A Weekend In Pictures

This weekend was so much fun.  Time spent with my sweetie, time spent with amazing women and the bonus of our first snow fall.  A perfect weekend by any one's standards.  The best way to explain it is to just show the photos.

Dinner on Saturday night was a birthday celebration for my dear friend Harrigan.  She turned 31 earlier in the week and to celebrate, we had a pasta making dinner and clothes swap.  For those of you unfamiliar with the clothes swap idea, it is basically getting to go thrift store shopping for free in your home.  Friends bring clothes, baby items and housewares that they no longer want or need and then you can swap and take what you want.  Even if you have nothing to add to the swap, you still get to go through everything and take what you like.  For this Thrift Store loving gal, it is a dream come true.  All the joy of thrift shopping without having to pay any money, cooking and eating with friends, drinking wine and cappuccinos and eating dessert and the fellowship of about 25 fabulous women.  What could be better?  I don't know, but would love to hear if any of you know of something better.

Menu for the night.

Freshly made balls of pasta dough.

 

Rolling the pasta dough through the pasta maker the final time.

 

If there is one thing this group of women can do, it is eat.  We made plenty of pasta so no one would leave hungry.

 

Homemade sauce with garden tomatoes, garlic, onion and olive oil.

What more could you need?

 

Harrigan putting the finishing touches on the dessert......

Pumpkin Spice Cake with Burnt Salted Caramel Crèam Cheese Frosting.

 

Dessert and wine

 

Dinner......

Homemade Fettuccine with tomato garlic sauce, Kale and brussel sprout salad with pepitas and cranberries and cabbage.

 

We should all open a restaurant together and take turns cooking and talking in the kitchen.

What a wonderful group of women.

 

 

After a perfect night, I woke this morning to the glorious site of freshly fallen snow.  Oh how I do love snow!!!!!  It brings out the kid in me.  Couldn't help but go out and get some photos of the magical beauty that is the snow.  Enjoy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 





Preserving What We Have

 

Awwwww, September is here and along with it, the busy work that comes with having a large garden you wish to squeeze every bit it has to offer from.  At least that is how things are working out here at our home.  This year I am more determined than ever to can, dry, freeze, roast or ferment anything I can to keep it around longer.  Robby has been a huge help in this area because during the week when I am at my job, if it is raining and he can be outside getting work done, he will do some canning for us.  So far, he has canned our beans, spaghetti sauce, tomato juice and hot peppers. 

I have canned blackberry jam and concord grape jam.  I have also been slow oven roasting the tomatoes as I harvest them from the garden and put them in jars covered in olive oil to keep in the fridge.  They are so delicious!!!!!  I also have been making a lot of pesto with our basil and either freezing it in ice cube trays or filling 1/2 pint jars and freezing it.  I also made some Tomato Almond Pesto for a change and froze that in the ice cube trays too.  I found that recipe here at  Smitten Kitchen and highly recommend it.

I have always grown herbs in my garden but for whatever bizarre reason, I have never dried them at the end of the summer.  Not this year though, I have hung rosemary, thyme and oregano to dry and have frozen parsley and chives.  Next year I hope to have more variety of herbs to grow and later preserve.  I will continue to cut more branches of herbs as groups dry and hang them, but my space is limited as to where I can hang them so I must do them in batches.  Besides, I don't want to cut them all now and then not have anymore fresh herbs for the rest of the growing season.

Our root cellar is completed and as of now, all we have in it is our potatoes and garlic.  Our onions are still curing but will be added soon.  We have turnips planted and a second planting of beets that will be ready to dig in a few weeks that will also be put in the cellar.  I planted carrots again, but hold out little hope of them actually growing into anything worth harvesting.  I just can't seem to grow carrots to save my soul. Oh yeah, a friend of ours gave us a bunch of sweet potato plants and we still have those to harvest and place in the cellar.  I am anxious to see how the root cellar works this winter.  I am not going to lie, even though there is a light inside and a door, it still sort of freaks me out when I go into it.  I usually make Robby go with me but hope in time I will get over this silly fear of something I wanted so desperately.  Robby swears animals can't get inside of it, but I have seen these pesky little country critters get into just about anything they want, and I would imagine a dark cellar filled with yummy food would be a perfect place for them to want to hang out.  Once we get the root cellar full for the winter, I will take a picture to share and post a story about the construction of it.



Herbs to dry and to freeze



Our kitchen table is rarely cleared off enough to eat on this time of year.
It makes a great work station for prepping foods to preserve.





Classic Pesto placed in ice cube trays to freeze.

