Almost Second Week of November Post

Well, it's been 9 days this time.....not too bad for me.

We are finally having much cooler weather, even cooler than normal for November.  Several spotty frosts but still not a hard freeze.  I had left my pumpkin harvest buried on the ground amidst the ribbon grass or whatever it is.  I just threw a comforter over them.  I think they will be fine.

 

I took a short tour of the yard a few minutes ago.  It was lovely in the bright sunshine....didn't even wear a jacket.  The following are some pictures of the fall yard:

This is the cistern planter chock full of lemon thyme and chives. I have cut both back several times.  I need to harvest some for the freezer next.

 

This is the self-seeded parsley bed I planted about 4 years ago.  It keeps coming back and I am delighted.  I will cut some for the freezer very soon.

If I knew how I would delete the trash can......I  don't.  This is the whiskey barrel with more herbs.  Rosemary which needed to be lifted and brought inside, chocolate mint and oregano.   The purple sage does not taste the same and the regular one.  I will be looking for it next spring.

The above is a clump of white petunias that must be from Rainmaster I planted a couple of years ago.  However this one does not have the markings on the flowers.  I keep watching for seed pods but so far, haven't seen any.  Very curious.  At one time you could buy Rainmaster seeds then they began selling only the plants.  I haven't quite figured that out yet. 

The cooking isn't quite what it once was.  I am being diligent  about baking sweets since Max's HA.  I did bake this chocolate cake for our friend's family.  She is our daughter's age and broke some lower vertebrae  in her spine and damaged her  tail bone riding in some horse competition.  She is now home in a body brace and using a walker for  weeks...

This is my go to cake and the one our grandson and his friends always request.

It was painful not to cut a piece, but I resisted.  DH wanted me to bake one for us....I didn't. Here is the recipe with two icings.  Max prefers the chocolate. 

Fabulous Fudge Cake

(I call this the boys' cake made for Ry and his friends)

First made during January 2006 ice storm when Steve and family came down and cleaned up the yard of debris.

I iced it with ganache (recipe follow cake)

You will need: Regular flour, baking soda, butter,brown sugar, eggs, vanilla, unsweetened chocolate squares and sour cream.

2-1/4 cups all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

½ but butter

2-1/2 cups packed brown sugar

3 eggs

1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla

3 (l oz.) squares unsweetened chocolate, melted

1cup sour cream

1 cup boiling water.

Preheat Oven to 350°

Sift together dry ingredients in bowl and set aside

In large mixer bowl beat ½ cup butter and 2-1/2 cups brown sugar until well blended. Add eggs one at a time and beat well after each. Add vanilla and melted chocolate, mix and add ½ the sour cream and ½ the dry ingredients to butter mixture ; blend well.

Add remaining sour cream and dry ingredients to batter. Stir in boiling water

Bake in greased 9x13 pan for 35 minutes.

Cool and ice.

Ganache

shopping: 8 oz. Semi-sweet or bittersweet choc chips, heavy whipping cream, butter

8 oz. Semi-sweet chocolate chips or bittersweet cut into pieces. I used good quality like Giardelli.

¾ cup cream

2 tablespoons butter

l tablespoon brandy (opt)

Place chocolate in medium stainless steel bowl; set aside.

Heat cream and butter in medium pan over medium heat. Bring just to the boil.

Immediately pour over chocolate and let stand 5 minutes. Stir with a whisk until smooth. I sometimes

add a little brandy for flavor.

Ice cake

this same ganache can be used to make truffles. First chill the chocolate mix really well. Form into small balls with hands (very messy)Can roll in chopped nuts or rolled in powdered sugar.

Another icing that goes well the the cake is this:

Icing

½ cup butter

1 cup packed brown sugar

¼ cup milk

1-3/4 cup confectioner's sugar

Melt butter in a saucepan. Stir in brown sugar and boil about 2 minutes. Stir in ¼ cup milk and bring to a boil. Place pan in cold water and stir in confectioners sugar. Stir until smooth spread over warm cake.

I am still making our oatmeal bread though.

We have begun our round of doctors after the ER.  This last one was to a Primary Care doctor, listed as a follow-up ER appointment. I will not voice my opinion of all these intrusions into our private lives.  We are to see her again in 3 months (or not).  DH seems very willing this time to follow to the letter the new policies our health care is made up of.  It is his decision.  I am not in the system.......yet.

