Sleeping Dog Bakery

Making felted soap

2010-08-26T07:49:00.000-07:00

My aunt Britt-Marie lives in Sweden and since a few years back she owns and operates a certified organic sheep farm together with her partner Unto. What I love about this farm, apart from the organic side, is that she takes care of everything from her sheep (meat, pelts, wool) and she practices what I can only refer to as "good stewardship farming." What I mean by that is that she is careful to not deplete the natural resources that her farm provides - the areas for the sheep (and one llama!) to graze, as well as the areas where she grows her feed.

Britt-Marie knows how to shear her sheep, she knows how to wash, dye and spin the wool and she also knits, sews, felts and does other crafty and beautiful works of art with the materials her sheep provide.Her sheep are all registered "old world" breeds and she carefully selects her breeding pairs each season.

She also has provided me with three awesome and wonderful cousins! :-) Too bad they live so far away!

My aunt taught me how to do needle felting a few summers back, and I brought some of her wool back home with me. I've always wanted to try to make felted soap, and when my best girlfriend Leslie and her daughter Sydney came to visit, the perfect opportunity arose.

I found the basic instructions from Mielke's Fiber Arts on a page complete with pictures.

Here are some pictures from our session:
First we started by separating the wool fibers. By hand, since I don't have any carders.

This was not Sydney's favorite part. :-) But we got through it.

Then we wrapped the wool around the soap, either mish-mash colors, or I made some patterned ones.

We dribbled warm water over the wool and soap and started rubbing lightly. Eventually the soap started sudsing.

And sudsing....

And the wool started to shrink around the soap. Wondering why I'm wearing gloves? I have exzema on my hands. It's a bad outbreak and being in water makes it much worse. So I wear gloves when I'm in water, when I do the dishes, when I bake, when I garden....not fun....ah well.

And then we let them dry. All done! Felted soap work just like scrubbies in the shower. Natural wool scrubs your skin while the soap washes.It was fun - and I highly recommend doing this with kids.

Belated New Mexico Pictures

2010-08-18T17:38:00.000-07:00

Balloon Festival in Raton, NM

Sean and I went to New Mexico for a Fluhman family reunion over the July 4th weekend. We flew in to Albuquerque and then drove through Santa Fe to the northeaster corner of New Mexico. Seans aunt and uncle have a "camp" near the small town of Raton, NM, just outside Sugarite Canyon State Park. It was a perfect location since the park had showers that we could use, just a few minutes from where we were staying. There was only so many beds under a roof, and we let the children sleep in the cabins since there had been plenty of bears around.... It was wonderful to meet more of Sean's family and they are all very nice...even to a foreigner like me! :-) This area is beautiful, and I can highly recommend it for vacation. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

Sugarite Canyon State Park includes the ruins of an old coal mining village. This building sits on the mountainside before the village and supposedly it was a hotel of some sort. You can still see wall colors and the tiled bathroom.

Sean practices his fly fishing skills in Sugarite Canyon State Park.

Friendly chipmunk at the old mining village ruins.

I missed Kane terribly, but luckily one of Sean's uncles has a German Shepherd Ranch Dog! Meet Radar - he was our bear chaser dog for the weekend. Just days before we arrived he was practicing that job...Radar is only 3 and has been snakebit twice!

Sean's aunt and uncles own and operate a cattle ranch which has been in the family since Sean's grandparents.
It's beautiful country out here.

These boots were made for workin'.... I found this pile in a barn on the ranch.

Open country on the Fluhman Ranch.

Near the Fluhman ranch is Mills Canyon. A total surprise. Imagine the previous picture - pretty much flat country as far as you can see. A few trees here and there. Mills Canyon is a deep gorge formed by the Canadian River. It is lush and green. Luckily our rental was an AWD, and Sean is an expert navigator of rough roads.
We drove down to the bottom to take a look.

Melvin Mills built a hotel here in the late 19th century. The ruins of two buildings still stand along with remnants of Mills Canyon Enterprises - a 14,000 tree orchard with apples, peaches, plums, pears, cherry, walnut, almond and chestnut complete with irrigation, cisterns etc.

Here you can see the remnants of his fruit dehydrator. A flood in 1904 completely wiped out Mr. Mills operation and he died poor in 1925. Supposedly you can still find some fruit trees throughout the canyon.

What a place this must have been back in the days. Supposedly there was a cargo tramway that brought all the produce up 800ft to get to the railroad.

On our way back home, we drove through the mountains of southern Colorado. I've always been in love with the Rocky Mountains, since I was a small child. We stopped at this mountain stream, wow - it was c-c-c-cold!!

Hello future place where I will live someday. This is the Conejos River Valley in Colorado.
Sean and I decided we should live here. At some point.
This is my desktop image on my laptop at work. So that I know what I am working towards. :-)

Delicious Tomato Pesto Pie

2010-08-04T07:07:00.000-07:00

Our tomatoes are just starting to come in. We had some end-rot early on, but now that seems to have gone away. It has been one hot summer, and I think we were a little inconsistent with the watering. Lately I've been feeding the tomatoes and up until now we have been watering twice a day.

Along with my tomatoes, I've planted plenty of basil. I made some basil pesto the other day with our own garlic and then I found this recipe for Tomato Basil Pesto Pie. Perfect!

All you need are ingredients to make a simple crust (flour, butter, baking powder, milk and salt), parmesan cheese (which you can put in the crust as well!), ingredients for basil pesto (more parmesan cheese, basil, garlic, pinenuts or almonds, olive oil) and then you add sliced tomatoes and mozzarella cheese, and more parmesan cheese. I used some plum tomatoes and some others Genovese tomatoes that happened to be ready. The crust calls for milk and since I only drink fat free milk, I added some greek yogurt to my crust. Yum, yum, yum. I had some for dinner last night. I am having it for lunch today and hopefully I will have some for dinner as well.

The crust is perfect for soaking up the pesto and tomato juice and the cheese....oh this is so, incredibly good! You have to try it! It bakes in the oven for 40 minutes, and prep time was for me about 30 minutes. I hope you like it as much as I did! :-)

Here's the recipe for Farmgirl's Savory Plum Tomato and Basil Pesto Pie.
Finny over at Finny Knits has a version adding sausage for you meat lovers.
She also has a nifty page describing what she makes from her farmshare box. Cool way to categorize her recipes.

Cheesy Yumminess.

I'm getting hungry just looking at these pictures. Is it lunch-time yet?

My kind of gold

2010-07-28T04:32:00.000-07:00

Golden Yellow/White potatoes are my kind of gold!
These are Carola and Yellow Finn potatoes that I dug up in the morning this past Sunday - before we made it up to 108F.

Lots of potatoes!

Then I made this - Rosemary Potatoes Au Gratin from Pioneer Woman's Cookbook. Yum!

Hot Garden Update

2010-07-24T13:48:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick pictorial garden update. As you can tell from the picture above from The Weather Channel - it's HOT! My husband is away on business for a while, so all the yardwork (and housework) falls to me. On the weekends I spend from 8am until 11am in the garden and then I go inside and wait until temperatures drop around 7pm. Ugh.

I have some zinnias in our garden and they seem to LOVE the heat. In turn, the butterflies and the bees love the zinnias (and hopefully pollinate my tomatoes and peppers!)

Most of our tomatoes are green, but they are starting to turn. And crack. From the heat. :-(

The basil looks so pretty with the purple petunia wave flowers around the birdbath (yes, this is also in our veggie garden, in the middle of the peppers.)

Cucumbers are still going strong. I pick at least 6-10 every day. It makes my colleagues at work very happy!

Aren't these sunflowers adorable? Not sure what they are called, but they are about 10ft tall and these smaller 3 inch flowers. They make me smile!

The mini-maters are back! I enjoy these on my salads. From only ONE plant this year, and this was self-seeded!

More pretty zinnias.

Some peppers are coming in. They are delicious. Hopefully they love the hot weather!

A bell pepper!

The gorgeous Costoluto Genovese tomatoes.

Lima Beans!

Eggplant Bloom.

Leek!

And I leave you with a picture of our bi-color Crepe Myrtle. They are everywhere in the south, but ours is the only bi-color I've ever seen. I think they must have done a cutting and attached it and it was a different color. We have three of these going up the driveway, and this year they are really taking off. Probably because I finally read up on how to prune them correctly and they are showing off their gratitude! :-)

Have a great week, everyone! Stay cool, dry - wherever you are!

Pickles!

2010-06-24T07:57:00.000-07:00

When life gives you cucumbers - you make pickles!!! I went just a tad overboard on planting cucumbers this year. Last year it was the currant tomatoes, this year it is definitely cucumbers. So far we've made tzatziki, asian cucumbers, quick pickled cucumbers, had cucumbers on our salads and finally given away loads of cucumbers to friends and colleagues. Still we have plenty. But, it's good to have plenty. :-)

My grandmother in Sweden makes two different kinds of pickles every year that are delicious. One is a dill pickle and one is a bread&butter type recipe. This was my next mission with all the cucumbers; make pickles like grandma's!

The dill pickles were made with a brine solution of water, mustard seeds, dill seed, salt and spirit vinegar. We have imported spirit vinegar from Sweden which is a 12% vinegar. I have tried making another batch using american vinegar which is 5% and re-calculating the recipe to get the same % of vinegar acidity and the same amount of liquid. They will be ready in early August and if they turn out - I will post the recipe!

The dill pickles are layered with fresh dill and grape leaves. Grandma uses black currant leaves. They supposedly have an enzyme in them that keeps the pickles from going soft.
The bread and butter pickles are first sliced, layered with dill and mustard seed and then marinated in a vinegar-salt-sugar brine. Yum! Here is the recipe:

Pernilla's Bread & Butter Pickles (adapted)

2.2 lbs small pickling cucumbers
2 tbsp yellow or brown mustard seeds
plenty of dill, preferably dill crowns (flowers) as well

Brine:
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 1/4 cups water
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup salt

Wash and slice the cucumbers - discard blossom ends. Place the cucumbers in glass jar(s) layered with the dill and mustard seeds. Mix together the ingredients for the brine until the sugar and salt has dissolved - this brine should NOT be boiled. Pour the brine over the cucumber slices. Marinate for 3 weeks. The jars should be kept in a cool dark place.
I used large glass jars (see below) for the first 4-5 days and weighted down the cucumbers with glass jars filled with water. After 4-5 days, I transferred the cucumbers (plus brine plus extras) to smaller jars and kept them in the fridge until the 3 weeks were up. Mainly because it's so doggone hot down here this time of year and I was afraid they would go bad.

My grandparents (like most older farm houses in Sweden) have an earth cellar and so neither recipe call for the actual process of canning. I ended up test-canning two jars of the dill pickles, and they turned mushy....so for the future, those pickles will be kept in the fridge. We eat them fast anyway!!! :-)

Sorry for not blogging a lot lately, but work and life has been hectic. Our garden is keeping us busy and soon I will have some posts on that. Sean and I had some overdue vacation time in New Mexico with his family as well, and I will post some pictures soon.

Hope your gardens are boutiful as well!

Strawberry Jamfest 2010

2010-06-21T14:52:00.000-07:00

This year I made some wonderful strawberry jams using new recipes (for me). I found some new great blogs about canning and one of them is called Saving the Season written by Kevin West whom I've come to admire as a writer and blogger and whose recipes are absolutely delicious.
I made two of Kevin's recipes for strawberry jam. One was a regular no-pectin and low sugar recipe that was so wonderful I don't even have the words to describe it. I am doing my best to hoard each precious pint and half-pint that I canned and not give them away to (only) well-deserving friends. I've not been very successful because I want to hear people say "Oh, mmmmm, oh, wow, oh, mmmmmm" and so on......
The second recipe is for balsamic vinegar and black pepper strawberry preserves. It just sounded so different and delicious that I had to give that a try. The black pepper is only hinted at when you taste it and the vinegar provides almost a more adult flavor. I wouldn't pour this on my Kefir for breakfast, but I would eat it with some good cheese, crackers and I might even bake with it. Here are the recipes and links to Kevin's webspace:

Basic Strawberry Jam

Strawberry Preserves with Balsamic Vinegar and Black Pepper

I started out with 2 and a half gallons of strawberries from my local farmer at the Bush n'Vine farm just about 2 miles from where I live. That bucket of blueberries sneaked into my photo, but they got dumped into the freezer for now while I ponder what to make with them (other than these for sure, my favorite!)

Then we move on to the sugar. It's the season for the gigantic bags of sugar again. Kane is making sure it stays put and doesn't get carried away by cats or something.
The only other thing you need are a couple of lemons, and then balsamic vinegar and black pepper for the second recipe.

Kevin does not believe in pectin. And neither do I now....at least not for strawberries. I don't mind it being a little runny, just one less thing I have to clutter up the berries with. :-)

The recipes were both very easy to follow - keep in mind that the second recipe calls for soaking overnight though. I made mine in batches so that I wouldn't mess up the recipe by doubling anything. All in all I had 4 batches of each type of jam/preserve. Can you imagine how great our house smelled???!!