 

I think this looks more like ground meat in ice cube trays but in reality it is the
Tomato-Almond Pesto and it is delicious!

The aromas in my kitchen while all of this work goes on, is amazing.
It might look like a complete mess, but it is a fragrant mess!

My trusty Cuisinart.
I have had her a long time but she just keeps plugging along.

One of the things I love the most about living where we live and the friends that I have here, is that we all believe in bartering and trading.  Robby is a retired contractor and many times we have friends that call and ask for him to help with a project they want done.  This past winter, two of our closest friends, who were expecting their first child in a few months, were needing to renovate their kitchen.  They asked Robby for some help and direction and Robby was more than happy to help out.  January and February are his two least favorite months as hunting season is over and the weather can be too cold to get much done outside.  Jason is a cattle farmer and his wife Harrigan is one the most amazing young women I have ever met.  She has taught me so much about so many different things and she is 18 years younger than me, how is she so wise?  She puts me to shame with the preserving, fermenting, home baking and cooking she does.  And now she has also added amazing mother to her list of accomplishments.  Anyway, we agreed that for payment on the kitchen renovation, Jason would give us one of his steer and pay for the processing at our local slaughter house which is just up the road.  We would have our freezer filled with beef for the winter and they would have a beautiful new kitchen, sounded great to me!  This past weekend, the beef was ready for us to pick up and oh my goodness, do we ever have a freezer full of beef?  Good thing I have 4 sons who come home to eat and one who now lives on his own so I can help him keep his freezer full too.

We filled this extra freezer full and had a bit more to add into our other extra freezer in the house.  I turned the page on my calendar this month and to my surprise the verb for the month of September is BARTER.  I love it!!!!!!!  Harrigan and I did a much smaller scale of bartering recently.  She showed up at my house with this huge pan filled with concord grapes she had just picked from her husband's family's grape vines.  These vines have been around for about 4 generations.  I was floored and so appreciative.  In exchange for my grapes, I sent her home with fresh figs from my fig tree.  They had just started ripening and I was happy to share with her.



10 pounds of freshly picked Concord Grapes

These are my figs, clearly not ripe in this photo, but you get the idea.


So since I had these 10 pounds of delicious grapes staring me down, I needed to figure out what to do with them and fast.  So I looked up a great recipe for Concord Jam and got to it.



The finished product.

Yep, things have been busy around here on the weekends and it seems like before I know it, the week is starting back up.  I go off to work with my 16, two year olds everyday and come home too tired to hardly fix dinner.  It's nice to know there is so much in the pantry that I can just grab and easily transform into dinner or be able to still go out to the garden and pick our dinner.  I wish I could just spend every day doing what I do on the weekends, but in the mean time, I will cherish each and every opportunity I have to work on my sustainable lifestyle and improve upon it.  Winter will be here before we know it, and all this hard work will pay off.

Until those cold days settle in, enjoy your last days of Summer and try and find a way to make them last into the next few seasons.

Isn't It Lovely Part Deux

So this Friday I am posting my second week

of Lovely Things.

These are things that I think are lovely.

Things I look at and say,

"This makes me feel great."

That kind of lovely.

So here is this Friday's

Isn't It Lovely

post.

Enjoy.

My "lovelies" for the week.

So my lovelies this week include:

my "measuring cup" for my sugar bin, snow fall on my back deck,

me learning to use my mom's sewing machine,

my happy little hearts banner I sewed on

said sewing machine as taught by

Dottie Angel, cupcakes brought by a

pharmaceutical rep. at my work,

Snowdrops blooming in my gardens,

sunset on my way home, cuppa tea

and my favorite hand lotion,

my "shrine" for my mom,

lovely old print from my greatgrandmother,

a wonderful parcel from Dottie Angel,

lovely gift wrapping  and my wonderful

gift to myself, Dottie Angel's Book,

my shopping lady Saint from my

bestest friend Karin.  A gift given to me

YEARS ago!!!!

You should link up to this fun Linky Party also.

There are still 2 Fridays left in

February to take part in.

Just click onto this link, kimberly taylor, Finding the Lovely  and join the fun.

Happy Friday.

XXOO

Deb

Company's Coming!!!!

This is me (on the right) and my best friend in the entire world.

This picture was taken a LOOOOOOONNNNNGGGGG

time ago.  Can you say 26 years ago probably.  Maybe 25.

We had no wrinkles, no gray hairs, thick eyebrows and really

white teeth without using whitening strips. 

We also didn't have too many life stories to tell nor did we have

any idea what our futures held for us.  Both of us have been

through some super tough times.

What we did have then that we still have, is a love for each other

and a friendship that has survived everything that life has

thrown at us.  The really wonderful and the really awful.