Have a  super week.

Tuesday At Last - Milk Project

Much colder today at around 37° and very cloudy; slight chance of rain or snow.  We need rain.

Tuesday, at last because Monday was MIL's doctor appointment and the first time I went  with her and went into the exam room.  I doubt I will be  doing that  again.  Enough said.  I don't want you to think I am a mean person (but I am often!).

She got a good report with no more changes made in her medicines.

We (Max) has been milking Jewel every other day so we were getting a considerable accumulation of milk.  This morning I worked up 2 gallons.  First thing I did was skim most of the cream from all.  This gave me slightly over 1 quart of heavy cream.

This left me with a full gallon for making mozzarella and a quart plus for buttermilk.  It is a messy process as you can see.

I made another 12 oz. of beautiful dark yellow butter which I will freeze.  I used the mixer this time and it is not nearly as quick as using the food processor.  I was afraid I would overload the processor but it would have been faster to just split the amount and made two batches.

From 2016-02-23

The mozzarella is at the curds ripening stage and I will finish it off in the morning.

I combined the left over milk from the butter with the quart of whole milk and it is setting in the kitchen to curdle and ripen like grandma made clabber milk.  No additives of any kind.

Most of the mess is cleaned up and I am resting at the computer!

This is for Kris.

The texture of the Oatmeal bread.  Please note it is not the true recipe because of my using too much liquid and the 'sort of' correcting it.  It didn't hurt the flavor at all.  The whitish pieces are the bits of  steel cut oats I added plus the rolled  oats.

Note it is a little to holey in the center.  I think that is due to adding a little too much yeast on the correction.  I know that last rise was almost instantaneous and I had to be careful putting it into the oven so as not to deflate it.
Also I had to cut the loaf in half and then slice the halfs so it would fit a toaster and be easier for sandwiches.  This is actually half a slice.  See what I mean.....

Fresh cup of coffee at the computer, breakfast over, and I will blog.  That used to be my routine and it worked for a long time.

I still have some aches and pains but have decided that it is something I  will just have to adjust to.  I had a little conflict with my doctor and it left me feeling less than happy with him.  He called me hyper!  I know I am Type A but I am certainly not hyper. He did not make a life-long friend or happy patient.  I will now just tolerate him.....and may be forced to ask for another doctor if and when I need one.

We have had some excitement on the farm since last we visited.  We had the fencing man back to cut up a downed tree and remove some downed limbs.  I had done several but we thought since he was at the neighbors we would take advantage.

I was sitting at my desk and saw his truck running across the front yard at a pretty good speed and he was chasing it (a loosing battle); truck crossed the drive and headed to the east fence by the cellar.  He fell right beside the truck and it grazed him.  I thought it was going to run over his body.  It happened so fast.  My new east fence stopped  the truck. It took out my purple smoke tree and broke a wire on the new east fence.  The sad thing is, the truck is a 1972 junker; he had to lift the hood to start it and it jumped out of gear and took off.  I guess the accelerator stuck.  He even tried to climb in the window because the door had slammed to and  locked!  I am guessing no insurance of any kind. I am so relieved he wasn't injured.  He has already repaired the fence, the smoke tree is cut way down, hopefully to  return.

And now more pleasant things,  my rose cutting of the Aloha is blooming.  My sis took several from my bush before it succumbed to Rose Rosette Disease and they took.  She sent me three last year and two have thrived.



I see this rose is now  available  commercially.  I can't praise it enough.  Very fragrant, glossy leaves and a lovely two tone pin.  It is very doubled:



I planted them on the garden fence next  to the white clematis.

Speaking of clematis, all of mine have re-bloomed a little this fall. 

This is the back side of Harlow Carr on the garden fence:

From blog Oct 21 2015

A mish mash of Events

I haven't squeezed in time to actually blog but now and then I typed a Journal thing of events....I will try to rebuild and use that to catch up.

Journal
"
We have had about a month of "if it can happen, it does".

First a severe windstorm with 2 inches of rain in an  hour.

