with sprinkles and the little one had a plain cone. I asked 1st DGD what the sprinkles tasted like and she said "A rainbow!".

They giggled and were excited and we all had a great time with memories made...

Gee, I love those kids!

A little knitting and a little cooking

The Iceling Cardigan should have been done by now but, you know, summer interfered. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

The next thing happening with it, is the buttonhole row. I've done sweaters before but I can't remember doing a one row buttonhole so this will be a new experience. Hopefully a good one!

Yesterday I did a bit of cooking. It was the annual Test Plot Tour for our seed plant. Only it rained. So we did the whole thing at the plant instead of in the field.

The AgriPro Wheat representative did a powerpoint presentation and afterwords I fed everyone. Well, I didn't feed them personally I just cooked and served the food. ;) There were about 30 people there and that was a good turnout considering the weather.

We brought 2 grills out to the plant and 3rd DS and I cooked hamburgers and brats while the talk was going on. I had quite a smoke smudge going. I can't grill without a nice fire flareup happening! We did 48 brats and 35 hamburgers.

I had bought 10# of potato salad and made a big crockpot of calico beans. There was an assortment of condiments and these "zero" calorie little puppies...

They look pretty sad all alone on the big pan but they still are tasty. Rice Krispie bars with a caramel layer topped with fudge frosting. They went like hotcakes!

A busy weekend, a little baking and a lot of fun!

This just past weekend was our little town's "Days" weekend.

There was a community cooked & served BBQ (tender roast beef, baked potatoes, marinated carrots, baked beans, roasted onions, and watermelon, yummy); canoe races; games for kids (the kind that you rent...this year they had a water slide); paper plate drop at the airport (the local businesses put candy or silver dollars etc on paper plates and they are dropped from an airplane for the kids to run around and pick up); the band, Boomtown, (a very fun-for-everyone band) for the Friday night street dance and a DJ for the Saturday night street dance; and also on Saturday after the BBQ was the singing group from Fargo, Great Plains Harmony - amazing singers and performers.

This is just a small sampling of what went on...the young gals that organize this are amazing. And probably the most amazing part is that most everything is free. They fund raise like crazy during the year.

Also on Saturday was the 3rd annual McBake Off Dessert Contest. I entered the 1st year, was lazy last year and decided to enter again this year. Well, I had a new cheesecake recipe and so that was it. I had to make it. And here it is....

There were 19 desserts in all. That's a lot of tasting for the judges! I didn't win but I did get perfect scores for appearance. :)

It was a very fun weekend. A lot of people came home to visit. Our town was hopping!

I'm sure the organizing committee is taking a break and heaving a sigh of relief and then shortly they will be planning for next year.

Good job ladies!

Happy....

Turkey Day to everyone!















I would have taken the picture when everything was done but it's just going to be too busy then.

I'm wishing everyone a fun day, safe travels and happy new memories. We live in an amazing country and are so blessed. Most of us have more than we know what to do with. But...

Please remember to support your local food pantry and your local mission. Even with everything we have there are some that are hungry and homeless....

An excellent book, a good cup of coffee and some knitting

Have you ever wondered what it is like to be an early onset Alzheimer's patient? Some days when I can't remember what I'm in a room for or what a certain word is, I do. And so when I came across the book STiLL ALiCE by Lisa Genova I snatched it up and bought it. The National Alzheimer's Association has endorsed it and it's the only one that they have endorsed.

This isn't a statistical book. It's a work of fiction that follows 2 years in the life of Alice who just turned 50, is a professor at Harvard, is a mother and who discovers she has early onset Alzheimer's.

It is written from Alice's viewpoint but also shows how her husband, children and coworkers deal with the disease.

It made me cry. But it isn't written to grab sympathy but to as accurately as possible show you what is happening to an Alzheimer's patient.

I give it 5 stars.