So if your local farmer or farmer's market still has fresh strawberries - go out and get them and make this recipe. I promise you won't be sorry. I'm not sorry. I'm only slightly miffed that I didn't buy like 10 gallons and make more. But then, I'd still be chopping strawberries right now....

So - have you canned anything yet this season?

Garden Crazies

2010-06-11T13:00:00.000-07:00

I love living in the south! I love having vegetables already! Ahem, well...remind me of that again when it's in the 100s and humid, humid, humid and my hair is all frizzies....at least the garden doesn't care about my frizzy hair. :-)

Our garden is going crazy this year. Crazy in a good way and I just hope we can keep up with it. Here are a few photos of what we've harvested so far:

Cueball zucchinis that are growing next to the compost bin (courtesy of me tossing the bad ones over the fence from the garden in the "general direction" of the compost bin and then promptly forgetting about actually putting them ON the compost pile...oups.)

New potatoes - All Red, All Blue and Carola (yellow). Wow were they good. We've been handpicking a TON of Colorado potato beetle larvae and the plants that these potatoes came from were pretty much eaten up. So I figured they could be sacrificed. I think now I will have to dig up some more! New potatoes are the best. Heike eats them with creme fraiche, basil and lime....I will have to try that next time!

The bush beans are going absolutely nuts. I eat them, I blanch them and freeze them and still there is more! The Chinese yard longs are starting to come in as well.

I think I got a little too excited about the cucumber plantings. They are growing like weeds and even stretching their prickly tentacles over the beans and over towards the tomatoes. That's where I draw the line though and they get whacked. Noone messes with Lena's tomatoes!
So this weekend I think I'm going to try my grandmother's recipe for pickles. I've picked about 50 of them over the past week. Still there is more!

Next up in my contest to catch up on my blogging (work has been very hectic) will be some photos of my jamfest 2010. Strawberry jam was on the agenda (not sure how the blueberries sneaked in above, but they are on sale now at the local farmstand so they will be next!)....and I found a new recipe that I want to share with you. Coming soon....
Have a wonderful weekend!

Our Memorial Day Hike

2010-06-03T19:06:00.000-07:00

Here we are on the ridge of the Linville Gorge in western North Carolina. We had a great, short trip and got to spend some much needed together time and time away from all the must-do lists that come with a home and large garden.

We started our hike from the parking lot at Wolf Pit Road. Loaded up all the gear (why do our packs seem to get heavier with each trip???!), and trudged up the mountain. The first mile or so was not fun. I thought I was in decent shape, but I could only do 10-15 steps and then I had to stop and breathe. I suppose Jillian's workout tapes don't include 30 jumping jacks with a 40 lb backpak on a 30% incline. Well, they should.
Kane was a trooper, very sure-footed and sniffing every bush, log, rock and tree. I was a little worried about bears, but I had found a new fellow blogger, Sam, and after reading her hiking story at Linville Gorge, I felt better. If she could do it - I could do it! Luckily we did not see any bears, but we certainly smelled them in a few areas. Peeee-eeeewww!
After we made it up the mountain, there were some beautiful views and a nice breeze on this otherwise humid and hot day. We found a shady spot under a rock outcropping and sat down to make some lunch.
For lunch I had found an organic corn and green chili soup (just add water) and we added some couscous to make it a little more filling. We had decided early on to NOT purchase the ready-made freeze-dried outdoor food, but instead try to bring real food, as light and easy to cook as possible. We both agree that the food we had on this trip was great. We have a book on outdoor cooking from Sweden and I found another website called backpackingchef.com where you can find recipes and how-tos.

We found a gorgeous little camp site on a ridge a little ways off the main trail. It had a fire-ring, and some cleared moss-covered areas perfect for cooking and for our tent. Kane loves camping. He take pride in carrying his pack (his own food and water), he loves to sleep in the tent, he alerts us to other hikers that come near our camp (but once he gets to "meet" them, he is all love!)

Bringing food for Kane gets a little tricky since he is on a raw diet. I don't exactly want to carry raw chicken with me on the trail (see note about bears above, then add possible mountain lions, foxes etc.) So I found this dehydrated raw diet called Honest Kitchen that you mix with water.

You can tell he likes it from that food "moustache"! :-)

My husband, the camp pyro. It did scare away most of the flies and mosquitoes though. :-)

Dinner was pancetta and chicken tortellini (frozen so it thawed as we hiked) with a cream sauce (milk powder and water + a few drops of olive oil) flavored with salt, pepper and nutmeg. WOW!

Next time - we will strive to make it a little (read A LOT) further...All in all with the blueberry bushes, the mountain laurel and the rhododendron in bloom - it was a beautiful weekend! (This is where I don't mention the rain on the hike back that had us soaked through with water squishing out of our boots 20 minutes into a 4 hour hike. You can bet I was glad we had that stash of dry clothes in the car!

Sharing the bounty

2010-05-27T07:16:00.000-07:00

Greetings fellow gardeners!

Last week on CNN, there was a story and accompanying video on "Using nature's bounty to feed the hungry." Gary Oppenheimer of NJ has built an amazing website and network at ampleharvest.org for the purpose of matching up home and small-time vegetable gardeners with local food pantries that distribute food to families in need.
Most of the time, food pantries carry food that stores well - processed, canned etc. It's sad to me that the best food for our bodies; fresh, locally-grown vegetables and fruits, are not available to everyone.

If you're like me, and you have the opportunity to share some of what you grow, please check out ampleharvest.org and click on the link for finding a local food pantry near you. If you can't find one, maybe google for a local food pantry, contact them to see if they're willing to accept fresh produce, ask them to register on ampleharvest.org and get started with sharing your bountiful harvests.

If you have other ideas on how to share your garden with others, please leave a note in the comments.
One such example would be my blog-friend Kim over at Inadvertent Farmer who has started a KinderGardens blog experience where she urges people to help children get involved in gardening and teach them the importance of learning how to grow your own food. How neat is that?

Have a wonderful day!

The revenge attack of the mini maters

2010-05-13T07:44:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick garden update. Everything is growing like crazy. The End.

Seriously, that could be it in a nutshell. We've had fabulous warm weather for a few weeks now. Nothing too seriously humid yet, but nice warm days and cooler nights. Everything but tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, basil and some of the leeks, kale and broccoli I had started indoors are in the ground. I've had a bumber crop of lettuce already and I keep getting more. I've made arugula pesto and put it on pizza and in pasta dishes. I just harvested some baby pak choi last night and going to use it in a stirfry tonight. Our peas, carrots, beans, corn, potatoes and cucumbers are growing really well. I think the combination of great weather plus the horse manure from our friends and neighbors is what is making a difference this year.

Did anyone notice the title of this post? Remember last years "Great Mini Mater Invasion"? The currant tomatoes that I had SO many of that I finally quit picking them? Well, guess what is coming back to bite me in the butt? (No, not Kane....he only bites arms. lol) Yes, the mini maters are back. In full swing. In what is now the cucumber bed (because I rotate my crop like a good gardener). Here's a picture:

After I took these pictures, I put Kane in a down and gave him a cow knuckle bone while I proceeded to weed the tomato plants out of the cucumber plants. It took him about 3 hours to finish the bone, and by that time the mini mater army was reduced to a rubble (a pile, really). I found 2 other tomato volunteers elsewhere in the garden, and I'm letting them live, for now. Mostly because I'm pretty sure they're not currant tomatoes. lol.

Meanwhile on the back porch - this years hopeful tomato plant contestants are sunning themselves hoping for a good showing and a nice new large lot space in the garden as soon as this weekend. Grow, babies, grow! I feel like one of the mom's on the horrid child beauty contestant tv shows (I just flip past them, honestly I can't stand to watch!) - everytime I walk by I tell my tomato plants to "stand tall, grow strong, you are gorgeous!"

Hope everyone's gardens are coming along well. I'll leave you with this video of Kane doing one of his favorite weekend morning chores; chasing away the Canadian Geese that come up in the yard to feed. As long as they stay away from the potatoes, corn and beans....I'm happy. Kane loves to make sure I'm happy. Good Boy!

Honey Rye Sourdough Yeast Bread

2010-05-03T15:13:00.000-07:00

Now that you have all made some great sourdough starters, or at least read my how-to, here is a recipe for a very yummy honey rye bread. It's one of our favorites and who knows, maybe it will be yours as well?!

It is a mixed flour bread, with both rye and wheat flour, so the rye is not too overpowering. Just enough to give your tummy something to work on. :-)

I'm going to start you off with a bread that has both sourdough starter and yeast. To ensure your success, although I have complete faith in you being able to do this!

A note about yeast: I use bread machine yeast (also called instant active dry yeast) which comes in the small glass containers. Once the bottle is open, I store them in the fridge. Since I bake bread almost every weekend, this works well for me. If you are used to baking with other kinds of yeast, fresh (Lucky you!) or active dry yeast, you can use this conversion table to figure out just how much to use.There's one more thing to remember about yeast: dry yeast can be added with all the other dry ingredients (like the flour) while fresh yeast will need the warm liquid to dissolve in before you proceed. There are a million different opinions on how to add the yeast to your bread - throw it in and hope for the best, that's how I do it!

These loaves are on the small side. I've doubled the recipe before, so you should be able to, and then just bake them a few minutes longer. Maybe double the recipe and make three loaves as my friend suggested.

Honey Rye Bread with sourdough starter
1 1/4 cups of warm water
1.5 tablespoons honey (I've used both raw honey and "regular" honey)
2 tablespoons rye sourdough starter
1 1/4 cups bread flour
6 - 7 tablespoons all purpose flour
1 1/4 cups rye flour
2 1/4 teaspoons bread machine yeast
2 teaspoons salt

Mix all ingredients in mixer (or in a bowl by hand if you want to!).

Run 3 minutes on low (Knead by hand for 6 minutes).
Run 9 minutes on medium (Knead by hand for 10 minutes).

Let the dough rest for 90 minutes with a kitchen towel covering the bowl.

Here is my dough after the first rise. It should double in size.

Pour the dough out on a floured tabletop and cut it into 2 pieces (or 3).

Form round balls with your dough, and then stretch them by turning and pushing the dough up on the underside....so that the dough stretches across the top.

Pushing the dough up on the underside while stretching with my hands.
Move the bread round in your hands to stretch evenly on all sides.

Stretched bread dough.

Let the dough balls rest for 10 minutes under a kitchen towel. Form into oblong shapes using this simple technique:

1. FLatten the dough by pushing down with your hands to form a rectangle.

Gently pull on the edges and flatten with your fingers
until you have a 10-12 inches by 6-7 inches rectangle.

1. Fold one long edge over to the middle.
2. Fold the other long edge over to meet in the middle
3. Fold the two folded edges together
4. Roll slightly to get everything to stick together

Place your loaves on a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper.

You can add a design by cutting with a sharp knife across the top - lengthwise.

Let the breads rise under a towel for 60-90 minutes - until double in size.

Turn oven to 480 F. (or as close as your oven gets!)
Put your loaves in the oven and spray some water into the oven. You can also add some icucubes to a tray underneath your bread.
Lower the temperature to 425 F and bake for 25-35 minutes.
Let your loaves cool on a rack under a kitchen towel.

Enjoy! If you bake this - please leave me a comment and let me know how it went!

Helpful Hints: Sourdough Starter

2010-04-22T17:48:00.000-07:00

My dear and beautiful blog-friend Lisa over at Molti di Moda blog has asked me to write a guest blog on the topic of Helpful Hints for Daily Living. I am so honored that she chose to feature me, and I hope everyone enjoys this blog post!

I love to bake bread and lately I've been especially interested in baking sourdough bread. There is just something special about sourdough breads; the way it smells, how it tastes different. I've read that sourdough bread is easier to digest and healthier for your body as well.

For my helpful hints post, I am going to give you two recipes for starting sourdough - these are called sourdough starters and I keep a rye version and a wheat version in my fridge at all times. I feed them about once every week and a half and use them for some of my breadbaking.

A mixed flour sourdough made with wheat and spelt flour.

If you are new to sourdough making, I suggest you start with the rye sourdough starter. It's a lot easier to get a rye sourdough started, probably because it's a whole grain and has more of the "good stuff" in it. When you have a good rye sourdough starter, you can use some of it (a tablespoon or so) to kick off your wheat sourdough starter. Today I will post the sourdough starter recipes and instructions and sometime soon, I will post a few sourdough bread recipes for you. Here we go! Make sure you have: Water (ha!) Rye flour - I like a sifted version, not a very coarse rye flour. Bread flour Wide mouth canning jars with 2-piece lids. You can use regular glass jars as well, but I've found wide-mouth canning jars to work really well. I highly recommend organic and stoneground type flours if you can find them at a decent price. They too seem to have more of the good stuff in them and make for better sourdough starters.

