Pumpkin Cake

Here is a good fall recipe:

Pumpkin Cake

3c flour

2tbsp baking powder

2tsp baking soda

1tsp salt

3tsp. cinnamon

2c sugar

2c pumpkin

1 1/4c cooking oil

4 eggs, beaten

Blend flour, baking powder, soda, salt & cinnamon. Blend beaten eggs & sugar. Add pumpkin & oil. Blend. Add flour mixture. Grease & flour a bundt pan (or 2 loaf pans). Bake in 350 oven 1hr for bundt 50 min for loaf cake.

This a very moist cake. It is good w/ either cream cheese or chocolate frosting. If you use chocolate you can add mini chocolate chips to the batter too, Mmmmmm.

I made this one for Bible Study last week & I think I will make it with chocolate frosting for Potluck on Sunday.

Blessings.

New Toy

I bought the totally coolest new toy I mean tool for my kitchen. It is an apple peeler/corer/slicer. I bought mine from Pampered Chef and first I have to say, they are on the ball. I ordered it online Tuesday afternoon. It was in my hot little hands Friday morning. Wow. That was fast.

Second, this thing is so cool. In seconds  you have a peeled, cored & sliced apple sitting there. We whipped out a dehydrator load in 5 minutes . And the kids LOVE it. They fight over who gets to use it.

I so wish I had bought one of these years ago. I guess the only thing left to do is send the kids out to pick more apples.

Blessings.

Goodbye Tom

Today was the day. Finally. I've been begging my husband to do it for months and now it's a done deed. Our tom turkey is no longer the terror of the barnyard. He is now cooling his jets in the outside fridge. I am soooo glad. I hated that bird .

He was a big feathery pain. But today he became a fabulous homesteading/homeschooling family opportunity.

The family that plucks together stays together

The final rinse

27 lbs of Thanksgiving goodness

 

Blessings.

Getting in shape

I was reading on a friends blog   http://www.accidentalfarmwife.blogspot.com/  about her attempts to lose weight and get into shape. She is a homeschooling mom with 4 little ones so it's not like she joined the gym . What she has been doing is running laps in the pasture. I smiled when I read that because that is basically what I have been doing as well.

I'm not trying lose weight but I am trying not to gain any (more). And I want to be in as good a shape as possible when I go into labor. I hate walking on the treadmill when it is nice outside but if I go for a 'real' walk, all the kids want come. And their bikes and the dogs etc. It becomes kind of hard to get enough, steady walking to actually DO anything. So I've started doing laps in the barnyard every morning. I turn on the water  and while the troughs are filling I get in about 10 -15 minutes of fast walking. I'm not going to win any marathons but it is helping my weight to stay down and keeping me fairly 'fit'.

Sometimes I feel like a dork "power walking" in circles, scattering turkeys and geese as I go, but oh well. It's all worth it in the end right?

Blessings.

 

The Wordless Book

My heart was black with sin

Until my savior came in, his precious blood I know

Has washed me white as snow

And in God's word I'm told

I'll walk the streets of gold

Oh, wonderful, wonderful day. He  washed my sins away.

Too Cute

I almost titled this "twins" but I was afraid it would give everyone the wrong idea .

My daughter has been wanting an outfit to match her doll 'Kirsten". This is what we came up with:

Aren't they cute?

Now for those of you who are cheapskates, oh, um...I mean frugally minded like me, here is the fun part.

I bought the fabric for the dress for--can you guess?-- $1 a yard . I bought 5 yards plus 4 packages of bias tape. The fabric for the bonnet and the apron I had in my stash. I already had the ribbon trim too. Sooooo, the entire outfit, including bloomers

 

cost less than $10. Can we all say "Amen"? It is good to be cheap I mean frugal.

Blessings.

Projects

We've had a very productive week. We concentrated on "life skills" (which means we hardly did any real school sshhhhh!). First we made these guys to usher in the fall season:

They need a few pumpkins to hold but since mine didn't grow (sigh) I will have to pick some up next time we go to town.

Yesterday we spent the better part of the day putting up 11 quarts of applesauce.

We've also been dehydrating apples & next up is freezing apple pie filling. We might get to borrow a cider mill & that would be awesome.

Today I actually pulled out my sewing machine. I have a friend who is expecting twins ( I am so jealous I could spit ). The church is having a shower for her next week so I stitched up a tote bag

and filled it with receiving blankets & onesies & a couple cute little outfits

I want to add some powders & lotions & wipes. And whatever else is cute & I can't resist .

I also made an outfit for my daughter but it is not quite finished yet, so that is another post

Blessings.

Caving

Yesterday, after church, we borrowed one of my daughters friends and we all headed out to Lava Beds National Monument (http://www.nps.gov/labe/   please ignore all of the evolutionary poppycock). We packed a picnic lunch and prepared for adventure.

After stopping at the Visitor's Center for our flashlights we ate out lunch under a juniper tree and picked our caves off the map. Our main criteria was being able to stand up. We don't crawl. And, thankfully, the caves with bat babies were closed to the public. We don't do bats either.

