Sam  R.I.P. 2000-2012

We had to put Sam to sleep today. He couldn't hardly walk, was very wobbly, was mostly deaf, and nearly blind. Last summer he woke up from a nap on his rug here in the house and was very disoriented, head and eyes going back and forth. He was Ok after about 10 minutes. Yesterday he was doing it again and also today. I asked the vet if it was a stroke, and she said no. It was something with a long name that I can't remember. She could see his eyes doing it today. His rear legs or hips couldn't hold him up anymore, so it was time. He was a good dog.

Snow!

This is way too much snow! It is very pretty, but is cold and inconvenient! Makes getting from here to there, difficult! Ok, I am done whining now. It makes the landscape beautifull.

Maddie was sure enjoying herself! She layed down and jumped up and did it again, at least three times, then she...

took off bucking and jumping! But even the horses are tired of it now too.

The hay wagons are looking for warm weather too!

This is my favorite photo, so far. I like the hint of faded red in this.

A chilly scene!

Fruitcake!

Do you suppose there is something wrong with me? Why? Because I love a good fruitcake! First you have to collect the ingredients. Lots of dried and candied fruit.

Then you have to cut some of it into halves, toast the nuts, etc.

Wow! 16 1/2 cups of fruit and nuts! This fruitcake never comes out the same, each time I make it, as I use different amounts and varieties of fruits and nuts. The recipe came from an old cookbook, from the 1940's I think, and it was called Dark Fruitcake.

Then you get a VERY large bowl, and mix it all up! That is a 5 pound bag of flour, for comparison, sitting next to the bowl.

Then bake it SLOWLY for 3 hours.

And then you have...dark, wonderful, fruity fruitcake! This recipe makes a 10 pound cake. I made this a few days after Thanksgiving, and it was stored in a cool place to mellow until Christmas. It is yummy!

My latest  experiment was this bread baked in my cast iron dutch oven. It worked perfectly, but the bread had a bit of an odd texture.

It tasted ok, and really made good toast. The ingredients were only bread flour, yeast, salt and water. You start it the day before and let it sit at room temperature for 12 to 18 hours. I would do it again. Maybe my kitchen was too cold? Don't know.

Then, I made this! Persimmon Pudding with Caramel Sauce. I have never been a fan of persimmon pudding. I don't like the wet texture. Last year, I discovered a young persimmon tree at the edge of the hay field. Last year it only had a few, maybe a dozen persimmons on it. This year it had lots of them. I can't stand to see anything go to waste, so I picked them up and looked online for a cakey recipe. My sister made one last year, that I thought was really good. It was not so runny and wet as most of them. So I made one using her recipe. I also came across someones suggestion to use a potato ricer to separate the seeds from the pulp. Well, it worked very well! It wasn't messy, and I would do it again. Back to the cake itself. When mine came out of the oven, (and I baked it at least 20 minutes longer than the recipe stated), it was still wet! Yuck! We let it cool, and ate some of it anyway. Tasted wonderful! But the texture, ick! After sitting in the refrigerator, it was firmer, but I want to find a recipe that is more cake like. Anyone have one like that?

Catching Up!

I have had all kinds of trouble with Blogger and trying to post, and since at the moment it is being kind, you will get all my previous posts, all in one day!

I had some plum puree in the freezer, and didn't quite know what to do with it. I recently came across a recipe that I was able to adapt for Plum Butter that was made in the microwave.

Well, I like a challenge! Here are the key players,

And here is the result! I liked it so well, and it was so easy to make that I made four batches! Love it!

I found a recipe idea that sounded like it would work for me for breakfast and thought I would try it. I cooked some sausage, cracked up some eggs, added a little milk, cheese, a few red peppers....

mixed it up, and portioned it out in to a muffing tin, baked it, then froze them the little egg muffins. With a piece of buttered toast, breakfast is ready in the 30 seconds it takes to heat the muffin! And they taste good!        

                                                                                             

Terror!

These things give me the heebie geebies! That thing is going to BLOW!!

Enrique's wife gave me this almost new pressure canner. Still in its original box and with  all of its parts and pieces, including the instruction book.

So...I had two grocery bags full of green beans to can. I had never used this one before as ours doesn't have the dial, it just has the 'jiggler'. But I wanted to finish these beans before bedtime so I used both of them at the same time, never getting more than a few feet from this one, or from the instruction book, as I wasn't sure what to expect from it! What do I do now? Is it supposed to make THAT noise? EEK! Where is my mamma! Oh, you are all grown up now, so get a grip! I don't wanna, I want my mamma! Well, it didn't GET me, and it did cook the beans perfectly, so I guess I lived through this traumatic episode of my day!

 

 

Peaches!

I had some juicy peaches that were just crying to made into something tasty. I found this recipe online sometime ago and it just begged to be made.

It is cooling and we couldn't hardly wait to taste it.

Peach Slab Pie! It is good cold too. Grab a piece and go! Eat it as you go out to the barn or whatever you are doing. It holds together so you can enjoy it anytime, anywhere! Yum! You can find the original recipe here:  http://www.mennonitegirlscancook.ca/2010/08/peach-slab-pie.html

Dog or ?

We came home from work and about an hour later, Ed went to the backyard to feed the dogs but they weren't there! Or so he thought. He walked down the hill looking for him and this is what he found!

The tree was a dead cedar, and had fallen down at an angle. It was easy to get up the tree, even though he had to climb over a lot of small branches sticking out everywhere. As you can see from Ed standing next to him, he was pretty high up there!