And for a real change in topics...I'm not really a coffee drinker. I usually go for a Diet Coke or some tea but this is something else that I could give at least 4 stars. It's Maxwell House International Cafe Vanilla Caramel Latte. And it makes it's own foam on top! What fun!

There have been days and days that I haven't touched my knitting but I am making some advances on the Norwegian Woods Shawl. I'm on the 3rd chart now and it is less rows for a repeat so it will go quicker.

And I have to admit that reading a chart is easier/faster than reading the words. I just had to learn how and stop thinking that I couldn't!

I think I love the beads. They look like little dewdrops.

The next shawl will probably be Frozen Leaves. If I can decide on the yarn....

Unusual?

There's been a change in what is being cooked around here since the weather got colder. It started with scalloped potatoes and ham made with heavy cream. (I got a bit of a stomach ache from that one!) Then there were a couple soups, some baked beans with hamburger and a batch of smothered meatballs served with boiled potatoes. The kind of food that puts on a layer of, dare I say it, fat! to help keep you warm during the long winter. Every season brings different foods to go with it. But occasionally there are things that you've always done and are good whatever time of year it is....

Today I was rummaging through the cupboards trying to satisfy a craving and realized I had regular plain potato chips on hand. Now this isn't a cold weather food....just a crazy thing that I used to do when I was a kid. Potato chip sandwiches. Ah, pure heaven.

I used to eat them on white bread but now I'm so healthy that I use whole grain bread. ;) You gotta use lots of butter/margarine and really smash the potato chips so you can fit in lots of them. You eat them standing over the sink to catch all the crumbs that are sure to drop.

My dad also had a sandwich that he ate any old time that the mood stuck. That was an onion sandwich. Raw onion sliced on white bread. He sure liked it. I've never tried that one.

When we had fresh bread, which was every Saturday since we baked bread every Saturday morning, Daddy would eat it with fresh cream (we had milk cows so it was always available) and sugar. Rip the bread in pieces. Put it all in a bowl and eat it. For supper. Just that. Nothing else. I'm always a bit amazed he lived to be almost 91 considering some of the things that he ate.

I don't remember Mom having any unusual food that she ate, although some of the Norwegian specialty food is rather unusual. And she really like those things.

There is a mush made of cream, butter, sugar and flour and simmered 'til the butter floats to the top. It's served in a bowl and topped with sugar and for those that like it, cinnamon. This is called rommegrot.

There's fish called lutefisk. It's cod soaked in lye. The story I heard is that the Swedes were trying to poison the Norsks and put lye in the fish to kill them. Well it didn't kill them but they liked it so they kept making it and it's become a tradition. It's served with melted butter. Even our little local grocery store carries it during the holidays.

There are wonderful sweets that are just to many to tell all about but if you can see the trend here, they have butter in them!

So it seems I've rambled on too much but food is on my mind. I need to start something for supper. It won't be any of these things I've mentioned though...DH is from a mainly German background and isn't fond of any of these things!

BTW, I really enjoyed that potato chip sandwich. :)

Feels more like summer

It was a gorgeous day today. Mid 70's for temps, the lawnmowers are going next door, and it just seems more like summer than it did during the actual summer. The only thing that lets you know fall is here are the flies hanging around the doors and windows. Pesty things.

I'm still knitting on the Upstairs Shawl. I'm anxious to see it when it's blocked so I've been trying to push and do as much as possible each day. There are 2 hours of Grey's on tonight though so I'm afraid there won't be much knitting then! I can't watch that and count at the same time. I'll just knit during the commercials....

I need to mow again too. The grass here is the longest of all the neighbors. The apple tree is the main reason I haven't mowed lately. Wonderful apples for applesauce and pies and crisps but they fall on the ground. It has been raining apples. And I've been lazy and haven't done anything about it so they've laid there for days now. My new plan is to rake them all up and get rid of the ones on the ground. They are soft and full of ants and squirrel teeth marks anyway and then I'll get the ladder out and pick everything off the tree and be done with it. They'll keep for awhile if they aren't all bruised from falling on the ground. I canned a few pint jars of applesauce last year and should really do the same again. Someone told me to freeze the applesauce instead of canning it. I might try that. I freeze pies. Can't be much different.