I wish I had a picture of us from when we first became friends, because

even though this picture is old,  we met each other when we were 13,

that was 34 years ago.  A picture from then would be really old:)

So this was when we were 15.  We were in my backyard and my dad

was sweet enough to humor us by taking pictures.  We had made up

some silly skit and were acting it out.  We didn't have a movie camera

so still shots is all we could take.  There are several more to go with

this one, but you get the idea.  We were so odd, hahahaha.

So I guess I was a sailor who was about to be attacked by Dracula?  Who knows!!
I can't remember the story line now, but I promise you we thought it was funny and made
sense back in 1980.

Then we decided to just turn upside down on my fence and have dad take pictures of that.

We were so easily amused by ourselves, you have no idea.

Notice that even though it was clearly a weekend, I was wearing khaki pants.  My mom
never allowed me to wear jeans.  It was either dresses, skirts or khakis.

Once we got our driver's licenses, our fun changed.  We started going to

thrift stores and vintage clothing shops.  Here we are standing outside of

Luxor Vintage Clothing store on Carey Street in Richmond, "modeling"

vintage dresses.  In the 80's, it wasn't so popular to want to buy vintage clothes,

we were way ahead of our time, hahahaha.  We stopped random people

to take pictures of us:)

Great dresses and great shoes.  This was such a fun day.  I still have earrings I bought
on this day of vintage shopping.

The car also allowed us to go on fun day trips.  This day we headed off to

King's Dominion in Karin's little convertible Karmann Ghia.

We took a giant pitcher of Wink mixed with Gin along with us.

Probably not the smartest thing to admit to, but we were of legal drinking

age, and it was nice to go to the car in the parking lot and have a "cocktail".

Not so good to get on rides that turn you upside down afterwards though.

It was a great day.

My goodness I had the bushy eyebrows.  Another thing my mom wouldn't let me wear, skinny eyebrows, hahaha.

And then there were our big hair 80's nights when lord only knows what we were thinking.

I really don't think I would ever re-live the styles of the 80's, once was bad enough.

There are no words to describe the mess of hair we have going on here.

Well, Karin and I grew up.  We married, we divorced, we married again, we had children (one

daughter for her, four sons for me), we lost loved ones, we've had some of our dreams come true

and some of them never make it into reality. 

Me, Garrett (my first born and Karin's God-son) and Karin

Karin and I don't live in the same town anymore, and haven't for 23 years.  But our friendship has

never faded.  We are only a text, an email, a phone call or a two hour drive away from

each other.  She was right by my side when mom passed away 3 months ago and I will

never be able to pay her back for that.  It meant the world to me.

Tonight, Karin and her family are coming to eat dinner and spend the night with us.

I can't wait to see her.  She is an amazing artist and I can't wait to show her what I have been working

on with my art classes I have been taking. 

There are many things in this world that money can buy, but the most important things,

have no use for money.  No amount of money could buy me the gift of friendship

that Karin and I share. 

I hope that in their lifetime, my boys will find a friend that will stick with

them through all of life's ups and downs.  I feel so blessed to be able

to look back at pictures and see what Karin and I have been able to

share over the years and I look forward to what the rest of our lives

has for us to share.

A rare moment in my grown-up life:
a girl's night out.

The night before Robby and I got married.
Planning my own wedding sure made me look tired.
May 21st 2010

What about you?  Is there a friend who has always been there for you?

I would love to hear about it and sure would love to see

some embarrassing pictures just like I shared with you:)

Now, I have got to go get the house cleaned up before they get here.

Have a great weekend everybody.

XXOO





Few and Too Far In Between



My VERY first best friend ever and I. Circa 1980?

Best, close friends are something I have always found hard to find.  The summer before 7th grade, I met my first best friend, Karin.  She was my sister I never had. Even though she was about 4 inches taller than me, had cheekbones chisled out by a sculptor, beautiful long blonde hair and wore a size 0, I was sure we were long lost twins. We stayed in school together all the way through 12th grade all though we went through some major ups and downs, all thanks to a boyfriend who didn't like us being friends (she dated my first true love after he broke up with me, but to her defense, I told her I didn't care.  Okay so I lied, I did care, but that's another story)  She stayed in Richmond and went to college and I left home and went away to college.  I missed her so much and found it so hard to meet another person who could possibly know me as well as she did.  How do you share all those years together and then expect to be able to find that same friendship with someone else?  I came back home and finished up college in Richmond.  When I wasn't in my classes, I drove over to VCU where she was in school, and hung out with her between classes, or we skipped classes all together and went thrift store shopping, listened to punk rock bands, colored my hair, cried over boyfriends, you know, the stuff best buddies do.  We were in each others weddings, she is the Godmother to my first born, we have been on an amazing vacation to Belize together, she is my one person that I KNOW no matter what, she is there.  When many other friends turned their backs on me, Karin NEVER left my side and always promised there would be better days.  Through the most horrendous times of my life; my divorce and one other life changing event, she was right there, never faltered and never failed me.  NEVER judging but always helping me to see how things needed to change and what could be done different to make things better.  We have been friends for 34 years people, that's a VERY LONG TIME!!!! 