Rye Sourdough Starter

First Day - Morning
1/2 cup warm water (not hot!)
1/4 cup rye flour

Mix the water and the flour in a glass jar until there are no more lumps of flour. Wide mouth canning jars work great, especially with a 2 piece lid. Put the lid back on, but don't screw it on. We need air to make this work! Put the jar in a warm place such as above the fridge. Let the jar stand for 3 days and lightly shake it every 12 hours or so.

Flour and water added.

4th Day - Morning
Add the following to your mixture:
1/2 cup warm water (not hot!)
3/4 cup rye flour

Mix until no more lumps of flour. Put the jar back in the warm spot.

Starting to bubble...

4th Day - Evening
Add the following to your mixture:
1/2 cup warm water (not hot!)
1/2 cup rye flour

Mix well and let stand for 12 hours.

The finished rye starter.

Your starter should smell nice and yeasty now. The consistency should be like chocolate mousse, bubbly on top. If you're going to use your starter, go ahead and do so. If not, you should put your jar in the fridge.

The beginnings of my wheat starter.

Wheat Sourdough Starter
First Day - Morning
1 tablespoon rye sourdough starter
1/4 cup warm water (not hot!)
1/2 cup bread flour

Mix the water and the flour in a glass jar until there are no more lumps of flour. Put the lid back on, but don't screw it on. Put the jar in a warm place such as above the fridge. Shake it every 12 hours or so.

Wheat starter halfway through

Second Day - Evening (a day and a half or 36 hours later)
Add the following to your mixture:
1/2 cup warm water (not hot!)
3/4 cup bread flour

Finished wheat starter.

Mix well and let stand for 12 hours. Your starter should now be nice and bubbly and have nice volume. If you don't see this - let it stand for another 12 hours, check again. If no activity, pour out half the mixture and repeat the second step above adding new water and flour. If you are not ready to bake, place your starter in the fridge.

Coming up next - my favorite rye honey sourdough bread and how to keep your sourdough starter alive! Happy Baking!

Potato Planting Pictures

2010-04-21T18:20:00.001-07:00

All the taters in a row....

About 3 weeks ago, we got our potatoes in the ground after some nice warm weather. Our wonderful neighbors let us have several truckloads of horse manure which we spread out over the Lakeside Garden plot. Some of it was not composted, so we let it sit on top and burn for a few weeks. Then Sean used the tiller and created these long rows that we planted in.

We had gotten the hoops that you see in the pictures, and fabric to cover the ground for cold weather, but it turns out we've not had to use them at all. We've had weather in the 70s to 80s consistently now for a few weeks. Go figure - oh well, we will probably use them for winter gardening then!
We've planted All Red, All Blue, Carola, German Butterball and Yellow Fin potatoes. We planted them in offset rows with a thin layer of dirt on top and then added about 6 inches of straw. As the potatoes start to come up, we will hill the soil around the plants.

Between then and now, we've also planted corn, beans and squash between the two sides of potatoes. Oh, and I'm planting some cotton as well. Just for fun and to see how it grows and how hard it is (so I've heard) to harvest it.

We are very excited about the start of our garden this year. I'll have more updates from the House Garden soon! :-) Happy Gardening and I hope your gardens are taking off as well!

Happy 5th Birthday Kane!

2010-04-10T07:52:00.000-07:00

Sweetpea. Baby Kane. Kane-kane. Cutiepie.

Last weekend was your 5th birthday. You are my constant companion, my second love, my buddy, my protector, the best dog that ever walked a bride down the aisle, my joy and my happiness.

Right now I watch you take a nap on your spot on the couch. One of the few moments you actually stay still! That spot on the couch where you can simultaneously keep an eye on the patio door, the yard outside, the cats upstairs and where your people are and what they're up to. You're awake in a nano-second if I even hint at going upstairs (cats!), getting a treat from the pantry, picking up my keys (car ride!).

Oh, how I love you. How much fun we have together and how much we are going to have this year.

This is the year when I plan for us to get some titles in Schutzhund. Maybe a 1 and a 2, and maybe something else - who knows? Some good hikes, camping, car rides. You've learned to go with us on mountain bike rides as well.

Thank you, Kane. For being in my life. For licking my face. For snuggling up with me on the couch and keeping my feet warm. For protecting me, making me feel safe. For showing me just how much joy there is in life, for slowing me down to enjoy everything with you. For bringing me new friends through schutzhund. For loving me back and making my heart feel like it's overflowing. For filling a void in my life I never knew I had. Happy 5th birthday (4/3/2010). I love you lots.
~Mom

Front door surprise

2010-04-04T18:59:00.001-07:00

What I think is a House Finch has decided that the perfect place for her nest and eggs is our front door wreath! There are two small adorable little eggs in her nest. They are greenish blue with just a few black brownish spots.
Now I will have to put up a sign for the UPS-Fedex guys to not disturb the mama and her young!

What an adorable surprise for Easter!

Tomato Plant Restraint. I have none.

2010-03-29T18:17:00.000-07:00

Pretty Costoluto Genovese

Tonight I started transplanting my tomato seedlings. Way overdue. They were growing into the growlights....oups.

I thought I was showing some real restraint this year by only doing 4 or 5 plantings of each type of tomato: Costoluto Genovese, Hungarian Italian Paste, Yellow Pear Cherry, Riesentraube Cherry and German Pink.

The problem is/was that both seeds in each soil block germinated. Sometimes a third one that slipped in germinated too. And I am so NOT a tomato plant killer. I just can't do it. I let them grow and then tonight I started separating them. Successfully I hope. So I end up with 8 - 10 of each kind.

Basic math: 5 varieties of tomato plants X 10 plants = 50 tomato plants. Wow.

Hungarian Italian Paste Tomato

Friends- you had better come out of the woodwork right this minute and demand that I give you tomato plants for your garden. And I was laughing (silently) at a fellow blogger writing she had over 40 tomato plants. What a crazy person, I thought. Well here I am, just as crazy (and loving it!).

German Pink Tomato

Now I'm out of pots. And out of transplant mix. Sigh. Home improvement store at lunch tomorrow. Just think of all the salsa we'll be making...and I promise to show an equal lack of restraint in eating whatever we end up producing. This gardening season is off to a GREAT start! Hooray!

That's great, mom. Could you come back inside and feed me now? I'm like...starving here.

Hoping everyone's garden is off to a great start. If not, you know where you can find free tomato plants now.

Chocolate Sticky Cake

2010-03-25T08:26:00.000-07:00

Raise your hand if you have a relationship with chocolate!

I do. I love chocolate. It rewards me through taste, but hangs around in the most inconvenient places. :-)

I also love to bake. When I need a quick chocolate fix without a ton of work, and a recipe that doesn't make oodles and oodles of cake, I refer back to my Swedish Sticky Cake recipe.
I have a small recipebook where I write down my favorites, and next to this cake recipe is the name of my childhood friend Anna J. She's a Facebook friend now, just welcomed her second child into this world, little Amelie, and has a good life with a husband and a young son. We baked this cake A LOT way back when. We even formed an organization, whose name is written down next to the recipe: The Organization for Spreading the Word of Sticky Cake's Greatness
We had some lofty ambitions, let me tell ya....

I would love it if you would join our organization and make this recipe:

2 eggs
1 stick of melted butter
1 1/4 cup sugar
2/3 cup all purpose flour
a pinch of salt
3-4 tablespoons of cocoa

Preheat your oven to 390F.
Mix all ingredients in a large bowl. I usually just mix with a spatula.
Refrain from eating the mix. :-)
Place a heaping tablespoon full of mix into muffin cups in a muffinpan (or regular cookie sheet).
Bake for 15 minutes.

You can also make this cake in a small ovenproof dish, just bake it for about 20 minutes instead and make sure you grease the sides of the dish before adding the sticky cake mix. This version of the sticky cake tastes great with a scoop of icecream.

Dig in with a glass of milk, or tea, or coffee....

Welcome to The Organization for Spreading the Word of Sticky Cake's Greatness. We are so glad you could join us.

Visitors!

2010-03-19T12:10:00.000-07:00

My blog-friend, the author of YD's A Little Bit of Everything Place and her husband Mike stopped by on their way back from Florida. She is every bit as lovely, friendly and generous as her blog. And her husband is the perfect match!
I will say that I was a little bit nervous about meeting someone I really didn't know, but it turned out we knew a lot about each other already....and we have so many good and joyous things in common, that it was like we were never strangers. Our shared love of our dogs, cooking, blogging, our husbands ... as well as both of us being foreigners to the US. Of course those countries are as far apart as can be (she is from Malaysia and I'm from Sweden!).

We ended up in the kitchen, all of us including Kane, and made some excellent homemade pizzas. Homemade pizza dough recipe from Farmgirl Fare and a somewhat BBQ chicken pizza loosely based on Pioneerwoman's recipe. It was great fun, and I'm so appreciative of having friends that pitch in for dinner. Mike was an excellent pizzamaker, and showed us some of his professional(!) tips for yummy pizzas, and Sean even brought out the coveted roasted green chiles from New Mexico. Not everyone gets to share in his New Mexico roasted green chile stash!

For dessert I had made Pioneer Woman's best chocolate sheet cake ever, cut it in 4 pieces slathered raspberry/blueberry/strawberry jam in between 4 of the layers, stacked them with strawberries in between, added some whipped cream and our awesome local strawberries. YUM!

Kane was played with, loved on and petted. He was a very good boy and sent some treats back to his friends Samantha and June.

Now Sean and I have to plan a trip up to see them! Maybe in the fall, who knows?
Thank you for the flower, YD! Hope you all had a safe trip home!

Sprout Update

2010-03-11T18:39:00.000-08:00

Here's an update from the kindergarten room: This year we have invested in a heating pad for the tomatoes and peppers, hoping to get some faster sprouters and some stronger plants. I haven't really had a problem with strength, more so that it takes FOREVER to get pepper seeds sprouting. Since my husband LOVES hot peppers, this is a must in our garden.

I purchased my heating pad and thermostat at greenhousemegastore.com. Fast delivery and the product worked really nice. My pepper seeds were started a week after the tomatoes, and they really came up in about a week and a half. The tomatoes were fast as always! I've also started eggplant, broccoli, kale, some flower seeds (bunny tails! I just couldn't resist the name....), and all the herbs (basil, bergamot, marjoram, thyme, oregano etc).

It's almost time to feed the hungry little sprouts, and the tomatoes are already developing 3rd set of leaves! Time flies - my how my little sprouts have grown! :-)

Markers for our garden

2010-02-15T16:33:00.000-08:00

I've been going back and forth about markers for our garden this year. But finally I had to give in. If you saw my list a few posts ago, there is no way I will remember where all those veggies and herbs went! I do draw things out in a notebook, but I don't want to always bring that with me out to the garden.
I looked at expensive copper markers with etching pens, found ideas on other blogs about using plastic knives and Sharpies, saw crafty markers done using small terracotta pots and hangers, decorative paint and a lot of time! Something about putting plastic into my carefully crafted organic garden seemed all wrong, and I really couldn't see myself spending on those nice copper markers. I wanted something easy, cheap, long lasting and nice looking.
Sean helped me come up with this handy neat idea, that will look great in our garden. We had some left-over marker stakes, the kind that you mark out construction projects with. At our Lowe's they sell them over by the construction wood in a package of 15 or 20. They are pointed at one end and are about 1 1/2 inch wide.
Sean then used a woodburning tool to burn in the names of some of the vegetables for our garden. I think it looks great. Not sure how they will hold up through watering, rain, southern sun and heat, but if not - they were pretty inexpensive. Thanks honey!

When life brings you snow...

2010-02-14T15:58:00.000-08:00

...we make snow lanterns!

Back when I was a child, waaaaay back when, in Sweden we used to make these snow lanterns when it snowed (which it did quite often). I always loved how they glowed so nicely, making the snow look warm and inviting.
We got a bit of the Southern snowstorm on Friday night, so I taught Sean how to make a snow lantern. Here's how:

1. Decide on placement so that you can see it from inside the house.
2. Make 6 snowballs about 3 inches in diameter. Decide where your opening is going to be for putting the tea light in there and for lighting purposes.
3. Place the 6 snowballs in a circle
4. Make 5 snowballs about 2 inches in diameter.
5. Place the 5 snowballs on top of the original 6, so that they rest in the cracks between the original 6. Place them a little bit inward so that they form a smaller circle
6. Continue making 2 inch snowballs and placing them on top of the others so that eventually they meet and form a roof.
(Tip: If it's not snowing when you make these, you can leave it without a roof. But if it snows, chances are the snow will kill your candle.)
7. Light a tea light and place it in the middle of your lantern.
ENJOY!

Our snow has almost completely melted now, but it was nice to spend a few moments looking at our snow lantern on the porch!

Garden 2010 - Return with a vengeance!

2010-01-31T08:10:00.001-08:00

Some of 2009 Harvest. Looks nice, but this was probably all the edible potatoes we got!

