Early Autumn & Chocolate

We still have a couple weeks before official autumn, but today we have been blessed with lovely cool weather. The kids and I ventured outside this morning in sweaters and pants! It was wonderful. I love autumn. Tonight there is a women's activity at church and I signed up to bring dessert. We're to make apple crisp. I just pulled mine out of the oven and it smells blissfully of autumn! Do you think they'd notice if I stole a teeny tiny piece? I mean, I have heavy cream in my fridge, for goodness sakes! It's practically screaming for me to eat it. Oooooh, so hard to resist! (Can you tell I haven't had lunch yet?)

Our house is cool, a hot apple crisp is on the stove and now all I need is a warm, crackly fire in a woodstove. Alas, we had to remove our stove for insurance purposes (it wasn't installed up to code, blast it!). But I guess I could always turn to the fireplace on Netflix! haha!

I've been meaning to share this, but kept forgetting. About a month ago, in an uncharacteristically fit of food inventiveness, my husband got the kids together and made up a new, yummy dessert. He dubbed it:

Muddy Bananas

He heated chocolate chips with peanut butter and then they dipped ripe bananas in it. They were in love! I gave it a try later on and it's absolutely delicious! When I told him the chocolate/peanut butter mixture reminded me of Nutella, but better, he was a little disappointed to feel it wasn't as original as he thought. I assured him that it was different because he used peanut butter instead of hazelnuts and Ghiridelli chocolate chips which are a darker chocolate and so, sooooo good! It was amazing. My husband is so clever! :-)

Speaking of chocolate. I have now created 2 new converts to making S'mores with dark chocolate. You should give it a try. Really. It is so much better than with milk chocolate! I never liked S'mores because of the milk chocolate (too sweet!), but with dark chocolate, it's almost like a whole different dessert and so, so amazing.

Busy Busy

I have been busy. Perhaps a bit too busy. I tend to overwhelm myself. Last week we went to Larriland Farm and picked the last of the season's peaches and tomatoes. A few days went by and I finally canned the peaches in a spiced honey syrup (YUM!). I had a lot of syrup left over, so the next day I reduced the honey syrup a bit and canned the rest of it to use for other things.

Finally, today, I cut up the tomatoes and boiled them. When they cool down I'll run them through my food mill, boil them down a little more and then make it into salsa. I know. It'll be a thin, non-chunky salsa, which suits me just fine! I am not a fan of chunks. I might add a few cans of diced tomatoes for more texture and to make my husband happy. He likes the chunks. Why go to all this trouble? Because I didn't want to skin the stinkin' tomatoes! It was too overwhelming to think about and because of that the tomatoes just sat there with a few of them rotting in the mean time. So I did what I could cope with and I just cut them up and boiled them. Aaah! I feel so much better! I need to finish it today. I don't want to be canning on my birthday tomorrow!

I've also been busy working on a Regency corset so I can get started on making some dresses. You can read all about it over at my history blog.

My garden is overrun with weeds, but I have 6 watermelons growing about about 3 pumpkins! I've been planting some perennial flowers and some spring bulbs (not daffodils, thank you very much!) so it doesn't look so bare around here. It's slowly starting to look fairly presentable! I have visions of a well established herb and flower garden in the same tradition of well established, old-fashioned kitchen gardens like you see at historical homes. It'll take some time to get there, but it'll be a beautiful goal to achieve!

4 Weeks of Preparedness

This morning I was thinking that I would like to do one thing each week this month to help our family be better prepared. So, here is the list:

1) Update our financial binder.

We keep all our financial documents together in a binder in our safe. It gives me a great peace of mind that they are easily accessible and portable in the case of emergency or evacuation.

We first put the binder together about 3 years ago. We've moved a few times since then and had a baby (who is now 2 1/2!), so it is in sore need of being updated.
Along with the updates, we need to put some protocol in place with both my husband's and my parents in case something should happen to us so that they can know the location of and how to access our documents. It's not something that anyone likes to think about, but it's all part of being prepared for emergencies.

2) Fill out our wills.