Skull Cave was our first pick. It is by far the coolest cave there (in more ways than one). It is absolutely HUGE. The ceiling is hundreds of feet above you. At the bottom is a year round pool of ice and no matter the outside temperature, it is only about 40 in the cave.

Here's everyone in the parking lot getting ready to go in

This is in the 'mouth' of Skull Cave

The Little Man and me at the bottom of Skull Cave

 

Big Brother

A close up of the ceiling

(how cool is that?)

Next we went to Merril Cave. A hundred years ago, locals used to ice skate by lantern light at the bottom of this cave. About  20 years ago the ice started to disappear and now there is none left. Still a very cool cave.

Daddy and The Little Man on their way to the cave

The girls

We did one more cave, Mushpot, before we ran out of time.  Everyone was tired, dirty and happy. The Little Man slept the whole way home. Today, my legs are SO sore from all those stairs . As my husband pointed out yesterday, as we were huffing and puffing our way back to the car, we used to be able to do that all day without tiring. Ah well, apparently those days are behind us. But the caves rock anyway.

Blessings.

A Day in the Life

You know the old adage "work smart not hard"? Apparently we're beyond that in our family.

We castrated our bull calf today. "Big deal" you might say. Well, considering that he weighs close to 700 lbs, it kinda was. Why didn't we do it earlier you ask?

We always intend to do it while they are small. But we got him as a day old calf to graft onto our Jersey cow and that can be stressful business. We didn't want to  make it any more stressful by banding or cutting him. So we waited. And waited. And waited. A little too long.

So today, while we watched him over the barnyard gate, my husband says "Get the ropes and a knife. Let's get it done." Oh boy.

Did I forget to say we don't have a squeeze chute? We squeezed him behind a gate, dropped some ropes on him, tied him to tree, knocked him over and hog tied him. It took a little longer to do it than it does to read it.

Now it gets ugly. Out came the knife and my husband "removed him of his infidel self". Couldn't have happened to nicer guy. We pumped him full of Wonder Dust and hosed him down with BluCoat Spray, yanked off all the ropes, and he was free to go. He ran and hid in the barn ( big wuss).

It really wasn't as much of a Mickey Mouse show as we have done in the past but I just have to shake my head. And promise up, down, and sideways, that the NEXT calf we are banding first thing.

What do you think the chances are?

Blessings.

My glamorous life.....

Today we had a picnic in the park with 2 other families.

The Little Man sucked down a bunch of lemonade and then went swinging. Bad combination.

He started crying so Big Brother brought him to me to see why. I was holding him, asking him what was wrong, when BLEH! He "recycled" his lemonade all over me. Of course, being as he is 2, I always have spare clothes for him. Not so much for me. So I wiped down as best I could and spent the rest of the picnic in my puked on clothes.

Just another glamorous day in the life of a mom.

Don't you all wish you were me?

Blessings.

Apple Fritters

Since it is apple season  I thought I would share one of my favorite apple recipes with you. Now, these are not those apple fritter things you get at the donut store. These are yummy, easy, delicious apple fritters that I grew up on. My dad used to make these for us on the weekends. The recipe was passed down from his grandmother. We eat them with jam and cinnamon at our house. Mmmmm.

Apple Fritters

1 1/3 cup flour

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

2/3 cup milk

1 egg, well beaten

Sift together flour, baking powder, & salt. Blend milk & egg, add gradually to dry ingred. Stir in fruit. Drop spoonful at a time into deep hot fat (365 to 375). Fry 2-5 min per side. Drain on paper towel.

You may use any type of fruit w/ this (apple is THE best) I usually use 2-3 large apples per batch.

Here is the original recipe card I have been using since childhood.

Mixing the batter

Adding the apples

Mixing it all up

Frying

The finished product

Now remember, this is a secret family recipe. It can be shared on a need-to-know-basis only

Blessings.

Blackberries

We have a wonderful friend who has wild blackberries growing on her ranch. Every year she calls us to let us know when they are ripe and last week the call came in. We had several days of sickies so we had to wait for everyone to be feeling good and then we headed out. We picked for a little over an hour (final breaking point for a 2 yr old) and came home with almost 2 gallons.

I made jam

and cobbler

( I like a little cobbler with my whipped cream )

and we still have a bucket to freeze for smoothies.

Very, very yummy.

And totally worth the scratches

We hope to go back for more next week.

Blessings.

Guess what?

Okay boys and girls, guess what we had last night? August 31, the last official day of summer? Give up yet? We had........wait for it........a FIRE (in the wood stove)!

It was all  of 64 in the house and at 8pm last night it was in the high 30's outside with a freezing wind blowing. The kids came in from chores red-cheeked and loaded down with fire wood. I have to admit, that fire felt pretty darn good. Made the house warm and toasty.

As of right now, at 7:58am, it is 38 outside and everything in the shade is still sparkly with frost.  This could possibly be the one good thing about having a sucky garden this year. I wasn't outside last night with every blanket in the house trying to save it. Been there, done that. I did cover a few of my flowers I want to last longer. We will most likely go back to warmer nights before the real cold sets in. But I think we are officially in fall. It's good for the apples. The frost will make them sweet and crisp. Don't know what it will do to the plums though. They are still green. This might have done them in. Sigh. Global warming anyone?

Blessings.