Last year we had a so-so gardening year. Probably because we were so busy planning the wedding and getting our yard ready for 100 family and friends, tent etc. This year, we are returning with a vengeance! Even more than usual, I feel the need to know where my food comes from, to not eat anything that didn't grow from the ground or had a mother (sorry, vegetarians!). I'm done with putting preservatives and chemicals in my body, or I at least want to do that as little as possible. So, what better way to do that then to grow the food yourself?

We were lucky to receive some great plants as wedding present from friends: blackberry bushes, raspberry bushes and a persimmon tree. I am going to find out if I can grow black and red currants in SC too. I'm so used to having these berries from Sweden, and I miss making jelly, jam and juice from them. I've ordered frozen berries from NY state, but I want to have some of my own.
This year our strawberry and blueberry patches should start producing as well. Can't wait for that.
We found some EMF on Craig's list, bought some garden fabric and are planning low covered tunnels this year to start our planting earlier and extend our season to all year around.

Here's a complete list of seeds/plants we are planting this year (take a deep breath):

Potato, All Blue
Potato, All Red
Potato, Carola
Potato, German Butterball
Potato, Yellow Finn
Tomato, Hungarian Italian Paste
Tomato, German Pink
Tomato, Costoluto Genovese (inspired by Inadvertent Farmer's tomatoes!)
Tomato, Riesentraube
Tomato, Yellow Pear
Sweet Potato
Sweet Pepper, Tolli's Sweet Italian
Sweet Pepper, Sweet Banana
Sweet Pepper, Carolina Wonder
Hot Pepper, Wenk's Yellow Hot
Hot Pepper, Serrano Tampiqueno
Hot Pepper, Ancho Gigantea
Squash, Yellow Crookneck
Squash, Black Beauty Zucchini
Squash, Waltham Butternut
Pumpkin, Musquee de Provence
Pumpkin, Connecticut Field
Beans, (yard-long) Chinese Red Noodle
Bush Beans, Provider
Pole Beans, Genuine Cornfield
Pole Beans, McCaslan
Pole Beans, Dean's Purple Pod Bean
Pole Limas, Violet's Multi-colored Butterbeans
Carrots, Chantenay Red Core
Corn, Pennsylvania Butter-Flavored
Corn, Golden Bantam
Corn, Stowell's Evergreen
Cotton, Red Foliated White
Cucumber, Boston Pickling
Cucumber, Homemade Pickles
Eggplant, Black Beauty
Sunflower, Cucumber Leaf
Sunflower, Selma Suns
Aragula, Aragula
Parsley, Dark Green Italian
Spinach, Long Standing Bloomsdale
Swiss Chard, Ruby Red
Swiss Chard, Rainbow
Herbs, Mammoth Basil
Herbs, Sweet Genovese Basil
Herbs, Cinnamon Basil
Herbs, Wild Bergamot
Herbs, Borage
Herbs, Bouquet Dill
Herbs, Oregano, Greek
Herbs, German Winter Thyme
Lettuce, Amish Deer Tongue Lettuce
Lettuce, Tennis Ball Lettuce
Lettuce, Thai Oak Leaf
Snow Pea, Mammoth Melting Sugar

WOW! Are we going to be busy or what?

In addition, my friend YD asked me if I wanted some asian seeds that she did not want anymore, so I'm getting some Komatsuna, Mibuna, Chinese Kale & Thai Yellow Egg Eggplant. Last year I traded some seeds with my friend Jeff at the office, and hopefully we can do the same again. It only takes one tomato seed to have a different kind of plant! I urge you to swap seeds with friends, it's fun to get some different varieties and then you can compare how your plants succeded (or not, lol).

Happy Gardening! Now I'm off to make some Inadvertent Farmer's Whole Wheat Cinnamon Raisin Bread. Great smelling house alert in 3, 2, 1......

Felted Purse

2010-01-30T08:49:00.000-08:00

Over the holidays, I made a simple knitting project for a felted purse. My aunt in Sweden has sheep and a wool/spinning/coloring business and she showed me how to do needle-felting one time when I was visiting. She also gave me a few bags of colored wool to do my own felting. I wanted to try to knit something and found this cute pattern online. I found some felting yarn at the store, and started knitting. It took almost no time at all to knit, and felting it was even faster. I threw it in the washing machine, hot water, a little detergent and a pair of jeans. It was done in about 5-7 minutes. Kinda cute, isn't it?

When I took the picture, I used a wine bottle to show the shape...and I suppose it could be used as a wine bottle giveaway bag as well! :-) Next I'm going to embellish it with some needlefelting and maybe a few beads. Then the best part - give it away and watch a good friend light up with a smile! :-)
We had some snow and ice come down last night so I leave you with this picture of Kane running around in the backyard. He always gets extra energetic when it gets cold. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

It's their fault

2010-01-07T13:26:00.001-08:00

I knew when I saw this recipe for Chocolate Truffles with Sea Salt, that I was in trouble. Bad kind of trouble. The kind of trouble that goes right to your thighs. At least in my case they do.

However, don't be scared. I urge you to go forth and conquer and make these. I know the holidays are over, but maybe you have someone's birthday that you should celebrate. Maybe there's a dinner party to attend? A potluck in the office? Maybe your husband did something wonderful? (Mine does ALL the time! Yup, we're still newlyweds!)
The best part about finding something as delicious as these chocolate truffles is that you can give them away.

My modifications to this recipe are as follows:

I used 3/4 semisweet chocolate (Ghirardelli) and 1/4 Dark Chocolate (Hersheys, it's what I had in my pantry) for the actual truffle. I'm sure the mix that Pioneer Woman uses is just as good. Use what you like. I'm more of a milk chocolate woman than a dark chocolate woman anyway.

Some tips:

After you melt the chocolate and the sweetened condensed milk, you can split the mix up and flavor differently if you want to. I added a few (3-4) drops of peppermint to one batch and that tasted great.

Smaller is better for truffles. I made my second batch about 5/8" in diameter instead of 3/4".

I left my truffle mix to sit out on the stove to cool. The first batch was put in the fridge overnight, and I then had to remelt it in order to get it to working form. Play around with what works for you.

When covering the truffles with melted chocolate, I used a fork with wide prongs and several toothpicks. I would throw 3-4 truffles into the chocolate, use a spoon to heap chocolate on them, and then fish one out and use the toothpick under the fork to swipe away the chocolate that drips through. (Are you salivating yet?)

Recipe can be found here: Pioneer Woman's Chocolate Truffles with Sea Salt

Let me know if you are going to be blaming these truffles like I am.
Back to the gym...

Baking with my Grandmother

2009-12-07T13:42:00.000-08:00

Sean and I took a trip back "home" to Sweden for the week of Thanksgiving. It was a short visit, but wonderful nonetheless. It sure feels like we spent a lot of time on our behinds in the airplane. We stayed the entire time with my paternal grandparents, "Farmor" (Grandmother) and "Farfar" (Grandfather), in their home near Arboga, Sweden.

I've written about this place before on my blog - it's the place where I spent my summers while young, and I have so many good memories of playing here with my parents, my brother and my cousins.

My favorite forest. So deep, dark and mysterious....

When I need to think of a place where I feel calm, at peace and utterly at home - the forest near this place is what I imagine. It is surrounded by tall pinetrees, with a floor of wet white moss, grey moss, granite boulders, blueberry bushes and lingon berry bushes. There is moose, fox, rabbit, all kinds of forest birds and lately also lynx (we saw tracks!).

My grandmother and I had decided in advance to have some baking sessions together, since we rarely get to bake for Christmas together. Being that the sun sets at 3pm in Sweden this time of year, we had plenty of indoors time for baking. Our first baking adventure was a basic Swedish cinnamon roll, but we added saffron (traditional Swedish Christmas baking spice), almond paste and raisins. Here's the recipe:

2 1/2 cups milk
1 1/2 cups melted butter plus 1/3 cup melted butter for filling
1 cup sugar
2 tsp ground cardamom
1 tsp saffron
1 tsp. salt
2 pkg. dry active yeast (4 1/2 tsp.)
8-9 cups all purpose or bread flour
2 Tbsp. cinnamon
Raisins
Almond Paste
1 egg plus 2 Tbsp. water, lightly beaten together into an egg wash
Pearl sugar (or crushed sugar cubes)

Melt the butter and add milk, heat it until it reaches body temperature roughly - use your (clean!) finger to test. You can do this in the microwave as well (but my grandparents don't have one!).

Add to a bowl with the sugar, salt, cardamom and saffron. Stir in the yeast.
Add flour about 1/2 cup at a time until the dough is firm and pulls away from the side of your mixing bowl. We use human power and a wooden spoon, but you can use a mixer with a dough hook as well.

Cover the dough in the mixing bowl with a clean towel and let rise until doubled, about an hour.

Punch down the dough, then remove from bowl. On a floured counter, knead dough lightly until smooth and shiny. Use a knife to split the dough into two halves.

Use a rolling pin to roll the dough into a rectangular(ish) shape. No thinner than 1/4 inch.

Adding raisins.

Adding shredded almond paste.

Brush with melted butter, add raisins and then shred almond paste over the entire dough.

Sprinkle with cinnamon and some more sugar ( 1 tbsp or so) if you want. Raisins are optional too! You can also top with sliced almonds.

Roll the rectangle from the top (long side) until you make a long cylinder. Cut each cylinder into slices about 1 inch wide. Place each slice into paper cups on a baking sheet.

Time to sleep for a little while!

Cover with a dishtowel and let them rise for another 45 minutes.

Behind the new electric stove is the old woodfire oven.
It's been sealed shut but the space remains, and at Christmas my grandmother fills it with small santas and gnomes.

Preheat oven to 425 F.
Brush with egg/water mixture and sprinkle with pearl sugar or crushed sugar cubes.
Bake for 7 minutes until medium golden brown.

Stay tuned for some more baking with my Farmor. Next we made gingersnaps. :-)

Last Canning Session

2009-11-18T19:13:00.000-08:00

I finally managed to find some time for the last canning session(s) of the year. My friend Janice had purchased some mountain apples for me, and I turned them into applesauce and apple/rosemary jelly.

For the applesauce, I used a saucer attachment to my mom's old Electrolux mixer. That mixer is probably close to 38 years old and it still works great. I mix most of my bread in that mixer. I made one classic applesauce mix with apples and sugar, and one with cinnamon and only using honey as a sweetener. I'm trying to not eat "as much" sugar as I used to, and we will see how this works. I found the recipe for apple/rosemary jelly on Pioneer Woman's recipe site, called Tasty Kitchen. My kitchen smelled great with the apple rosemary mixture cooking on the stove. I let the jelly liquid drain for about 20 hours using cheesecloth as a strainer. It took me a few more days to find time to cook it so I had it in the fridge for a few days. Once it was time to can the jelly (and turn the juice concentrate into jelly) I did a major mistake.
I started overachieving.
You know, thinking I can "just" vacuum for a few minutes while the pot of jelly starts boiling on the stove. Ha!

After I cleaned up the boiled over jelly that went all over the stove, down the stove cabinet, INTO the stove cabinet, and finally all over the floor.....and trying to keep Kane from the hot liquid and keep myself from sticking to the floor.....after that I still came out with 9 half-pints of jelly. But just imagine how much I COULD HAVE HAD. sigh.

The floor is still sticky. I have washed it. Twice.

Here's to the women who can really multitask and who do not get caught up in vaccuming. Have a wonderful rest of the week!

Newlyweds and Peppers Galore

2009-10-30T17:19:00.000-07:00

Greetings from the newlyweds! :-) Yes, it's great although it really doesn't feel like much has changed. lol. Instead of the "When are you getting married?" questions, we now get the "When are you getting pregnant?" questions. lol. Oh and the "Mrs. Baaaaaaarley" wherever I go. Yep. You know who you are. I'm hereby letting you know that you're weird. And you should stop now.

Our honeymoon weekend at the Biltmore Estate in the NC mountains was awesome. We had a great time, eating good food, enjoying adventures that friends had so graciously given us as wedding gifts. Here we are enjoying the Segway tour. Off-road Segways are so much fun!

Back home I ventured out in the garden to find that the bok choi and chard I had planted the weekend before the wedding had survived, the cabbage and broccoli that still needs to be planted has survived the neglect, the raspberry bushes and persimmon tree that friends gave us for the wedding are waiting for their "place" and I had a huge bounty of peppers! I think I'm going to make some pepper jelly this weekend and can it as holiday gifts. We have a mixture of Carolina Bell peppers, Banana peppers and some Wenk's Yellow Hot. I also have some cutie Lemon Drop hot peppers that aren't in the picture.

I also have to take care of these that my friend Janice got for me during their trip to a mountain orchard. Apple sauce here we come.
Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Our wedding day!

2009-10-12T17:40:00.000-07:00

Here are a few initial photos. It was a gorgeous day - a few raindrops in the morning, warm and sunny (and humid!) but a perfect day nonetheless. All the hard work we did up until one hour before paid off. The food was delicious, the place was gorgeous, our friends and family were there and I married the most wonderful man in the world. :-) Life is good indeed.