Erik and I purchased some state-specific wills online through Dave Ramsey's website for a great deal. Now the next step is to fill them out which is a time-intensive project. However, the wills are no good if they're not filled out! So, this is definitely on the list of things to do to be better prepared.

3) Participate in the 7 Day Challenge sponsored by Food Storage Made Easy.

I got the e-mails for it, but I didn't participate last year. This year I want to see exactly how prepared (or not!) we are.

4) Finish the other half of our storage/food storage shelves.

My husband built these awesome food storage shelves in the side room of our new house. He made a partition to section off the end of the room for a food storage "room", which is more like a food storage "hall". One side has floor-to-ceiling wooden shelving, while the other has our old, recycled university bookstore metal shelves. These shelves are heavy duty and great for storing cans, but there's a lot of wasted high wall space above them, so we'd like to take them out and replace them with wooden shelving. This will be a great project when we have some family in town visiting for a week. :-)

Do you have any projects planned or things you'd like to do for National Preparedness Month?

For fun, check out this article from National Geographic in this month's issue about extreme weather. Very cool! (I used to want to be an earth scientist, but I'm horrible at math and biology eludes me. Hooray for History degrees!)

National Preparedness Month!

Happy September! This month is National Preparedness Month (and the month of my birth...) :-) Today I donated blood to the Red Cross. It was the first time in 7 years! What a great way to kick off a month that encourages people to prepare for emergencies.

Here are some links to help you become better prepared for emergencies this month:

1) Join the Seven Day Challenge with the gals over at Food Storage Made Easy. The challenge will begin on an undisclosed day in September, so sign up ASAP!

2) Check out Ready.gov for good, basic information. If you have kids, be sure to click on the "Kids" tab for some fun preparedness activities you can include your kids on.

3) Learn about the great learning opportunities over at The Survival Mom. She's got some interesting looking preparedness videos too.

4) Pledge to prepare at Fema.gov.

5) If you need to stock up on things, Emergency Essentials, and I'm sure other emergency prep online stores are having sales for National Preparedness Month.

Happy prepping!

I just had to tell you....

that they were right. Bon Appetit magazine taught me how to make the best fried chicken of my LIFE. To be honest, I've actually never really like fried chicken. It was always too greasy with too much breading. Awhile back I posted the link to their recipe on how to make the best, life-changing fried chicken ever.

Oh. my. goodness.

Using their instructions and recipe, my very first batch was incredible!!!! The meat was juicy, tender, and flavorful; the breading light, crunchy, and seasoned perfectly.... I drool just thinking about it. I could hardly believe I had made it myself! (And my second time around, it was just as good!) I'd always heard making homemade fried chicken was nearly impossible or you had to have some southern great-aunt's famous recipe to do it. But no. Bon Appetit taught me all I needed to know. And I'll be forever grateful.

You should give it a try. Really. You'll thank me.

Here's the recipe.

They weren't lyin', folks!!!

All this talk... I need me some fried chicken right now.

P.S. Pssst! I even broke down a whole chicken all by myself for the first time in my life - just to make this recipe. Can you believe it?! I was so proud of myself! You can do it too! They have a good slide show of pictures here.

The Natural Canning Resources Book

I just learned about this book, Natural Canning Resources Book, through the Cultures for Health website and I just had to take a look! I'm fascinated with food preservation and enjoy eating the fruits of my canning labors (though the process itself is not as fun, especially doing it all by yourself!).

Just one look inside and I could tell that this book is special. It's hard to tell, but I believe there are recipes. What struck me about this book though, was that it has information not usually found in the standard Ball Blue Book like how to replace conventional sugar and corn syrup with healthier alternatives in canning like honey or maple syrup, the nutrient changes in canned food, an explanation of the PH scale, and the science of what lies behind the USDA's regulations for canning. It also has information on unsafe canning methods and things that do not have safe home canning guidelines.

Here is what it says about the book on Cultures for Health:

Details

Lisa Rayner, 2010, softcover

The local foods movement has made home canning popular once again! Farmer’s markets, Community Supported Agriculture projects, urban foraging collectives, permaculture guilds and community gardens are popping up like mushrooms. People who never learned how to preserve food growing up are teaching themselves and learning from old-timers how to can in boiling water baths and pressure canners.