We don't live in the same town anymore, and we don't get to see each other NEARLY enough.  We don't talk much on the phone because neither of us are big on phone conversations.  But we are ALWAYS right here for each other.  I know with every inch of my heart, she is there for me if  I need her to be.  I love her more today day than I did yesterday and that love only continues to grow no matter how long it has been since I have talked to her.


Karin and I in Belize with the silly island drunk.  Circa 2001

On one of our rare girl's nights out when I make it home to Richmond.
Circa 2009

We have gotten a little older over the years, but she is still taller than me and her cheekbones still have mine beat by a mile.  We probably have the same color now, if you know what I mean, but neither one of us is ready to have that same color, hahahaha.














Karin and I the night before my wedding last year.  She may have not been in this one, but she was still my maid of honour in my heart.

A few years ago, a new girl from New Jersey, made her way into our office and applied for a job.  She got it, and in the process, God sent me a new great friend, who, here's the best part, lived 15 minutes from me!!!  She is Meghan but I call her MegPie.  She is about 20 years younger than me, but because I have been blessed with the curse of being really immature for my age, we get along just swell.  She loves to cook, I love to cook, she loves to garden, I love to garden, she loves to decorate, I love to decorate, I have no sense of fashion, she has a great sense of fashion.  We were like two peas in a pod.  She helped me plan my entire wedding last year, photographed my wedding for me, kept me calm when I was ready to murder family members at the wedding, and made sure my champagne glass was never empty, even when I was dancing in the rain at our outdoor reception at our house.  She had it all under control.  She has wiped my tears when being a mother has sometimes felt like more than my heart could take.  Helped me understand younger generations when I just couldn't figure them out.  Tells me I am an amazing person when I feel like the worst possible person on earth.  She lifts me up whenever i get close to going down. 

She and her amazingly, sweet husband Ben, did the unheard of at the beginning of this year. They moved to Georgia.  A big job advancement called for them to move far, far away.  I was crushed.  Finally I had found the friend I hadn't had since I moved from Richmond 22 years ago and she was LEAVING ME!!!  The day they brought in MegPie's replacement at work, I burst into tears the moment they told me who she was because MegPie had not yet told me Ben had taken the job.  She didn't know how to tell me, so meeting her "replacement" was a little shocking to say the least.  I did apologize by the way to Jennifer later that day for being such a baby and not welcoming her to our practice in a nice way.  She forgave me and she is a doll.  The next few weeks, I helped MegPie prepare to move, cried ALOT, drank as many bottles of wine as I could with her and promised to Skype everyday (I have not kept up that end of my deal).  Ben had already left for Georgia and MegPie and I packed the rest of their belongings in her car and she spent her last night in Virginia at my house with me and Robby.  I left for work the next morning with puffy eyes and cried the whole way in.

Well, yesterday I got a great text from my MegPie.  She was in town and wanted to meet for dinner last night.  This is me on my way to work when I got the text that she wanted a date.

Yep, I am soooo happy and I just may wreck taking a picture to prove how happy I am.

MegPie and I the night of my Wedding Rehersal.

MegPie and her adoring husband Ben.

We had an amazing dinner last night and both talked a million miles a minute.  I am not sure either one of us actually finished a sentence, but we knew what the other one was saying just the same.  It was so good seeing her again, and it was as if she hadn't really been gone for 9 months. 

After dinner last night.  She looked so stylish as usual, and I had on my scrubs from work.

Finding friends that you just really click with, who get you right from the start, that don't question who you are or judge, are so hard to find.  I have been blessed to have had two in my lifetime.  It is hard that they aren't close by anymore.  I really need girl time sometimes, especially being the mom of 4 boys and wife to a very rugged, country boy.  Some good smelling girls who like girly stuff are fun to hang out with.  

I have many "friends" but I have only two who know the real me, warts and all.  I guess that's more than some people ever have, so I am going to count my blessings and thank the Lord for the 2 gifts he put in my life; my Karin and my MegPie.  I love you girls and friends like you both, are few and too far in between.