Jamfest 2009

2009-09-14T18:34:00.001-07:00

My awesome friend Janice graciously volunteered to help me with cooking and canning the strawberry jam that we're going to use for favors at the wedding. Thus Jamfest '09 was born.

The 'jammin begins....

We had two batches going at any time, and once we had done two batches we got down to it; Janice decided on an improvised assembly line and off we went and canned 84 6oz jars of strawberry jam.
Yes, you read that right. 84 jars. My kitchen was COOKING during jamfest. I cannot wait for that electric bill....

"The Jammers"

(I was making my mom a salad for lunch. She was doing hard time with Sean on the walkway outside, and so the very least I could do was to make her lunch. So no, we did not add avocado and mushrooms to the jam....)

The final product turned out good. A few of the jars did not seal all the way, not even after a second hot water bath. Next time, I will do more research to find smooth side canning jars with double lids so that I won't have to worry. On the flipside, all the jars that didn't seal are in my fridge now, begging to be eaten.
Final pictures will be posted once I have the fabulous labels (ordered via Ms Pickles Press on Etsy because Mrs. JP reminded me to not do everything myself!)

Less than 4 weeks left! :-)

223 pieces of bread

2009-09-02T19:27:00.000-07:00

My dear friend came over a few weekends ago, and brought her KitchenAid mixer. It was time to bake bread for the wedding.
I had already decided on a simple recipe for good rolls, that wouldn't require a lot of hand-shaping or kneading for that matter. I made these rolls a few weekends before for my bridal shower and everyone loved them, so....I'm hoping everyone will love them for the wedding as well!!!
I froze some after the shower and they turned out fine, so hopefully being frozen for 6+ weeks won't hurt them.

Sean was busy outside with our neighbor's digger digging a trench for the flagstone walkway. It's going to look great. Gotta love a man that knows how to operate heavy machinery. :-)

With my Electrolux mixer (30+ years old, and still kicking!) and her KitchenAid, we made a dozen sets of dough. My mixer made 2 to hers making one, so we did pretty well.

The dough looked like little mushrooms rising under the towels.... This dough requires no kneading and after rising, all you do is tip it out onto a surface with some flour on it and cut each set into 12-14 pieces, irregular shape is fine.

We put parmesan cheese on some, some with sesame seeds, some with sea salt and some just plain. Then we baked them for 12 minutes or so, and voila - after at least 8 hours of baking (and cleaning) we had 223 rolls of bread.

Minus the three that I had right out of the oven.
Minus the three that Julie had right out of the oven.
Minus the four that Sean ate coming in from digging the walkway outside.
Minus the two that Kane stole off the dining room table when I wasn't looking. (with cheese of course.)
Minus the five that I let Julie take home with her.

Here's the recipe for wedding rolls:
3 3/4 tsp dry yeast (I use bread machine yeast, if you don't here's a conversion table)
500 ml or 2 cups + 3 tbsp water (body temperature)
100 ml or 1/2 cup of kefir, plain yougurt or milk
2 tsp salt
1 tbsp honey
5 - 5.5 cups all-purpose flour

Mix all ingredients except the flour in a bowl.
Add half of the flour at first and mix until you have a nice shiny dough. Add the rest of the flour.
The dough will be a bit looser than what you may be used to.
Place a towel over the bowl and let it rise at room temperature for 1-2 hours.
Turn your oven on to 425 F.
Pour the dough out onto a surface well dusted with flour. Do Not Knead!!!
Use a sharp knife or dough scraper to cut into 12-15 pieces.
Add toppings if you wish. Toppings tend to stick better if you brush the rolls with a little water first.

Bake them for 14-16 minutes, preferrably with a bowl of water in your oven to get some steam.
Let cool on a wire-rack.
Eat promtply with butter. Yes, butter. The real stuff.

Once they have cooled, you can freeze them if you wish.
Find a friend to bake with. I highly recommend it.

Somewhat of a garden bounty

2009-09-02T18:55:00.000-07:00

The happy harvesters.

The kids came over again (see Let's plant potatoes) came back to dig up their potatoes and were sorely disappointed....sadly enough, they only got a few potatoes from their two rows. Our potatoes just did not do well this year.

Luckily the rest of the garden is delivering, so they got to pick green peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, hot peppers and cucumbers. The day was saved! (plus - who doesn't like digging in the dirt? lol)

Hope you were able to share your garden(s) this year!

Canning Pictorial

2009-08-21T18:31:00.000-07:00

The wedding invitations are sent out and I am rewarding myself by doing a short pictorial of the canning we have done this year. First up were the canned peaches, recipe and instructions courtesy of the informative and knowledgeable Mrs. Zen at TennZen.

We then graduated to peach jam, with real vanilla beans. Yumm.....

We canned two different kind of pickles. The one on the left is pickle chips with a "Rodale spice mix" which includes bay leaves, mustard seeds, ginger, coriander, allspice, peppercorns and dried chilis. The one on the right is dill pickle spears with dill, mustard seeds and garlic cloves.
The chips are responsible for banning me from using the (new) mandolin..... I am so ~~smart~~ stupid that I did not feel the need to use the holder that comes with it, and promptly sliced off a nice chunk on one finger. Nice work. Even better was when I, a mere 2 days later, did it again on the next two fingers on the same hand. Apparently I don't like to learn from my mistake, and again felt that I was so ~~smart~~ stupid that I didn't need the holder. Then Sean banned me from the mandolin. But I know where he hid it.

The gracious and wonderful Mrs. JP over at "The Little Dog Shelter in the Holler" shared her recipe for salsa, and Sean and I spent an entire evening making LOTS of salsa with my pinieapple tomatoes. Hence the orange color salsa. We made a medium spicy for me, and a spicy version for him.

Now I just have this to work on. 96 small jars that are waiting on strawberry jam, blueberry jam and maybe a tomato marmalade. These will be the favors for the wedding, and I've found the most adorable little labels to put on the outside.

So much to do

2009-08-13T11:29:00.000-07:00

In case it seems like I never blog anymore, this is why.
The DIY AMAYC (As Much As You Can) wedding is only 8 weeks and 2 days away!
(Excuse me while I run off and scream into a pillow)

It's not that bad, really. But there are a lot of things to do. Kane may just not get a lot of training in the next two weeks. My garden might feel a bit neglected. I'm feeling bad already.... :-)
The favors have to be done, the bread bakes, the porta-pottys ordered (thanks, hon!), the shrug knitted, the invitations mailed, the shoes must be found, the decorations decided on and aquired.....

The most important thing is that we have a date, we have a minister and we are ready!
What else do we need, right? (well, yes, a license would be good to make it all official and all, I know)

It's going to be very busy, but fun at the same time. Sean is such a wonderful guy, I can't wait to make things official! :-)

Basil pesto pizza

2009-08-02T16:06:00.000-07:00

Sean does not appreciate the minimaters the way I do, so his 40% is without.

Here's a slightly homegrown thrown together pizza recipe that we made the other weekend. I was hungry for some homemade pizza, and our garden is just overflowing with basil, and mini-maters, so I created this:

Basil Pesto pizza with Kalamata Olives and Mini Tomatoes

The basil pesto recipe I have is an adapted version from a Jamie Oliver cookbook:

Toasted pinenuts (toast in cast iron pan on stove for a few minutes - keep your eyes on them, or they WILL burn)
A few handful of washed, dried basil leaves
1 garlic clove
Salt and Pepper

Mix all this in a foodprocessor. Add olive oil and handful of parmesan cheese until you get the right "pasty" consistency.

Set your oven to 450 Fahrenheit.

I have a few different pizza-dough recipes I like, but Here is the one I used this time.

I finagled (that's right, finagled!) the dough into the right thickness and shape, placed it on the hot baking stone, spread the pesto out evenly, dribbled on some mini maters, sliced kalamata olives and then.....more shredded parmesan cheese (the real kind, mind you, not the stuff from a can).
I popped it in the oven for 8-10 minutes (depending on your oven). Watch for a golden crust and melted parmesan cheese.

As you can (not) see, it was so good that we promptly ate it and completely forgot about taking a picture of it. :-)

Have a great weekend everyone! My best friend is in town and Sunday is my BRIDAL SHOWER!!!! :-))))

ps. No we did not have pizzasalad with this pizza. :-(

Tag Two

2009-07-30T07:41:00.000-07:00

A place that makes me happy - my grandparents place in Sweden, wintertime.
Phew - just looking at this picture cools me down!

THINGS THAT MAKE ME HAPPY TAG

YD at YD's A Little Bit of Everything tagged us for a cute little list of 6 things that make me happy. Thanks for the tag, YD!

Here we go:
1. Being with Sean makes me happy. No matter where we are or what we're doing. I luv you hun, can't wait to marry you in a few months! muah!

2. Training my dog Kane makes me happy! I love interacting with him, seeing him think, learn and having his attention is an awe-inspiring feeling.

3. Growing my own vegetables. This is our second garden year and I am delighted with everything that grows well, and confounded with everything that doesn't. It's such a joy to see something you started and nurtured as a seed all of a sudden be a healthy, vigourous living green thing!That gives back to you! Even better!

4. Being at "Torpet" - my grandparents place in Sweden. Tall, dark pine woods with blueberry bushes for carpet, quiet forests, big granite rocks, plum trees, currants and strawberry patch, the lilac hedge, "fika" and my grandmothers cooking. I get a content kind of feeling just looking at pictures from there.

5. Spending time with friends.

6. Living in the here and now. Being thankful for all the gifts life has given me, starting every day with a smile.

I'm going to tag my friend Lisa at Molto di Moda Designs with this one - she has such a wonderful way of writing about the things she enjoys, I'm sure she will come up with something good! :-)

Tagged! (1 out of 2)

2009-07-29T08:59:00.000-07:00

A picture that has nothing to do with this post. I just felt like it needed a picture!
I took this last year on our vacation back to Sweden, and I've added some texture.
Typical southern Swedish farm house.

HONEST SCRAP TAG
Two people awarded us with this tag!! Wow! I feel so popular! Thank you guys! Wvfarmgirl over at Creating Utopia in WV, One Project at a time and JP and Mrs. JP over at The little dog shelter in the holler tagged us for the Honest Scrap. The deal is to tell your readers 10 things about you that they may or may not know, but are true. Thank you to the talented vwfarmgirl and the lovely and wonderful JP and Mrs. JP for this tag. We love your blogs!

1. Sean grew up on an 8000 acre farm and ranch operation in New Mexico.
2. Lena once threw her brothers Nintendo game into the wall so that it broke. Not a very well thought out plan, since this meant she had to give him hers.
3. Lena hates bananas.
4. Sean is allergic to bee-stings, ever since he was stung in the main artery once as a child. The epi-pen is our friend and goes with us everywhere.
5. Lena has never broken a bone in her body.
6. Kane is afraid of feathers.
7. Lena wants to learn how to play the guitar some day.
8. Sean owns workout videos titled "Yoga Booty Ballet" (I've never seen him actually work out to them though, but stay tuned, my camera is ready!)
9. Lena reads romance novels like they are going out of style. (No wonder the house never gets cleaned!!!)
10. Sean makes THE BEST cream cheese stuffed and bacon-wrapped jalapenos!

Now I am supposed to tag others....well, I'll just put this out there for the masses - if you feel like doing this tag- GO AHEAD! If you feel like you want to be singled out tagged, let me know and I will be happy to tag you!

What to do with all the cucumbers?!?

2009-07-21T18:46:00.000-07:00

Along with the mini mater invasion this year, I'm also having a very good cucumber year. Self-seeded cucumbers at that. They are climbing the 6ft fence is several spots, shamelessly using the lettuce that went to seed as shade, and they have higher aspirations than the tomatoes - using their trellises to wind their way up, up, up. I draw the line at them winding their little tentacles around the peppers and eggplants though. Enough of that, you are being yanked back and put elsewhere! There should be some order in my garden! :-)

I promised Lisa at Molto di Moda Designs that I would post some cucumber recipes, so here goes. This is a fun and quick recipe for a thai pickled cucumber salad that I made tonight.
I used my own cucumbers, the french red shallots that grew over winter, and my friend Melika's hot peppers that she gave me last week. I have no clue what they are, but they are adorable and look like little Christmas lights.

Thai Pickled Cucumber Salad - Ajad
(Enough for 4-6 people)
1 cucumber (mine was about 8 inches)
2 medium-sized shallots or other mild onion, Vidalia would work
1/2 red chili pepper or other hot pepper

Vinegar Mixture
1/4 cup boiling water
1 tbsp regular sugar
1 tsp salt
3 tbsp rice vinegar

Make the vinegar mixture first.
Place sugar and salt in a medium bowl and pour the boiling water over. Stir to dissolve the sugar. Add the vinegar. Let sit.

Peel the cucumber and cut it in half length-wise.
With a small spoon, scoop out the seeds and discard (compost bin!).
Slice the cucumber across. Place cucumbers in the vinegar mixture.

