Hubby in the kitchen

Hubby was in the kitchen again and cooking up his own chili recipe:) He is always tweeking his recipe, but pretty much has it down now.

 

First he fire roasts the poblano and green peppers on his gas grill. This takes a little time, but makes the flavors come out. Then he chops them up.

 

Then he cut up the onion and jalapeno peppers and sauted them in a bit of oil until they were soft, then he added the peppers that he had fire roasted.

He cooks up the hamburger and adds tomatoes, beans, seasonings and the onion/pepper mixure. Then he places the whole mess on his smoker grill for a couple hours so it'll all take on a bit of smoky flavor. Once it has gotten all nice and bubbly hot and full of flavor, he brings it inside and lets it cook in the crock pot for a few more hours.

I like mine with a bit of shredded cheese, sour cream and some tortilla chips. YUMMY: ) He made this a couple of weeks ago, and now that I'm typing it all out, I want it again!! Hmm, it needs to get cold here again so I can talk him into it making it:)

Hubby said I can share his recipe. Like I said, it is ever changing, but here are the basics:

2lbs ground beef
1 onion, chopped
2 poblano peppers, fire roasted and chopped (think we'll add a 3rd next time)
1 green bell pepper, fire roasted and chopped (or whatever color bell you like)
1 jalapeno pepper, chopped
4 oz. can chopped mild green chiles
1 can red beans
1 can kidney beans
1 can tomato sauce
2 cans diced tomatoes (we like fire roasted)
4 t. salt
1/2 t. paprika
1/2 t. cayenne pepper
1 T garlic granules
1 t. smoked paprika
1 t. chipotle chili powder
8 T. chili powder

Fire roast peppers, chop. Brown ground beef while sauteing onions and peppers in a bit of oil. Add all ingredents together. Cook on smoker grill for a few hours then transfer to crock pot. If you don't have a smoker grill you could add everything to the crock pot after the ground beef is cooked and let it simmer all day.

This isn't a super hot chili, but it does have some heat. You can adjust the heat to your taste by adding or subtracting peppers and/or seasonings:)

October TUSAL

I haven't done a TUSAL post in quite a long time, but after looking at my very dusty jar I decided it was time to get it down, clean it up and pull out the most recent thread clippings in it. Most of the thread clippings I have here are from frogging out various mistakes from several different projects. It's funny how much it seems you are pulling out at the time and how little thread you actually have in the end:)

 



I have been MIA for this past week, busily stitching away at a couple projects. My dh has been busy  in the kitchen as well so I have a few blogging posts to put up in the next couple of days. :)

Happy Stitching, everyone :)

Week 4 Crafty Project

These projects are going so well:) I'm very pleased to be getting old things finished, however this week my crafty project was a new project. I mentioned before that our 4-H group would be putting together a gift basket with an Autumn theme, for an auction that will benefit our county 4-H group. So this week I bought some new yarn that I'd never used before and set to work on a couple dish cloths to put in our basket.

 

I used 'I Love This Yarn' brand and I really did like it!! :) I've used their 'I Love This Cotton' brand and I really do love that one, but I thought I'd use something different, and I love this color and thought it was perfect for this Autumn basket. I've very glad that I did because I think I'll be using more of this yarn in the future.

 

Not sure what I'll end up doing for my next crafty project yet. I have several things to choose from, but most of them are bigger projects that I'm pretty sure I can't get finished up by next week. We will see what I come up with!! :)

Daybook for Oct 4, 2012

It's been quite a while since I've done a daybook entry and since I'm in-between craft projects right now, I thought I do one of these to fill up some time.


Outside my window - It was a chilly and blustery day today, and while I LOVE Autumn, I was really worried that today was going to be a flop. Our homeschool group's 'Secret Sister' club was having it's first party today and we were to meet at a pumpkin patch. I was super worried about the 'Little Sisters' getting cold and everyone being miserable, but just in the nick-of-time, the sun came out and made the day so much nicer. It was still cool and windy, but the sun was warm and everyone had a good time. :)


I'm thinking - That I'm really glad we didn't end up with calves last night!!! The thought of having 'meat' roaming around the place makes me feel so much more secure, but it sure is a lot of work to raise animals!! And this week has just been so very busy that I wasn't sure how I was going to fit in 3 feedings a day on top of everything else.


In the kitchen -  With the cooler weather moving in, it's time to start thinking of soups:) This is one thing that I can make pretty well, and I love soup!! Being gluten free means that for the most part I need to homemake my soup as a lot of canned soup uses flour to thicken them, though some brands have started using corn starch. So this week I made Cheeseburger Soup with some extra jalapeno for a little more kick. Last weekend my dh and dd smoked a ham, so this weekend I will make ham and beans.


