Hubby (and daughter) in the Kitchen

A couple weekends ago my hubby and daughter got a sweet tooth and decided it was time to try another pumpkin recipe. It just so happens that I get Better Homes and Gardens e-mails and had just gotten one that had lots of pumpkin recipes. It was REALLY hard to choose just one of them!! :) 

 

 

We ended up deciding on Chocolate Glazed Pumpkin Pie Cheesecake.

 



 

Of course, we had to make a small change to the recipe to make it mommy friendly (aka, gluten free). This was a very small change this time though. Instead of using chocolate wafer cookies (which I could not find gluten free, though I do believe I may have been able to order), we used gluten free chocolate sandwich cookies. This turned out really good, and I'm pretty sure I would have been fine just eating the whole box of them:)

My hubby is getting so good at baking, but he insists on doing all the baking on his smoker grill:) Again, I will say that at a temp of 300 or higher (and using a non-flavored wood like oak) there is very little to no smoke, and so it really does act very much like an oven. You can see on the left that we had a bit of extra batter which we cooked crust-less in another glass bowl. On the right is the pie all nice and cooked. We had to let it cool all the way before adding the chocolate glaze and then we had to let that cool to set up!!! This was incredibly hard to do!!!

 

 

As you can see, we lived and ate it all up within a few days:) We did cheat a bit and shared that crust-less pie while it was still (very) warm, so we had a little to hold us off.

 

I will say that while I liked the pumpkin flavor of this one better than the Hazelnut Pumpkin pie we did a while back, I thought the chocolate overwhelmed the pumpkin flavor. So I really liked the crust-less version of this, but wasn't as impressed with the full version. It was still good, but didn't have a strong enough pumpkin flavor to compete with the chocolate.

 

BTW, my dd was trying to practice her drizzling skills, so that is why the white chocolate is on top:) 

A stitchy finish

About a month ago, right about when I was starting the race car block for LOVE QUILTS, a message came across one of the stitching Yahoo groups I'm on that another member just found out she had cancer. Now I do not know this other member, and the truth is that I'm not very active on this board, but when a different member suggested that we stitch up some heart blocks that could be made into a small snuggle quilt, I thought that would be a great idea. I found this free pattern at Luli, but had seen it stitched up at Reve de fil as well, and I really liked it done up in blue with the small heart in a contrast color so it would stand out. 



 

 

I hope that enough people joined in to make this a success, but either way it was a fun pattern to stitch. Maybe something I'll need to do for myself at some point:)

Weekly Crafting Post#????

I had been doing really good with my weekly crafting projects, so where did they go? Well, as I am getting closer and closer to a dead-line for a LOVE QUILT  cross-stitched block to be done, I've given up on just about all other activities to make sure it gets finished up. I have 3 weeks left before I need to mail it out and I'm not nearly close enough to being done. So I thought I'd take a pic of some of the crafty projects that I had hoped to finish before the New Year. I'm still hoping to have a bit of time in Dec to finish a couple of these, but we will have to see:)

 

In the upper left-hand corner there is some crocheting in spring colors. This is one of what needs to be 4 panels (I have just started the 4th panel), of what will be a blanket for my daughter. I started this last winter hoping to get it done for her April birthday:) HAHAHAHA!!!  Okay, really, I do still hope to get this one done for Christmas.

To the right of that I have a few rows of a quilt that I was doing for myself. Not getting anywhere too fast on this one either. I really would rather do just about any other craft than sewing, but we really could use a few extra blankets around here. No set time frame on this one.

In the upper-right hand corner you can see some brown/cream/green crocheting. Again this was to be a blanket for myself/my family. Gee, I can't even remember when I started this one:) I have ripped it out several times as I started this one when I was just learning to crochet and I was unhappy with the first few blocks I did.

Just down from the brown/cream/green 'blanket' is a red crochet bag I was trying my hand at. This is even older than the blanket. I got both the front and back panels done on it and then gave up as I couldn't figure out how I wanted to attach them. I should look closer at this now that I have a tiny bit more experience with crocheting.

Along the bottom I have many cross stitch projects that are all stitched up and in need of some finishing. I counted 9 projects. Some are for ornaments and some are a bit bigger. Really need to work on these too:)

And finally, if you look really close on what will be my daughters blanket you will see the beginnings of a stuffed bird I was working on. I think I originally made 2 or 3 (though I didn't finish any of them), but I think our cat got to a couple of them:) He thought they were great even if they weren't all sewn together!!