Chop the shallots and clean the hot pepper before chopping it as well.
Add hot pepper and shallots and stir.

It may seem as if you don't have enough liquid at first, but the cucumbers will release some water as well.

Let sit for about an hour.

I really like the sweet-hot-sour mixture of this pickled salad. This would be a nice side to any asian dish, or even to a nice meal from the grill.

The Great Mini Mater Invasion and the Pizza Salad

2009-07-13T03:53:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time there was a salad, it was a cabbage salad, and it wasn't very exciting. It was depressing, really, and it needed some spicing up.
In walks the swedish pizza-chef with a fabulous recipe:

Shred half a head of green cabbage, preferably with a cheese-slicer. Place in a bowl.
Sprinkle on 1/2 tsp sea salt, a few turns with the black pepper grinder.
Add some italian seasonings - thyme, oregano, basil.
Mix up a small batch of basic vinaigrette: 1/3 apple cider vinegar and 2/3 oil (I used canola)
Pour the vinaigrette over the cabbage and spices, mix well.
Cover with plastic and let sit in fridge overnight.
Sample the next day and add more salt or pepper depending on your preferences.

All was well - the swedish pizza salad had been invented.

Swedish pizza is near and dear to my heart. When my friends ask what I want to eat while I'm at home, I always say "Let's get some pizza!" At which point they look at me like I'm crazy. But it is not true, they say, that you live in the land of deep dish pizza? The land of pepperoni and extra cheese? The land of Papa Johns, Little Ceasar and Domino's? Why do you want Swedish pizza?

Swedish pizza is thin crust, are single servings (if you LOVE them like I do!) and have interesting Italian names like Capricciosa, Quattro Stagniono etc. And they always come with a small container of pizza salad.

And now back to the SC homefront:

We are under attack. I repeat, we are under attack. The mini maters (also known as sweet currant) have decided to launch an invasion. They are all ripening and intense speed and take forever to pick. But they're good. Oh are they ever good. Especially on salads. Yum.

The zucchini is ripening at frightening speed. We had stuffed zucchini last night (and probably will all week). We have a boatload of cucumbers that needs something done to them, lots of green tomatoes (not mini), and a ton of melon flowers, but no melons. The corn is catching up, and I think we'll have to harvest the potatoes early, They just already died off.....just not a good potato year here.
Hope you are enjoying the fruits of your labor!

Being productive

2009-06-28T18:17:00.000-07:00

It's peach time in South Carolina!

We had a wonderfully productive weekend. Both of us took Friday off and used it as our regular Saturday - relaxing, some yardwork, catching up etc. So when Saturday and Sunday actually came along, we got lots done. Here's a rundown:

1. Went for a hike with Kane at Crowder's Mountain State Park

2. Picked the first tomatoes in the garden. Yes, that is a penny - aren't the maters cute???? :-) These are sweet currant tomatoes that I grew from seed with seeds from Seed Savers Exchange.

3. Picked the first cucumbers. Yum!

4. Sean made a giant teabag from jute and suede cord to make manure tea for the garden. Here he is sewing it together. Sean actually once took first place in craftsman skills at his local 4H by sewing a dress for one of his sisters! :-)

5. Shopped at the local farmstand and got fresh blueberries, rhubarb (not local!), white corn and strawberries.

Blueberry Breakfast Bars

6. Made these Blueberry Breakfast Bars with the fresh local blueberries. This photo was taken 5 minutes after it came out of the oven. Haha. Just kidding. But we're chowing it down pretty quickly! If you like bluberries, please, please try this Foodie Farmgirl recipe. You won't be sorry!

7. Felt very sad at the news of my friend's 6 month old puppy drowning in a freak accident. Little Davey Crockett will be missed. I will miss your snapping kisses and your boundless energy. We love you lots, J. Sometimes, life just doesn't seem fair. Love with all you have.

8. Went to Greensboro to meet my dog training girls for an obedience training session which was great. More on that in my other blog. Here is Bronco and Jackie working on the jumps.

9. Sean weed-whacked the entire garden. Love you, honey!

10. Sean installed a drip-irrigation system in the veggie garden. The tomatoes love you, honey!

11. Celebrated my neighbor Gaye's birthday with a giant bouquet of kitchen garden herbs, coneflowers and black-eyed Susans. Happy double nickel, neighbor!

12. Almost finished cleaning the green bedroom! Yeay - I can see the floor!

13. Canned peaches. (9pm on Sunday night....). I used TennZen's recipe and canning instructions over here. She has excellent recommendations for safe canning practices which can also be found here. She has also written this post on various unsafe methods (which I have in several of my (recently published) cookbooks.

Sean made me a funnel! Nice...

14. Blogged about it.

I hope you all had wonderful either productive or relaxing weekends, or perhaps they were one and the same. Despite the productiveness, my thoughts are with everyone that lost someone this weekend, which seems to be many, both public figures and friends. May everyone eventually find some peace after all this sadness.

Happy Midsommar!

2009-06-24T19:33:00.000-07:00

It may not have escaped your notice that I grew up outside the boundaries of the US of A. :-)
I was born and raised in Sweden, and came over here when I was 18 years old with my family. Yup, I'm Swedish through and through - here legally though, no worries.

Many Swedes favorite holiday is Midsommar, or Midsummer. It is a celebration of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, and traditionally a large maypole is raised, decorated with birch-branches and flower wreaths. People wear traditional folk costumes and there is good food, plenty to drink and lots of good cheer. Midsummer used to be the time when people thought magic was at it's strongest and so it was a good time to perform rituals. One such ritual was for young girls to pick seven different kinds of wildflowers, place them under their pillow before going to sleep and they were then supposed to dream about the future husband. I'm all set in that area, so no sleeping on wildflowers for me anymore. :-)

The Spread.

The traditional food is the freshest, first harvest from the garden: new potatoes, fresh strawberries and the like. My mom and I like to put on a very Swedish menu so this year we made gravlax (marinated salmon) with dill-mustard sauce, new potatoes out of our garden, some fresh bread and a yummy cake with strawberries and our own blueberries. My grandmother also serves "kassler" or Canadian bacon sliced thick with a pineapple-mayo-peas and whipped cream kind of sauce. Sounds weird but it's delicious. We also had some home-made bread and some cucumbers.

Here is the recipe for Swedish Gravlax:

For 1 kilo of gravlax (2.2 pounds, for 6-8 people)

I freeze my salmon before marinating it to make sure it is safe, and then I take it out of the freezer so that it is just about defrosted when I add the marinade.

Marinade:
4 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp salt
2 white pepper corns - smashed
lots of chopped dill (1-2 cups)

Leave the skin on the salmon. Cut out or pull out all large bones. Cut the salmon in half on the short end.
Rub the sugar,salt and pepper mix on the meat side, pat it into the fish (don't wipe off) and put 2 pieces meaty side together with the chopped dill in between.
Put the thick side against the thin side of each half.
Put all of this into double plastic bags and put in the fridge for 1-2 days. Turn the bags about once a day.
Once done - scrape away the spice mix and throw away the salt fluids.
Cut in thin, thin strips and eat with gravlaxsas. (see recipe below)
You can freeze gravlax, or you can put it on the grill and quick-grill it for a more finished flavor.
I prefer mine raw!
It will keep in the fridge for 3-4 days!

Gravlax-sauce:

Almost one cup of chopped dill
1 tsp salt + 1 tbsp sugar
1/2 cup sweet swedish mustard (or 1-2 tsp dark french mustard, I've used Grey poupon in the past as well)
1 1/4 cups oil (canola)
Some ground white pepper
Some vinegar (optional)

Place half of the dill in the bottom of a round bowl
Add sugar and salt and rub it into the dill with a wooden spoon
Add mustard - mix well
Add the oil by dripping it into the mustard mix while CONSTANTLY stirring.
If you stop stirring, the sauce will not coagulate - it will separate.
You will end up with a nice thick, shiny sauce.
Add the rest of the dill and pepper to taste (1-2 turns), a splash of balsamic maybe

IF the sauce separates - add a few drops of lemon juice and stir again until it's mixed nicely.

My fabulous wine-glasses!

Did I perhaps say I wasn't going to eat cake until the wedding? Well, I obviously couldn't keep that promise with this guy/gal sitting in front of me....It has layers of strawberry mousse, blueberries, white chocolate mousse and strawberries. How can you go wrong?

Digging up new potatoes. Very fashionable outfit, ey? :-)

The happy farmers (it was a rough day at work for me, that's my excuse for looking horrible!)

Yeay - we have hot peppers (Wenk's yellow hot)! I can't wait to taste them!

We had a fabulous midsummer dinner, before I had to pack and go to Chicago on a businesstrip. It was a good trip but it's even better to be home. And there's still cake left!

Morning Glory

2009-06-11T16:57:00.001-07:00

This morning, Kane and I went for a walk as usual. There was a slight fog, and it was humid after last nights rain. The air felt "full" and as the sun was coming up, there was a special kind of light. We walked up our long driveway to the street, Kane offleash as usual until we get to the mailbox. He usually bounces on ahead of me, sniffing this and that. All of a sudden he stopped and stared across the street at the neighbors house. A deer leaped across their front-lawn, and we both stopped and looked. It was a beautiful sight.
Even more beautiful was that Kane was loose and he didn't go chasing after the deer. :-) I'm quite sure I would not have enjoyed chasing my dog in the woods throughout the neighborhood at 6 o'clock in the morning.
After our walk, I figured I had seen enough sights that I really should go get my camera and take some shots. I missed the deer, but maybe there was something else....

Hello Gorgeous! I know you are still sleeping, and you will probably open up
while I'm not here, but you are such an amazing color, I had to take a picture.

Another beautiful daylily...

Then I picked some of these for our breakfast cereal. It's the northern highbush variety that produced these berries. They tasted very good! Of course, I shared with Sean.

And there are more berries to come!

That was the glory of my morning. I hope you too have wonderful mornings like this!

Onion Makes An Exit

2009-06-01T18:15:00.000-07:00

These are busy times in our garden. Living in the southeast means that there is barely any spring time, instead summer smacks into you from behind and I feel a little bit like I'm playing catch-up all the time!
We spent all day Sunday in the yard and garden. Sean mowed the grass while I weeded the front decorative garden. I then moved on to the veggie garden where it was time for the onions and garlic to get yanked up out of the ground. I need the space for other stuff! :-)
I'm happy to report that our first garlic and onion crop was great. Not fabulous but great. I had four varieties of garlic and they all turned out decent sized. The white multiplier onions did good and so did the french red shallot. The potato onions were a bit on the small side, but I can imagine they pack more of a punch that way.
Now it's time for the tomatoes and peppers to grow so that we can make some salsa! Here are some more pics from the weekend.

White Multiplier Onions

The Garlic.

Parched eggplants and peppers. All the rain we had last week made the top layer rock hard. These kids need some mulch, I know.

I have about 3 or 4 peppers growing already, about thumbsize.

The space-alien tomato cages have landed. We got 29....

I have cherry tomatoes! They are so little, and so cute!

Here, I zoomed in so that you can see them. :-)

Nom-nom...

No honey, the grass never stops growing....

I leave you with a picture of my chamomille in the herb garden. Add some hot water, and we have a date!

Happy Gardening everyone! I hope you are not as stressed as I am! :-)

Wedding DIY Weekend - Part 1(Cake Bake & Test)

2009-05-22T13:25:00.000-07:00

Can I just say how sick I am of cake right now? I normally have the biggest kind of sweet tooth (if it's chocolate and it's near me, it's gone), and now I really feel like I could do without seeing, or eating, cake until the wedding. This is, of course, better for my hips. :-)

My bestest friend Leslie came down from Detroit to help me make cakes, and also to get started on invitations. Leslie is a high school art teacher in Detroit (all together now: Bless her heart!)and we've been friends for 20 years. When I first moved to the US, my high school French teacher introduced us since Leslie had been an exchange student in Sweden. Twenty years later, through life's ups and downs, here we are. Still friends. I love her. Here she is hanging out with Kane :-)

I knew I wanted something with fresh berries - Sean and I both love blueberries, strawberries, raspberries etc. Sean had also indicated a strong hint for angel food cake which he loves. Since he's actually also in the wedding (ha!), angel food cake was one of the cakes we chose to bake. We also picked a recipe for "white cake" and I found a recipe for yellow cake at Bakerella's site here.

Insert HOURS of mixing, whipping, sifting, baking here. This is a quick view of what it all looked like:

The fillings ranged from Wilton icing with fresh strawberries (which made a very sweet mousse), various jams, fresh raspberries, fresh blueberries. We also attempted to make a blueberry mousse and a raspberry mousse, but that didn't work out too well. The mousses never gelled. Hence the pink mousse with the sad face in the picture above.

For frostings we made a cream cheese frosting, a white cake frosting, and we also made a recipe for buttercream frosting from a cookbook, and it didn't gel either. It was made with egg yolks, and turned out runny and yellow - not exactly what anyone wants to see on the wedding cake. That's the picture in the bottom middle.