The 70mph winds brought down tree limbs and twisted the center out of my Red Maple tree that is several years old and took out half of my new red Locust tree that was so lush and beautiful.  During the storm, the power went off and the generator did not come on!  The neighbor got it going again and then..........the air conditioner stopped.  It literally exploded and blew Freon out when the serviceman came out.  This, of course, was on a Saturday.  He promised to fix us Monday......didn't make it; Tuesday, the same.  We got up to 87° in the house.  We used two fans in the bedroom so weren't too miserable at night.  A record heat was recorded for one of those days.  Finally Wednesday he came afternoon and worked until ll pm. to get us up and running again.  Not many people will do that.  They pack up at 5 and come the next day but this boy (31years old) has worked on this ancient AC for a few years now and we are very happy with his work.  Note:  of course, now that the AC is going, we are having an unusual cool spell!

Hay is all done and paid for.  So two down and holding.

We are getting sporadic rains now which are very welcome."

I think that catches up except for the normal daily chores for the farm.

8/24/15

We are in a cooler period, mid 50's this morning.

I mowed the yard yesterday afternoon.  It had rained in the morning so I caught a break with dry grass.  It has been hard to do that lately.

I still need to mow  around the shop and milk parlor.  DH brush hogged one of the fields. 

Seems like one of us is on a mower full time.  This has been the greenest August we can remember!

Today will be a day of controlling weeds in places that can't be mowed.  I will be using herbicide.  There are no bees so I won't feel so bad using it.  This will be grasses and tall woody weeds.

Trimming still awaits.



Kitchen

The  only above and beyond cooking has been peaches.  A varmint stripped our trees; also got the honey pears! We suspect a raccoon.

We went to a local orchard and bought 3/4 bushel of peaches from the Missouri boot heel which is where most Missouri peaches come from.  They were not the most flavorful peaches but they are adequate.

I froze 11 quarts and made two batches of jam.  They made particularly pretty and tasty jam because the the red around the stone.
(Started again, Friday 8/28/15)

Just a personal note here.  I have had a really bad flare up of polymyalgia rheumatica and finally when it sank into my brain that was the problem, I gave in and saw the rheumatologist.  They took me in within  two days of the  call and I am back on Prednisone.  This is a near miracle drug for PR and works in just a  few hours for me.  I went  from needing help getting into and out of the car and truck and yelling in pain when I did get up to making a pound cake yesterday evening around 5 pm.  My first dose was at ll am that morning.  The doctor told me  to walk across the exam room for him.  Then he said what a change from last visit; I walked like an old  woman.  He clapped his hands over his mouth grinning.  I said 'Doctor, I am  an old woman!'.  We both had a laugh.  Today was even better.  I made the bed, folded a load of laundry, cooked  breakfast, cleaned up dthe kitchen and our bathroom..........the went outside and chopped a few tree sized poke bushes and harvested the peppers and eggplants......cooked lunch and am now typing.  For  me, that is a Wow! day.  I have really felt bad for a couple of months but just couldn't seem to realize what my problem is.  Along with the muscle and joint aches, you have  general malaise and that old bugaboo 'depression'.  Enough said.  You might keep these symptoms in mind if you have something the doctors can't seem to diagnose.  Two simple blood tests will give them a good clue. A sed rate and a c-reactive protein test.

Now back to  normal life:

Fruit from local orchards:

The Gala apples we got were almost tasteless.   I bought some Jonathon's at an orchard at Marionville, Mo. and they were good but extremely tart!  Jonathons are my favorite for pies and fried apples, in fact, for lunch we  had sausage and fried apples and potatoes.  Now that is a real down-home meal Mom made but she also had gravy and biscuits with it.

Outside:

Harvest of peppers and eggplants


Note:  I also raided the freezer for a few days of meat that is in the plastic bag and drove to the mail box (across the road)  for  DH's paper.

I may toss most of the egg plants.....but I want to try eggplant parmesan  first.  The peppers are a mix of Jalapenos, yellow, red and green cheese, Maule red and Anaheims.   I believe to may have overdone the pepper thing!  Will be making lots of sweet Jalapeno relish.

I planted one hill (5 seeds)  of  Long Island  Cheese Squash/Pumpkin in the large bed in front of the propane tank.  It is maybe 25 feet wide and the LIC squash has covered it from one side to the next!  I see a varmint has already been nibbling on one of them! 


Finally a very large sunflower gift from the birds.  They haven't begun seriously attacking it yet.  I think it hangs over too much.



Enough  for today.  I took a few more pictures but  will post later.