He couldn't back down as there were too many branches in the way. He was standing on little ones with his toes, just barely. He really was stuck, and couldn't move. I had to hold onto the trunk and try to bend it down far enough for Ed to reach him. He had to break a bunch of branches out of the way so he could pull him off of it. As soon as his feet hit the ground, he ran for the water bowl and drank and drank!  Silly dog. He is always busy, playing with his ball, dragging a huge broken tree branch around the yard or digging hole looking for moles. He has killed at least 5 or 6 of them.

This gas oven and stove from the old camper has really come in handy in this awful heat wave. It is just too hot to have all that heat in the house, so Ed parked this on the porch, and I cooked down the mulberries out on the porch! Thanks Mom and Dad for letting us take that old camper apart.

The heat wave is effecting everyone. These little Carolina Wren babies need some cooler air. This nest is on our front porch, and in the shade, but the 105 degrees we were having when I took this yesterday was just tooooooo hot!

Here comes momma, or maybe daddy. The parent birds never slowed down at all, even though they would pause after delivering their bugs and worms, and pant with their mouths open.

Hot Momma!

As soon as the parent left, they would try to cool off by sticking out of the nest as far as they could.

Random Images of the Day

Katie is such a regal lady. She was intently watching the dog as he barked at the neighbor. She was posing so nicely I just had to take her photo.

This was Ed's project for the day. This was the camper frame that he got from Mom and Dad and he has turned it into a nice trailer.

These are three of the plants that are still in the greenhouse. It gets so hot in there even with the fan running that most of the plants have been moved to the porch. The begonia with the red flower is one of the plants that nearly died in the heat episode a couple of months ago. It has finally come back nicely.

This one I call 'PEEKING'. She went 'broody' so we let her set on three eggs and she hatched all three. (We really didn't want any more chickens). There is a third one hiding under those warm feathers.

Pecan Pie Bars

Rachel, this is for you. I don't have a scanner and wanted you to see the photo of these bars.

I hope it works for you.

I Couldn't Resist!

I came across this recipe in one of my Make Ahead cookbooks and it sounded so different that I just had to try it! It is something like a Shoo fly pie, but with fruit instead of molasses.

I used fresh strawberry's instead of purchased frozen ones,

and a one layer cake mix, such as Jiffy Mix. I think if I make it again, I might use a yellow cake mix instead of the white.

Mix the cake mix up, pour it into your unbaked crust, and gently pour your strawberry's on top,

bake and enjoy the lovely aroma in your kitchen,

Let cool at least one hour, and serve with vanilla ice cream! Yummy! I kind of compared it to a strawberry cobbler taste, but different and well worth making again!

My Worse Nightmare-An Escapade

Last Sunday, well I guess it was already Monday, Missy woke us up barking, at 4:10 Am. We could see headlights in the driveway. Ed got up and peered out the window and a sheriff's car was in the drive way. He went to the door and the sheriff said there were three horses out on the road and one of them had been hit by a car. We scrambled into some jeans and shoes. I got outside first and asked the sheriff, who was standing on the porch waiting for us if the horse was on its feet, and he pointed to the area of the barn and asked if those were our horses. I hurried toward the barn and the horses were out of their lot, and were standing up near the run-in shed. (They had come back to the barn on their own, just ahead of the sheriff. I grabbed halters and walked up to them and caught Maddie and Katie, and Solomon followed us down to the barn. Katie kept pawing the ground, first with one foot then the other. She was holding her head at an angle, not the normal way. Maddie had a bad scrape all the way down her back leg, from the knee to the ankle, (likely from getting into barbwire fencing that was in the grass, where they had been), where all the hair had been scraped off. Solomon had no injuries at all. I could tell that Katie was in pain, even though I couldn't find anything visible on her. I called the vet, waking them up, I'm sure. I explained the situation to the vet when he called back, telling him there were no broken bones but that Katie wouldn't stop pawing and he said he would come right out. It was almost and hour before he arrived. (They are 30 minutes away). He examined her and the others and gave them all Banamine, a painkiller. He found soreness on her left ribcage and a stiff neck. He was concerned about them colicing, (a bad horsey tummy ache) from both stress and eating all that grass. They haven't been out on grass for 8 years! He suggested I stay home from work and watch them for the day. So I did, checking on them about ever 30 minutes all day. Katie just stood in the corner of the shed, all day, walking very slowly when she came to get a drink. She was eating and drinking, just sore and stiff. 
   That evening after supper someone knocked on the door. When I answered it, there was a man standing there, and asked how the horse was. I asked him if he is the one that hit her and he said yes. So this is his story...
Said he was going home from work, and he saw what he thought were deer walking down the middle of highway. He slowed down, to about 30 MPH, and said to his buddy that was with him, THOSE ARE HORSES! And just then Katie who was on the other side of the road, jumped out of the ditch right in front of him and he couldn't avoid hitting her. Then he called the sheriff with his work radio as cell phones don't work around here. (This all happened just pass the fire station, that is near our driveway). The impact bent his bumper a little bit, broke a headlight, and cracked the grill on his pickup truck. Katie has a place on her ribs, about 20 inches long where the hair appears cut. She is still improving, as I saw her trot part of the way back up to the shed after coming down for water. She still does a lot of just standing in the corner. She was given a painkiller dose for about 4 days, but now she is off of them.
   The next day, when I was leaving for work, I drove up the road a little way and there was horse poop, quite a ways, so they had been out for several hours, most likely. We could see tracks where they had been down the back hayfield.
   Thank the Lord that our words are like a shield. This could have been a real tragedy, both for us and for that driver.  

This all came about because a gate was accidentally left open. A lesson not to be soon forgotten. 
This whole episode still makes me shake to think about.

What is this? Ginseng?

Ruth, can you tell me what this is? I stumbled on this in the backyard, right in the edge of the woods. I wondered if it was ginseng. I've never seen it growing to know what the plants look like.