Here's Kane, supervising as usual. He was also handy for whipped cream testing to ensure maximum quality consistency of course. I usually smear a little on top of his nose so that he has to walk around and lick it off...

Then we cut the cake into pie-pieces, added the various fillings...

Here are the finished angel food cake pieces.

The finished moist yellow cake pieces.

We labeled them with numbers and made a voting sheet for everyone....lol. Sean was called in from the Lakeside garden, he was out in the rain planting corn (and wondering who ordered so much corn.... "Errr....you did, honey!"):

Sean planting corn in the rain. I decided to not zoom in more.... :-)

It was time to taste. Each piece here is about a spoonful only. We had 3 different kinds of cake, 7 different fillings and 2 different frostings. Can you multiply all that up? 42 spoonfuls of cake. Each.

It was pathetic. I could only make it to 12 or so. Luckily I had already found my favorite....lol.
Sean and Leslie persevered. Such troopers.

Here's the aftermath. Crumbles and people full of cake:

We finally decided on this:

Bottom: White cake with fresh raspberries
Middle: White cake with chocolate mousse
Top: Angel food cake with blueberries
It will be a 3-tier cake, all covered in cream-cheese frosting and decorated with all kinds of berries: strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and red currant (if I can find them). I found a gorgeous picture here. This is what I'd like for it to look like. Nice. I'm almost starting to feel like having cake again when I see that picture. Almost.

Coming Soon: The invitation-making session.

Happy Memorial Weekend everyone - I hope you'll have a splendid weekend!
Sleeping Dog Bakery is officially closed for cake-baking.....at least for now.

Garden Update & A Surprise

2009-05-14T12:46:00.000-07:00

My real job has been quite busy in the past week or so, but luckily my garden is growing without me. As are the weeds. :-) Here's a quick over-greening experience for you all.

The potatoes that I planted with the children are doing great! These first 2 rows are yours, guys!!!

I numbered all 18 of my tomato plants for you, just so that you could tell I really planted eighteen. There's a tray of 5 more sitting in the foreground. And 5 chocolate cherry tomatoes still growing inside. I've given them away to neighbors and co-workers, but there is still more!!!

Here's the mixed area. Notice my lovely square pattern? :-) I'll be adding some cosmos flower seeds, some zinnias and some marigolds to this soon. Just as soon as I get rid of the weeds. Real soon.

We've already had several servings of the lettuce which tasted FANtastic. I'm so excited. I've also picked (well, cut!) the aragula (foreground) once already and I'm going to blanch it and freeze it.
On to the surprises.

I love my camera, and I love taking pictures. Some day soon I'll post about some digital photography and some Photoshop I've been messing around with. Here are a few pictures of surprises around my garden. They make me smile.

The gecko hanging out on the gas can for the grill. We see them every time we take the cover off!
Kane likes to chase them. :-)

The electric-blue pansy! I added some edge burn to this image. It almost glows!

The Amaryllis. Pretty, isn't she?

Except where she decided to grow. I have Amaryllis bulbs for Christmas every year, because that's what I'm used to from Sweden. Sometimes I save the bulbs, but some that look a little shabby, get tossed...

This girl got tossed into the area under the trees where we throw flower scraps and weeds that don't go in the compost pile. She surely did not let the ugly location stop her from putting on a show. Guess she showed me. :-) I'm sure there's a learning experience in all this somewhere.
What do you think?

This weekend my best friend Leslie, who is also going to be my maid of honor, is coming down from Detroit, MI. We are going to start making the invitations for the wedding, and we're also going to make some trial cakes (and filling, and frosting!!!!) to see what we'd like to do for the wedding. Anyone available for taste-testing? lol.
I'm hoping to do as much as possibly by myself, our by ourselves (!). At least I may be able to serve my own tomato-sauce for the wedding reception meal, right?

Chocolate Bread

2009-05-03T11:05:00.000-07:00

Chocolate!!!!

No, no, no.....this post is not about chocolate bread. Although that is a direct translation of the name of these cute little yummy cookies that I make whenever THAT chocolate need comes over me. So, I make these just about every day. Not really. But I wish I had the metabolism (and genes) that I could! :-) So today I had that chocolate need again. Since we're doing the Biggest Loser weight loss club at work, and yes I'm in it, I don't plan on eating too many of these. I'm gonna eat "just enough." I have no willpower. Just wait and see. Although that wedding of ours in October is a pretty strong goal for loosing a few pounds. :-)

Here's the recipe:

100 g of butter or margarine
0.75 dl of sugar (1/3 cup)
2.5 dl of all-purpose flour (1 cup)
1/2 egg (save the other half for later, or do like me, double the recipe!!!!)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon cocoa

You may want to bring out your butter in advance to soften it a little.
Place all the ingredients in a bowl. Mix until crumbles form.
Take about half the crumbles and squeeze into a ball of dough (yes, with your hands).
Shape the ball into a long cylinder (roll against your counter), and place it on a baking sheet with parchment paper. With your fingers, flatten the cylinder until about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick.
Whip up the remaining egg and slather on top of the dough pieces with a brush. I add pearl sugar on mine which is a large crystal version of sugar. You can use regular sugar or sprinkles or whatever you want. Nuts work too. Bake in the over for 10 minutes at 350 degrees F.
Let the cookies cool for a minute (really don't wait too long!!!), then cut on the diagonal, about 1/2 inch wide. Let them cool completely. Eat. Or as I'd like to do: inhale, chug glass of cold milk. Repeat. :-)

The Itch

2009-05-01T04:03:00.000-07:00

It's on my right shoulder.

Yep, right there. I'm getting it.

Phew. Need a break.

Now it's on my left shoulder.

All the way down the middle of my back...

Another break. Itching is hard work.

Now we do the shake.

Get it off of me!!!

Mom, why are you laughing at me?

Ok, I'm ready now.

So, where are we going? Did you bring the ball?

Happy Weekend Everyone!

Let's plant potatoes!

2009-04-23T11:56:00.000-07:00

The potato planting team.

One of my dear friends is the mother of two wonderful children, and they stopped by on Easter Monday to help me plant some potatoes. I was hoping it could be a fun experience for the kids, and my friend and I would get to visit as well, which we don't do nearly often enough.

I had left some of our All Blue, All Red, Carola and Fingerling potatoes for them, and we ended up planting two rows (one each of course!) in our nearby vegetable garden.

Raking dirt over the potatoes, under Kane's watchful eye, of course.

Stomping down the ground over the planted potatoes

After we finished planting, we went back inside and brought out the acrylic paints and some wood pieces. It was craft time!!! (my favorite!). The idea was that they would decorate a marker each, and I would seal them and stick them in the garden so that we would know where their potatoes will come up.

Budding Artist 1

Budding Artist 2

We had so much fun painting that when we were finished, they asked if we could do another craft project - so I brought out an Easter Felt Chicken kit I had bought in Sweden and they each made their own "Crazy Chicken" complete with hanging thread to hang in their room at home. Good times. I hope they will come back and visit soon, to see their potatoe plants growing and of course to harvest them when that time comes.

Thanks for stopping by - come back soon!

Mega Garden Update

2009-04-15T10:57:00.000-07:00

Here's a mega-update from my 2009 garden. Things are heating up outside, and we're busy bees every weekend trying to get to everything. It feels a bit like a race, but I know it will be worth it in the end. :-)

Inside the house:

My tomatoes have been transplanted and are growing like crazy - here are Pineapple tomatoes
and Cherry tomatoes.

Our transplants, peppers and tomatoes, from SSE came in and are recovering nicely from their boxed trip cross-country.

Eggplants - ready to be transplanted.

Three kinds of peppers (2 hot and 1 sweet) are also ready to be transplanted.

The misc. tray. Some chocolate cherry tomatoes from my friend Jeff are getting started. Behind them are Moonflower, Lavender and some Coneflower seedlings. Behind those are basil, a few misplaced lettuces, marjoram and oregano. These also need to be transplanted.

My peppers that I'm not very happy with. The soil mixture was not right since these were planted at the same time as my other peppers. Can you tell the difference??? So I'm carefully going to transplant them into some new soil mix and use the soil blocker. Johnny's 512 mix rules!

A tray of flowers, seeds courtesy of my friend Jeff as well. Echinacea, coneflower and passion flower should be making their way up here. These will be great bee-attractors to my garden and some will be in the front of the house as well.

In the outside garden:

The peas are almost ready to climb the fence.

The strawberry's have their own raised bed and are thrilled to have some dirt.
These are Earliglow strawberries from Pinetree Gardens.

The transplanted lettuce is doing well.

The aragula is breaking through.

The chard is doing it's best.

The chocolate mint is expanding it's territory, as mints do. It's chocolate, I don't mind. :-)

The spinach will soon be ready.

The beets and carrots are sleeping, but the bok choi is awake (middle).

The dog is patient while mommy takes pictures.

The blueberry bushes (Rabbiteye) are waiting for their place.

The potatoes (Banana Fingerlings) have been planted.

And, if all else fails....we have potatoes growing in the compost pile. So there.

Hope your garden is going well too!

Birthday Boy

2009-04-03T03:00:00.000-07:00

Dear Kane - 4 years old today,

How you have grown!

I remember this cute, little, fluffy pup (with giant paws!) in a cardboard box on my car passenger seat, desperately trying to get out and get into my lap. Now you weigh about 85 pounds, and although you don't exactly fit in my lap, you do whatever you can to lay next to your favorite person, which is lucky, lucky me.

You love your family, especially your new friend Sean who can throw the ball much higher and longer than I can, and who can play with you tirelessly in the backyard until you both come busting into the house desperate for water. You don't quite mind him all the time, yet, but we'll get there.

Every time you come inside you race over to the stairs, hoping that this one time might be the one where one of mom's cats "accidentally" fell down from upstairs. Or maybe you're hoping that you'll catch them sneaking back through the gate after having watched you play through the living room windows.

You love going outside, and if we pick up your collar, you spin in circles with excitement. Knocking anything and anyone over that may be in your path. If we then happen to pick up the car keys as well, it's double the excitement.

With the backseat folded down in my Mazda3, you stand with your front feet between the seats and stick your head out the sunroof. We make many people smile on our way down the road. It's fun to see how we bring some joy to them. You're good at that, sweet Kane. When we go faster, your jowls flap in the wind, and you can only stand it for so long until you simply have to pull your head back inside the car and shake it off. Motorcycles and big trucks get extra attention. The kind of attention where you whip around and bark at them. Small vehicles need not apply.

You love kids, which bodes well we hope. Our neighbor Skyler (2) comes running, screaming your name when he sees you. You stand patiently while being hugged, petted, and having your ears pulled. You sniff the little kids, lick their faces and you're so, so good with them. Just like you are in this picture with your buddy Collin. With most adults you are curious enough to say hello, if mom does so first, but then back to being solo, just like a GSD should be.

We've been taking a few overnight hikes together in the past year, and we hope to do more. You have your own backpack, in which you carry water and your own food. I think that it makes you feel proud to have a job to do. At the campsite, you seem to settle down quickly, more so than at home. Maybe because we wore you out, or maybe because nature calms you just like it does to me. You enjoy sleeping in the tent. Usually you go in and nap for a few minutes on our sleeping bags while we change clothes and get ready. Then you curl up next to us and go to sleep. In the morning you wake up thirsty and lick the condensation off the inside of the tent. Then you lick our faces while we're immobilized by the sleeping bags - the perfect opportunist!

In the past year, I've switched your food from commercial dry food, to grain-free kibble and finally now a raw diet. Although our vet wasn't thrilled, she said she's never seen a healthier and happier looking dog - clear eyes, shiny coat, healthy weight and good demeanor. Whenever it's food time, I let you jump around and bark, simply because I'm excited too that you love your food. A foodie woman should have a foodie dog, it's only right. I remember when you were eating commercial kibble and how you would slowly walk over to the food bowl, and slowly eat half, only to leave the rest. I hope the minor dysplasia that showed up on your x-ray at 2 years old is also helped by all the natural chondroitin and glucosamine you get from chicken backs, leg quarters, turkey necks and rabbits. You have good even muscle development in both hips, so I think we'll be good.

We continue to train with the schutzhund club twice a week; tracking, obedience and protection. You are doing so wonderful at everything, I'm just amazed that we even can. We need to do more tracking, but you already lay down without command at the articles, and your pace is good. Corners are another thing we need to work on, but it will happen. Your heeling is beautiful, you prance next to me and I'm so proud to have you near me showing off. You respond with even more prancing when I smile and we proceed across the field. Walking sits, walking downs, recalls, about turns and groups are no problem at all. We're starting the dumbell work, and it's going well. Positive marker training means you get a treat everytime you do what I ask of you, and you love your treats.
You are very real in protection, and I love that about you. You approach it with an unmatched energy and intensity, barking to get started while we heel out on the field, barking as I ask you to sit after an exercise. Now we just need to harness all that energy into obedience so that you listen to my commands. That's how we'll make the 100s, my boy. My schutzhund friends seem to think you're doing pretty well for a non-working line type of dog, but I secretly think sometimes they're a bit scared of how intense you are. We'll do the BH this spring/summer. Just need to shape your long down more to make sure you stay put. We will get it, I promise. I won't give up on you ever.