It's a learning process.....

So I've learned a few things while knitting on this shawl. The main one is that I really should have been alternating every couple rows between 2 skeins of yarn. It has some pooling issues and it's really a bit disappointing. But if I can pass it off as something that you want....more to myself than the recipient....maybe it'll work.

This picture is miserable colorwise, but shows the swirliness (if it isn't a word, it should be) of the colors.





This is a better picture as far as the colors go but is out of focus. The camera & I aren't friends today. The color is a bit darker and more bricky but this is pretty close.

The other thing I've got to learn about is how much things grow when blocked. This is supposed to have only 1 repeat left and the pattern says it'll be 55" when it's blocked and done. I don't think so. I can't imagine that it will grow that much. It's 31" right now and I've done 9 repeats. At the rate I'm going it'll be about 34.5" when I'm done. That means it'll have to stretch 20.5". In my book, that's a lot. But like I say it's a learning process.

Actually I don't think 55" is long enough to start with so I'll be doing more repeats anyway. Also I had planned on doing one of these for each DDIL. By the looks of this one I might be "giving" it to myself and starting another one for one of the DDILs and something else for the other one. I don't think I could handle doing 3 of these in a row. o.O

Tomorrow is a break from knitting. Not that I really want a break but am required to work at our church's fall fundraising dinner. Pork roast, mashed potatoes, really excellent gravy, corn, cole slaw and a huge assortment of desserts. I'm roasting 2 of the roasts. Lipton's onion soup mix and a roasting bag for a few hours.

I'm also on to make coffee. I don't drink coffee and the gal I'm on with to make the coffee doesn't either. So how do you think that will turn out?? Two non coffee drinkers making the coffee in a Scandinavian/German community that loves it's coffee. Uff. (Yes, I'm Norwegian. I just don't drink the stuff!) If I could get canned from a job it would be the coffee making at the church dinner. They never can anyone though!

Progress

I've done 1/2 of the total repeats that the pattern says but I think I'm going to make it longer. Two reasons. I don't think it'll block out as long as the pattern says it should. And 55" probably isn't long enough anyway so will be adding more repeats. I need to remember to measure before and after blocking. That will help if I decide to do this pattern again. And I do still like the pattern.

The lighter colored "stripes" in it is pooling and I'm disappointed in that but absolutely refuse to rip it all out and start over. I may eat those words though if the new skein does something totally different. Time will tell.

This is for 2nd DDIL and I was going to make an identical one for 1st DDIL but on further reflection, 1st DDIL has no real use for a shawl but a lacy scarf would be a better idea. So I'll use the same yarn but either make this pattern narrower or find a different pattern for a scarf.

I didn't take any pictures but I made 7 pints of corn relish and 7 pints of pickle relish in the last couple days. I've got extra cucumbers and onions and peppers so I'm going to make a batch of refrigerator pickles from them. It's a good thing. ;)

Our weather has cooled off and will be that way for a couple days. It rained overnight and that is putting a crimp in the harvest. The barley has been swathed and they take longer to dry out. So it goes every year. Something gets rained on while it's laying there. Hopefully they get to start straight combining soon. I should ride along on the combine and take pictures. It's pretty cool stuff if you are into that kind of thing....

The sweetest sound,

after a day of canning, is the ping when the lid seals.

Beet Pickles. 2009. 5 pints.

Baking, baking, and cooking and a tiny bit of knitting

Last weekend was our little town's annual celebration and a new thing this year was a dessert contest. Well, I baked 2 pans of Caramel Chocolate Bars. Very gooey and rich. Yummy looking yes? Well, they didn't win anything....not that I expected to. :)



Then within 3 days of each other is DH and 1st DDIL's birthdays. So I baked a cake. New recipe for both the cake and the frosting. Was a bit sweet and I doubled the frosting recipe and got a bit carried away with how much I put on. Do you see the overhang on the side of the cake? Yeah, a bit much.