The Natural Canning Resource Book fills a major gap in the canning literature.  Most published canning recipes require the use of non-organic, refined ingredients like distilled while vinegar, white sugar, corn syrup or commercial pectin containing chemical preservatives.  This book explains the science behind USDA canning guidelines and explores how to can foods using healthy, natural ingredients you'll find at your local farmer's mart, CSA, natural foods grocery, buying club or cooperative.

Learn how to:

• Can fruit & pickles without sugar or sweetened with raw honey, agave syrup, maple syrup, brown rice syrup, barley malt, evaporated cane juice or other unrefined cane sugars.
• Pickle vegetables with organic, unpasteurized apple cider vinegar or homemade vinegar.
• Can wild and tropical fruits like Oregon grape, Juneberries, elderberries, paw paw & guava.
• Gel jams and jellies with homemade pectin extracted from locally grown fruit.
• Create your own jam, jelly, fruit butter, pickle, relish, chutney & salsa recipes.
• Can foods using a solar cooker.
• Create a community canning project or start a community kitchen.
• Save money & energy with home canning.
• Use European-style canning jars with glass lids & rubber gaskets.
• Sell your canned goods at your local farmer’s market or CSA.

This looks like an exciting book, especially if you enjoy or depend on canning to fill your cupboards!

Christmas?

So, for some reason my wandering mind has zeroed in on Christmas. I'm thinking about Christmas already! Maybe it's my subconscious yearning for cooler weather. Usually this Christmas contemplation happens in September when I start planning for gifts to give me plenty of weeks to prepare. Well, this time I was actually thinking about a new tradition I wanted to start in our family. I got the idea last Christmas at a friend's house.

Every day of December leading up to Christmas day, her children unwrap one Christmas movie. I don't have that many Christmas movies and don't really want that many, so instead I decided we could do Christmas books instead, supplemented with the movies we have and Christmas music CDs. (I actually buy new Christmas music every year. This year I'm getting Barbara Streisand's classic Christmas album I grew up listening to - my mom's fave. I can't wait!)

So, I happened to be at Goodwill and they had quite the selection of Christmas books! I bet if I had waited a month or two, they would have been gone. I wanted to focus on Jesus' birth, so I skipped most of the Santa books, making an exception for the classic "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" because it had gorgeous artwork. I'm a sucker for good artwork!

Speaking of art work, one of my most amazing finds was a pop-up book about the 12 Days of Christmas. The paper work is incredible!!! My jaw dropped as they got more and more complicated with each day of Christmas. And for 95 cents, that was a steal!!! I'll have to take picture of one of the pop ups just to show you what I mean.

So, when I got home I pulled the few Christmas books in the kids' regular book collection, added them to the stack and pulled out all our Christmas movies. My music is missing, but I think it might be in the Christmas tub. (That's right! My husband is adamant on keeping our Christmas things down to one large tub. Let me tell you, that is quite the feat for me. I LOVE Christmas!!)

Anyway, our Christmas movies are "White Christmas", "Little Women" (even though it's not all set during Christmas, it always makes me think about Christmas!), "The First Noel", "Mr. Kreuger's Christmas", "The Gift of Love" with Marie Osmond, "The Muppet's Christmas Carol", "A Child's Christmas in Wales",  and a few others. I even have some more movies on my wishlist on Amazon.

Wow, I had no idea I'd have so much to say about Christmas in August, but maybe I just need to get it out of my system. Another Christmas project: Sewing present drawstring bags out of Christmas fabric instead of using wrapping paper. I'll have to wait for an incredible fabric sale sometime in November though.

That's ok! I have tons of sewing projects stacking up. (Go to my historical blog at History:Preserved to see my costume projects.) I have 2 quilts in the works too, but I was waiting until cooler weather to continue on those. (One is a fall quilt with beautiful fall colors and seeing the new autumn fabrics at the fabric store is just killing me! I am just drawn to those earth tones!) Also, I just finished the last of the curtains needed for our house. Whew! I'm keeping my sewing machine busy! It feels good to be sewing again after a long haitus.