Creativity this week - Well, you already know that I'm working on Week #4's craft project. I'm also
working on another stitchy square for Love Quilts USA, doing some Autumn stitching, looking for some projects for our 4-H basket that will go up for auction and looking into starting an ornament. Whew!! Lots of fun crafting projects in the mix :0)


In the barn - Even though the calves fell through this week, we are preparing the place (and ourselves) so we will be ready to get some soon. This means the stalls need cleaned out, a gate needs turned around and mended and (the hardest part) alfalfa needs to be found - at a reasonable cost:) Hopefully in the next few weeks we will be able to fill the barnyard with something other than cats!!


I think that catches you up on most of the goings-on around here. Maybe I'll have a stitchy up-date to share in a day or two.

Week 3 - Crafty Project

I can't believe I am actually getting some of my old, half-done projects finished up!!! It really feels great knowing that some of my ideas are going to be used instead of just sitting around:)  So this week I finished this scarf that I started long ago - maybe a couple years ago? Not sure, but now that it's done I need to decide what to do with it.

 I don't really like the color for me so I had been thinking about putting it in an Operation Christmas Child box or finding some other place that would take warm winter items for those in need. I may still do that, however I got some news today that means that I might possibly want it for myself after all.

My dh called me this morning to tell me that a friend of his will be going to a cattle auction tomorrow and since bottle calves have been selling cheep, he asked if we'd want a few. Dh was kind enough to call and ask me as dd and I will need to be feeding them a couple times a day while he is at work. We said sure (not so sure this was a good idea, :), and so we'll find out tomorrow evening whether or not we will have some new babies around the farmyard. Since we will need to bottle/bucket feed the little ones for up to 7-8 weeks, I know it will be getting pretty cold while we are out working with them. This scarf might not be my favorite color, but I'm sure the cows won't mind:) and it'll help keep me warm anyway!!

If we get those calves, I'll be sure to post pics of them. They sure are cute when they are little:)

Next week's crafty project will be a new project. I need to do a few crafts to add to a gift basket that our 4-H group will put together to auction off at our carnival at the end of the month. The money goes toward our county 4-H projects. The carnival is lots of fun, but a lot of work, so I'm trying to get things done as quick as I can. We got the 'Autumn Theme' basket to put together, so that should be really easy to come up with a couple projects for things to add to the basket:)

Stitching trouble

Have you ever had a stitchy project that you just couldn't get right? I started this project earlier this year as one of my 2012 Crazy Challenge projects. I've already stitched the other 3 in the series so I really wanted to get this one done as well so I would have actually finished a whole series of something:) I knew from the start that I didn't like the purple that was called for and I wanted an orange for the pumpkins that was a bit more bold. So I started changing some of the colors. And that is where things went wrong!!!

 

 

 The picture above was actually the second attempt at getting the color right, and I just didn't like that shade of brown with that shade of red. It just doesn't look like autumn colors to me.

 

This is my 3rd attempt and the one I will stitck with. Sadly the red that I choose this time looks real close to the purple in the picture, LOL!!! Figures, doesn't it? :) It does look a bit different in real life though, and I'm happy enough with it that I'm not going to start again.


So do you do this sometimes too? Most of the time I can change around the colors with no problem, but then other times are like this:) I actually have 2 more projects that are like this. One of them I did get figured out, but it took a long time and I haven't gotten around to stitching on it since. The other I gave up on, but one day I may get back to trying to figure it out too:)

Pantry Basics - Peanut Butter

I thought I'd start posting on some pantry items that we home make for ourselves. I'm going to start out with peanut butter. Of all the things that I need to make homemade to make sure I'm eating as gluten free as possible, peanut butter isn't one that I would need to make. Generally this is a naturally gluten free food. However my dh has a bad habit of reading all those nasty on-line articles about what gets into our processed food (really you don't want to know), and telling me about it. Soon enough I've added one more thing that I make for ourselves:)  I do want to say here that we do eat processed foods. I don't make everything myself, but I am slowly working towards making a bit more here and there.

 

 Peanut butter is not a hard staple to make, but it does take some time. I start out with a little more than a pound of in-the-shell non salted peanuts. We choose non salted just so we can control the amount of salt in the peanut butter, salted peanuts would work fine though. If you start with raw peanuts that have already been shelled, you would need around 1 lb of peanuts.

 I then pulse them in my food processor until it looks like this. Then I add 1/2 t. salt, 3-4 T. of olive oil (or oil of your choice), and about 2 T. honey. Then I continue to run it in the processor until it bunches up into a ball. I usually spread it apart a bit and run it some more until it is pretty smooth. The more oil you use the more smooth it will be and the easier it will be to spread as well. I wanted to use the least amount of oil that I could and found for us that 3-4 T was a nice balance. It is a little hard to spread straight out of the frig, so I let it sit out just a bit and that helps.

This is what mine looks like when it's done. I store it in a sealed bowl in the frig. I'm not sure how long it would last as we go through it pretty fast:)