Like I said, I still REALLY want to get my dd's blanket done, and hopefully a couple of the ornies as well before Christmas. And we could use a blanket or two for the winter. We will see what I can get done, but first I MUST finish the race car block I am stitching!! :)

Pantry Basics #2

Well, not exactly a 'pantry' basic, but more a freezer basic or a food prep basic. Not sure if I should separate these or re-name all these as 'Food Prep Basic'. Will need to give some thought on that:)

 

As I've written before, we didn't do a garden this year. With the VERY dry conditions and heat here, it just seemed a waste of time and energy. However my father-in-law loves to garden and he kept at it. We received lots of onions, tomatoes, potatoes and sweet potatoes and lots and lots of peppers from him this year.

 

 

We do love peppers and use them in lots of our cooking, but I just can't use as many as I'm getting before they go bad. So I decided to chop them up and freeze them.

This is pretty self explanatory. I cut the peppers up into strips, place them in a single layer on a cookie tray lined with aluminum foil (they are easier to pull off the aluminum foil if they freeze to it), let them freeze and once they are frozen, I store them in a plastic bag. The reason I cut them into strips instead of chopping them up is because my daughter doesn't like peppers so usually we put strips of peppers and onions in our food and that makes it easier for her to pull out the veggies:)

I have, in the past, just cut the top off and seeded the peppers and frozen them whole to be used in a stuffed pepper recipe, but none of these were big enough to be used for that.

I had enough to freeze two batches from this bunch of peppers. I would rather eat food from a local garden (that I know) than the stores, so this will help to get us into the winter a bit before I have to start buying peppers at the store again:)

Thankful Sunday

This has been going around on Facebook lately. I'm thinking it is a goal of posting something you are thankful for each day up until Thanksgiving. I didn't get started quite as soon as everyone else did, but I thought I'd start putting up a post each Sunday of the things I am/was thankful for during the previous week.

Nov 1 - For my LORD, my family and friends and for my country and the freedom we have (in that order:).

Nov 2 - For the beautiful Autumn that we have had so far. It's been far too dry where we are, but still very nice weather.

Nov 3 - For the animal friends that we have. They are a lot of work and sometimes are a pain, but I just love that we always have something to suggle up with!! :)

Nov 4 - For my daughter's friends. She has met some really great kids through church activities, 4-H group and her homeschool group.

More to come next Sunday :)

A new family member

Yesterday I wrote about us going to look at a rabbit for a possible new 4-H project. We didn't know if we would get one yet or not, and dd wasn't even sure if she wanted the responsibility of another animal. After meeting this little guy and giving it some more thought, we did end up bringing him home.

 'Fargo' is a male Holland Lop and is almost 6 months old. The breeder we got him from has already started showing him and has handled him a lot, so he is very friendly.

He came home and settled right in. Now we just need to slowly introduce him to the rest of the
in-door crew. He didn't do too well when introducing him to the cat:) But we'll keep up with it a little at a time and hopefully they can all be friends before long. (NOTE: we are not allowing the animals to be together outside of the cage. I'm pretty sure that would be a bad idea:).

Well, I just barely made my post in today. It's 11:10 pm, so I have officially posted 3 days in a row!!! Just 27 more days to go:)

Busy season in our lives

It seems that no matter how much I plan and try, I just can't squeeze enough hours into the day (or enough sleep into the night:). I really don't know how parents with 2, 3, 4, 6 or more kids keep up!! I *think* next week will be a slower week for us, but I've been saying that for months now, LOL!!

Today was MOPS meeting, and of course, I don't have a preschooler anymore, but my teen aged daughter just loves working with little ones and she has been volunteering in the nursery for the MOPS group. She just loves it:) I think it is great since she doesn't get the experience here at home taking care of siblings so this is a really good learning opportunity for her.

Tonight is our 4-H meeting and I think we will go and look at a rabbit tomorrow for one of her 4-H projects. We have been trying to re-arrange her bedroom to fit the critter in and I think we've figured it out. Hopefully there will be pics to show off the new addition by the end of the weekend.

Well, I know this isn't a normal posting for me, and I've been lacking in the picture department on the last couple posts, but I was bound and determined not to have messed up the NaBloPoMo on the second day!!!

More interesting post tomorrow, for sure:)