Busy Week

Last week I got a email from "the Mama" (DD) wanting to know if "you are interested in some Utah peaches?" They belong to a fruit and veggie co-op where they go about every three weeks and get a basket of assorted fresh fruit and vegetables for a great price. She often shares with us, so nothing goes to waste. I am thinking maybe a peach pie and sliced peaches for my Special K, so I wrote back and said, "Sure."

Later in the week, she emailed that she had signed up for peaches on Sat. These were a extra that they were offering their members, not part of the regular basket. Then on Friday, she told me she had ordered some tomatoes too. I am thinking BLT sandwiches and salad for next week. Yum!

The kids had a Nana/Papa sleepover on Friday night, so when we took them home on Sat. afternoon, we got our peaches and tomatoes...........a HALF a case of each. She had to take a whole case, so we got half. Quite a few more of each than I had planned on.

So this week will be spent baking peach pie, trying a frozen peach yogurt recipe in my new ice cream maker and preparing the rest of the peaches to freeze, making fresh salsa and spaghetti sauce for the freezer plus dealing with the large amount of apples that are left from the apple picking trip. I think I have enough applesauce so I will make apple pie filling or just freeze sliced apples for pie. I froze corn in the spring. Last week I made a huge batch of chili and froze it for quick meals. I will do the same with stew later this week.

End result will be a freezer full of fresh goodness for the winter! My great white hunter and the great white hunter son #2 are going to Colorado elk hunting next month so we are crosssing our fingers that they will have good luck and we have meat for the freezer. I have the great feeling that my great grandmother's used to have after the crops were in and the food stored for the winter. Now I need to finish a quilt to keep my family warm, finish a rag rug and whatever else needs done to prepare for the hard AZ winter. LOL I feel like a squirrel.

Here is my share of the "good stuff".

Did I Say "BABY"?

I took the picture of my burp cloths, and sat down to write the post. When I turned around, here is what I found. I think she approves.

Add washing to the list of things to do to the cloths before they become gifts!

Baby Boom

Julia came home from school last week with exciting news. Her teacher told the class that she is expecting twins! She told them she was going to find out if she was having boys or girls, or one of each, and would tell them. Julia told DD that was good because then Nana would know what to make for them. Yesterday, the teacher told them she is having a boy and a girl. The Momma is taking Julia to pick out flannel for blankets. I just sew two pieces of flannel together and blanket stitch around them. They are great for Arizona, where a quilt is sometimes too much. We used them a lot with the grands.

Our nephew and his wife are expecting baby number four. This one follows three precious little boys and the entire family is hoping for a girl to round out their family. A co worker of DD is expecting a girl. A close friend of our daughter and son in law is expecting his first, and we are excited. They have all been friends since seventh grade, so he is almost one of the family.

I dug out my stash of flannel, the great white hunter sent me to buy more and the burp cloth marathon is in full swing, to be followed by the two layer flannel blankets and fleece blankets edged in the blanket stitch. I love the finished handmade look that the blanket stitching adds to these simple items. When gift giving time rolls around, we will be ready.

Here is a start, I have more cut out and waiting to be sewn together. The three in front will be ready to go after a light pressing.

Apples and Grandma Toot's Biscuits

I have posted the last three years about going outside of Wickenburg, AZ to pick apples from a orchard out in the middle of the desert. We did that on Saturday so I am busy making my Chunky Cinnamon Applesauce that I posted last year. Most of this will be for the freezer. There will be a pie or two plus apple crisp. I love the feeling of using fresh fruit now and having the results mid winter.

There weren't many apples this year. The lady said they had a late frost. Too, a lot of them had worm holes, as these apples are not sprayed in anyway. We did get quite a few though. Colin loves to take Nana's applesauce in his lunchbox so I need to make a extra this year.

My Colin also loves homemade biscuits. So what is a Nana to do but make sure that a little boy has things that show him how much Nana is thinking about him? Julia likes the biscuits too, but it is not as big a thing with her as it is with him. He told the pre-school teacher last year, that his Nana could make anything. That is a high standard he has set for me! I am working hard to live up to it.

