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.

Family always makes it better

There is just something so wonderful about having family around.  Family that you can completely be yourself around, know you are going to have tons of laughs with, maybe shed a tear or two with, say silly and stupid things with and just know it is all okay!!!!

That was how this weekend was for me.  Two of my nieces came for the weekend along with my one niece's husband and their two dogs.  It was such a great weekend filled with food, crafting, food, baby chickie lovin, food, some Skeet shooting and shooting lessons, food, garden planting, food, baby bump lovin and last but not least, food.  Yes, I guess you could say we did a lot of eating this weekend.  Well, I do have a niece who is expecting in August and she is married to a wonderful man who has the most incredible appetite for food.  So, I was in heaven to say the least.  I got to cook for people that I love the most, and they in turn, made the past 2 and a half days perfect. 

I will let the pictures tell most of the story and fill in the words where needed.

Prayer Flags I hung on the deck Friday before our company arrived.  I purchased these in Frenchtown, New Jersey at Elizabeth Gilbert's store, Two Buttons.  Love the way they blow in the breeze.

 



Mesclun Salad greens I planted from seed and harvested for our Beet and Orange Salad we would be having for dinner that night.

Baby Spinach to be picked for the salad also.  Love that I am able to once again go to the garden to pick fresh veggies for dinner.

Beet and Orange Salad with fresh baby greens and pistachios.  It was so yummy and fresh!!!!

First thing Kristina wanted to do was get her hands on the baby peeps.  This girl loves her some chickens, just like her Aunt Deb:)

This is a little propaganda photo to make my brother feel guilty and agree to let Kristina get some chicks of her own.  See how sad she is because she doesn't have chicks?  How could any daddy say no to that cute pouty face?

Once Jess and Joe arrived, Kristina had to show her sister the babies.  Jess was won over immediately and agreed that yes indeed, peeps are just the cutest little creatures ever.

It was time to focus on real baby love.  Jess is expecting her first child in August and Kristina is so excited about being an Aunt.  She can't help herself and has already started buying lots of little gifts for sweet baby girl.

Saturday morning Robby and I had some planting that needed to be done in the veggie garden.  Kristina was more than happy to help us plant over 30 tomato plants and some other veggies.  Jess was bit by the Veggie Garden Bug too and began making plans for the garden she and Joe could start once they got back home.

We decided to channel our inner Brit and do a little Skeet shooting.  Kristina has never shot Skeet before, so Joe gave her a little lesson.  I don't think Kristina will be doing it again anytime soon.  Her little body isn't use to the kick of the gun.

Next it was time for a little DIY craft time.  Kristina is the Queen of DIY in our family.  There is nothing this gal can't make when she decides she wants something.  She has become a pro with power tools and this former clothes horse now would rather go shop at Loews than shoe for clothes.  She had a little project she wanted all 3 of us to make as a little token of our weekend together.  She brought everything with her we needed and we provided the power tools.  FUN TIMES!!!!!

We started by sanding our blocks of wood Kristina had brought for us to use.  Rounding the corners and creating a super smooth surface.  Let's just say the palm sander is now my favorite power tool!!!
After we sanded our wood, we stained it and then either left it stained and applied a tinted wax to it, or we could paint it like I did to give it more of an antique, weathered look.  A few bangs with the hammer to add some dents, and you have an instant "old" piece of refurbished wood.

Next Kristina showed us how to attach a mason jar to the board using a pipe clamp so that the board could be hung and used as a vase, a planter or for storage of just about anything you could think of that would fit inside it.

Our finished project.  Love how they turned out and can't wait to get mine hung in the guest room so I can use it to put fresh flowers in when guests come to stay:)  Thanks Kristina, it was so much fun and I will think of all our fun laughs the three of us had every time I look at it!!!

I was officially bit by the DIY bug at this point.  Robby had found 6 really old wooden doors that had belonged in a farm house that was built in the 1800's.  I snatched those beauties right up but I wasn't really sure what I would do with them.  Jessica suggested I use them to make a  headboard for the guest room.  I have a bed with no frame in that room and I hate that there is no headboard.  So, that is what we decided to do.  Kristina said it was really easy to do and we could finish it in a day.  But, it was getting late and I still had dinner to make for all of us, so it would have to wait a day.

Dinner was going to consist of roasted chickens and asparagus risotto made with asparagus picked from our garden.

With some help from the girls, we got those chickens roasted, that risotto stirred and cooked, dinner rolls made, green beans cooked and homemade gravy that was delicious.  It was a perfect meal and another great time around the family dinner table with people I love.  I am such a firm believer in eating meals together at the kitchen table!!!!  We have the most awesome, sometimes inappropriate,  conversations during dinner and then during the time we are just sitting at the table once the food is gone.  I highly recommend all families incorporate at least one family meal at the table a day.

This morning after we ate a huge breakfast of sausage gray, scrambled eggs and homemade buttermilk biscuits, it was time to start back to DIYing.  Time to make my headboard.  First up was sanding the very rough and worn doors down to a nice smooth finish hopefully without losing all of the lovely chippy paint that was on them.

First door before we put the sander to it.  Hard to tell in this picture, but it is a really nice, worn yellow.

After we were done.  The grain in the door was exposed and it turned out so very pretty.  We rubbed in some finishing wax, sanded it one last time with very fine sand paper, and it was done.

The second door had old blue paint on it.  We sanded that down too and it became a really nice light turquoise color.  I was in love and in awe of what these doors were turning out to look like.

 

 

After it was sanded, we applied the finishing wax to it too.  Now all that was left was to use the original hinges to attach the doors together and put it in it's place.  I just love the old, tarnished hardware and handles on these doors.  I love to think about all the people who ever opened those doors to the rooms of their home.  Oh, if those doors could talk........

 

 

 



Here they are in place.  Now I just need to get a few finishing touches, like a different duvet cover and pillow cases, re-paint the room and find some new lamps and I will have a guest room I can be proud of.  Just have to avoid making it too girly so that when the boys come home for a visit from college, they will still want to sleep in their old rooms:)

 

I really love it and just can't believe we got it done in one day.  Pictures just don't do it justice because my cameras kind of suck.

Our weekend was winding down as everyone needed to get back on the road to go home.  This weekend was such a nice treat for me.  The week was a long one worrying about my dad, who is getting stronger and better with each passing day, and knowing I had my extended family to make my weekend special, made it so much easier.  I love having girl time with my nieces!!!!!!  And being able to walk past a room in my house and see the fruits of our labors makes it even more sweet.  I hope that you all were able to do something really special this weekend with people that you love being with. I know I will start my week with a little extra spark in my heart and a smile on my face thinking about the fun that was had by all.

Hope you all have a wonderful week and look forward to the upcoming weekend:)
XXOO