You love it when my mom stops by a few times a week and takes you for a walk in the woods. Then you get a treat while she sits on the front porch, enjoying the afternoon sun together. Your favorite thing about my mom are the neck and back massages she gives you. You stick your head between her knees, over and over again, for just a little more.

Every time you place your head on my leg, arm or shoulder, my heart does a funny little skip and I'm reminded again how much you mean to me. I keep asking Sean if you realize just how much I love you, how happy it makes me to reach down and fill my lungs with that sweet doggie-smell that can only be found right behind your fluffy ears. It calms me. Whenever I'm scared or nervous, I think about that, and my love for you fills me and washes away the scariness.

When I see my big bad shepherd stretched out on the ground or floor, belly up for a belly rub, I can't wait to scratch your feel-good spot. You know, the one that makes your right back leg move to some kind of a drum beat. It's right in your right front arm-pit, that spot. I love to tickle the little fur between your feet, watch you pull your feet out of harm's way, sigh and give me the look of "Mo-om, stop!"

I love it when you come running back to me with a toy, how you do an extra leap of joy, while shaking that soft frisbee of yours or the punched-out basketball that my mom gave you. Most of all, I like laying next to you on the green summer grass while you snooze, watching you, resting my head on your shoulder and remembering the little puppy you once were, and now...the most wonderful dog, protector and best friend anyone could wish for.

I will always, always, always love you. Thank you for the joy you bring me every day, you are such a blessing. May we make many more memories together.
Happy birthday, sweet-pea. Yes, you get an extra serving of chicken today.

Love,

Mom

Caramel Strawberry Jam - NOT a recipe

2009-03-30T16:57:00.000-07:00

Well, it is a recipe. Sort of. That I messed up. :-(
I wasn't meant to be caramel strawberry jam. It was meant to be my very first batch of real strawberry jam. Made from local (greenhouse) strawberries from the farmstand down the road, made without added chemicals like CERTO, or organic pectin (since I didn't have any).
And I messed it up. Turned my head for a second, and......Hello caramel strawberry jam!

Well, the good news is....I learned from it. Plus it actually tastes ok. Not great, kind of difficult to get out of the jar, lol, but that's alright. It still works on my breakfast and on the waffles we made the other day.

I started out with about a gallon of strawberries from the local "Bush n'Vine" farmstand. I cleaned them and cut them into chunks. Then I weighed them and luckily (!) ended up with roughly 1000 g (35 ounces, or 2.2 lbs) of strawberries.
In a generous bowl, I added 1000g of sugar (4.3 cups), and the juice from one lemon.

I mixed all of this well, covered with plastic wrap, and let sit for 24 hours. By that time, the berries had released a lot of juice.

I poured all of this into a thick-bottom pot and warmed to a boil with close supervision (obviously, this should read meticulous since my level of supervision was not enough!). I used a skimmer to skim off the foam every now and then and a brush dipped in water to clean the sugar crystals off the sides.

So the recipe says to look for the jam "jellying up" or forming a skin on top - that's how you know it is done. Or you can do the "jelly test" on a clean, cool plate to see if your jam jellies or not.

This is where I lapsed. All of a sudden I started smelling caramel or toffee (which I love) and by the time I figured out that it was the jam......ah well.

I then continued by pouring the jam into cleaned, sterilized (in oven) glassjars. I let the jam cool and then tightly screwed on sterilized lids. Since I was planning on eating this jam within 2 months, I did not go through the canning process, but instead I am keeping it in the fridge.
Yes, I know....there are no pictures of the final product. I was too disappointed to take some. My dear fiance claimed it tasted just fine, and I felt a little better after that, but still.....

So, time for fess-up.....how was your first foray into jam or jelly making? Was it a complete success, or utter failure? Care to share with me some of the possible mistakes I might make next time? :-)

Grow, grow, grow!

2009-03-24T09:53:00.000-07:00

Yeay - the gardening season has finally arrived to my little corner of the world!
(insert me doing a crazy little dance here...lol)

This is our second year gardening here in the Carolinas, and as you may know from my previous post about gardening (read it here), we have decided to expand our existing vegetable garden, and also create a whole new section, aptly named the Lakeside Vegetable Garden.

So what's in the ground already?
Well, I planted peas a few weeks ago, and they are already peeking up quite well. I am considering doing another planting next to them, along the fence as well, since I luv peas. The idea is that they will use the chain-link fence to climb on and maybe even shade some of the lettuce that soon will be joining the fun. The peas are called "Tall Telephone" from Pinetree Gardens. Height can reach 6 ft, which is great since that's how tall the fence is! :-)

Spinach.

I've also planted spinach, Long-standing Bloomsdale variety, which is curly-leafed and developed to resist bolting and hot weather (which we will have soon enough). I'm hoping to harvest most of this before the real heat hits us.

Here is a picture from my onion patch that I planted in the fall of last year. There are four kinds of garlic and four kinds of shallots, red and yellow onions. I'm not quite sure if they are ready yet, the tops are only a little brown, so I figured I'd wait another week or so and see what happens.
They did not grow as large as I expected, so my harvest may not be that great. I've sprayed them once with fish emulsion/kelp and maybe should have done some more of that. Any suggestions?

I also have a small kitchen herb garden where my chamomille, sorrel, rosemary, oregano and chocolate mint (yum!) over-wintered. They have now been joined by a red sorrel (very pretty!) and a lively and bushy chervil plant. Both were gifts from my friends at Tega Hills Greenhouses - they grow lettuce hydroponically and also grow micro greens for restaurants in the area.

Inside, the seeds are sprouting.

I planted six kinds of lettuce (you'd think I love lettuce, which isn't entirely true. I like lettuce, but it's been a rocky kind of romance - too many bitter tasting store-bought (and non-organic!) varieties in my past. There is Slo-bolt loose leaf lettuce, Thai Oakleaf, 2 kinds of Bibb lettuce, and a romaine mix and a looseleaf mix. The lettuce came in quickly but then became really tall and spindly, which was because of a lack of light (Thanks wvfarmgirl!). My live-in handyman quickly pulled together a shelf and some fluorescent lights, including some handy wiring, and we now have our very own grow-lights. TADA! Exciting!

The newly planted seeds get to sit on top of the top shelf so that they get some bottom heat from the growlights. This has worked out very well for the tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, bok choi and chard that I planted next.
The lettuce was transplanted this past weekend, and should be ready to go out in the garden in another week or two.

The tomatoes and peppers are peeking up, except for some of the hot peppers, but I've had issues with them taking a while to germinate before as well. I'm keeping the faith. They will come in when they feel like it.

This year, more than ever, it feels important to me to grow and eat my own food. Maybe it's because of all the scary food recalls, the cost of food or just in general the economical downturn. Whatever it might be, I know it makes me feel so at peace - digging in my garden, planting seeds and making them grow.
Thanks to all my online friends in the blogger world for their tips and suggestions on what to grow and how to do it. You guys are the best!
I wish you a peaceful gardening season!

Wedding Stuff Part 1 - Knitting

2009-03-12T18:57:00.000-07:00

It's Christmas in March!
Look at what arrived in the mail just the other day....a new set of interchangeable circular knitting needles and some new yarn! I'm as excited as a child on Christmas morning!

I've had the book Fitted Knits by Stefanie Japel for a few months now. I picked it up at my local used/new bookstore for a few dollars less. I was very excited to find it there!!!

I've been knitting on and off since I was a teenager (waaay back when), but other than 2 sweaters (part of the 80s glitter/glam, pouffy type knitted sweater), it's been mainly scarves and other straight, rectangular and, let's face it, "easy" knitting projects. I'm a much better crafter with other things than I am at knitting!

My mom knits. my grandmother knits, my aunt knits (more on her in a later post as I am currently knitting a project with her yarn, spun by her, from her sheep. How neat is that?). They are all great knitters. Socks, complicated patterns, baby sweaters, caps etc. I finally started wanting to knit something other than a straight rectangle, and I've since had my grandmother teach me to knit socks (which I still have not actually done!), started (almost finished) on a baby sweater (yep, the baby is way too big for the sweater by now) and now I'm ready for the big time. I think. I hope.
See, I have chosen to knit myself a little bolero type sweater for our wedding this fall. It's going to be here at home, in the backyard. We're planning a laid back ceremony, and I'm not wearing a big, fancy dress. I've already found a nice and simple dress (yes, it's white) and I wanted to add some color to it by knitting this bolero. We picked the colors of apple green and dark brown, so that is what my sweater is going to be. Green for the body and brown for the ribbing/collar. It's labeled as one of the easy projects, so I should be able to finish in....oh, 7 months.

I have until October to finish it. But I promised myself I couldn't start until I finished my other 2 knitting projects - the scarf from my aunt's wool and the baby sweater. Sigh.....such temptation.
So - how about you - do you also have unfinished knitting or crafting business laying around?

If you plant snowpeas....

2009-03-03T18:43:00.000-08:00

....does that mean it might snow soon after you do so? :-)

I certainly hope the little guys survive and start poking up sometime soon. We got snowed on by Mother Nature (after getting about 7 inches of much-needed rain, yeay!) in the storm that pulled up from the south/south-west and then continued on north. It started snowing on Saturday evening, and continued throughout the night.

Naturally me and Kane had to go out and investigate (while Sean was snuggling in bed with Stars and Stripes). Everything gets to be so pretty when it snows. I find small little details that I long to take better pictures of, the mist rising off the lake, the morning sun setting the clouds on fire.... I think I need to go visit Kim over at Inadvertent Farmer and learn some more about photography. :-) Or my dad. My dad is an excellent photographer, his specialty being nature and especially birds. The family just came back from a trip to South Africa where they spent a week at a safari lodge. I'm expecting a photobook very soon!

Anyways, here are some pictures as far away from what Southern Africa is like as possible. Kane and I had fun - if you got some of this weather - we hope you did too!

Here is Kane chasing a mouse under the snow....lol. He would jump up like foxes do, then bury his nose into the snow, supposedly to get a good sniff, and then he'd mow the snow over with his nose. Crazy guy! But it looked hilarious.All of Kane's toys were frozen, which means his teeth wouldn't get stuck in them. A great opportunity to play some more, mom!

Our house was just re-stained in a solid, darker color. In anticipation of our "at home" wedding that will take place on October 10 in the backyard. I can't wait to marry Sean - he's such a wonderful man, he makes me feel wonderful and he makes me smile every day. I'm truly a lucky woman for having him in my life. Thanks Steph! Kane is going to walk me down the "aisle." (all together now....."awwwwwww......") We have lots to do before then, but we feel better spending the money on our own home improvements in this kind of economy. More on wedding plans in future posts, I'm sure....

Last year's crepe myrtle berries.

Dripping from a missing drain onto the patio created this master-piece. Only in nature...

Early morning lake ice.

Snow on my garden fence-post.

Now open for Dog Biscuit Business!

2009-02-28T16:10:00.000-08:00

Sleeping Dog Bakery - now open for Dog Biscuit Business!!! :-)

My friend Steph and I are both interested in feeding our dogs the best food we can. Gracie, Steph's dog, is a rescue mutt of mixed origins - perhaps border collie and papillon? She is on all-natural Kibble and sometimes enjoys both Kefir and eggs as part of her diet.
Kane is on an all-natural raw diet. I feed him things like chicken backs, leg quarters, chicken necks, turkey necks, turkey wings, ground beef and sometimes we get lucky when my friend Maggie supplies us with rabbit. The amount he gets is based on his current weight and how much physical exercise we are doing at the moment. More about Kane's diet in the future perhaps, or on his Schutzhund Adventures blog.

We looked up a few recipes online and in a book I have and settled on a salmon "cookie" recipe and a baked liver treat. Both dogs WOULD NOT leave the kitchen while we were baking. They were smelling something good, and they were going to make sure they did not miss the taste-testing that could potentially happen.

The salmon treat recipe was made with canned salmon, whole eggs, parsley, sesame seeds, flax seeds, and potato flour. Recipe can be found here.

It was quite easy, and only took some time because I wanted to make pretty cookies using cookie-cutters. :-) Hey, dogs need pretty food too!!! :-)
We used doggie bones, hearts, stars and palmetto trees (for South Carolina.)

The second treat we made was done with chicken livers, molasses and parsley. It truly stunk up the kitchen, which means the doggies LOVED it! :-) The end result was a dried liver treat kind of thing.

Grace and Kane - eagerly awaiting the taste test.

We were really excited that they liked the treats. Both dogs are known to spit out purchased so-called "Gourmet" dog treats and it feels good to know what goes into the treat I give my dog.

What's your dog's favorite treat?