Yesterday was our annual wheat test plot tour and I cooked a picnic supper for afterwords. Calico beans, pulled BBQ beef, brats, potato salad, buns and brownies. Sorry, no picture of the food....it was mostly eaten and the leftovers given to family. But this is the mess that I faced this morning. Augh.





And I've done just a bit of knitting. This is the 3rd and probably last little hat I'm doing for our grandbaby due the end of September. I think it's the cutest one. It's a combination of patterns. The hat is "Little Rosebud" by Rita Weiss and the flower is crocheted and is part of the pattern for "New York Skully" by Nancy Brown. The yarn is RY Cashsoft Baby DK. Very nice yarn, BTW.

Hats, sweater and supper last night.

This is the umbilical cord hat or as the pattern is call Hospital Hat. It is made out of Caron Simply Soft in Pink. I had it completed in one evening. And started on the next one...








This is Baby Hat from the book "One Skein" by Leigh Radford. I love this book. This cap is the 1st thing I've made from it but I have my eye on several other things. The round rug at the back of the book really has me interested. The cap is made from Debbie Bliss Cashmerino in Carnation. I finished the cap the next day. It took about the same amount of time as the 1st one.




Here is the finished sweater. Seamless Yoked Baby Sweater. I still am not totally happy with the end results. I don't know if I like the ruffle or the buttons or the placement of the decorative stitches at the bottom of the body. And I'm still not fond of the color. But I don't think I want to redo so many things and it will probably stay just as it is. It also is made from Debbie Bliss Cashmerino in Carnation.






And this is leftovers from supper last night. Oh was this good. Corn salsa. Made from scratch. An eyeball and stir kind of thing. I had 3 recipes in front of me and just used the parts that I liked the best. Are you interested in what's in it??

Here's the recipe. Such as it is....

4 ears of corn, wrapped in foil, cooked on the grill for a few minutes, cut off cob and cooled.
1 tomato, seeded and chopped.
Purple onion, diced, about 1/3 C.
1/2 of a Red bell pepper, diced.
1/4 of a jalepeno pepper, minced.
I didn't have cilantro so I threw in a generous amount of dried parsley.
A glug of olive oil.
Juice of 1/2 of a lime.
1/2 tsp kosher salt and a dash of pepper.
It was all mixed together & in the fridge while I cooked some pork chops on the grill. Yum Yummy!

This is one of those recipes that you can add more or less of things depending how you like it.

Easter preparations

So today is housecleaning and meal planning for tomorrow. I've gotten a start on the cleaning and mostly have decided what to make for dinner tomorrow but just can't decide on a dessert. I guess in the overall scheme of things it's a pretty minor problem. Maybe I'll just make some brownies with fudge frosting and offer some vanilla ice cream. I also have frozen fruit, blackberry, raspberry and blueberry combination, that I have made a sauce out of with just a touch of water and a bit of sugar. Simmer on the stove until things get somewhat mushy, cool and use as a ice cream topper. Yum yummy! Either one would be a good dessert or maybe a combination of all of it.....?

And talking about ice cream reminds me to say that if you can get Schwan's ice cream, do it. It's the best. No doubt about it.

It is wonderfully sunny and warm out today. That nasty snow should be melting like crazy. I am so tired of snowbanks and mud. We don't have much to complain about though. There are parts of the state that are flooding and will spend Easter sandbagging and watching their sump pump.

Oh, and if you are wondering what we are eating tomorrow?? Well, it's pretty traditional around our house. Ham, raisin sauce, hash browns with cream of chicken soup and sour cream on top and all topped with melty cheese, asparagus, broccoli and cauliflower salad, olives, dill pickles. And if I really get my act together I am planning on homemade overnight buns.

I hope everyone has a good Easter and that you get to spend it with family and friends.