I grew up with biscuits made from Bisquick about twice a year. When they put them in a pop open can, we had them more often. I was amazed when the great white hunter told me that his mother made biscuits almost every day. I was even more amazed when I saw how she made them. I thought the main ingredient in biscuits was shortening but these are big and fluffy, and have two ingredients!

She makes them by pouring flour in a bowl, adding enough MOCHA MIX coffee creamer to make a dough, cuts them, and adds them to a pan that she has poured a little vegetable oil in, turns them to coat on both sides and pops them in the oven. I had to stand there and watch several times just to get the feel of the process. Then my kids wanted me to write it down because they said it was no good to them in MY head. I took the time one day to measure and this is the result. I use buttermilk because we don't use coffee creamer. I do use buttermilk in my cornbread so I don't waste what I don't use for biscuits. We also don't have these everyday. They are the big draw for Christmas breakfast with gravy and I have been making them a couple times a month for Colin to take home and have for breakfast.

Grandma Toot's Biscuits

2 to 2 1/2 cups SELF RISING flour (do not use all purpose)

1 to 2 cups buttermilk (today I used about 1 1/2 cups)

Mix about 1 cup buttermilk into flour, keep adding buttermilk a little at a time until you have a dough that is moist but not really sticky.

Flour a surface and place the dough on the flour. Knead dough a few times into flour until it no longer sticks to your fingers. ).



Flatten out and cut into circles. I used a 11" by 7" by 1.5" pan but a 8" square pan works as well. Pour about 1/4 cup oil in the pan, lay each biscuit in oil, then turn over to coat. Bake at 375 until golden brown. (about 40 minutes for my pan today.)







Now for some reason, I sometimes end up with a tough bottom crust, don't know why and I am sure there is someone out there who could tell me, but, I have my own solution. When I take these out of the oven, I immediately cover them with foil. That seals in the steam and it keeps them moist and makes the bottoms soft.

Serve with butter for Colin, butter and honey for my great white hunter and Julia, and gravy for my great white hunter son and my son in law.

Wash Out

We worry more about lack of rain in AZ than we do actually rain. It is routine to schedule outdoor weddings, birthday parties, sporting events, festivals and the like without so much as a back up plan for bad weather. Of course this sometimes backfires with Mother Nature being who she is. But, it does rain more in the higher elevations than here in the valley and when it is raining in the valley, it is most likely raining higher up. I know that, my family knows that.

We had planned picnic for a late birthday celebration for me. They had surprised me by us all going out to dinner the weekend after my birthday but we still planned on this trip. I bought hamburgers and brats and all the fixings. We loaded the car and met everyone for breakfast. The sky is full of gray clouds. The sky has been full of gray and sometimes black clouds for the last week. I said it was going to rain, NO one listened. We ate and loaded up for the trip north.

All was well until we got to the planned meeting place before heading for the lake. It was cloudy but the great white hunter assured me that the clouds were heading the other direction. DD and family were at the meeting spot when we got there but great white hunter son #2 was not. We waited awhile and then decided to go back and check to see if we could locate him. He was along side the road with his Jeep hood up, he had a engine light go on and things didn't feel right. Oh, and by this time, it had started to drizzle. My great white hunter helped him check things out and then son headed back to town. It is raining harder so we go to get DD and family. By the time we got back to them, it was raining so hard that you could not see two feet in front of the car. Hmmmm, guess who is doing a slow burn in the passenger seat?

We drove back to Payson, where it was not raining, by the way. We met up again with our son long enough for him to find a auto parts store, then went to the park in the middle of town where they have a great lake for the kids to fish in. All ended well with the kids getting to fish, Julia caught five tiny blue gills that they put right back in. With help from his great white hunter uncle, Colin caught two but he was more into the neat stuff Papa put in his tackle box. The rest of us hung out and enjoyed the lake and the lovely green grass at the park. The trip ended with lunch at our favorite resturant and a very special birthday gift for Nana.

The great white hunter and I had hamburgers yesterday and brats today. And, I never did say "I told you so!" but they knew............LOL

If you look really close, there is a fish there.



Here is a special picture of three of my favorite fishermen.

Tripping Down Memory Lane

I had my teens in the wooly and wild Sixties, but I remember all of this. This one really brings all those memories rushing back. How in the heck did I get so old so fast?

For a great trip back, click on this.

Take Me Back To The Fifties

Rethinking

I love this block. It is easy to do and so striking. I am not sure about mixing them up though. Not sure if it is my color mix or what but not as excited about the the end mix. Maybe more colors will help?

I saw a medium brown batik at Joann's that I love and think a quilt made with that and a lighter brown would be wonderful. I definitely plan to do one with just two colors.

As with all my quilts, it is a journey. This one might be more about color that I thought. Now the question is, what do I do with all these wonderful blocks if I decide it is a no go?

If you have Google Reader, the link does not work for the quilt pattern, Try this. Hopefully that one will do it.........if not, maybe do a search> :)

Out of the Slump and Out of the Box

Drum roll, please, light the fireworks, sound the gong, do the dance. I cleaned the rust off my cutter, dusted the mat and sewing machine, changed the bobbin and found the pins.

Today someone put a message on my Yahoo group about a quilt called "Bento Box" The pattern is here. The first thing I thought of when I saw it was all those cool fabrics that I got in my Goodwill haul not long ago. They are great prints, but they are just pieces and not enough to do much with unless you mix them. So...........here is what I have so far. The four sections in each square aren't sewn together, they are mixed with each other to make a scrappy block. I really need to do some other color combos to get a good mix but this is my start.




Here is what they will look like when I have enough to start mixing them up. The blue greens are really different, but look the same in the picture. I will have some pinks and reds and yellows combos to mix in with these.



Now is this what I should have done? Started something new when I have a quite a stack of UFO's waiting for my attention. No, but it was fun and at least I did SOMETHING after a long break in the quilting action around here.

I did this in the middle of a raging thunderstorm. The lights kept blinking and we lost the satellite TV reception for a while. See what happens when Nana gets her groove back? I was sure praying that I would not be sitting here by candle light wanting to sew and not able to.

Life Mysteries

While I have not done much quilting or stitching this summer, I don't want you to think I have been completely idle. I have, on occasion, put my book down or turned off the Scrabble game long enough to do some deep thinking. I even did some of that while waiting for the other person on Scrabble to figure out that there is NO two letter combination for the letter C.

Yesterday, I opened my cupboard and had plastic storage dishes and lids spill out. Enough was enough! I emptied it all out on the counter and decided two things. Number one, I had some really nasty looking plastic there that had been around way too long. Number two, there were a lot more lids than dishes. So, I began matching lids to dishes, putting aside the old stuff that I was throwing away. Hmmm, way more lids than dishes.

Then today I tackled the plastic thow-a-way dishes and lids in the upper cabinet. (you know, "Gladware".) Funny thing, there were dishes with no lids as well as extra lids.

Here is the pile of single dishes and lids who have no soul mate.



Which brings me to my question on the mysteries of life. How can this happen? I will say that no doubt, I saw a nasty dish and threw it away, and neglected to toss the lid too. Surely that didn't happen every time. If I gave away a left over, surely I put a lid on it and what went out the door was a complete set? If they returned the dish, (note the IF, these are my grown children I am talking about), I must have gotten a complete set back?

I guess I will add this to my other list of things that will be forever a mystery, like how can you put two socks in the washer and come out with one, or better yet, how the mate to the sock you threw away a year ago, suddenly appears. Then there is the lint in the belly button thing ....................

Needless to say, I need some plastic storage dishes that have lids. That is on the list for the next shopping trip, unless I decide that I like the neat and tidy cupboard better. The pile of wayward lids will go in my Goodwill donation. I bet there is someone out there with dishes and no lids.

Maybe I should stick to Scrabble?